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 existing blog posts off DershSpace and into Google Blogger. I think Blogger will allow much easier family notification of new content and the ability to collaborate more easily. I'm looking forward to continuing here.

Here is the new Blog location:

http://dershspace.blogspot.com

For sometime I have been posting family photos and documents to my Flickr photo sharing website. Flickr is much easier to use and maintain that what I had in the old DershSpace site. I can easily tie blog entries to photos in Flickr so I actually have more options than I had before.

>Here is the location for photos and documents:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38197980@N00/collections/72157603720517671/

So, from this point forward I will not be updating the original DershSpace website. I will leave it in place but provide pointers to the new content. I'm going to start blogging about current research finds first and work my way back to my trip last October to New York. Hopefully I'll remember to catch everything.

Enjoy!

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.  The photos revealed simple headstones with Hebrew inscriptions.  It was exciting enough to actually find their burial location but as an added bonus the headstones' inscriptions also pointed to an older generation to add to my family tree.

The inscription on Rosa Singer's headstone said she was "Rahel bas (daughter of) Avraham Abba".  Since her maiden name was LEIBLER, I assume her father was Avraham LEIBLER.

The inscription on Isaac Singer's headstone said he was the "Son of Zvi".

Thanks to the staff at Montefiore Cemetery for taking the photos and Rachel Heller Bernstein for supplying the Hebrew translations.

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 some light on the how events in Poland unfolded during the years 1910-1921 and ultimately led to the Deresiewicz family immigration to the United States.

My cousin, Shelley Kohen, had some old family documents that her mother, Bella Dershewitz Kunin, had inherited.  Among these docments were Bella's original birth certificate, a lease agreement for a tavern business in Poland and others.  My cousin Norman Sakoff found a box of photos and documents that he inherited from Helen Dershewitz Richman after her death in 2000.  In that box I found passports for Gitel (Gertrude) Deresiewicz and children and Rozalia Singer, her mother.  I also found other travel related documents.  This additional information gave me real insight into how the Dershewitz family came to America.

Here is a timeline of events as well as I can piece them together for the family of Solomon Deresiewicz:

1909

• Solomon Deresiewicz and Ella Singer, daughter of Isaac Singer and Rosa Leibler, are married and living in Lukowica, Galicia.

1910

• Gitel (Gertrude) Deresiewicz is born April 26, 1910 in Lukowica.

1911

• Solomon Deresiewicz enters into a lease agreement with Jozef Grzybowicz for a tavern business in Kamienica on September 27, 1911.  The lease is for 12 years with 2400 krone to be paid annually in quarterly installments. This was about $500 USD at the time.

1912

• Ester (Estelle) Deresiewicz is born July 1, 1912 in Lukowica.  Ella Singer Deresiewicz dies shortly after.

1913

• Solomon Deresiewicz marries Ella Singer's sister, Gitel Singer.

1914

• Jakob (Jack) Deresiewicz is born August 29, 1914 in Kamienica.
• A major turning point of WWI, the Battle of Limanowa, is fought December 1st to the 15th.  Austro-Hungarian troops held off the Russian army from moving westward and taking Cracow. 
• There are family stories of Russian cossacks riding their horses into the tavern in Kamienica.  Solomon is said to have taken them into the basement and got them drunk before they could do more damage.
• My grandmother, Gertrude, said that the Russians were far worse than the Germans at that time.

1916

• Avram (Abraham) Eber Deresiewicz is born March 5, 1916 in Kamienica.

1917

• Juda Leib (Louis) Deresiewicz is born May 21, 1917 in Kamienica. View his birth certificate.

1918

• Beila (Bella) Deresiewicz is born October 22, 1918 in Lukowica. View her birth certifcate.

