Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #10 There's more to Dora than meets the eye

No docs for Dora
Key moments of Dora Zaturensky's life appear to be almost totally undocumented, so what follows is an attempt to piece together fragments of disconnected information into what I hope is at least a half-way coherent story.

Some things are certain:
1) I have a strong DNA match with one of her great-grandchildren, Cousin Paul, and a weaker one with another, Cousin David.
2) Her father has the same name as my great-great-grandfather, Movsha Zaturensky, he's from the same town, Pinsk, and was having children at about the same time. I deduce from this and the DNA connection that her father *is* my gg-g'f, that Dora is the sister of my g-g'm Shprintsa, and that Paul and David are 3C to me. There are virtually no documents openly available from Pinsk from this period, and none that mention any members of this family.
3) Dora left Pinsk around 1887 and emigrated to the USA. She came to live in Peoria, Illinois, and married Joseph Kawin either just before or just after emigrating.
4) She had two sons with Joseph, in Peoria: Abraham b 1888 and Samuel b 1890.
5) Joseph died around 1897.

There appear to be no documents available for any of the events described in (3), (4) or (5) - no Passenger Manifests that I can identify as being for either Dora or Joseph, no Naturalisation documents, the 1890 US Census has been destroyed, there's no marriage record, no birth records for the sons, and no identifiable death record for Joseph. All the information presented here is either culled or inferred from later documents.

Dora and the Kawins
The first time I can find Dora on paper is in the Peoria Directory for 1898, as the widow of Joseph, living at 108 Gallatin Street:

As you can see, there is one other Kawin family in town, running a china store. They must be related to Joseph, but I have found no documentation to verify this. They are in Peoria in the 1880 Census, where the head of the family is Max.

Who is Joseph?
A second look at the 1880 Census reveals that one of Max Kawin's sons is a Jacob b 1862.

Now Joseph appears in Peoria Directory listings in 1890 and 1896, and Jacob does not, although several other members of the Kawin family do (see below). Jacob dies in 1897, and as we have seen, Joseph has also died by then - Dora is the "widow of Joseph" in the 1898 Directory.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Joseph is Jacob? Jacob is Joseph?

Or is he??


Not forgetting George
Thinking on this question, and browsing through the Directory listings for Peoria on MyHeritage, I stumbled across a feature I had not noticed there before. You can do a "who else lived at this address" search. It returns matches for the address across all years, but could be very useful for answering questions for the years between censuses, when you have to be a very lucky researcher indeed to locate that information.

So I checked Joseph's entry for 1890:

And then I did the "who else ... " search on his address, 303 Gallatin. I found this in 1891:

George Kawin? Who is he? He's not in Max Kawin's family. He's a peddler, like Joseph the year before. Come to that, where's Joseph? Hmm.

So I followed up on George. There is only one other entry for him on the whole of the internet (trust me), this one for 1892:

He's moved down the street to number 414. And still no Joseph. Hmm again.

Let's try the "who else .. " search again on MyH, and see who turns up in 414:

Hello, hello! It's our old friend Simon Moses! Or Shmuel Zaturensky, as we prefer to call him. And this entry is also for 1892 - so this time we've got two people in the same house at the same time. And they are two people that we know quite well: Shmuel is of course the brother of Dora, and Dora, as we know, is married to Joseph/Jacob Kawin.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking (again)? Is George just another name for Joseph? And are George, Joseph and Jacob all the same person?

Why Peoria?
Once I had reached that, albeit tentative, conclusion, I decided to follow this Kawin family through. I found that Jacob had arrived in the USA aged 8 with his mother Hinda and 4 siblings in 1871. They came from Volkovisk, in what is now western Belarus, about 100 miles NW of Pinsk, and settled in Peoria. Dora was born around that date, in Pinsk, and seems to have emigrated, on her own, around 1887, aged about 16, although as yet I have not found a Passenger Manifest for her. She must have married Jacob/Joseph/George soon after arriving, as Abraham appears to have been born around 1888-89, in Peoria. Bear with me, these dates are crucial.

