Wondering how to start the process of using DNA research and genealogy to find your biological family, or help an adoptee do the same? Here are a few tips. Get tested at both Ancestry and 23andMe. Both have big databases but you can’t compare your results to the people in…
When doing DNA research consider adoption’s troubled history
Like most genealogists who have taken a DNA test or three, I’ve come across several adoptees in my DNA match list. I was intensely curious about where these people fit in my family tree, but I had never given much thought to the process behind these adoptions, or known that…
Przedbórz Yizkor books
Yizkor books are memorial books put together by Jewish emigrants from a specific community, often part of a landsmanshaft society, to memorialize their villages and shtetls that were destroyed in the Holocaust. These can be a great source of information, both in terms of names of people who were murdered,…
A 1915 Visit to Przedbórz
A few weeks ago I came across this story from the October 23, 1915 issue of a German weekly, Die Woche. It’s a travelogue of a visit to Przédborz written by Dr. H. Roesing, believed to be Dr. Lieutenant Roesing of the German Royal Wuertemberg Army Corps. It’s a fascinating…
Przedbórz burial societies
Landsmanshaftn were organizations started by Jewish immigrants as a multi-purpose fraternal organization, health insurance, death benefits, and aid society. There were two New York landsmanshaftn for Przedbórz, the First Przedborzer Benevolent Association and the Independent Przedborzer Friends Society. The former has sections at three cemeteries in New York, at Floral…
Mike Schackowitz, Satanover Benevolent Society
Michael Schackowitz is the reason I started photographing the Satanover Benevolent Society. My elusive great great grandfather Moses Schechowitz or Scheckowitz (or indeed, about 30 other spellings of this name) was registered in the nearby town of Volochisk, so when I saw that there were several Scheckowitzs and Shackowitzs buried…
Taube Spilka Scheckowitz, Satanover Benevolent Society
Last year I visited Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, New York and spent a few hours taking photos of every headstone in the section for the Satanover Benevolent Association landsmanshaft. Mount Hebron has a very useful website where you can search for people by name or by burial society, and…
The Przedbórz synagogue
The wooden synagogues of Poland, with elaborate carvings and brightly colored interiors were a “truly original and organic manifestation of artistic expression—the only real Jewish folk art in history,” according to art historian Stephen S. Kayser in Wooden Synagogues by Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, a Polish couple who were the…
But which Catherine Stack and Tom Collins?
In the 1800s in rural Ireland, people weren’t about to get creative with their children’s names. They drew on a very small number of popular names when baptizing their children, often using an Irish naming convention that named the children after their parents and older siblings. It’s not uncommon to…
The Przedbórz Jewish cemetery
Right now I’m writing up a collection of information for those researching their Przedbórz Jewish roots, and once all of the sections are done I’ll combine it into a larger guide. But for now, here’s more on the Przedbórz Jewish cemetery. The Przedbórz Jewish cemetery has been neglected and has…