1920

• Hema (Helen) Deresiewicz is born May 28, 1920 in Lukowica.
• Louis Singer applies for and receives a passport to travel back to Poland to help the Deresiewicz family immigrate to the US.  He returns to the US on June 28, 1920.
• Gitel Deresiewicz is granted a passport on September 9, 1920.  Her 7 children are listed on her passport as well.
• Birth certificates were obtained in Limanowa on November 20, 1920 for Juda Leib and Beile and probably the other children.

1921

• Rozalia Singer is granted a passport on January 4, 1921.
• The Deresiewicz family and Isaac and Rozalia Singer leave their ancestral homes for Warsaw in March 1921.
• Family arrives at the Hotel Rossya in Warsaw on March 2, 1921
• Passport Warsaw entry stamp is dated March 3, 1921
• The family members proceed to obtain visas for Germany, Belgium, France and United States from embassies in Warsaw.
• US visa obtained March 7, 1921
• German visa obtained March 9, 1921
• French visa obtained March 9, 1921
• Belgium visa is dated March 19, 1921
• The family travelled from Warsaw to Berlin, through Belgium to Cherbourg, France during the middle of March.
• The Deresiewicz family entered US Health Service quarantine on March 25 in Cherbourg in preparation for sailing on the Cunard liner, Saxonia on April 10.
• Cherbourg exit stamp on April 10, 1921.  Family boards the Saxonia for the trip to the US
• The Deresiewicz family arrives at Ellis Island April 20, 1921 and is met by Louis Singer to begin life in their new country.

These were difficult years for the Deresiewicz and Singer families.  World events shattered dreams and forced an exodus to a place a world apart from the life they knew.  Driving them was the hope that this new country would offer opportunity for a new life.

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 Isaac and Rose came over to the US with the Deresiewicz (Dershewitz) family in 1921 and lived with them in the Bronx.  The card was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. S. Brenner.

I had asked current New York family members if they knew where the Singers were buried and no one seemed to know.  So this card was a real break-through.  The card was damaged but I could read that Isaac was buried in the Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, Block 8, Row 4, Grave ??.  I called the Cemetery (718-528-1700) to see if I could get more complete information.  I spoke to a very helpful staff member who verified that Isaac Singer was buried on May 16, 1934 at Block 8, Row 4, Grave 28.  As an added bit on information, I had her check on Rose Singer and found she was buried March 18, 1945 next to her husband.

Cemeteries are places of remembrance.  It seems tragic that final resting places, like old photos, often get lost over time to their families.  Isaac and Rose Singer's memories have been reclaimed.

http://dershspace.net/photos/isaac_and_rose_singer/images/200/original.aspx

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 of weeks ago I was speaking to my cousin Shelley on the phone.  We had a lot of catching up to do as we had not talked in a while.  I knew her mother, my aunt Belle, had had a stroke a number of months before and was concerned as I had not heard anything since that time.  I was relieved to hear that Belle was doing fine, now making adjustments to assisted living.  Shelley mentioned that they were getting together a small family group to celebrate her mother's 90th birthday in about 2 weeks.  It didn't click at the time but later that night I thought this would be a great time to visit New York.

I called back the next day which happened to catch Shelley and guests right in the middle of Rosh Hashanah dinner.  Aunt Belle was there and I got to speak to her.  She sounded great!  I decided, what the hell, I was going to New York for her birthday.  Shelley was kind enough to invite me to stay in her house in Monroe; Charlotte stepped up to do my farm chores for a week; I found a non-stop flight to JFK; reserved a car and headed out.

 I stayed overnight in Portland with friends since my flight out was at 6:30am.  The flight was ontime and actually got into JFK early!  Wandered around JFK for a while trying to figure out how to get to the rental car lot (think getting on the right Air Train).  Once in the car, I headed out of JFK and into NYC rush hour traffic.  About 2 hours later I was in the Hudson Valley, full of beautiful fall colors and at the door of my cousins, Gene and Shelley Kunin Kohen.  A while later, Shelley's sister Suzie and her husband Joel arrived from Toronto.  Shelley had a fast breaking get together for friends that evening and there was great food and conversation.

