Two stones: son of Leib

Sometimes the smallest details can pass unnoticed. This stone has stood for 100 years, and it has kept its family secrets only because none of us has ever looked at it closely enough.

The other evening I put in a request for photographs of two headstones, to the Jewish London Genealogy Group site on Facebook. Less than 24 hours later, here they are. There are a few kind people in the Group whose hobby is photographing headstones for others. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude!

The first one (above) is the stone for Sarah Frankenstein, who was born in Gombin in Poland around 1840, and died in London in 1912. She is buried in the Federation Cemetery at Edmonton in North London. She's the mother of Jacob and Barnett Frankenstein, and along with several of their descendants, I've been trying for several years to link our two families together. Sarah was a widow when she first appears in the UK records in the 1891 Census. We assume her husband, Israel Jacob Frankenstein, had died before Sarah and her children left Poland. He's the one I'm trying to connect to my family.

What we knew
You can see where we had got to a while back in these posts from a couple of years ago:

Is this the Missing Link? - Another Link in the Chain

To summarise these posts, we found that there was a significant amount of evidence accumulating to show that our two families are closely linked; however, it was all more or less circumstantial:

i) they all say they came from Gombin; I have found that all Frankensteins in the known records from the Gombin area belong to my family; however Sarah's family do not appear in any of these records 

ii) there is a striking coincidence of male given names in the two families 

iii) Aaron Hyman stayed with Barnett Frankenstein (son of Sarah on the stone) when he got married to Frajda Rajn (my family) in 1916 

iv) my great-grandfather's brother Morris Frankenstein was a witness at the marriage of Fanny Shalinsky (granddaughter of Sarah) in 1912

Then, just the other day, this came up:

v) Frajda Rajn's brother Abram (my family) stayed with Sarah's daughter Rachel when he got married in 1907

All in all, too much to be merely coincidental - but there was no proof, no single document that explicitly shows a connection. The obviously close family links, though, are pretty convincing, and the timescale leads me to surmise that Sarah's husband, Israel Jacob, is probably a brother to my own 2nd-great-grandfather Wolek, born 1839, and that both are sons of my 3g-g'f, Lewek, who was born around 1800. 

We already know Morris (in iv above) to be an uncle to the Rajn siblings, Frajda (iii) and Abram (v) - their mothers are sisters of his, Tauba and Rywka Laja Frankensztajn. If my conjecture is correct, Morris would also be a first cousin to Barnett (iii), and a first cousin once removed to Fanny (iv). And Barnett and his sister Rachel would be 1C1R to Frajda and Abram Rajn. We have a picture building up of a family that had settled in London earlier giving a helping hand to their younger cousins who had recently followed them over.

What we needed
A key piece of evidence to confirm the relationship would be a document showing the name of Israel Jacob's father - if it's Lewek, we're in business. This information could appear on a birth, marriage or death record for Israel Jacob, or in an entry in a Book of Residents, or on his headstone. However, he lived his whole life in Poland, and very few vital records for the Gombin area have survived. I've seen several Books of Residents, for different districts, and he doesn't appear in those either. And there's no chance of a headstone - most of the Jewish cemeteries in the area, including that of Gombin itself, were totally destroyed by the Nazis during WW2. So we're resigned to the fact that we are most unlikely to ever find any sort of proof. 

What we got
I wanted Sarah's headstone because I thought it might tell us a bit about the family she came from, and indeed it does (see next post). But - and here's the surprise - much more significant is what it tells us about her husband, Israel Jacob - and of course he's the Frankenstein that I'm trying to connect to mine.

Here's what is engraved at the top of Sarah's headstone:
Top line: Sarah daughter of Yonah
Next line: Widow of Israel Yakov son of Leib

This second line is most unusual. The headstones for widows that I have seen here in the UK sometimes do tell us the name of their deceased husband, but they rarely give his patronymic - the name of his father.

This one does. And Israel Jacob's father's name is Leib.

You will recall that I was hoping his father would be Lewek. Well he is. 'Leib' is the Yiddish form, used across Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe. 'Lewek' is a diminutive, affectionate version of the same name, used by Jews in Poland. The '-ek' ending is commonly used in this way with boys' names, as for instance in Wolek, for Wolf.

So Leib is Lewek, and Israel Jacob is the brother of Wolek. And, as we surmised earlier, Morris is a first cousin to Barnett. We now have the piece of documented evidence that we needed, and thought we would never be able to find.

