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.

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.