The Fourth Ring

The Certificate
The discovery last week of the death certificate of my great-grandmother, Shprintsa Schreibman née Zaturensky, marked a bit if a landmark for me. In the last column of the certificate, she - Szprynca Szrajbman in the Polish spelling - is identified as the "daughter of Movsha Chaim and Sura". So these are my Zaturensky great-great-grandparents. They were probably born around 1835-40.

I knew Movsha Chaim's name - actually I think he's really "Movsha son of Chaim" - from my visit to Pinsk 10 years ago (10 years next week, in fact). The Jewish Community there gave me a few sheets of paper containing handful of references - all they had - to my Schreibman family, including a typed-out list of Szrajbman burials. This list included Szprynca, who died in 1932, and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in the centre of town - sadly, it was dug up many decades ago by the Soviet authorities, and the land was re-purposed for a primary school.

As is usual in both Russian and Jewish traditions, the entry for Szprynca on this list showed her patronymic name: she was the daughter of Movsha Chaim. Another listing, this time of the birth record for her son Meer in 1897, had given us both her given name: Shprintsa, and her family name: Zaturensky. This was a great stride forward at the time, as we had not been aware of any of these names.

So, putting the two documents together, we knew that her father was Movsha Chaim Zaturensky. But there was no clue anywhere as to the name of her mother. Until last week - 10 years later - when I was trawling through the very few Pinsk records that are available online in the FamilySearch collection.

And there she is: Sura.

The Wheel
I began to enter the name into the family trees I keep in various places. I started with the master Tree I keep on my computer, using the MacFamilyTree software, and thought to myself, how does this look in the fan-chart? Sura will appear in the circle of my great-great-grandparents, four rings out from me - my Wheel of 16. How far have I got with that?

There she is, at the top, just to the left of centre, in a sort of lime-green colour. Hers is the last name to be added to the 4th ring of the circle, meaning that I now know the names of all my great-great-grandparents. Sura completes my Wheel of 16. 

I know there are people who have traced their ancestors - all their ancestors - back a generation or two further than this. 

But for me, this is a major landmark.

The Landmark
When I started researching, 12 years or so ago, I knew the names of 7 of my 8 great-grandparents - that is to say, my parents had known the names of their own grandparents, even though they had never seen most of them. The only ones I had 'met' in person were Barnet and Kate Waxman, as they were called in England, but they had both died by the time I was two years old. The only other one of the eight to emigrate was Mikhlya Levin, who had died in London well before I was born. The others all stayed, and died, in Poland or Belarus. In fact, checking over their dates now, the Waxmans were the only ones who were still alive when I was born.

Of the women - my 4 great-grandmothers - Mikhlya Levin was the only one we had a surname for. For two of them - including Kate - we had their given names but not their maiden names, so we had no idea what their family was, or where they had come from. The fourth one, the one we knew nothing about at all, was Shrpintsa.

And the next generation back - my 16 great-great-grandparents - were a total mystery, not only to me but to my parents and all their brothers and sisters. We couldn't even guess at their names, and even if we thought we knew where they came from, our assumptions have turned out to be mostly wrong.

We now have full names for 13 of the 16, with places of origin for most of them; family names are missing for just 3 of the women (including Sura). This in turn has enabled us to trace some of them back a further generation, to the Fifth Ring, and find out where they lived and something about their lives. And of course every step back creates a starting point for tracing sideways and forwards, towards cousins around now that you never even knew existed.

So to find Sura, and complete my Wheel of 16, really is a landmark.

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #14 Dora and Ockham's Razor

The story so far
Dora Zaturensky was the sister - or half-sister, maybe - of my great-grandmother Shprintsa. Their father Movsha may have had 2 wives; Shprintsa was born in 1858, and may have been the daughter of the first wife, and Dora, b 1869, the daughter of the second.

I have identified DNA matches with 2 of Dora's great-grandchildren, Cousin Paul and Cousin David. David is a descendant of Dora's first husband, Gitelman (we don't know his given name), whilst Paul is from her second husband, Jacob Kawin.



The paper trail says I have exactly the same relationship to both Paul and David: half-3rd Cousin. So why is there such a huge difference between the amounts of DNA I share with them? Or, to ask the question another way around: why do I share so much more DNA with a Kawin descendant than I do with a Gitelman one?