After dinner Shelley showed me what she had found while cleaning out her mother's apartment in the Bronx following her move to assisted living.  There was a box of old Dershewitz family photos, ones I had never seen before, and a leather handbag containing some old family documents including Bella's original birth certificate, naturalization certificates and what appeared to be a Polish lease agreement for a business in Kamienica dated 1911.  Suzie helped me organize the photos into family groups for later scanning and posting.

The next day we went over to see Aunt Belle.  She looked just great!  We had time to talk and get reacquainted after all these years.  It was a beautiful day and we thought we would visit the cemetery where many of the Dershewitz family members were buried.  Temple Israel Memorial Park of Nyack was close by so we all piled into the car and headed over.  The cemetery was very small in a nice country setting with one side for Christians and one for Jews with a chain link fence in between.  My cousin Norman, who lives close by, found this place and persuaded the immediate family members to purchase plots.  We found and I photographed headstones of grandparents Solomon and Gertrude Singer Dershewitz, Jesse and Gertrude Dershewitz Milner, Joe and Estelle Dershewitz Sakoff, Jack and Ann Dershewitz, Joe and Helen Dershewitz Richman and Leon "Russ" Kunin, Belle's late husband.  We placed rocks on the headstones, Joe said prayers and we bid adieu.

Aunt Belle's 90th birthday party was on Sunday, October 12th.  Her actual birthday was on October 22nd but this was the best time to get all the family together.  Cousins Norman and Ellie were there and we had a lot of catching up to do.  Norman had been the executor of Helen Richman's estate in 2000.  Helen, the youngest of the Dershewitz children, was always the family organizer and social director.  She was also a long time friend of my mother and was probably responsible for getting my mother and father together.  Norman could not remember seeing any collection of family photos or papers so I thought anything she had must have been lost.  A couple of days later I got a call from Norman saying that he, with the help of his wife Bonnie, had found a box of stuff that was Helen's and that I was welcome to come by and take a look.

The following day I drove over to Norman's house in Pearl River.  I walk in to find a pile of "stuff" covering a coffee table about 6" deep.  Where to start?  At the top of course.  We went through the photos separating them into family groups.  There was a mixture of Helen and Joe's family photos as well as ones that Aunt Helen had inherited or received from other family.  Many were old, pre-1940s, and others fairly recent.  Also included were many old documents.  I found original passports and other travel documents as well as some old letters and photo postcards with yiddish inscriptions.  We took a break and Norman treated me to lunch at his local favorite restaurant.  He is well known there and gives the entire staff a real hard time (in jest of course).  This was a most enjoyable and productive day.

I'm so glad that I was able to take the time to make this impulsive trip to visit family in New York.  Family and friend were great, fall weather was beautiful and connection to lost family was re-established.  Let's make sure we don't wait another 40 years.

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 so I was left to try and piece together the events.  I have come to find that Louis Singer, my grandmother's brother, was the key to bringing the Dershewitz family to the United States.

Let me back up a bit and tell you what I've found about Louis Singer.  He was born in Lukowica, Poland April 27, 1883 as Leib Singer, son of Izaak and Ruchela Singer. His Ellis Island record shows that he arrived in New York May 17, 1899 after sailing from Bremen May 6, 1899 aboard the SS Konigin Luise.  He was a young man of 17 years likely travelling alone with $5 in his pocket.  His occupation was listed as a tailor.

The next record of Louis' life in the US is his Naturalization on August 8, 1904.  He was living at 394 E 8th in Manhattan at the time and his occupation was a dress case manufacturer.  I'm not sure what that was but I know my father often talked about working in the garment trade in New York in his younger years.  After only 5 years in the country, Louis was establishing himself in his new home.