And Brian, David, Sandy and Linda are my 3C1Rs.

Another Link in the Chain

Once again, you're looking for one thing, and you find another. In my last post, Is this the Missing Link, I described how I came across evidence that linked my own Frankenstein family with another branch I was sure we were related to.

Well, it's happened again. With the same family.

The Marriage Certificate above is for Lewis Allerhand and Fanny Shalinsky, at the East London Synagogue in 1912. Fanny appears in the 1901 Census as a grand-daughter of Sarah Frankenstein, matriarch of the family I have been trying to link with my own. By this time Sarah is allegedly 70 years old, although I believe she must have been a good 10 years younger.

Sarah is a widow, her husband Israel Jacob had probably died in Poland before the family came to England in the 1880s. Sarah is described as a 'Hawker (Cakes)', and her birthplace is Gombin, Poland - this is what first caught my eye when I was trawling through all the Frankensteins I could find in the 19th Century UK Censuses. Gombin is our Frankenstein town.

Also with Sarah is a daughter, Betsy, aged 30, described as a 'Cripple'. I've no idea what kind of disability she suffered from. Fanny is 14, and a Tailoress, and has the surname Shalinsky. Both Betsy and Fanny are born in Gombin. Sarah's other children, Jacob, Barnett and Rachael, have all married by this time, and set up their own homes. Sarah is down as Fanny's grandmother, but what is not clear is, who is her mother? Is it Betsy? Or is it another daughter that we don't yet know of? And where has her surname Shalinsky come from?

In an attempt to pursue those questions, I ordered a copy of Fanny's marriage certificate, and it arrived last week. Unfortunately it doesn't answer my questions. The only new information it gives about her is that her father is Samuel Shalinsky, a cabinet-maker. It doesn't say he is deceased - which it does say of her bridegroom Lewis's father - so I presume he was still alive at the time of the wedding. However I can find no such person in any UK records, so maybe he never left Poland. I haven't found him there either, though. So he's still a mystery.

But there's something else. Maybe you've noticed by now. I didn't until I looked at the marriage certificate for the third or fourth time. Have another look.

Who's the first witness?

Morris Frankenstein? Morris who?? We've got a Morris Frankenstein, and he lived within walking distance of the East London Synagogue. Could it be him?

There are three Morris Frankensteins in the 1901 UK Census, and they don't include ours. One is in Manchester, the other two are in the East End of London. Our Morris - Moszek Boruch - was my great-grandfather's younger brother. He was born near Gombin in 1886, and came to London around 1905, so he's in the 1911 Census. However, by then, one of the East End Morrises had emigrated to the USA, and the other had died. So our Morris was the only one left in London. It has to be him.

It was Uncle Morris who welcomed my grandfather Leib (Lewis) Frankenstein, and his cousin Jankel Szwarc (Jack Schwartz), to London when they came in 1913 aged around 20. He was probably also there for another cousin, Frajda Rajn, when she arrived at about the same time. These three are children of Moszek's siblings Jankel Josek, Bajla, and Riwka Laja, respectively.

Now then. In the Missing Link post, I traced how when Frajda got married in 1916, her fiancé gave his address as 28 Blyth Street, which we know was the home of Barnett Frankenstein. This, together with other evidence discussed in that post and elsewhere (see A Frankenstein by Any Other Name), led me to conclude that these two families are indeed closely related.

Barnett was the son of Sarah - which makes him an uncle of Fanny Shalinsky. He must have been at her wedding. And as we can see from the certificate, Morris Frankenstein, uncle of my own grandfather, was there too. I'm taking this as further confirmation of the closeness of the family connection.

And if the relationship between these two families is located where I think it is - a couple of generations further back - then Moszek is also a sort of Uncle Morris to Fanny, and hence a suitable family witness to her marriage. And he's Cousin Morris to Barnett and his siblings Jacob and Rachael.

Unfortunately, over the course of the last 100 years, we have lost track of most of these relationships. But documents such as these marriage certificates show us how closely-knit our families once were.


In 1948 Jack Schwartz put together a photo album to commemorate those members of his family killed in the Holocaust; the only ones to survive were Jack and 5 of his brothers, who had all emigrated before the outbreak of the Second World War.

As well as photos of his parents, brothers and sisters, there are some of other relatives, including this one.

'Uncle Morris Frankenstein and wife Leah

London - England - 1922'

So here's to Uncle Morris - the man who links us all together.

Is this the Missing Link?