I've had a question like this before, in this same family. In that case, it seemed the solution was that there was probably a double relationship somewhere along the line - that Movsha's son Shmuel had married his cousin Rochel Leah, for instance. Is something similar happening here?

For this to be the case, I would have to have a single relationship with David, via Dora, and a double relationship with Paul. This second relationship could occur at any point in the Tree I have researched so far - via Paul's father's family (which I think is most unlikely, having had a quick look at his ancestry), that of his maternal grandmother Alice Cowan (wife of Sam Kawin), which also seems unlikely, or through Jacob Kawin himself. And the implication of this is that Jacob and Dora would have to be be fairly close cousins.

In other words, one of Dora's parents would have to be a sibling to one of Joseph's: either Dora's mother ('2nd wife' in the Tree above) would be a Kawin, ie a sister to Joseph's father Max, or Joseph's mother would be a Zaturensky, a sister to Dora's father Movsha. We don't have any information on Dora's mother, but we do have several references to Joseph's mother as 'Hinda Sandusky'. It is possible that this could be a variant on 'Zaturensky', but the Sandusky name does occur in several places, and in any case it's not a very convincing rendition of Zaturensky. At the moment I'm tending towards Dora's mother being the connection.

A tantalising Tree
Then I came across this tantalising clip from a Tree on the JewishGen 'Family Tree of the Jewish People' (log in required). It was posted nearly 20 years ago, at a time when it was not possible to do much online research, so I'm assuming it's the product of family knowledge, and possibly some archival research in Belarus. I've written to the person who posted it, asking where the information comes from; fingers crossed I'll get a response!


The layout is not 100% clear, but it seems to be saying that Benjamin is the son of a Mosha Lipschitz from Pinsk, who died in 1886, the same year as Benjamin was born. The mother is unknown, but she is not Dora, who seems to be Mosha's second wife. The dates given here suggest Dora must have married at the age of 14, though we have her down elsewhere as born in 1869, which would make her 17 at the time of this marriage.

In addition, if Benjamin is the son not of Dora but of an earlier wife, this first wife would need to be closely related to Dora - preferably a sister - so as to retain my DNA relationship with David (see my draft Tree above).

Fact or fancy?
All this suggests the following scenario:

1 Mosha Lipschitz and first wife have child Benjamin in Nov 1886
2 maybe first wife dies in childbirth or shortly after
3 Mosha remarries immediately, to Dora
4 Mosha himself dies
5 Dora packs her bags and goes off to Peoria to marry Jacob Kawin, leaving her stepson Benjamin behind

- all in a matter of weeks.

Oh dear. There's too much going on here, and it's putting a tremendous weight on Dora's 17-year old shoulders. I'm not happy with it.

Ockham's Razor
At this point I am reminded of the wise words of the medieval philosopher William of Ockham, who is reputed to have argued along the lines of "Don't make an explanation more complicated than it needs to be", or, as expressed by Bertrand Russell, "always opt for an explanation in terms of the fewest possible causes".

So what can we identify as the "fewest possible causes" in this case? Looking at our suggested scenario again, the only things we can take as fact are:

1 Benjamin was born around 1886, probably in Pinsk
and
5 Dora went to the US around 1887, probably from Pinsk

Plus,
6 We have seen that Benjamin brought his own family from Pinsk to Peoria in 1922, and lived for 20 years or so in a house built in Dora's back yard
7 I have the DNA relationship with David and Paul outlined above

Do we really need 2, 3 and 4 to explain 6 and 7?

A closer shave
What happens if we apply Ockham's Razor to this scenario, and shave off the bits we don't need? How about discarding the marriage between Dora and Mosha Lipshits shown in the Tree above? We have no evidence for it, or reference to it, other than this Tree, and this Tree shows no sources, and could be wrong.

The consequences for Dora's story would be:
2 Mosha's wife does not need to die at this point
3 Mosha does not need to remarry, so he does not marry Dora
4 we no longer need to 'free' Dora from the marriage to Mosha, nor do we need to posit his death at this point

That feels better.

Wanted: a sister for Dora
In fact, it feels much better. Applying the razor leaves both of our outstanding queries untouched. Point 6 - Benjamin coming to live next door to Dora in Peoria, and point 7 - my DNA matches with Paul and David, are covered by just one assumption: that Benjamin's mother is indeed a sister of Dora.

This implies that when Benjamin emigrates to Peoria, he is going to live close by his Aunt and Cousins. We know he took on their surname, Kawin, shortly after arriving in the US. And it would not affect my DNA relationship with David. Our Common Ancestor would still be my great-great-grandfather Movsha Zaturensky.

