Ancestor Deep Dive: Shmuel Moshe Rutner

(NOTE:  This post has been updated with much new information.  Read the updated version here.)

Shmuel Moshe Rutner was my great-great grandfather.  He was born in 1855 in the town of Kolodne (also called Darva) which was then in the Austria-Hungarian Empire and is now in Subcarpathian Ukraine.

Extract from Shmuel Moshe "Mosko" Rutner's birth Record--Extract from 1922, Birth in 1855

Shmuel Moshe (legal name Mosko) Rutner (also Ruttner)'s parents were Mendel and Yita (nee Farkas) Rutner.  So far as I know, he lived in Kolodne his entire life.


There may have been two Shmuel Moshe Rutners in Kolodne--or Shmuel Moshe was married twice.  My great-great grandmother was Rochel Fuchs Rutner, and the two of them had at least 6 children:

• Boruch Hirsch
• Esther (my great grandmother, later Esther Joshowitz, born March 25, 1882)
• Adolph Abraham (born February 9, 1894)
• Malka (later Malka Holder, born January 3, 1900)
• Mendel Fuchs (he took his mother's maiden name to avoid conscription into the army)
• Pava

There was also a Shmuel Moshe (who may or may not have been my ancestor) who married a woman named Henya Rochel and had a son Dovid Isaac.

Shmuel Moshe had a verification of his residence in Kolodne made in the nearby town of (what is now known as) Tiyachev.

Shmuel Moshe Rutner Verification of Residence (including his signature!)

My grandmother's older brother Izzy lived with his mother and his grandfather Shmuel Moshe before immigrating to American in 1920.  Shmuel Moshe was still alive at that time, but there were grandchildren being named after him in 1935, so he would have died at some point between 1920 and 1935.