All this raises more questions. Why did she come to Peoria, specifically? The most likely explanation is that her brother Shmuel was already there - he had obtained US Naturalisation as Simon Moses in 1886, in Peoria, so must have been in the USA for a number of years prior to that. He would have known the Kawin family, who were well established in the town by then, and was a similar age to Jacob/Joseph/George. Did Shmuel suggest she come over to marry his friend? As we have just seen, Shmuel was living with Dora and Joseph/Jacob/George a few years later.

Dora's daughter
In the 1900 Census, 3 years after the death of Jacob/Joseph/George, Dora and her two sons Abraham and Samuel are in Peoria, at 108 Gallatin Street, the same house as in the 1898 Directory.

I couldn't find Dora at first in the 1910 Census (more on this later), but from 1913 onwards they all start showing up in Los Angeles. In several Directories there, she is listed again as "widow of Joseph".

And then, in the 1920 Census, a strange thing happens:

Suddenly, Dora has a daughter, Sarah, aged 18, born in Iowa. 

Oh dear. This causes us all sorts of problems.

If Sarah is 18 in 1920, she would have been born in 1901 or 1902. But Joseph/Jacob/George had died by 1898. If Sarah is Joseph's daughter, she must have been born by 1899 at the latest - so how come she doesn't appear in the 1900 Census?

We seem to have two options. Either:

a) Sarah is Joseph's daughter, was born in 1898, was left off the 1900 Census by accident, and has been falsifying her date of birth ever since.

or

b) Sarah was indeed born in 1901/2, and so is not Joseph's daughter. In which case, whose daughter is she? And why can't I find them in the 1910 Census?

At this point, I am afraid we shall have to hold this part of the investigation for a moment or two, as other matters are about to arise that will complicate Dora's story still further.

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #9 Dora's Story

Who is Dora?
A couple of the Trees I was looking at referenced a Dora Turansky, married to a husband with the surname Kawin. 'Turansky' sounds like she could be a Zaturensky, so I am definitely interested. However, these Trees do not link Dora to any of the other 'Terensky' families.

One of the Trees in which Dora appeared was that of someone called Paul, who seemed from the Tree to be her great-grandson (he's the 'Private' above). Paul's DNA match to me is 138 cM, which suggests something in the region of Third Cousin. This implies that our common ancestor could be at the level of great-great-grandparents, ie in the generation prior to Dora.

The finger of suspicion
Just a minute. If Dora's father is to be the common ancestor for Cousin Paul and myself, and if the name Turansky comes to her from him, the finger of suspicion is pointing straight at my own great-great-grandfather, Movsha Zaturensky. In which case Dora would be the sister of my great-grandmother, Shprintsa.

So where can we find the name of Dora's father? Is he my Movsha? He's 'D Turansky' in Paul's Tree, but there doesn't seem to be any documentary evidence for this 'D'. Well, death records sometimes name the deceased's father ....

This appears to be the right person. It carries her father's surname, Toransky, but not his given name. Bear in mind that this record is just an index, and that the original may contain more information. Maybe if we can find the original death certificate ...

And here she is:

Aha! Born in Pinsk - sounds promising. And the informant is her son, Sam. He should know.

But look at her father: Morris Toransky, also born in Pinsk!

This has to be my Movsha Zaturensky!!

Another sibling for Shprintsa
So my great-grandmother Shprintsa has another sibling, Dora, to add to the one we found earlier: Shmuel (Simon Morris). Movsha Zaturensky does indeed have 3 children, as was suggested in Cousin Jennifer's Tree - except, two of them are daughters, Shprintsa and Dora, where Jennifer shows her with 3 sons. [We'll come back to the two sons who she shows at the head of the Terence and Trent lines in a later post.]

More to Dora
But there's more to Dora than meets the eye. You may have noticed that Paul's tree gives her mother as 'Chana', whereas Jennifer and I have the mother of Shprintsa and Shmuel as 'Baila'. I must say that I have not as yet seen any documentary evidence for either of these names, but the dates of birth suggest that the two-mother scenario could be a possibility. The best bets we have at the moment for these three siblings are:

Shprintsa b 1858
Shmuel b 1864
Dora b 1870

So it's certainly possible that Movsha's first wife - Baila? - could have died after having Shprintsa and Shmuel, and that he then married - Chana? - some time after 1864, and Dora was born a few years later.

