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Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted last and I can only blame it on procrastination. There have been a number of breakthroughs in my family history research and I guess it's time to start documenting them. I've moved all the...
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Today in the mail I received photos I had requested from the Montefiore Cemetery in St. Albans, New York. A postcard found among Helen Dershewitz' photos and papers had pointed the way to the burial place of Isaac and Rosa Singer, my great-grandparents...
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Over the past few years I've been trying to piece together a family history for my paternal line. After some false starts and dead ends, the picture has become clearer. My recent trip to New York has uncovered some very important documents that shed...
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In the things that I brought back from New York, I found a postcard that talked about the unveiling of a monument for the "Beloved Husband" of Rose Singer to take place on May 3, 1936. Isaac Singer was my paternal grandmother's father. Both...
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It's been quite a while since I've posted. It's not that I haven't been busy with the family genealogy, I've just been delinquent.... That aside, I thought I'd start again with my recent spur of the moment trip to New York. A couple...
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It's hard to imagine the hardships my father's family, father, mother and 7 brothers and sisters, suffered in leaving everything they knew in Poland to travel halfway around the world to a new country and new life. I've never heard any stories...
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A couple of week's ago I had finally found the Ellis Island record for Johann Dersowitz (Joe Dershowitz) after many futile attempts. Again the surname changes bit me.... Once I found the record I ran into another problem. It seemed that the actual...
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Late last year I started doing research to find my paternal great-grandfather Aron. All I knew at the time was what I had heard from my aunt Belle, Aron's granddaughter. All she knew she heard secondhand. Off I went to JewishGen to see what I could...
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Last fall, I became interested in DNA testing as a tool for genealogical research. I did some probing and found that Family Tree DNA had an existing surname project for Dershowitz and variations. There were only 2 members at that time. Since my family...
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Well it's been almost a month since my last post so I guess it's time to do some catching up. Quite a bit has happened. After getting in touch with Rachel Bernstein, a genealogy researcher, I discovered I have three previously unknown second cousins...
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Yesterday I was doing my bimonthly check for updates to the JewishGen databases and noticed a new entry in the Family Finder looking for Dershowitz in the Nowy Sacz area of Poland. I sent off a reply to the researcher, Rachel Heller Bernstein, with a...
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In my research into the Dershewitz (Deresiewicz) family, there has been a certain consistency in the area in Poland from which these leads come. I guess in the late part of the 19th century, people didn't move far from their homeland unless of course...
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My cousin Marty Dershewitz and I have been reconnecting after over 30 years going our own ways. We've found that we both share an interest in saving what we can of our family history. Marty was born and raised in New York, close to most of the original...
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Family history research is like a jigsaw puzzle with many puzzles all mixed together. Our job is to first determine which puzzle pieces are ours and then put them together. Keeping track of these pieces is a real chore. Organization is the key.... As...
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Every 10 years, the US Census Bureau goes door to door and attempts to count every nose in America. They have been doing this since 1790, collecting a variety of interesting data about the people it finds. They have a policy of not releasing the actual...