My 5th Great Grandmother, Chava Lefand

This past summer, I found the death record for my 5th great grandfather, which gave me his father's name.  I've also found the name of his wife, my 5th great grandmother.

My great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Chava Lefand.  I do not know her maiden name, but her father's name was Volko/Volf.

Chava Lefand, 1882 Poll Tax, Nezhin

Photo Genealogy and My Great-Great Grandmother's Photo

After my grandmother passed away in 2015, my cousin Michael found some photos in her basement.  Many were the originals for photos we had copied earlier.  Some were new (to me).

Fine Family - New Photo

RootsTech 2019--Win A 4-Day Pass to RootsTech

I'm excited to announce that I'll be back at RootsTech this winter--both as a speaker and an Ambassador!  I'll be giving on class on Jewish genealogy and another on endogamy.  This will be my fourth year in a row attending this conference, and I cannot wait.  Why RootsTech?  The conference gives a great overview of that here (check it out!).

As an Ambassador, I am able to give away a free 4-day RootsTech pass to a lucky reader, which has a $299 value!  (If you already registered and you win, you can get a refund.)

November/December 2018 Presentations--In CO, OH, VA, NY, CA, WA & MD

My November/December 2018 will be subtitled, "Who Needs Weekends, Anyways"?

I'll be speaking all over the country, and hopefully some of the people who read this blog will live nearby and can attend at least one of these sessions.  Come by and say hi!  You can see the full list of upcoming talks, scheduled into 2019 here.

So here are some details.

Me speaking a few years back at OGS

DNA & Naming Patterns Find Another Fuchs Branch (I Think)

Back in November 2016, a new match popped up on FamilyTreeDNA.  This person, IK, shared some very large segments with several of my family members.  Despite the fact that everyone involved here is 100% Ashkenazic Jewish (so endogamy abounds), these large segments imply that there is an actual close relationship.

DNA IK shares with some of my family members (showing matching segments of 10cM and higher)

Bringing it back to Uman

Last December, I wrote about how Alex Krakovsky was working to open up Ukraine's archives.  In addition to suing (and winning), he's also made a page to put scanned documents from the archives online.  No, they're not in English.  But yes, they are awesome.  More are being added all the time, so keep checking to see if your family's towns are represented.

But in any case, I was looking through the list of scanned documents when I saw revision lists (censuses) from Haisyn/Gaisyn.  My Zubkis family was registered in Kuna, just outside Haisyn, so I went through these.  First I reviewed 158 pages of the 1851 census--and there was not a Zubkis to be found.  So then I started on the the 92 pages in the 1850 census--and on pages 29-31, I hit the jackpot.

Zubko Family 1850 Cover Sheet

Religious Excuse Note from Court, 1869

This time of year, I'm having to take an awful lot of time off work for all of the holidays.  In addition, sunset is getting earlier and earlier, so I need to leave earlier and earlier on Fridays as well to get home well before Shabbat starts.  Generations of my family have had to ask for postponements of various events that conflict with religious observances.  And here's an early example:

Religious Excuse Note, Nizhyn, 1869