Back to the DNA
This scenario has DNA implications, of course. It would reduce the amount of DNA I share with cousins descended from Dora, such as Paul. I would only share one gg-g'parent with them (Movsha, but not Chana), as against the two I share with Private Morris, and also Cousins Jennifer and Rebecca (all Movsha and Baila). Always remembering that I strongly suspect that Shmuel married his First Cousin Rochel Leah, so my relationship with this branch is doubled, with further implications for DNA sharing.

At this point I will throw in another member of the original Cluster Club, Cousin David, who is also descended from Dora, and who I believe is a half-2C to Paul (that's another story). You will notice that I share a whole lot less DNA with David than I do with Paul ...

Here are the numbers, with my current estimate of the relationships, and the names of the Most Recent Common Ancestors, assuming the double- and half-cousin scenarios outlined above:

As you can see, my matches with Paul and David are in different territories - and yet the paper trail says they have the same relationship to me, ie Half-Third Cousins. Whilst the cM I share with Half-Cousin Paul suggests he should belong in the same category as the Double-Cousins Jennifer and Rebecca.

Oy veh!

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #8 Brothers and More Brothers

Top of the Tree
To recapitulate briefly, we have established that the head of our Zaturensky clan is Chaim, and that he has two sons:
1) Moshe, who has a son Shmuel and a daughter Shprintsa (my great-grandmother)
2) Meir, who has a daughter Rochel Leah

NB: see this Tree in #6 It Takes Two Teranskys to Tango

Shmuel emigrates to the USA, changes his name to Simon Moses, and marries his cousin Rochel Leah. Shprintsa stays in Pinsk, marries Nevakh Schreibman, and does not emigrate. My mystery match Private Morris is descended from Shmuel and Rochel Leah, as are another match Rebecca and her sister Jennifer.

But who are the other members of the Terensky Cluster Club, and how do they all fit together? Some have not posted Trees, but of those that have, Jennifer's (above) is by far the most developed. When I first saw her Tree, she did not have a name for the patriarch, he was just 'Terensky'; after our initial conversations a few weeks ago, she has named him as I have: Chaim Zaturensky.

Three Siblings, Twice Over
However, it is the rest of the Tree that is intriguing. She has Chaim with 3 children: Herman (who is really Moshe) and two others.  Looking at Herman, he is shown with a wife Bailie Czar, and 3 children - Simon Morris with his wife Elizabeth (originally Shmuel and Rochel Leah), and two others, one named Trent, the other Terence. These last are surnames, not given names; they both look like adaptations of Terensky, so the likelihood is they are probably both male. Outside the Simon Morris line, only one given name appears to be known (Beylya).

What I find intriguing in this Tree is that, despite the lack of names, it clearly shows knowledge about the 'shape' of the family, as well as the name changes. The patriarch has 3 sons. One of those has a daughter who marries a Gitelman, another is Herman, who stands at the head of the Morris line, and about the third we are told nothing at all, except that he exists. There must have been a family story about 3 brothers, otherwise why include him?.

Something similar happens in the succeeding generation, within Herman's own line. He has 3 sons, but the only given name we see is Simon. However the family does appear to know that the others adopted different surnames: Terence and Trent. Which suggests there's another family story about 3 brothers.

One of the Clan
Note that the current generation do not appear to know that Simon's wife Elizabeth/Rochel Leah is also member of our Zaturensky clan. I am only in a position to suggest that she is, because a) I have found documentation that she is a Teransky from Pinsk, which some of the others don't seem to have found, and b) the strength of my DNA match to Private Morris indicates that there could well be a second strand to our relationship. There is a good possibility that (a) explains (b). This would require her father Meir to be a brother to Moshe/Herman (see #6 again). Might Meir be the lonely 'no-name Terensky' we see in Jennifer's Tree, next to Herman?

My Clustered Cousins
So who are the unnamed siblings in this Tree? Are their families correctly located? And is this where we will find the remaining members of the Cluster Club, who should all turn out to be Third or maybe Fourth Cousins to me? The first two questions need a bit more work, but I can tell you now that the answer to the last question is "Yes".

