Gathering Information

Terry became familiar with several online search sites, contacted people through ancestry.com, and even found a genealogist in Russia.  Because the immigrants' names were often spelled in many ways, she had to do special investigative work to ascertain if, for instance,  a Butkewicz or a Butkiewicj was a member of our Butkovitz family.  She also had to deal with changes the immigrants made to their names when they came to America.  For instance, in researching the Seidmans, she found that their name in the Old Country was Zakman.  It took years to track everyone down, to create family trees, and to find out who we are related to in the U.S., Europe and Israel now, not to mention some still in Russia.  And the work is not yet done.  There is still much to sort out.  However, the torch may have to be passed on to the younger generation.  I used to think that Jews especially couldn't trace their ancestry very far back because of the massacres, the forced deportations and the general neglect of their existence (except for census records so they could be taxed!) However, Terry's work has shown me we can even further back than she has already done.  She has worked on this project for at least ten years, perhaps more.  She has done it with no hope or desire of remuneration or recognition and with little encouragement.  And, she has done the same work for her ancestors from France, Portugal, The Azores, and Canada.  Amazing. Amazing. I am in awe.  (I know the unbelievable hours I've spent on this website and it's a drop in the bucket compared to the material she has gathered for me to work on.)

What Terry has done already is easily the equivalent of the research for a doctoral degree in academia.  She did this for no personal gain or recognition.  In fact, years ago when she first sent me her constructions of family trees, I am ashamed to say that my response was, "This is just names that mean nothing to me. " My only excuse is that at that time I was engulfed in my own academic career and raising my granddaughter Rebecca at the same time.  My life was hectic, as it had always been.  I got my all my degrees, bachelor's, master's, and doctorate after my three sons were born, and I never relegated their care to a nanny.

When I finally retired from teaching and active scholarship in my field --and my job of childrearing was over at the age of 74, in response to my children's and grandcheldren's requests for family stories I decided to make them a disk with all the old family pictures on it.  Since some of those pictures were of my father's family in the Old Country and my mother's family shortly after they arrived in Boston, I started to remember what my parents and my grandmother and aunts had told me about them all.  Also, I recalled my own childhood experiences which were suffused with family visits, weddings, and Bar Mitzvahs.  So, I looked at the trees Terry had made and some of her other data and realized that they were far more than names.  She had discovered things about the family I didn't know, and, in return, I knew a lot she didn't know.  Moreover, my expertise as a linguist was useful in determining whether or not a given name could have been a relative's. I also could shed light on why certain names had changed over time, and the evolution of some names.  Then, too, my knowledge of naming practices amongst Eastern European Jews helped us determine whether a certain name was possible for a given person, clearing up some identity issues.  The naming practices also showed that we should look for someone with a particular name.  Anecdotes I knew even explained why someone wasn't named, for instance, for a grandfather.  Terry's further explorations confirmed that he, indeed, wasn't.  All this will be explained in the sections on family stories.   


Terry and I found that my memories and her data plus my linguistics expertise all combined to make a living history of the family.  The names are not just Sarah and Sholom, Bayla and Zisse, but people with real feelings and motivations, personal tragedies, and reasons for rejoicing.  Through ancestry.com, Terry also found collateral members of our immediate family, and they found her.  I always knew, for instance, that the Providence Shatkins were somehow cousins, but I didn't know why.  From Terry's work, I found that my paternal great grandmother's maiden name was Shatkin and that her sister, my Bobi Bayla's aunt,  who lived near us in Providence, was of course, also born a Shatkin. She had married a Schechtman and I knew her sons well, one of whom, oddly enough, also married a Shatkin.    A Charles Newman, a Shatkin on his maternal side,  contacted Terry, and we were able to clear up for him the relationship between the Ostrachs, Schechtmans , and Shatkins.  On the other side of the family, Ken Marcus, a descendant of Rebecca Gilfenbain Marcus, my grandfather Abraham's sister,  also found Terry online.  From him, we have gotten some important information as well, not the least of which was my grandfather's father's name.  Ken got it off his great grandmother Rebecca's tombstone! 

Terry found valuable information about the Ostrachs from yet a different source.  She found the two volume history, The Road from Leitichev,        written by two American Jews about the Leitichev District which included Meidan, my Zaide Zisse (Samuel) Ostrach's home town.  Meidan was 15 kilometers from Bar Bobi Bayla's home town.  That was well within the range of a Shadchan's (a marriage broker's) territory, so I guess that is how those two mismatched people got together.  Zisse was already known as a Bucher, a scholar of Judaic texts like the Talmud and the Shulchan Orach.  He was also a Cohen, a hereditary member of the priestly caste, and a Chazan, a singer of prayers in shul, but not an ordained cantor.   Despite Zisse's  lack of income and, so far as I can tell of industry in the sense of going out to work, Avrum Zakman, Bayla's father, would have considered him a good catch. It was an honor for a family to have a scholar marry into it, even if, as was usual, it meant having to support him.
 
