Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #5 Herman unmasked

Finding Simon
So the challenge now was to find Simon Morris - and any references to his father Herman Turiansky - in the US records. Rebecca's Tree (above) shows a Sam Morris who looks as though he's the same person as Simon, and she also has a wife for him called Elizabeth Bessie, and a son called Al born in 1912. This was as far as her Tree went, so I presume this is probably her own family line and it's all she knows about it. As such, it should be full of clues, even if some of the detail might not quite be fully accurate. Plus, the only locations we have for them are Pinsk in Russia, and Peoria, Illinois.

If you've stayed with this story thus far, you will not be surprised to hear that I could find no suitable Simon Morris in any of the US Censuses in Peoria.

But here's Sam Morris with his family in Peoria in 1920:

Is this our 'Simon'? There are 3 daughters, followed by 3 sons: Herman, Meyer, and Abe. 'Herman' looks promising - is he named after Sam's father? And note that Abe, the youngest, was born around 1913 - could he be the 'Al' in Rebecca's Tree?

From Moses to Morris
Here's Sam in 1910 (the other family members are the same as in 1920, except for Abe, who hadn't arrived yet):

Yes, he's Simon at this point, and the surname is 'Mose'.

And in 1900 he's Simon Moses:

So Turiansky morphed to Moses, which became Mose and then Morris. At least we now know who we're looking for. The Census forms suggest that Simon and Elizabeth were married around 1892, but I haven't found a record for this as yet. Bessie, their first child, appears on the Censuses as born in Illinois in 1897.

Immigration and marriage
Unfortunately the US Census records for 1890 have not survived. We do find a Simon Moses in Peoria who took out US Naturalisation in 1886, which corresponds approximately with the year he gave in later Census returns. If this is the case, when they married in 1892 it was almost certainly in the US. There is also a Simon Moses in Joliet, Illinois in 1880, but he seems to be from Prussia, not Russia, so who knows?

Passenger manifests might possibly offer some information on his place of origin, and enable us to home in on given and family names, as well as confirming a date of arrival. There may even be travelling companions. There are several candidates for 'Simon Moses' in passenger manifests, arriving in the US from the mid-1880s onward, but I've not been able to positively identify any of them. There are none at all for Simon Turiansky/Terensky or similar.

Elizabeth was only about 18 when they married. The Census forms say she was born in Russia; she may have come to the US as a child with her family, or on her own as a later teenager. Either way, we don't know when she came (the Census forms give varying dates), we don't know how her given name would have appeared on the manifest, and we don't have her maiden name either.

This is beginning to look a bit like a brick wall.

Who is Herman?
At this point we need to remember that what we're really looking for is, who is Herman? He's almost certainly a Zaturensky, but where does he fit in?

His son Simon Morris died in 1926, as Simon not Sam, and if we're lucky, the Hebrew inscription on his headstone will identify him by his patronymic name, ie, it will say he is the son of Herman (whoever Herman is).

Here's the headstone:

The stone has been placed by his children - Elizabeth had died a couple of years earlier - so the information on Simon's Hebrew name will probably have come from them. This doesn't guarantee that it's 100% reliable, of course, but close family is a usually a better source for names than most others. All his children are under 30, and several of them had been living in the family home, at least until a few years previously. I think we can trust them, at least for the time being.

The second line tells us he is:

Mr Shmuel son of Mr Moshe Chaim

So Simon is Shmuel, and his father "Herman" is  ... Moshe Chaim.

Well, you must admit that 'Moshe Chaim' sounds a bit more Jewish than 'Herman'. Furthermore, the DNA relationship between Private Morris and myself is such that this has to be my Moshe Chaim, my great-great-grandfather. Herman Czar Terensky really is Moshe Chaim Zaturensky.