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #7 The Morris Men

So how did Shmuel Zaturensky become Simon Morris? And how come his father gets referred to as 'Herman'? Not to mention 'Czar Terensky', which we have already dealt with.

I believe the answers lie in these two records, which we have come across in earlier posts:

Simon's headstone: Shmuel, son of Moshe Chaim

His sister's burial record: Shprintsa, daughter of Movsha Chaimovitch, ie Movsha son of Chaim

Hanging on patronymics
The answer hangs on the use of patronymic names. The father of Shmuel and Shprintsa was called Moshe, both records agree on this. On Shmuel's headstone, it looks as though he has 2 given names: Moshe Chaim. In Shprintsa's burial record, 'Chaim' is clearly not Movsha's second given name, but the name of his father.

Who's the informant?
I think we need to take into account the circumstances in which these two records were compiled. By the time Shmuel/Simon died, he had been living in the USA for over 40 years. His father did not emigrate, so Shmuel's children, all born in the USA, would never have known him. Shmuel's wife Rochel Leah was his cousin, the daughter of Moshe's brother Meir, so she would have known Moshe and his patronymic - but she had died 3 years previously. So the informants for Shmuel's headstone would probably have been his children.

One possibility is that the children - by now teenagers or young adults - would have heard their grandfather referred to as Moshe Chaimovitch, but were not aware of the significance of the patronymic ending, and just assumed the name was Moshe Chaim. Or maybe there just wasn't room on the stone for any more explanatory lettering ....

Exceptions to the Rule
My preference, however, is that what we are seeing is a custom that I am now realising was quite established, if not all that common. In Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, a son is never given the same name as his father, nor a daughter that of her mother. Children are usually named after a deceased family member, the closer and more recent the better. So a boy might be named after a deceased grandfather or great-grandfather, or uncle of some sort - but never after his father.

What I am thinking is happening here would be an exception to this rule, which may happen in exceptional circumstances. This is for a son to assume the name of his father after his death, as a way of honouring him. I have two documented cases of this happening elsewhere in my family, where the father died shortly before the birth of a male child, and the baby was given the name of the father.

I also have another, intriguing case, where an adult son appears to have adopted the name of his father after the latter's death. In this case, I spent years wondering how come Jacob Frankenstein could be the son of Israel Jacob Frankenstein. Then I came across Jacob's headstone, and found that his Hebrew name was Jonah. We don't have any records from Poland for either the father or the son, but by the time Jonah got to London in 1879, he was Jacob, so I assume his father had died before then.

So maybe in this case, after Chaim died, his son Moshe adopted his father's name as a second given name, calling himself Moshe Chaim thereafter.

Retrospective anglicisation
This decision was not without consequences. His son Simon's descendants seem to have retrospectively anglicised Moshe/Moshe Chaim to 'Herman'. Now I have seen 'Chaim' morph into 'Herman' before, so that's not a problem. What's a bit odd is that his name is not really 'Chaim' in the first place. He's Moshe, son of Chaim, as we have discussed above. You'd have thought they'd refer to him as 'Moses', or 'Morris', like all the other Moshes in the world.

Passenger - manifest thyself!
I have not been able to locate passenger manifests for the immigration journeys of any of the members of this family, so as yet I am not able to see what names they were using when they left Russia for the USA. Once in the USA, they used a variety of versions of (Za)turensky, dropping the 'Za-' and becoming Terensky, Turansky, or similar. All of these names appear in the immigration databases, but I have not been able to identify any of these records as members of this family.

How are they managing to escape us? I can only surmise that they were all using a version of their name that somehow the search engines are not recognising. However, this is difficult to accept, as there are at least 6 of them coming over individually over a period of 25 years, from the around 1882 to 1908, and they are hardly likely to have kept that consistent - in a foreign language - over that length of time. But so far I haven't found a single one of them.