In reading the following, bear in mind that in Russia, people had patronymics, their father's name as their middle name.  For males, the father's name ended in ovitch for females arovna. When Jews adopted this pratice, it gives us added information about their forebears.  For instance, The  patronymic of the first Ostrach, whom we have a record of, Sruel, born around 1798, prompts  us to look for a Leib Ostrach, a clue we wouldn't have without the Leibovich middle name. However, a search for that name in the district we know Sruel came from did not yield any Leib Ostrakh.  Sruel is the earliest bearer of that surname that has yet been recorded.    Not all Jews seem to have adopted the Russian custom of patronymics, however.  To my knowledge, the  Zakmans didn't use them.

In the index of The Road to Leitichev , the Ostrachs are listed, starting with Sruel Liebovich Ostrakh, originally from Cherno Ostrov, Proskurov District.  He and his two sons, Moshko and Itsko, came to Meidan in 1850 as colonists given a special Tsarist grant to farm on a settlement named Staro Zavresky Meidan. Moshko had a son Gersh Moshkovich Ostrakh whose son was my grandfather Zisse (Samuel) Ostrach.  My father was named for his grandfather Gersh, of which Hersch is a variant.  Moshko had another son, David Moshkovich Ostrakh who had a son Fischel Davidovich Ostrack.  Fischel changed his name to a Russian one, Fyodor Davidovich Oistrakh.  His son was the world famous 20th century violinist David Oistrakh.  Terry received a fax from David's son Igor, also a concert violinist who confirmed that David Oistrakh was my father's second cousin. Note: I have used the spellings of the surname as they are given in the aforementioned index and in each descendant's own choice of spelling.  My grandfather used the variant Ostrach and the violinist's family preferred Oistrakh.

This is not to say we know it all yet.  We know my grandfather Abraham had a brother Mendel who called himself Mendel Helfenbein.  My grandfather adopted the Gilfenbain pronunciation after he came to America.  The passenger list from Ellis Island listed him as Avrum Helfenbein.  Now, we know something about Rebecca Gilfenbain's descendents, but we don't know what happened to Mendel Helfenbein or who any of his children were and where they are.  I also knew from my mother that my grandfather's older sister Chana was his favorite.  Terry found her listed on the ship's manifest as my  grandfather's closest relative in Nowy Dwor.  I knew she later came to Boston, because my mother knew her, but I didn't know any information about her except that she was married.   Terry found her signature, but married surname was scrawled and seems to have been either Kushner or Kirschner.  That's all we know.  We know of no children, when exactly she came to Boston or anything else about her. 

My Uncle Norman Gilfenbain told me that his son Stuart met a Gilfenbain family in Chile.  Norman and Stuart are in the produce business and import produce from Chile.  What is unusual is that the Gilfenbain spelling and pronunciation are definitely from the U.S. In Poland, whence the family came, the last name was either Elfenbein or Helfenbein.  One of the problems in finding out about Mendel's family is that there are so many Helfenbeins, both in Nowy Dwor and in the United States.  So, where did this South American Gilfenbain family come from? 

In short, a family history of late 19th and early 20th century immigrants begins with searching the passenger records in Ellis Island, and determining from those who might have been our forebears.  This is complicated by the aforementioned variations in spellings.  Different members of the family came in with their last names spelled differently.  The Klaymans came in as Kleimans or even Claymans among other variations.  The Ostrachs were Ostrak or Ostrakh, Oistrakh, or maybe even Oystrakh or Ostracher, among other variations found.  Additionally, my Aunt Esther claimed the name was pronounced Estrach, but we haven't yet found that variation in any hard records.   Butkovitz as spelled in at least 40 different ways.  Sometimes Terry knew who a person was because she knew first names -- which were also spelled in various ways.  Sometimes she knew because she knew the name of the town they migrated from. In my grandmother Bayla's case, Terry knew that she had escaped Ukraine in 1919 and traveled through Rumania for 2 years with her children, so when she found a 1921passenger record of Beila Ostrak from Jassy, Rumania and her children Sura, Hers and Ester, she could reasonably guess that was Bayla Zakman Ostrach with her children Sarah, Hersch (later Harry), and Esther from Bar, Russia, and it was.

Terry approached this entire project with her formidable intellect, powers of deductive reasoning, rational analysis, and tenacity.  My contributions were memories, my knowledge of folkways, and my linguistic skills.  I grew up in the same house on Carrington Avenue in Providence that my grandmother and my two American born younger uncles lived in.  Not only do I have memories of the family gettogethers, but my grandmother, who was homesick for Bar until the day she died, regaled me with stories of their life in the old country.  My father's fond -- and terrible -- memories were also imparted to me from my childhood on.  He especially talked about the layout of Bar, its dirt streets and roads, and also his interactions with the Christian peasants.  My aunt Esther told me many other stories.  Unfortunately, they all died before I could ask them certain questions that Terry's investigations have brought to mind.  Still, there is much to tell about that way of life now gone forever. 