You know that moment when you're looking for something, and you find something else? Well, this is one of those moments.

Last week I met my Frankenstein 3rd Cousins Eve and Alan for the first time. We're 3rd Cousins because my great-grandfather Jankel Josek and their great-grandmother Rifka Laja were brother and sister, born around 150 years ago in little villages near Gombin in Poland. It turns out they both live about 15 miles away from me, but we had completely lost touch - I don't think our families had had any contact since my grandfather died over 60 years ago.

In the 1900s and 1910s, several members of our Frankenstein family emigrated to England. Jankel and Rifka's younger brother Moszek (Morris) came around 1905, and then 3 of his nieces and nephews came a few years later, all in their teens or early 20s. These were my grandfather Lajb (Louis) Frankenstein, Eve and Alan's grandmother Frajda (Frieda) Rajn, and Jankel Lajb (Jack) Szwarc, son of Bajla, who in turn was a sister of Jankel, Rifka and Moszek. So basically, it looks like each of these four siblings sent one member of their family to start a new life in London.

I know that Louis and Jack arrived in 1913. Whether they came together or separately I don't know. At the moment we don't know when Frieda came, but she must have come before the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914, because travel across Europe would have been impossible after that. In any case, by 1916 all three of them were getting married, all in the same place, at the Philpot Street Synagogue in Mile End in the East End of London, the area that most recent Jewish immigrants headed to on arrival.

When Jack first arrived, he stayed with Uncle Morris, and worked with him in his tailoring workshop, run from his home in Mile End. Jack got married in March 1916 from an address nearby, in Bethnal Green, and at that point he was no longer living with Morris. I know nothing of Louis until his marriage in November 1916, when he was living not in the East End, but across town in the West End. But then his bride was a West End girl, living just round the corner, in the shadow of the Post Office Tower (which of course wasn't there at the time).

I was interested to know more about how the 3 young cousins came to end up in London. Did they come together? Did they stay together? Did Uncle Morris offer lodging and work to Louis and Frieda, as he did to Jack? And why did Louis end up in a different part of town?

Eve and Alan didn't have any details on Frieda's arrival in London and her first few years there. They weren't even sure whether she and Aaron had married in London, or in Poland, before they left. So after our meeting I checked online, and found they had indeed married in London, in 1916. I ordered their Marriage Certificate. I was hoping the certificate would throw some light on where they were living at the time, and maybe help answer some of my questions.

Well it did throw light, but from a most unexpected quarter.

This is from the marriage certificate, shown above. They were both living in Blyth Street, Bethnal Green, but at different addresses. Maybe that's how they met? Who knows.

Wait a minute. I've seen Blyth Street before. Didn't someone else live there at some point .... ?

This is from the 1911 Census for Barnett Frankenstein and his family. It's the same house. Not just the same street, but the same house.

It's only 2 years ago that I first came across Barnett and his family in the records, and I've managed to make contact with a number of his descendants. Together we've been trying ever since to establish whether our two families are connected, and if so, how. There are a couple of circumstantial clues that suggest we probably are:

• Firstly, Barnett gives his birthplace as Gombin, which is our Frankenstein town, and so far all Frankensteins found in the records for that area are members of our family. There are none that aren't.
• Secondly, the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition was to name children after deceased relatives. The effect of this is that names are not repeated from father to son, but usually skip a generation, and are passed down from a grandfather or great-grandfather. Barnett uses exactly the same names for his sons as are repeated throughout the 19th Century - and longer - in my family: Jack, Woolf, Lewis, Isaac. Notice that in this same generation, my grandfather is Louis, and his cousin is Jack Szwarc.

Neither of these on their own would be convincing; together they make a stronger case, but it's still not quite definitive. The coincidence of address looks like a third clue, albeit from 5 years earlier. The case is building.

Well, next up, this is from the Post Office Trade Directory for 1916:

They're still there in 1916, at 28 Blyth Street. So when Frieda got married in March 1916, her fiancé Aaron Hyman was staying with Barnett Frankenstein. Of all the households in London - alright, of all the households in the East End - he was staying with Barnett.

Barnett is family. We still don't know exactly where the link is, but I think there's sufficiently convincing evidence here to meet the Michael Shade Genealogical Proof Standard. 

So this is one of those moments. Hello to a whole new branch of the family. Hello to new cousins. Dozens of new cousins!