The 1910 Census found Louis living on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.  He was now a liquor store owner.  It seems so many of my relatives were involved in some way in the liquor business in Poland and now in the US.  The next census page showed that he now had a wife, Regina, living with him as well as his brother, Joseph who must have followed Louis over.  Joseph was listed as a liquor store employee so I assume that he worked for his brother.  Louis has been in the country only 10 years and is already doing well.

Records show that Louis applied for and was granted a passport in March 1920 to travel abroad.  The reason he gave on the application was to visit his parents in Poland, I believe with the situation deteriorating in SE Poland he went over to try and get his close family members still in Poland out of the country.  He was to leave around April 15th and would be gone for about 6 months.  The birth registration for one of the Dershewitz family members was dated November 20, 1920 so Louis may have been over in Poland helping to arrange documentation for his family members.  A passenger list for the SS La Savoie shows Louis returning to the US via Le Havre, France on June 28, 1920.

Louis must have gone back to Europe one more time to accompany his family back to the US.  He is shown on the passenger list for the SS Saxonia which arrived at the port of New York on April 20, 1921 after sailing from London.  It seems like after London, the Saxonia stopped at Cherbourg, France where the Dershewitz family and Louis' parents boarded and then on to New York.  I hadn't until this time realized that Louis Singer was also on this ship as he was listed with the naturalized US citizens and not with the immigrants.

Louis Singer played a pivotal role in getting his close family out of Poland and to safety in America.  I wouldn't be here today to tell the story if it hadn't been for him.

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 passenger manifest image did not match up with the text version of the manifest.  Johann Dersowitz was shown to have arrived on August 22, 1905 on the SS Ryndam which had departed from Rotterdam on August 12th.  When trying to view the actual manifest image, another ship's manifest was shown in error.

I sent off an email to Ellis Island support and received a reply a few days later.  Ron Moldanado of donor services pointed me to JewishGen and had me do the following:

Good news!  I may have found your ancestors. To view the manifest you go to http://www.jewishgen.org/ Scroll down to HOSTED ORGANIZATION.  Once that is done   Scroll down to the 3rd link / ELLIS ISLAND DATABASE.  Then scroll down to the 5th link and click on / MISSING MANIFESTS. At the bottom of your screen you’ll see a tool bar.   At the Left magnify to 0.7. Adjust to Series T715   After that is done on the same tool bar you’ll see ROLL and FRAME, on the roll you adjust the number to 612.  And the frame to 725 .     You’ll see the passenger there. If you want to purchase the manifest you must call 212-561-4550 and give the same information I gave you

Johann (Joe) was found on line #5.  What was very interesting was that all the people in the first 5 lines (including Joe) were related in one way or another to Max Heller of 345 W. 38th St, New York City:

		0001.	Deutelbaum, Rose	F	16y	S	Austria, Hebrew	Neusandes
		0002.	Deutscher, Moritz	M	27y	M	Austria, Hebrew	Krakan
		0003.	Deutscher, Rosa	F	25y	M	Austria, Hebrew	Krakan
		0004.	Jacob, Helen	F	17y	S	Austrian, Hebrew	Krakan
		0005.	Dersowitz, Johann	M	19y	S	Austria, Hebrew	Krenicza

All were cousins of Max Heller except Helen Jacob who was a niece.  Moritz Deutscher was listed as a furrier and Johann (Joe) Dersowitz as a waiter.  The Polish place names were all in the general area that other relatives have come from: Nowy Sacz (Neusandes), Cracow (Krakan) and Krynica (Krenicza).  Here is the link to the original manifest image.

Another great find yields more family history clues.

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 find.  After a bit of searching in the JRI (Jewish Records Index)- Poland database, I found an interesting 1891 birth registration record for Biene Marjem Dersiewicz, daughter of Aron and Emilie Frei Dersiewicz of Labowa.  The daughter's name was a close match to one of my grandfather Solomon's siblings, the timeframe and place were right but the mother's name was not Malka as related by my aunt.  Since the original document was available from the Polish State Archives in decided to request the record.