I hope that this site makes our ancestors more real to us, and, above all, shows their descendants, the accomplishments of their forebears in the face of the adversity of being Jewish.  Just to survive in Europe was a miracle.  To have done so much more, including  having had the guts to board a ship in Glasgow, Hamburg, Rotterdam, or Southhampton or whatever Atlantic port they could make their way to was amazing.  They did this with a deep knowledge of the hostility towards Jews, a  hostility that was never glossed over in Eastern Europe.  Moreover, they all set out knowing no language except Yiddish and Russian or Polish.  They had to countries to get a boat to America, countries where none of these languages were spoken. With few possessions, and as little as the equivalent of $25, they lined up to get  into the bowels of  ships that were far from luxorious, crowded in steerage, to cross the Atlantic to a  new country they called Die Goldene Medina, which wasn't so golden and wasn't a paradise. 

When they left their parents and relatives, they knew they'd never hear their voices again.  There were no telephones, much less transatlantic calls in Bar, Koshovita, Meidan, or Nowy Dwor. Some siblings also migrated, but not necessarily all.  Think of what the decision to leave meant. To leave behind everyone and everything you ever knew forever.  There were no visits back, especially as the horrors of the 20th Century unfolded. And what they found bore little relation to what they had known.  There was no way to remain Jewish in the way they were Jewish in the Old Country. But that's another story.  That's the story of us American born children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  


                        Some Words about Names.

There is a general belief that where family names differ from their Old Country origins, it is because of harried Ellis Island officials who wrote down what they thought they heard. This is not so.  The Ellis Island officials merely took the ships' manifests, the list of the passengers' names, and checked off the names of the people in line.  Those were the names and spellings on the Ellis Island passenger records.  In turn, those names were usually orally provided by immigrants as they boarded the boat.  A ship's officer just wrote down what he heard.  Many mistakes in decoding what the passenger said were undoubtedly made.  Often, the immigran was illiterate, or only knew the Cyrillic or Yiddish alphabet, but all ships leaving for America were in countries using the Roman alphabet or the old German one abandoned after WWII.  Similarly, towns of origin were often misspelled for the same reasons.  For instance, my grandfather Abraham Gilfenbain's place of origin is listed as Nowy Dwor, Austria.  There is no Nowy Dwor in Austria.  There is one in Poland.  He embarked from Hamburg, Germany.  Abraham must have said he was from Nowy Dwor near Warsaw.  It was usual to give the province from which one came or the nearest large city.  In any event, the ship's officer, being German, and my grandfather's accent being strange, must have interpreted "Warsaw" as "Austria" said in a foreign accent.   Interestingly, after assigning him to Austria, the same official recorded my grandfather's ethnicity as "Hebrew, Russian."  (Russia ruled Poland in those days.)  Consistency was clearly not a concern in filling out the ship's manifest. 

So don't blame Ellis Island if your family's name or origin was messed up.  That was done at dockside.  Because of the variations in the ships' manifests, Terry often had to trace a name by using a Soundex program which listed all the variant spellings of a given pronunciation. Recall, too, that in order to embark for America, immigranrs had to  make their way to Atlantic ports in various countries.  As you look through the documents, notice where each person boarded ship: Glasgow, Rotterdam, Hamburg, even  Southhampton, England.  We all hear foreign languages through the filter of our own languages.  That is, a name pronounced in a Russian accent sounds different to an Englishman, a Scot, or a German.  That will also account for spelling variations.  This was not only a problem for Yiddish speaking Jews.  A colleague of mine whose surname is Hennedy told me that people presume his name is a variant of Kennedy.  I did.  But, he informed me, when his grandfather emigrated from Ireland, he was illiterate so when the passenger list recorded him as Hennedy, he didn't realize that was a misspelling of his name, which was Hannity.

When I labeled pictures from my grandmother Bayla's family, I was faced with a dilemma.  I grew up knowing my Seidman aunts and uncles and cousins.  Yet, the records were clear.  There were no Seidmans in our family.  The brothers who emigrated, Pesi and Schulim, later Benny and Sam, both had the surname Zakman on their passenger records.  Sam arrived 11 years after Benny, and each embarked to America from a different port.  Also, my grandmother received a postcard from her brother Doveed in the late 1920's and he clearly signed his name "D.A. Zakman."  Bobi Bayla often said to me of her life in Bar, "Everyone knew Bayla Zakman."  At the time, I didn't note the discrepancy in surnames. 

