Locating Louis Litowitz

Seven years ago - yes, seven! - I posted here about a major family discovery that I was "Over The Moon" about. It was a listing from the 1903 Revision List (census) for the town of Lida, now in Belarus. I won't go over the detail again here, just to say that it provided us for the first time with the names of 24 members of my grandmother's Ilyutovich family, only 8 of whom we had known of before.

This in turn enabled me to trace the family back, eventually into the mists of the 18C, and forward, to the present day. At least, I've managed to trace some of them - several of the lines dried up after a generation or two, and we're pretty sure that a goodly number have passed under the radar.

This then is the starting point for my Granny's Ilyutovich Tree - she's Sheina Zlata; her father Shlioma Dovid, and his father Shmuilo Gronim, were no longer living:

I have since then found descendants, including some DNA matches, for Shimel, Iudel Elia, and Iser, who all emigrated to the USA around the turn of the 20C. Evel is the mystery man - this is his only appearance, as far as I have been able to find, in Russian or any other documents. Maybe he stayed in Russia, maybe there are cousins there we know nothing of, maybe, like so many others, they perished in the Holocaust.

One other thing to note in this Tree is that Shmuilo Gronim seems to have 5 children, all of them male. This is not impossible, of course, but you can't help thinking there must be some daughters somewhere. If there are, they don't show up here or anywhere else in the Russian records.

ThruLines or No Through Road?

AncestryDNA has a feature they call ThruLines, which looks through the Trees put up by your DNA matches to see where they might coincide with your own Tree, and thereby enable you to extend it. I'm all for finding new cousins, of course, but ThruLines' suggestions depend on the accuracy of the Trees it uses, and sadly Ancestry's AI algorithms don't as yet seem to be able to filter out guesswork and wishful thinking. All too often I find that these 'ThruLines' can lead you on a Road to Nowhere.

NO THROUGH ROAD

So I was wary when I came across this suggestion a couple of weeks ago:

(click on pic to enlarge)

Shmuilo G is clearly my great-great-grandfather Shmuilo Gronim, Shlioma D is my g-g'father Shlioma Dovid, Shimel is Shimel, Iudel is Iudel Elia and Isaac is Iser. So far, so good. But who is Louis Litowitz? The surname Litowitz is not a concern in itself, in fact it could well be a clue - the 3 brothers who went to America all americanised to Litowitz, and so did several other Ilyutoviches who do not appear to be related to my family. It was an easy name to slide into.

But where does this 'Louis' come from? We've never heard of him. And how come ThruLines thinks he belongs in my Tree?

Looking for Louis
ThruLines indicates I have 2 DNA matches descending from Louis, albeit quite weak ones, and it may well have been their Trees that have prompted the suggestion. So I had a quick look, and sure enough they pointed back a couple of generations to Louis Litowitz. But no further. There are another 3 or 4 Ancestry Trees that detail his family - his wife and children - but no-one seems to know who his parents were. So how come he is attached to my Tree as a son of my g-g'father Shmuilo Gronim?

So I went looking for Louis.

It didn't take me long. Glancing through my immaculately organised filing system, I realised I had already come across him a couple of years ago, when I was conducting a 'Litowitz trawl'. I must have thought he was promising then, as I had downloaded a number of census and other records, but I had not gone any further. So I put all this information into a fresh Tree - and ended up with exactly the same as the others had. No mother, no father.

Head for the Stone
One of the most useful tools in a Jewish genealogist's toolbox is the headstone. For centuries Ashkenazi Jewish headstones have named the deceased person's father. Indeed, until the use of surnames became obligatory across Europe in the 18C and 19C, the customary way for Jews to identify themselves was as the son or daughter of their father. So if we could find Louis' headstone, it might tell us whether he was a son of Shmuilo Gronim. Or not.

We haven't found it. Not yet, anyway. His burial is listed on the FindaGrave website, but there is no photo of the stone. One of his descendants has put in a request, but the photos are taken by volunteers, and no-one has volunteered as yet.

The Names of Louis
We only have American records for Louis, and they all call him 'Louis'. However, this doesn't tell us what he was called in the 'old country'. The name 'Louis' was commonly used by emigrants to the USA whose Yiddish name began with an 'L', such as Leib, or Leizer. Or sometimes, just because. And those names - Leib and Leizer - don't appear in Shmuilo Gronim's family.

So how could we find what Louis' Yiddish name was? Why, on the headstones of his children, of course! (See 'Head for the Stone' above).

Head for the Stones
Louis had 6 children. Ida, Rose and Ethel do not seem to have entries on FindaGrave, Samuel changed his name to Litt but I can't see him there either, Anna's stone is there but it doesn't have a Hebrew inscription. That leaves Mildred, the youngest. Her stone is indeed on FaG, and it does have a Hebrew inscription:

I don't read Hebrew properly. I read this as: "Mikhlya bat r (something)" - Mikhlya daughter of (who?).

I couldn't work out her father's name. I read the 4 letters - the last word, right to left -  as: " y - o/u/v - a vowel - l ".

I did so want it to be 'Evel'.

I asked the experts on the Tracing the Tribe group on Facebook. They said it was 'Yoel'. So I asked if there might be a connection between the two names, Evel and Yoel.

"Evel is how the name Yoel is recorded in some Cyrillic records from Ukraine," came the response.

QED, as they say in Latin.

• Mildred's father was Louis Litowitz
• his Hebrew name was Yoel
• Yoel is written as Evel in Cyrillic script (ie, Russian)
• there is no other Evel Ilyutovich in the Russian records
• so the mysterious Evel Ilyutovich in our 1903 Revision List is indeed the Louis Litowitz suggested to me by Ancestry's ThruLines
• and Louis' great-grandchildren, although weak DNA matches to me (16cM and 19cM) are indeed my 3rd Cousins

And I still have no idea how ThruLines came up with this suggestion, seemingly unsupported by any evidence available to it.