Saying "Hello" to the cousins my grandfather probably never knew he had
This in turn means that Simon Morris is the brother of my great-grandmother Shprintsa Zaturensky, and consequently his children were First Cousins to my grandfather Movsha/Morris Schreibman. This is significant to me, as it's the closest I have ever got to my grandfather, apart from his box of cabinet-maker's tools. And some of his DNA, of course. He came to London on his own in 1905, and we have never been aware of him being in contact with any relatives. This is not really surprising in this case, seeing that Simon - Uncle Shmuel - may well have left for America before Movsha was born in 1883.

My grandfather died in 1930, and I don't think my father and his siblings knew anything at all about his family apart from the name and occupation of his father - Nevakh Schreibman of Pinsk, a teacher of religion. I don't think they even knew the given name of his mother - Shprintsa.

So Private Morris and I are confirmed Third Cousins, or possibly one remove away, depending on how many generations down from Moshe Chaim Zaturensky he is. I hope he sees this!

Four more questions
All of which leaves us with at least four more burning questions:

1) Is Moshe Chaim one person or two - ie, is this one person with 2 given names, or should we read this as Moshe, son of Chaim? This question, which has come up previously over the records of my great-grandmother Shprintsa (see #1 Who is Private Morris? and #4 Two for the price of one), is not resolved by Simon's headstone.

2) How, and when, did 'Zaturensky' morph into 'Moses'?

3) The amount of DNA Private Morris shares with me is towards the top end of the range for 3C, and is getting on for 50% greater than I share with any of the other members of the Terensky Cluster, some of whom look as though they are from the same generation as him. This suggests that either:

i) he really is a generation above the others

or

ii) there's some other factor at play

4) And where exactly do all the other members of the Terensky Cluster fit in?

Questions, questions, questions ....

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #4 Two for the price of one

So it looks like my mystery cousin Private Morris and I are related in some way through the families of his ancestor Herman Czar Terensky and of my great-great-grandfather, Moshe Chaimovitch Zaturensky. They have the same surname, they are from the same town, they look like they are from the same generation.

Wading through the DNA
Private Morris and I share 184cM across 12 segments. This gives an average of 15cM per segment, which in turn means that there are probably 2 or 3 segments of over 20cM each, if not more, and possibly one or two substantially bigger ones. Multiple shared segments of this size suggest 3rd Cousin or thereabouts. AncestryDNA puts him at the upper end of my 3C range.

The chart at the Shared DNA Project, which is based on figures for known relationships submitted by thousands of volunteers, suggests that 184cM lies well above the range for 4C. It's at the upper end of 3C, but well above the average, which comes in at 74cM. There are also a number of possibilities in the 1CR-2CR range, but it is clear from the Trees below that this cannot be the case for this relationship. Another part of the chart shows half-relationships, and maybe we'll have to take those into consideration at a later stage.

Peering through the Trees

So where does our shared DNA come from? Who is our common ancestor? Let's put the two Trees, as we have them at the moment, side by side:

Now, bear in mind that I still don't know who Private Morris is. He could be a son of Al Morris, or of an as yet unknown second son of Simon. It is also possible that there could be a further generation between Simon and Al - there appears to be a gap of 50 years between them - in which case he would be a great-grandson of Simon, which would place him in my own generation

My Tree is I hope a bit clearer. If I'm starting off by looking for a 3C, then the common ancestor must be Movsha Zaturensky, or possibly a half-relationship descending from his daughter Shprintsa. Anything further out would not be able to produce the 184cM match. And Shprintsa doesn't seem to have had children with any other husband, so 3C it seems to be.

All I know about Shprintsa is that she was born about 1858, and was the second wife of Nevakh Schreibman, with whom she had a number of children, including this one:

One person or two?
So her father is Movsha-Chaim Zaturensky, who has what looks like two given names. This is the only document we have that mentions him, apart from her burial record. As I discussed in the first post (#1 Who is Private Morris?), he is shown there as 'Movsha-Chaimovitch', which suggests that he is Movsha son of Chaim.

