Malka Vizel Fuchs Berkovics, Midwife

There's often little insight into the lives of our female ancestors.  If they even list a profession, it is usually "housewife" or "at home."

But I now know the profession of my 3rd great grandmother, Malka Vizel/Wizel Fuchs/Fux Berkovics.

Birth of Hers Fux, January 24, 1887

My Twice-Married Great-Great Grandparents

I've written before about how in Austria-Hungary, many couples had a religious wedding and were considered fully married by their communities; however, they never civilly registered their marriage, so their children were considered illegitimate.  In fact, I believed my great-great grandparents (Shmuel Moshe Rutner and Rochel Fuchs) were in this situation, as their children whose births were registered in civil records only listed a mother.

Birth of Mendel Fuchs (Rutner), 1900

Interconnected Vizel Descendants

A few days ago on the ISOGG Facebook group, someone mentioned a new tool by Brad Lyon that allows you to visualize interrelationships between family members.

Below, I looked at descendants of my 5th great grandfather Avrohom Vizel.  The tool takes a Gedcom and generates a chart showing relationships, with dots representing individuals on the year of their birth, giving a vertical timeline.

Descendants of Avrohom Vizel

My Fifth Great Grandfather. Also My Fifth Great Grandfather. Avraham Vizel: Ancestor Deep Dive

Avraham Vizel was my fifth great grandfather in two different ways.  There is quite a bit written about him in the Yizkor book Sefer Maramaros on the page for his town of Bilovitz (also Kis-Kirva and Mala-Kirva; today Kryva).  Avraham (who was apparently called the very creative "Avrum Bilovitzer") is said to originally be from the province of Galicia, nearby Krakow, where he lived with his widowed mother; he was a descendant of the Taz.  While in Galicia, a prominent man in the village was impressed with him and wanted Avraham to marry his daughter--and promised Mrs. Vizel that she would be given money if this would happen.

Bilvaritz Entry in Sefer Maramaros

Kirva Censuses

My Vizels are from what was then Kis-Kirva (somtimes just "Kirva"), Maramaros, Austria-Hungary and is now Bilovartsi, Ukraine.  Similarly to the way I looked at the Kolodne census records which have been indexed on JewishGen, I decided to look at Jewish individuals enumerated in Kis-Kirva to try to follow the population growth and figure out which were my relatives.  In addition, I found here that in some censuses, only first names were recorded.  In others, patronymics were used.  And in others, last names were given--but they sometimes morphed from census to census.  Systematically tracking individuals through the census records allows  you to link names to one individual and see how over what period that person was being enumerated.

Jewish Census for Kirva, 1774

How to Vet Your In-Laws -- And the Power of Genealogical Collaboration

(I'm giving two talks next Sunday at the Ontario Genealogical Society's conference--hope to see some of you there!)

Most of my posts lay out facts that I'm confident about given my research.  This one will be more of an "I think" kind of post, rather than "I know."  And if anyone has any ideas to be able to get this to the "I know" level, please comment on this post!

I've already discussed my great-great-great grandparents, Baruch Tzvi/Hirsch and Malka (nee Vizel) Fuchs of Felso-Neresnicze (today's Novoselytsya).  Malka's parents were Eizik-Yehudah and Eidel Fuchs of Kryva (then Nagy-Kirva); Baruch Tzvi's were Gershon and Toba-Rivka Fuchs of Novoselytsya (then Felso-Neresniczse).

There was another Vizel/Fuchs couple in Novoselytsya as well.

Birth Record for David Fux's 1849 Birth--Registered in 1909

My Pedigree Has Collapsed!

Well, it's happened. My first instance of pedigree collapse. While I've seen examples in my family of cousins related in multiple ways, I had no examples of any of my direct ancestors appearing on my tree more than once.

And then along came Avraham Vizel.

Avraham Vizel was the father of Rechel Vizel Rutner, who was the mother of my great-great-great grandfather Mendel Rutner. Avraham lived in what is now Bilovartzi, Ukraine (and what was called Bilvaritz in Yiddish). There's an entire section with his story in the Yizkor Book Sefer Maramaros which deserves (and will get) its own post.

Recently, as I was doing research, I found another branch of Vizels to whom I was related. I had traced them back to the dual villages of Kis-Kirva and Nagy-Kirva. But “coincidentally,” the furthest back I traced them was to a man also named Avraham Vizel.

So it looked like I had two 5th great grandfathers with the same name! Perhaps they were related? I checked to see how far apart they lived.

I'd looked up Nagy-Kirva in JewishGen's Communities Database (an incredible tool to find Eastern European towns by both their prior and present names). There was one result:

JewishGen's Page on Kryva, Ukraine (Formerly Nagy-Kirva, Hungary)

Eizik Vizel, 1828 Hungarian Tax Census

When I was at RootsTech this past month, I spent the entire Monday before the conference at the Family History Library going through roll after roll of microfilm.

Near closing time, they started making announcements that there were 30--and then 15--minutes remaining, so I just started taking photographs of images without looking at anything.  This week I looked through them--and this "strategy" got me information I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Last week, I wrote about how I discovered that my great-great-great-great grandparents were Eizik and Eidel Vizel from Nagy-Kirva.  I did not know that when I was in Salt Lake City.  But it seems that in my mad rush to photograph as much as possible, I photographed the 1828 Hungarian property tax census for Nagy Kirva!

1828 Hungarian Property Tax Census for Nagy- and Kis-Kirva, Cover Page

Malka Vizel Fuchs's Parents--Compiling the Clues to Find my 4th Great Grandparents.

Last week, I wrote about how I found a death record for a woman who may have been my great-great-great grandmother, but I wasn't sure it was her.  I was pretty sure I was out of data to prove or disprove that fact, and I was asking for guidance.

Well, turns out I found the data--some of which I already had and some of which I just discovered.

Malka Vizel's Death Record; 1896