Several weeks later the document arrived as an image file on a CD, perfect for analyzing and posting electronically.  The registration page is primarily in German but the column headers are in both German and Polish.  I have been told that this is a fairly late example of German records.  I'll go through each column on the form and see what information was gleaned.

The first 5 columns are fairly straightforward.

Column 1 - Sequential Number: 168

Column 2 - The Birth: July 20, 1891 in Labowa, house number 137

Column 3 - Circumcision or Naming: July 25, 1891 in Labowa

Column 4 - The Child: Biene Marjem, female

Column 5 - Legitimacy: Illegitimate.  This was common since Jews did not usually register marriages with the government.

The note below was added in 1917 stating that a civil marriage had been registered June 2, 1914.  Jews, usually later in life, saw the advantages of being "legally married" for them and their children.  The German text and translation:

TEXT: Laut Trauungsschein des Matrikenamtes in Bobowa vom 23/9 917 No 125 J II Tag 24/25 Nov[?] Zl. 9 haben die Eltern des Kindes nachträglich am 2/6 geheirethet, somit wird vorstehender Geburtsakt legitimiert. 

TRANSLATION: According to the marriage certificate of the registry office in Bobowa of Sept. 23, [1]917 number 125 year II day 24/25 Nov line 9, the parents of the child have subsequently married, therefore the present birth act is legitimate.

The next 2 columns contain information on the father and mother.

Column 6 - Father: Aron Dersiewicz, businessman from Labowa

Column 7 - Mother: Emilie Frei, daughter of Jacob and Beile Frei of Labowa

I had heard from my Aunt Belle that Aron's wife's name was Malka so Emilie didn't quite match.  In comparing notes with my newly found cousins, they confirmed the Frei relationship.  They knew their great-grandmother as Mindel.  My Aunt Belle also said she was named after her great-grandmother, Beile.

The last part of the record contains the witnesses and father's signature swearing the truth of the information.

Column 8 - Witnesses: Listing the person, their occupation and place of residence.

Column 12 - Note: Here we can find Aron's signature attesting to the truthfulness of this birth record.  It's very interesting that by his own hand, his surname is spelled Deresiewicz while in the rest of the record, the recorder spelled the surname Dersiewicz.  This seems to be the story of our surname.....

Here is the text of some translation help I received from Mark Jacobson:

Birth record number 168 born July 20, 1891 in the town of Labowa (which was in the Nowy Sacz district) house number 137, naming ceremony July 25th in Labowa. Name of child Biene Marjem, female, not legitimate (there is a note written above referring to a civil marriage June 2, 1917 making the child legitimate, this is common on Galician records since most Jews did not have civil ceremonies and often had civil marriages late in life). Father Aron Dersiewicz (I can't read his occupation) from Labowa. Mother Emiele Frei, daughter of Jacob and Beile Frei from Labowa. The next column is witnesses, the schames etc. The last column is the father swearing that he is the father and signing his name, along with two witnesses. A nice standard Galician birth record, rather late use of German on a Galician record (most were Polish by the 1890's).

Mark Jacobson

Secretary, JGSPBCI

Boca Raton, FL

The information contained in this document helped confirmed the identity of my paternal great-grandfather gave me more information to continue the search back in time.

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 history research had hit a dead end I thought I would try the DNA approach and see what insights I might gain.

I spoke with Barbara Leibell who was the project administrator at the time to get more information on the testing process and what had been found in the results thus far.  I decided to go for it.  I ordered a 67 marker Y-DNA test kit through the surname project.  There is a substantial cost saving doing it this way.  The kit arrived within a week.  The sample collection is very simple using cheek swabs.  The kit was sent back and my first 12 marker results were out in October.  I found I was an exact 12 marker match with a gentleman in the surname project descended down through the Dershowitzs of Pilzno, Poland.  This was really exciting news!  The Dersh*witz surname is very rare and I would expect some common ancestor but wasn't prepared for an exact match.