So I don't know whether Shmuel Zaturensky travelled as 'Simon Moses' when he emigrated around 1882, or whether he adopted the name after arrival - but this was the name he naturalised under in 1886:

As you can see, there's no age given, and no date or port of arrival to follow up. There is another Simon Moses floating around Illinois at this time, but he's not in Peoria, so I'm pretty sure this is our man. As we have seen, by 1920 he had adopted 'Morris', and his family has kept this name ever since.

Hitting on Moses
So how did he hit on 'Moses' in the first place? I think that once again the answer lies in the patronymic tradition that we were looking at above. His father was Moshe Zaturensky, so Shmuel would be referred to as Shmuel (ben) Moshe - Shmuel (son of) Moshe - Zaturensky. Drop the Zaturensky because it causes too many problems, and you're left with Shmuel Moshe. Anglicise that and you get Simon Moses. Hey presto - two names! Never mind that they're both given names. If they ask you for a surname, give them the second one: Moses. When, after 35 years, you realise that that sounds a bit too biblical, change it to Morris.

QED

Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #6 It Takes Two Teranskys to Tango

What's going on?

We have established that Private Morris, my mystery match on AncestryDNA, is related to me via my Zaturensky line from Pinsk, and that our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) is my great-great-grandfather Movsha. This would make us Third Cousins. Movsha's father was probably *Chaim, but we're not sure about that so I'm giving him an asterisk for the time being.

However, the amount of DNA shared by Private Morris and myself, at 183 cM, is fairly strong for a 3C match. Is there something else going on that we haven't spotted yet?

We've been following the journey of Movsha's son Shmuel Zaturensky from Pinsk to Peoria, Illinois, where he became Simon Morris, and we've wrung just about all we can from his US records. What else can we find? What can his wife and children tell us?

Simon's wife

Simon's wife Elizabeth died in 1923, 3 years before Simon himself. Her headstone identifies her as Rochel Leah, daughter of Meir. So it seems the anglicised name 'Elizabeth' was a play on the Yiddish name 'Leah'. One of the other documents associated with her death was this transcription of her Illinois Death Record:

Father: Mayer Tarsusky? Tarsusky?? You do come across a few Tarsuskys in the records, but none of them appear to be Jewish. That's a bit odd ...

Simon's children

Then I went through looking for records of the children of Simon and Elizabeth. Here's the relevant bit of their daughter Sadie's Death Record, 1979:

Mother: Elizabeth Teransky. Teransky? Teransky?? But Simon's father was 'Turiansky', supposedly. Is this the same name? Are they related?? And might the 'Tarsusky' we found a few minutes ago just be a mis-transcription of a hand-written 'Teransky'???

I have not been able to find death records nor marriage records for any of their other children, that might have given their parents' family names. For the moment this is all the information we have to go on.

Two Teranskys

If Simon (Shmuel) Turiansky and Elizabeth (Rochel Leah) Teransky are related, the closest it could be would be via their fathers, Moshe Chaim and Meir/Mayer - if these two were brothers. In other words, the father of both Moshe and Meir would be the same person, *Chaim Zaturensky, and they may well have had the same mother as well. Or the connection may be one generation further back. For the moment I'm going to stick with *Chaim as their most recent common ancestor (MRCA). This of course would make Shmuel and Rochel Leah First Cousins.

Double Cousins?

This is getting complicated. If we're now looking at *Chaim, he is my 3xgreat-grandfather. Anyone related to me, with him as MRCA, is my Fourth Cousin. And anyone related to me via the couple Simon Morris/Shmuel Turiansky and Elizabeth/Rochel Leah Teransky, is related to me via both of them.

So my mystery match Private Morris appears to be a double cousin to me: both 3C via Shmuel through to our common 2g-g'f Movsha, and 4C via Rochel Leah through to Movsha's brother Meir, and on to my 3g-g'f *Chaim, who is also Private Morris's 3g-g'f but by a different route.

I hope that's clear.

The Two Teransky Tango
My software (MacFamilyTree), doesn't seem to be able to put this double relationship into graphic form, so I'm going to try to draw it out:

Private Morris and me

Is this the explanation of the seemingly high 3C DNA match between Private Morris and myself? Are we not just 3C, but actually double cousins, 3C+4C??

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?