Climbing the stairs

Lewis (Leibisch) Levin was a brother of my great-grandmother Mikhlya. He was born in 1861 in Streshin, a little village on the river Dniepr, in what is now the south-east of Belarus. In the early 1900s he came to London accompanied by his three children from his first wife, who had died a few years previously, and his second wife with her own daughter. They found somewhere to live in the heart of the East End, where tens of thousands of East European Jews had settled over the previous 20 years or so.

My own grandmother - Lewis' niece - came to London soon after, aged about 18, and stayed with the Levins, probably helping to look after the children. Within a couple of years there were two more boys, and they moved from one accommodation to another, always along Whitechapel High Street and Mile End Road, presumably to have more room for the expanding family. In every document, and in various trade directories, Lewis is a 'Paper Bag Maker', even sometimes a 'Master Paper Bag Maker'; his own children, and my own young uncles and aunts, were all roped in to work in his paper bag factory, which was mostly located on the kitchen table.

We knew that he had died in 1927, aged 67, and that he was probably living on his own by this stage - his second wife had died when the boys were very young, his older children had all left home for marriage, America, or the Russian Revolution, and the younger boys didn't see their futures in paper bags and left home to work elsewhere and to put themselves through night school.

The figure of Lewis has long fascinated me, and a few months ago I ordered a copy of his Death Certificate, to see if it could offer up anything new about him. And so it did - an address: "of 84B Whitechapel High Street". So now we knew where he had been living at the time of his death.

The next time I was in the area I looked for the building. Next to the Whitechapel Library I found number 82; a few doors down was number 87. The two or three buildings in between did not appear to be numbered, but I assumed 84B would be one of them and duly took a photo as evidence.

My cousin Beatrice, Lewis' great-grand-daughter, is currently in London - her mother Alice (Lewis' grand-daughter, now aged 101) is unwell, and Beatrice has come over from the US to be closer to her. Yesterday afternoon Beatrice and I went on a 'Musical Walk round the Jewish East End', organised by the Jewish Music Institute, and guided by the historian David Rosenberg (highly recommended, by the way). Beatrice's grandfather Sam had been involved in the Workers' Circle, a friendly society established to further the interests of working-class East European Jews, from the 1910s onwards, and her mother Alice was active in the Yiddish theatre movement from the 1930s, and Workers' Circle and Yiddish theatre both featured in David's programme for the Walk.

The group met outside the Library, and then David led us off down a narrow alleyway between two of the neighbouring buildings - Angel Alley, you can see it at the extreme left of the photo above. There on the right a notice was pinned to a door: 'This is NOT 84B, it's 84A. 84B is opposite!' You can hear the exasperation in the printed words. You can probably also hear my involuntary intake of breath, for 84B turns out to be the premises of Freedom Press, the long-established Anarchist publishers and booksellers.

David was going to tell us about some of the radical figures and groups that flourished in the area 100 years ago, but Beatrice and I were just standing there, minds racing, staring at the building.

After the Walk, we grabbed David for a chat over a superb falafel lunch (PilPel, Brushfield Street), then made our way back to see if the Freedom bookshop at 84B was still open. It was. We explained why we had come, and asked the lady in the shop if she knew how the building was being used in 1927. She kindly went off to find a book containing a history of the organisation - and its premises - which told us that at least before 1942 there had been a printing press occupying the ground floor.

"Would you like to see upstairs?" I had to ask her to repeat the question, partly because I don't hear very well, but mainly because I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Upstairs? Lewis must have lived upstairs, 85 years ago. We took a deep breath, and followed her up. The staircase, banisters, walls, and some of the doors, looked as though they had had nothing done to them in 100 years or more.

She took us into one of the rooms, and we discussed the layout. The room we were standing in had a structural beam across the middle, and we reckoned it had probably originally been two rooms. On the landing there was a blanked-off door which confirmed this.

So we sat, and stood, in one half of the room, looking out to the brick wall opposite (the Library building, in fact), and tried to imagine a bed, and a chair, and a table. Where was the sink? There probably wasn't one, he'd have had to bring water in from the bathroom. Was there even a bathroom? How did he cook? Did he cook?

But it was the stairs that got me. He must have gone up and down these stairs every day for months, maybe two or three years. And here we were, treading the same steps, holding on to the same worn banisters, knocking on doors - his door, maybe - to feel the wood.

He fell ill here, and died at the London Jewish Hospital down the road in Stepney Green. I've just looked at the Death Certificate again. He died on 20 October 1927. Just 85 years and one day before we came to visit him.

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.