 As time went on the rest of the results came in.  I convinced the other member of the project to upgrade their test to 67 markers which can be done on the existing sample.  When all the results came back, we found we were a 66/67 marker match (a later retest showed a 67/67 match).  The only difference was in a fast mutating location.  This showed a very high probability of a common ancestor within 5-8 generations.  I also had the Deep SNP testing done to confirm my haplogroup which turned out to be J1.

Since the surname project had not really seen much activity I asked Barbara if she would be willing to take me on as a co-administrator to help with promotion and put up a public website.  She suggested that I just take over the project so we had ftDNA take care of the change.  In the last week I've put up a bare bones surname project website at http://www.ftdna.com/public/dershowitz/ to display project related news and Y-DNA results.

I recently convinced my cousin Marty Dershewitz to join the project to provide a second data point for our line.  Cousin Maimoona was able to get Greg Dersh to join as well.  I will be working on putting together a list of all male Dersh*witz I can find and try and solicit more participation.  I've also set up a forum on this site to discuss DNA testing as it's used in genealogical research.  Hopefully we can promote more interest.

 Stay tuned for results.

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 scattered around the US.  All are grandchildren of my grandfather Solomon's brother, Joe Dershowitz.

Maimoona Ahmed (Myrna Mintz, daughter of Sylvia Dershowitz Mintz) lives in California in the East Bay with her husband Nazeer.  She has 2 children, Ameena and Akbar, the same ages as mine.  We have spoken on the phone and find we have much in common, especially family.  Maimoona was able to bring a whole different perspective to my Dersh*witz family search.  A couple bits of history that were especially interesting to me were her mention of her great-grandmother, Mindel Frey and that Joe Dershowitz was born in Bobowa.  This provided a cross check that the birth registration I had found for Biene Marjem Dersiewicz, daughter of Aron Dersiewicz and Emilie Frei of Labowa was indeed the missing link in confirming my great-grandfather's identity.  I will be travelling down to the Bay Area in July and plan to meet Maimoona and her family then.

Karen Sandler (daughter of Blanche Dershowitz Mironov) lives in Pennsylvannia.  I got her hooked up through Skype and we have chatted a bit.  Also found was Gregory Dersh (son of Marcus Dersh(owitz)) living in Des Moines, Iowa.  Maimoona recently reconnected with him.  He is one of the few directly descended male Dersh*witzs.

What started out as a search for Dersh*witz roots has blossomed into a discovery of family here and now.  What a pleasant surprise.......

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 brief overview of who I was and where I was in my current family history research.  By the time I came home from work, there was an excited email awaiting me.

 It turns out that Rachel was able to confirm that the Aron Deresiewicz that I had found in the Polish State Archives in Nowy Sacz was indeed my great-grandfather.  She also pointed me to relative living in California who is the granddaughter of Joe Dershowitz, my grandfather Solomon's brother. 

Thank you Rachel for replying and opening up a whole new avenue of possibilities.  More on new family coming up.....

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 there was some monumental turn of events.  Poland was a very turbulent place during this time with world powers using it as a geo-political football.  Anyhow, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out the area of Poland I am concentrating on and the particular cities and towns that may be important in this search.  I am listing these places in the order that I was lead to them.  By clicking on the town name you will get a Google map of the area.  You can see from the map links that all these to towns are within a 20 mile diameter circle.  A good place for focusing attention.

Stary Sacz - When I finally found my father's family Ellis Island records, the place of last residence in Poland was listed as Sharyshoutz.  Searching maps of the area around Cracow which is where I always thought my father said he was from, my son and I found Stary Sacz.  This was the first geographical lead to the family origins.  You can read more about this town's history.