Now I know that Zakman doesn't just turn into Seidman.  The science of linguistics has long established the kinds of errors people make when they hear foreign languages.  It has also long established what sounds turn into other sounds over time and why. Zakman might be mistaken for Sakman, Sachman, Zachman, maybe even Zaman or Saman, but not for Seidman.  A  z can become an s, and vice versa.  A consonant is easily just dropped.  But k's don't turn into d's and a's (pronounced "ah") don't turn into ei's (pronounced i). 

Moreover, clearly the Zakman wasn't an error on the part of an official.  Benny's passenger record is Pesi Zakman.  Sam's is Schulim Zakman.  And, their brother Doveed signed his name clearly as D.A. Zakman (Click on Document page to view all three records.)  Sometime after coming to Boston in 1913, Pesi  changed his last name to Seidman, and his first name to  Benny. Later, he filled in a registration card  as Benjamin Harry Seidman.  Where the Harry came from, I also don't know.  I guess that he changed his first name because Benny sounded more American than Pesi.  Similarly, Schulim switched to Sam because that sounded more American.  So far, my Seidman cousins don't seem to know why the last name was changed, so it just remains a mystery. 

Changing first names to sound more American was very common with all immigrant groups.  Sam seemed to be an all around favorite for Jews.  My grandfather Ostrach is erroneously listed as Zitic on his passenger card. That seems to be one of those ship manifest errrors.   His actual name was Zisse until he renamed himself Samuel in America. My father, Yiddish name was Hersch, renamed himself Harry.   Actually, Terry found in her research that these names were often linked so that an


American Jewish Harry was, in Yiddish, Hersch, and in Hebrew, Zvi.  My father's grandfather, after whom he was named, was Gersh in Ukraine, but I have no record of his Hebrew name.  I would presume it was Zvi, however, or how else did my father get that name?    Sometimes, Yiddish -el ending, which is both a diminutive and an endearment is added,  yielding Herschel.  My grandmother often called my father Herschele.

                                            G's and H's

Recall, above, I said k's don't turn into d's.  However, some sounds do turn into others.  We see this as word pronunciations change over time, and also, we see it when one dialect uses one sound and another uses a related one.  By related, I mean phonetically similar.  We have already seen that Gersh and Hersch were considered the "same" name in Ukraine.  We also saw that the last name Helfenbein changed into Gilfenbain.  How could this be?  Well, both consonants are made in the back of the mouth. Go to make a g, and then, instead of saying "guh," with the back of your tongue touching the soft palate, lower your tongue and let the air out.  See, you made an h.  In Ukraine and Poland, there was a variation between g's and h's, so that some dialects said "golumpki" for stuffed cabbage, and others said "holumpki."  That is, wherever a word began with g in one area, it was pronounced as an h in another.  Hence, in Bar, "Hersch" was how you pronlounced "Gersh."


We see a similar situation with the Helfenbein-Gilfenbain names.  This variation of the name is complicated by the fact that my grandfather's father's name was Elfenbein, with no h or g in front of it.  Yet, the three names are clearly the same.  At least, they're all used as the same family name, one by the father, and the other two by his sons.  The first record we have is for  Lezer Vulf Elfenbeijn and his daughter Tauba Rifka's birth.  In that document, the witnesses said that Lezer Vulf could not read.  My Uncle Norman Gilfenbain told me his father, Lezer Vulf's son, couldn't read either. So?  They pronounced their names in their Yiddish speech.  This is how the Elfebeijnj-Helfenbein variation came aboout.  In many Yiddish dialects, if a word began with a vowel, an h was added to it.  I can still hear my Bobi Bayla asking, "Do you vant a heppel?" (Do you want an apple.). 

The Elfenbeijns must have pronounced their last name as Helfenbein, although officials in Poland, familiar with this dialectal addition of an h sound, wrote it as Elfenbein.  Then, when my grandfather Abraham presented himself at the boat in Rotterdam, when he told the ship's clerk his name was Avrum Helfenbein, the clerk wrote it with the h.  If my grandfather couldn't read, he wouldn't have known the difference.  However, he must have known that some people, people who could read, perhaps, pronounced a g where he would say h in words that legitimately had a g or h.  Not realizing that the h in Helfenbein was there because of Yiddish addition of an h before a vowel, he naturally equated it with the g that varied with h in words like golumpki in Polish, which were holumpki in Ukrainian (Both words refer to stuffed cabbage, which in my father's family were called prakes, but they didn't live near Poland.  Don't forget that there was no border between Poland and Ukraine in those days and both Polish Christians and Jews often lived in what is now Ukraine.   My grandfather was clearly aware of the variation between g and h,  Avrum began to call himself Abraham Gilfenbain once he settled in Boston. The h spelling was created by whatever official recorded his name on the boat he took in Hamburg.  My grandfather once told my mother proudly, "My brother calls himself 'Helfenbein', but I say 'Gilfenbain'."

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