It's Rajning cousins

When I first got in touch a few years back with my Third Cousins in the USA, Fran, Joyce and Dana, they sent me a typewritten Tree, compiled in 1999, that included Abraham Icek Rajn, half-brother of Fran's grandmother Frajda. 

* * Warning: this gets pretty convoluted, but then these things usually do * *

First, a bit of family history. If you're not feeling really fresh, you can skip this bit. I'll understand. Some days I can't get my head round it myself. 

So:

Frajda Rajn's mother was Rywka Laja Frankensztajn; her father was Hersz Ber Rajn. Hersz Ber had previously been married to Rywka Laja's sister Tauba (see the clip from the Tree above), who had 4 children with him, including Abraham Icek, and then sadly died. So, according to custom at the time, Hersz Ber then married his deceased wife's sister (Rywka Laja) with whom he had a further 3 children, including  the afore-mentioned Frajda, and then passed away himself. If you're still with us, Rywka Laja then took a second husband, Herszl Boll, with whom she had a further 6 children. So there's half-siblings on all sides.

Abraham Icek Rajn
Abraham Icek was the only one of Hersz Ber Rajn and Tauba Frankensztajn's 4 children to survive into adulthood; the other 3 had all died in infancy. The Tree also showed 3 children for Abraham, but it didn’t have the name of his wife. Two of his children appear with anglicised names: Ben and Esther, whilst the third has the Yiddish name Tauba. There was a suggestion they might have gone to France. This was all anyone had about them.

I had located Abraham in the Polish records, where he appears as Abram Icek, born 1883. However, I didn't find anything further on him - no reference to a marriage, or to any children that might be his. I wasn’t sure whether the anglicised names of his children in the Tree were an indication that the family had emigrated from Poland to an English-speaking country, or if it was just the way they were referred to in my cousins' family. They didn't know either. I didn’t attempt to follow them up.

Out of the blue

Then, out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a person with the surname Raine, about a DNA match he had with one of my other Frankenstein cousins whose DNA account I manage. We couldn’t find a Morris link - which is what he was looking for - but I wondered if the Raine name might be significant. We haven’t found a Raine link yet either, but it did set me off looking at our Rajns again.

And once I started looking, I pretty quickly found Abram Icek and his family.

In London.

There they were, in the 1911 UK Census, as Abram and Blooma Rayne with the first two children, Bernard and Debbe. Hetty was born a couple of years later. All three children were born in the East End of London, between 1908 and 1913.

Go back to what my cousins had on their Tree: Bernard is Ben, Debbe is Taube, Esther is Hetty. And Rajn is Rayne. These are their cousins - or at least, they are Fran's mother's half-Second Cousins. Joyce and Dana are a bit more distant - they are the great-grandchildren of Hersz Ber Rajn's second wife, with her second husband. So maybe they're step-half-Second Cousins??

Mystery cousins

There's another family of Fran's cousins - Alan and Evelyn, also grandchildren of Frajda - who live not too far from me. When I went to see them a year or two ago to swap notes, they mentioned some cousins they vaguely remembered hearing about, who lived near them in London when they were young. They couldn't place who they were. I thought perhaps they might have been one or other of our Frankensteins that were in London around that time, including my mother's family - her father was a First Cousin to Frajda, and they came to London at the same time, in 1913. We couldn't place them, though, and we left it there.

Now I think we've found out who these mystery cousins were - they're Abram Icek and his family. Abram is closer to Alan and Evelyn than my Frankensztajns were - he's their grandmother Frajda's half brother - same father, different mother - though the mothers are sisters, of course. Is there a word for that relationship?

What's in a name?
And, of course, there's more. Here's Abram Icek's marriage certificate:

Abraham Isaac Ray marries Bloomah Freedman on 3 March 1907, at Great Alie Street Synagogue in the East End. His father is shown as 'Harris Barnett Ray' - that's Hersz Ber Rajn to you and me. What's interesting about that is that Hersz Ber had died 13 years previously, in 1894, and had never left Poland. Abraham had anglicised his deceased father's Yiddish names, using versions that had been current amongst Jews in England for over a century - Hersz becomes Harris, Ber becomes Barnett, and no-one has to explain how to pronounce or spell them.

I have managed to trace a few records for Bernard, Debbe and Hetty, the children of Abraham and Bloomah. They all married and had children, one each so far as I can ascertain, all born in London just before or just after WW2. These children are my generation, they may still be around. The next challenge is to find them.

Ding-dong
And, of course, there's more still. On their marriage certificate, Abraham and Bloomah gave the address 11 Underwood Street. That rang a bell. Hadn't I come across that address somewhere before?

But that story warrants a post of its own.