So is Movsha-Chaim one person or two? This could be crucial, because we're hoping to find one or other of these names amongst Private Morris's ancestors.

So far, all we have is Simon Morris and his father, Herman Czar Terensky. They're not in the vestigial Tree attached to Private Morris's DNA results, but they are in Jennifer's Tree and they do seem to belong in mine. So where do they - and he - fit in?

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #3 What's in a name?

Who is Herman?

You will recall that my mystery match, who I am calling Private Morris for the moment (see #1 Who is Private Morris?), has a Tree which suggests he is descended from a Simon Morris b 1864. Then in the following post - #2 The Cluster Club - I included a couple of clips from the Tree of one of my other matches, Rebecca. She has a couple of versions. In one she shows what appears to be the same Simon Morris, with slightly different dates. She also has a Tree which shows a Sam Morris, whose dates are close to the other two. It looks like all three of these are probably versions of the same person.

Rebecca's Sam Morris has a father, Herman Turiansky. Aha. Immediately, several questions rear up. I know many immigrants americanised their surnames after they arrived; in most cases they chose a name that wasn't too far distant from the original. So how did Turiansky turn into Morris? It's nothing like it, not in Yiddish, not in Russian, not in English. It doesn't even begin with the same letter.

How come he's Herman?

And while we're at it, what sort of a Russian-Jewish name is Herman, anyway? For a start, there's no aspirated (breathy) 'H' sound in Russian. Any Yiddish word with this sound is transcribed with the 'G' letter in Russian (a hard 'g' as in 'golly'), so for instance 'Hirsh' gets written, and pronounced, as 'Girsh'. 

The name Herman was certainly used by Jews in German-speaking countries, and 'German' (hard 'g') does exist as a Russian name, but I have never seen it used in Russian-Jewish records. My guess at this stage is that if Herman immigrated to the USA, he may have chosen to adopt the name as part of his new American identity. However, there is no indication anywhere, in the records or the Trees, that he ever came to the US; I can find no reference to him anywhere in official documents such as Passenger Lists, Censuses, City Directories, Death Records, in the US or anywhere else. I don't believe he ever emigrated.

I believe that the information shown for Herman - given name, surname, son's name - is probably based on family information, such as the recollections of parents or grandparents, or perhaps family documentation, such as letters. At this stage, I was thinking that the name 'Herman' may have been what Simon put when he needed to enter his father's name in an official document, such as an application for naturalisation. Simon seems to have naturalised in 1886, but the naturalisation documents do not seem to be available online, apart from an index card with not much on it. So I can't check that, for the moment.

And if Simon emigrated some time before 1886, well they weren't asking for contact information at that point, so his father's name would not appear on his Passenger Manifest. And I can't find that, anyway.

Herman the Czar

And then I found a Tree posted on Ancestry by Rebecca's sister, Jennifer. She hasn't tested with AncestryDNA, so she's not in my original Cluster Club. Her Tree goes a good deal further - and she has a different name for Herman, as you can see above. He's now Herman Czar Terensky.

Czar? Really?? I know that a few Jews - a handful - achieved some form of eminence under the Russian Empire, maybe in the medical or other professions. But I wasn't aware of any Jew rising to the very top of the pile, to rule over lords and peasants as Czar of all the Russias. Not one from Pinsk, anyway.

So where does the 'Czar' come from?

Tsar Terensky
This is one of those where you have to say the words out loud. Bear in mind that 'Czar' is an odd spelling for this word in English - it should be pronounced 'Tsar'. Go to a quiet corner and say "Tsar Terensky" a few times over. Try it. Does it sound a bit like "Zaturensky"?

Zaturensky. That's my great-grandmother's family name. It's taken several weeks of head-splitting DNA analysis, and 3 whole blog posts, but we've finally got there. This is indeed my family, even though neither of us recognised the name the other was using.

When I explained all this to Jennifer, she said "Wow!", and "Oh yes - that's my brother's middle name - Zarterensky".

Now she tells me.