Limanowa - When I first got in touch with my Aunt Belle through my Cousin Shelley Kohen, she related what she could recall of the family history.  Belle was only 2 years old when the family immigrated and recalls history that she heard from other family members.  She recalled that all the Dershewitz children were born in Limanowa.  This is a bigger town then Stary Sacz and an administrative center.  The railroad also goes through this town.  I has quite a history.

Lukowica - This is the village that Isaac and Rosa Singer, my grandmother's parents, listed as their last residence in Poland.  I believe today it's a very small rural community.  There was an interesting article written about the Jews of Lukowica.

Kamienica - I just received a photostat of my cousin Marty's father's Polish birth certificate. The birthplace was listed as Kamienica, not Limanowa.  It even had a house number (302).  So, I guess this was the actual birth village of at least Juda Leib Deresiewicz (Louis Dershewitz).  The birth certificate was however issued in Limanowa.  From the looks of the map today, Kamienica is just a bump in the road.

Mszana Dolna - This is where I found a marriage record for Ester Deresiewicz, probably Solomon's sister, to Wolf Leib Glashut in 1911.  They apparently died in the Holocaust.
 

These towns are but places in my imagination now.  I can look at maps, do Google Earth and read town descriptions and history but it is still somehow not real.  I would like someday to visit these places, plant my feet where my ancestors may have done the same to get firmly rooted in the reality of my family history.  Sounds like another adventure I will need to take soon....

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 Dershewitz immigrants and consequently was able to interact with them and heard the stories they had to tell.  He has the memories of those experiences and is sharing them with me now.  I, on the other hand, was born and raised in California with a complete lack of exposure to the New York side of the family except for a couple of early childhood visits east and the rare visitors from the other side of the country.  What I have to offer to this family history effort is a knack for research and detective work.  To me, this effort is a puzzle and I love puzzles....

In one of our recent conversations, Marty had said he found an old document handwritten in Polish that he thought might be an immigration form of some sort.  I begged him to send me copy which he mailed out and I received today.  When I opened the envelope, I found an old photostat A4 in width and a little longer than A4 in length.  It was a boiler plate form with instructions in Polish and German filled out in handwritten Polish script.  Since I can read a bit of German, it was obvious that this was actually a birth certificate for Marty's father, Louis, my father's younger brother.

Some of the entries were obvious while others are going to take some Polish translation help to decipher.  Here is what I was able to glean in the first pass.

• The birth was registered in Limanowa on November 30, 1920.  I can't make out the signature of the issuer.
• Birth date was May 21, 1917 which matches Louis' known birthday.
• Birth place was listed as Kamienica, house number 302.  I heard from Aunt Belle that all the children were born in Limanowa but this certificate indicates otherwise.  Kamienica is in the same vicinity as Limanowa and Stary Sacz, both places I've seen in other research.
• Circumcision date was listed as May 28, 1917.  Strange to have a dedicated place on the form for that!
• Given name was Juda Leib and was a male child
• Father was Salamon Talman Deresiewicz of Kamienica.  His profession is listed as Tavern Keeper (szynkarz).
• Mother is Gitel Leibler, daughter of Izaak Singer and Ruchela Leibler of Lukowica which is again in the same vicinity as Limanowa and Kamienica.
• Names of the witnesses (mid-wife, circumcisor and another) which I need some help on.

This birth registration was done over 3 years after the birth.  I'm guessing this was needed to get immigration papers to leave Poland and enter the US.  If records are still intact in Limanowa, the birth certificates or registrations for the other children may be there as well.  Five months after this registration document was signed, the Dershewitz family passed through Ellis Island and started their new life in America.

I scanned the birth certificate but had to make 2 passes since it was too long for my flatbed scanner.  So you can either look at the top or bottom images.  Enjoy.... 