The only problem is, we don't have an eligible sister for Dora.

A Hundred Up

Three years ago I submitted a DNA sample to FamilyTreeDNA, and sat back and waited for the test results. The genetic 'matches' have duly been coming in, week by week since then, over 5000 of them and counting. Today I received my 100th match at the level of 2nd-to-4th Cousin. A cause for celebration, you would think - a host of new connections, new cousins, the expansion of our family tree, new family stories to hear and tell.

Well, I have not been able to establish a connection with a single one of them, with the exception of one I already knew, since before she was born so to speak - she's my cousin's daughter.

The problem is, my ancestors. And those of my matches. We are Ashkenazi Jews, and belong to a group that has been endogamous - ie, has intermarried within the group - not just for generations, but for centuries. So the DNA testing companies, and the science that underlies them, struggle to fit us into the pattern that works well for most other populations. They say they compensate to take account of the effects of endogamy, and I'm sure they do, but in my experience I have to say they end up grossly over-estimating the closeness of our relationships.

(click if it's too small to read)

Here's the listing of my top 5 matches. Katy, the first one, is a 1st Cousin Once Removed - my cousin's daughter. So I know her. The next four are classed as probable 2nd-3rd Cousins, which means we should share great-great-grandparents, or closer. 

The thing is, I know my family quite well. I know all the descendants of all my grandparents, most of them personally. I know the given and family names of all 8 of my great-grandparents, and where most of them were born and where they lived. I know the names and places for the vast majority of their descendants - ie, the brothers and sisters of my own grandparents, and their children in turn, who are my 2nd Cousins.

Moving back to the previous generation, my great-great-grandparents should in theory be the source of my 2nd-3rd Cousin matches. I know the given and family names of 12 out of 16 of them, including all 8 men and 4 of the women, and many of their places; I also know the given names of the other 4 women. My knowledge of their descendant lines - ie, those of my great-grandparents' siblings - is much more sketchy. In some cases I know only the name of my own ancestor, and have no information at all on possible siblings. Some of my DNA 2nd-4th Cousin matches will undoubtedly come from these unknown lines, maybe most of them. But surely not all 99 of them?

From my grandparents to my great-great-great-grandparents

(click on the image to enlarge it)

To take this one step further, the above implies that I actually know the family names of 12 out of 16 of the families of my great-great-great-grandparents - in other words, I know the family names that all of the siblings of my great-great-grandparents would have had, even if I don't actually know whether they existed or not. And these, of course, are the family names that the men would have passed on to the next generation.

At this point, let's make a few uncontroversial, generalising, assumptions: 

i) that any descendants that married and had children would be more or less equally divided between male and female

ii) that most women would take on their husband's surname on marriage, and thereby not pass on their own

iii) that any children they had would again be 50% male and 50% female, and so on

In this scenario, my knowledge of the surnames of any potential cousins would more or less halve with each generation, as the women don't pass on the known family name. However I do actually know who the siblings are in some cases, in particular who the women were, and who they married, and this knowledge increases the closer we get to the present day - so the halving process I am suggesting here is an exaggeration. I know much more than half of the names in my grandparents generation, but the calculation is easier to follow like this - let's just bear in mind we're being severe with the numbers.

So whereas I know all the family names of my great-great-grandparents' generation - the source of my 3rd Cousins - I will only know about half of those of my great-grandparents' generation, and a quarter of those of my grand-parents'. Which means I should expect to recognise the names of an eighth - 12.5% - of my parents' generation. And 6.25% of my own. Not 0% of any of them, which is where I am with my DNA matches at the moment.

We can halve again to get the picture for 4th Cousins - I should recognise fewer names in each succeeding generation: 12.5% of my 4th Cousins in my grandparents' generation, 6.25% in my parents', and 3.125% in my own. But again, not 0% of any of them. Especially considering we're just being theoretical, and not taking my actual knowledge into account.

And it's not just me recognising names in my own family tree - I am sharing trees with a number of my closer matches - and I don't recognise what's on theirs, nor they what's on mine.

So my conclusion is that FTDNA's match estimates exaggerate the closeness of our relationships. My guess at the moment is that they are a couple of generations out at least. I'm in touch this week with a couple of the 2nd-3rd Cousin matches in the list above, and I'll be surprised if we manage to confirm FTDNA's ratings. More than surprised - I'll be overjoyed! But I'm not expecting anything closer than 4th-5th.

