Sunday, December 27, 2020

Multi-Source Research - Connecting Chana Lefand

People often want to know which genealogy company's database they should subscribe to in order to best research their family.  There's no one right answer; while some records are common across multiple platforms, some are only on one.  And sometimes the answers can be scattered across different platforms.  Here's a puzzle I solved this long weekend, and the resources used.

Women often disappear into the genealogical ether upon their marriage.  Name changes wreak havoc on building back families.  But sometimes records can help reconnect them and their descendants to their families.  And there are some great online resources that might be able to help with that.  No one resource is necessarily the best--sometimes you get a tip-off from one but need to use lots of different sites to find all of the pieces.

Chana Lefand, 1850 Revision List, Nezhin

Sunday, December 20, 2020

The Patriotic Lefands - Soviet WWII Records

My Lefand great-great grandmother came to America in the early twentieth century.  But she left many cousins behind in what was then the Russian Empire (and currently Ukraine).  And while my branch of the family fought for the United States during World War II, other branches fought for another one of the Allies--the Soviet Union.  And some of them left a paper trail--and sometimes photos as well!

Volf Lefand, Order of the Red Star

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Nezhin Jewish Community Meetings - With Attendee Names (List Included here)

One document I got as a byproduct of my j-roots searching ended up being was a 103-page document that is titled, "On the application of Nezhin town council about adoption on their positions of the members of governance of the Jewish religious schools of the town of Nezhin. 1884-1885."  There are lots and lots of names listed in these documents--683 total, although some appear more than once--many of which are original signatures.  And we have an index to all of those names.

Title Page for Document