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 a computer professional I tend to organize my things electronically these days.  I looked at the software solutions the were available for storing family history and was surprised at how many there were.  I checked out reviews, watched demos and finally ended up with a "trial" version of Family Tree Maker.  This software was very easy to use.  I could store the information I'd found, display it in various ways, produce reports and nice family trees suitable for framing.  There was an Internet research feature that was disabled and required the full version and subcription to be active (the hook).  I hate when software vendors do this but they all do, give you a taste to entice you and then bait you with the part you really need.  FTM does this to the max.

 I finally took the bait while shopping at Costco a couple of weeks ago.  I saw Family Tree Maker version 16 on their software table for $40 and decided to become legal.  One nice thing about buying the software is that it came with a 9 month subscription to Ancestry.com, an Intenet genealogical research website.  I had already done a trial subscription there and knew how useful this was.  Installation and registration of the software was very easy, almost too easy.

And here's the really annoying part....  As part of the registration process, you are required to give them a credit card # to activate the subscription to Ancestry.com.  Why, you ask?  If you read the fine print you are signing up for an automatic Ancestry.com annual renewal that will cost you $155.40 if you don't cancel at least 2 days before the renewal date.  To make matters worse, they don't really tell you when the renewal is and make it very difficult to get in touch with the right people to actually cancel.  How many people are going to remember this 9 months out?  Maybe users of the sofware will want to keep the subscription intact but I find it downright sneaky the way Ancestry.com has done this.  This has become a very common practice among software vendors desiring a steady income stream from complacent users.

Anyhow, enough for my rant.  The software is actually very useful.  The Internet search feature saves a lot of time by passing saved family information to Ancestry.com to focus searches in their databases and saves found data and citations back into FTM.  It's so easy to spend hours searching through bits of history.  For discussions on FTM and other software, see the Genealogy Software forum on this site

I've already marked my calendar to call Ancestry.com on June 15, 2007 just to let them know that I'm on to their game.

 

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 census records until 72 years have passed.  So, the last records made public were the results of the 1930 census. 

While the Census Bureau does not have data online, they do sell and rent microfilm versions of this data to companies and individuals.  One company, Ancestry.com, has taken on the task of transcripting and indexing the data and placing the actual census sheet images online.  This makes a superb genealogical search tool for people looking to trace family in the United States.  Of course you must pay a price for being able to use this service.  Ancestry.com does offer a 14-day free trial which I tried and spent countless hours extracting what I could and then cancelling at the last minute.  I will go back and pay the fee when I have more fine tuned research questions to ask.

So where was the Dershewitz family in 1930?  They were fairly easy to find since the surname was listed as it is spelled today.   The census page image yields quite a bit of information.

• The census information was taken at 2136 Honeywell Ave.  They were paying $40 a month rent (cheapest on the page).
• Here's who was living there:
• Solomon (age 42 - Head)
• Gertrude (age 38 - Wife)
• Estelle (age 17)
• Jacob (age 15)
• Adolf (age 14)
• Louis (age 12)
• Bella (age 11)
• Helen (age 10)
• Issac Singer (age listed as 67 but may be wrong, Gertrude's father)
• Rose Singer (age listed as 63 but may be wrong, Gertrude's mother)
• Ellis Island records show both Issac (Isaak) and Rose (Rozalia) as 61 in 1921 which would make them about 70 in 1930.
• Age at marriage columns shows the Solomon and Gertrude were married around 1910 in Poland.
• Solomon was employed in or owned a delicatessen and Estelle had a clerical job in a bank.  No other jobs listed.
• All were listed as being able to speak English except Rose Singer
• All were listed as naturalized aliens except Isaac and Rose Singer
• The oldest daughter, Gert, was not in the household at this time.
• You can see that the children had taken on americanized versions of their first names.  My father was going by Adolf at that time but was legally Abraham.

It must have been a rough time right after the stock market crash and the beginning of the great depression.  At least the prohibition years were about to end although I heard stories of the Dershewitz children mixing up alcohol in the bathtub for Dutch Schulz during those rowdy times.  We'll see what other stories we can get out of the family members.