A major issue of course is that most of us are finding it very difficult to trace our families back more than two or three generations, which is where we need to be to locate 3rd Cousins and further. In many areas the documentary trail has been disrupted, by emigration, war, revolution and the Holocaust, not to mention those inconsiderate ancestors who wilfully changed their names when it suited them. And all this makes it even more difficult to trace the descendants of those generations. But I still think I should be able to recognise one or two of them, at least.

On the plus side, it is useful having Katy in the list, as I can do a check on whether the people that match me also match her - she's on my father's side, so this gives me a rough orientation as to which side the others probably match me on. If they match Katy, they're probably on my Schreibman-Ilyutovich side, if they don't, they're probably on my Frankenstein-Waxman side. Reassuringly, across all 5000 matches, there's more or less half on each side.

It would help even more to have a few more known cousins do the test, as this would enable us to refine the analysis further, and get closer to identifying how our matches connect to us. Ideally I would like to have one of each line - a Frankenstein who's not a Waxman, and a Waxman who's not a Frankenstein, and similarly a Schreibman who's not an Ilyutovich, and an Ilyutovich who is not a Schreibman. That woud help us identify matches for each of my four lines.

And of course it's not just for 'my' family - they would all get matches on the other sides of their own families, as well.

Any offers?

A new Shreibman

I've found a new Shreibman! Well, he's new to us, but he's quite old really - he's the earliest Shreibman we know of. Meet Movsha Shreibman, born - we suppose - sometime around 1740.

Yesterday I came across the 1816 Russian Census ('Revision List') for the town of Pinsk on the JewishGen website - I don't know why I hadn't spotted it before - and there they were - father and son, Girsh and Movsha (here, Movsha Dovid). We already had their names, and a date of birth for Movsha Dovid, from later Censuses. This, however, takes us one step further back into the past, thanks to the Russian - and Jewish - custom of patronymic naming, as in 'Movsha Dovid, son of Girsh'. Thus the Census gives us not only the names of the people it is recording, but as part of the identification it also gives us the names of their fathers. As we can see, Girsh's father is also a Movsha.

Girsh's age is given as 50, which suggests a date of birth of 1766. This in turn allows us to guess that his own father Movsha may have been born around, say, 1740.

It is interesting to see that the surname Shreibman was already being used by the family in 1816; we can't tell from this census record whether it dates back to the previous generation as well. Most Jews in Eastern Europe used patronymics until around the beginning of the 19th century, when the Russian authorities began requiring them to use surnames.

The name 'Shreibman' means 'writer', or 'scribe', and we can assume that the first use of the name would be a reference to that person's occupation. Was Girsh the first 'Shreibman' in our family? Or his father Movsha, perhaps? Or were they from a line of scribes maybe, who were already being referred to as such before the formal adoption of surnames?

Notice also the given names, repeated across the generations, usually at one remove:

Movsha (b abt 1740) - Hirsh (1766) - Movsha Dovid (1798) - Hirsh (1827).

There was  - maybe there still is - a tradition amongst Ashkenazi Jews of naming children after deceased relatives, especially recently deceased close relatives such as grandparents, and although we don't know the dates of death of these Shreibmans, we can see the pattern in their names.  

Another of Movsha Dovid's sons was Nevakh, or Noah. Nevakh used 'Dovid' and 'Movsha' for two of his own sons. And then this latest Movsha - my grandfather - named his first son - my father - David. And although my parents were not observant Jews, they continued with the tradition: my Hebrew given name, so they told me, is 'Moishe'.

You can see this pattern of naming in the revised version of the family tree.

So, Movsha Shreibman the First, born around 1740 - welcome to the family!

Finding more new cousins

It's happened again.

Four weeks ago I found some Shreibmans, on my father's side, that I never knew existed. They are descendants of Aron, a cousin of my grandfather. We didn't know of Aron's existence until he appeared in the research we commissioned in Belarus last year. Aron emigrated to America, and became Harry, and now we are sharing family stories with the sons and daughters of his sons and daughters. If only my father - or any of his seven brothers and sisters - were alive to share this moment with us!

Two weeks on, and I've found some Frankensteins.

My mother's father, Leibisch 'Louis' Frankenstein (above), came to England from Poland some time in the 1910s. A few years later his brother Itzhak 'Isaac' Finkelstein, emigrated to South America, and then after a few years went on to Israel. Before you ask, neither Isaac's nor Louis' families have ever been able to explain why the brothers used different surnames. Did one of them change his name? And which was the 'genuine' family name? No-one knows.

The extent of our families' meagre 'knowledge' is that their parents were Jacob and Gittel, there were probably three other siblings, all girls, called Hava, Haia and one whose name we don't know, and they came from a town called Gombin (Gabin) in Poland. We have a rough idea of Louis' and Isaac's years of birth. Other than that, nothing.

Or rather, next to nothing.

My cousin Bracha, Itzhak's daughter, and I have been getting our heads together. Bracha tells me that Itzhak had a relative called 'Reimond Ball', who was active in the Gombiner Society in America, and that Itzhak himself had been President of the Society in Israel. And that there were other relatives, called Schwartz, who had six sons, all tailors, who went to London, and helped my grandfather when he arrived there 100 years ago: one of them was called Abraham.

Now this being the 21st Century, the Gombiner Society in the US has a web-site. On the web-site I came across a reference to a 'Raymond Boll'. Promising! They also had a database with listings of Gombiner families from a few years around the turn of the 20th Century, with dates of birth and, where appropriate, death.

Amongst the families in the database I found a Jacob and Gitla Finkelstein, with a daughter Jenta Bajla who married a member of a Svarc family. And a Bajla Frankenstajn, who also married a Svarc, and had eight children; the two girls died young, the six boys survived. One of them was called Abraham. This Abraham Svarc was just a few years younger than my grandfather Louis and his brother Isaac.

And then I found that some of the US Gombiners have even set up a Facebook Group; it is 2012, after all. When I saw that the owner of the group is called Dana Boll, I felt we might be on the right track.

And indeed we are. Dana and her cousin Joyce are grand-daughters of Raymond Boll; their fathers recall Raymond being in contact with Itzhak Finkelstein, who they assume was a cousin to Raymond. They tell me that Raymond's mother was Rifka Leah Frankenstein, who married twice and had mountains of children. They also have a Bajla Frankenstein, who married a Schwartz, and had 10 children. However, although they think of Itzhak as a cousin, they know nothing further about him. He does not appear on their family tree, and at the moment, no-one quite knows how he fits in.

They do, however, have a 'Lajb (?)' - with a question mark - on their tree, and a Chava, as brother and sister. So they do have reference to two names that appear in my grandfather's family - his own, and one of his sisters' - although, again, they are not sure which bit of their family they 'belong' to.

So, to sum up:
1) My own family's knowledge includes:

• an Itzhak Finkelstein who used to be in contact with a cousin Raymond Boll, both involved in the Gombiner Societies in their respective countries

• Itzhak has a brother Leibisch and a sister Chava, plus two other sisters, one called Chaya and the other unknown

• their parents are Jacob and Gittle

• Itzhak also has a cousin Abraham Schwartz, one of six brothers, who went to London and knew Leibisch there

• we do not know the exact relationship with Raymond Boll and Abraham Schwartz

• no other related Frankensteins or Finkelsteins are known to us

2) In the database, we find:

• a Jacob and Gitla Finkelstein who had a daughter Jenta Bajla who married a Svarc

• a Bajla Frankenstajn who married a Svarc and had six sons, one of which was called Abraham

3) Our possible new cousins' knowledge includes:

• a Raymond Boll who used to be in contact with a cousin Itzhak Finkelstein, both involved in the Gombiner Societies in their respective countries

• Raymond Boll was a son of Rifka Leah Frankenstajn

• Itzhak's parents and siblings are unknown

• a brother Lajb and a sister Chava, who are closely related but whose parents and any other siblings are unknown

• a Bajla Frankenstajn who married a Schwartz and had about ten children

So, nothing definite, as yet, no absolute proof. In particular, we do not yet have anything that identifies a specific relationship between Jacob Finkelstein and Rifka Leah Frankenstein, Raymond's mother. Were they brother and sister? Cousins maybe??

Nevertheless, life is short, and I'm happy to accept the weight of evidence, which as far as I'm concerned points to the conclusion that, for the second time in a fortnight, I've found new cousins.

The sharing of stories is about to begin. If only my mother were alive to share this moment with us! Happily, two of her sisters are still here, as is their cousin Bracha - and they are going to be the ones with the best stories to tell.