Faithful reader:
This has been a deserted, quiet blog for some months: thanks for your patience, and I hope to be again more active here.
The Chicago conference was busy: among other things along with Deena Berton and Sally Mizroch, I stood and was elected to the LitvakSIG, Inc board. There has been a lot to learn about what and how and why. If you have views on the SIG's priorities, do let me know. The conference also sent me haring off after different research possibilities. I am now running a family DNA project.
I did get to meet those different sets of cousins: second, third and putative 6th (or 7th) cousins. Some fascinating payback for hours of research.
Here I have just updated the link for http://www.maps.lt/ - so this now works again - and provides access to the best interactive map of modern Lithuania.
JGS Great Britain held an Eastern European SIG meeting last weekend in London. About 20 Litvaks turned up - with a good mixture of experiences and interests. After introductions we broke into tiny groups to attack brickwalls and other problems. There was good feedback and so there will be similar meetings perhaps 2 or 3 times a year.
News for the future: some record distribution soon...
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Tauragnai lists
At the very end of June we distributed two lists for Tauragnai:
(i) an 1880 family list of Jews transferred from Salakas and
(ii) a 1912 candle taxpayers list.
Thanks to our members for their continuing support!
(i) an 1880 family list of Jews transferred from Salakas and
(ii) a 1912 candle taxpayers list.
Thanks to our members for their continuing support!
Salakas 1876 family list
In June we finally received and distributed the 1876 Family List for Salakas from the Kaunas archive thanks to one particular donation. It covers the period 1876 to 1887 and includes 5279 individual records. The most exciting feature of this list is that it includes ages for almost all women and girls. This is a rare feature.
The comments column is interesting. There is an entry for "murder and forgery", several conversions and one deportation to Siberia. It also shows the mass movement of families -mostly to nearby shtetls towns around the region - some of which we had not identified before on the district list including:
The comments column is interesting. There is an entry for "murder and forgery", several conversions and one deportation to Siberia. It also shows the mass movement of families -mostly to nearby shtetls towns around the region - some of which we had not identified before on the district list including:
- Tilze (also known as Tylza) at 5540 2634, located 17.8 miles NE from Salakas in the NE corner of Lithuania where the Lithuanian , Latvian and Belarussian borders meet. Tilze is in Shtetlseeker and is on the northern shore of Lake Druskiu.
- Bachmatai/Bachmaty about 2 km south of Zarasai.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Belarus shtetls: some photos and finding Pelikany
The Zarasai district boundaries follow the pre-1918 map. This means we cover a number of shtetls that are now in Belarus. These include, most notably, Vidzy with 49 researchers registered on the JewishGen Family Finder, and Braslaw with 23. Many records for these Belarussian shtetls are in Lithuanian archives.
Current pictures of the area are at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr. There are a lot of churches.
When I took over as district co-ordinator I tried to develop a list of all the shtetls we cover. One name that came up was Pelikany. And I looked at old maps, http://tinyurl.com/4jhwow for example, and there it was between Widxi (ie Vidzy) and Opsa (by the way this 1650 map has north to the right). But on modern maps it was nowhere. Look at http://tinyurl.com/4ca35u and zoom in: no Pelikany. There is a catholic episcopal website that lists a Pelikany church, but where it is was a mystery and they didn't answer my email.
There are no JGFF researchers listed for Pelikany, but there is a 1914 taxpayers list at Kovno according to www.rtrfoundation.org , so you never know...
The search went on in a fitful and desultory way and then at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr I found the answer... if you look on the left you see "Pielikany (Miluncy)". And then you go back to the modern map and find: "Milyuntsy" just west of Opsa.
So: the old shtetl was replaced by a new village, but the Church kept the old parish name. This is a story that one sees all over England, so it shouldn't have been a surprise - and it's a salutary reminder that not only people and families change their name.
Current pictures of the area are at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr. There are a lot of churches.
When I took over as district co-ordinator I tried to develop a list of all the shtetls we cover. One name that came up was Pelikany. And I looked at old maps, http://tinyurl.com/4jhwow for example, and there it was between Widxi (ie Vidzy) and Opsa (by the way this 1650 map has north to the right). But on modern maps it was nowhere. Look at http://tinyurl.com/4ca35u and zoom in: no Pelikany. There is a catholic episcopal website that lists a Pelikany church, but where it is was a mystery and they didn't answer my email.
There are no JGFF researchers listed for Pelikany, but there is a 1914 taxpayers list at Kovno according to www.rtrfoundation.org , so you never know...
The search went on in a fitful and desultory way and then at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr I found the answer... if you look on the left you see "Pielikany (Miluncy)". And then you go back to the modern map and find: "Milyuntsy" just west of Opsa.
So: the old shtetl was replaced by a new village, but the Church kept the old parish name. This is a story that one sees all over England, so it shouldn't have been a surprise - and it's a salutary reminder that not only people and families change their name.
New revision list translated for Salakas!
I have today sent district research group members a spreadsheet containing a translation of the Vilnius Archive revision lists for Salakas over the period 1858 to 1876. There are 3082 lines of data.
This is the first of a number of lists that we should receive this year that will be sent promptly to research group members.
In accordance with LitvakSIG policy, the list will be made available through the All Lithuania database in 2009 to all other researchers.
Thanks to those members whose continuing support have made this possible!
This is the first of a number of lists that we should receive this year that will be sent promptly to research group members.
In accordance with LitvakSIG policy, the list will be made available through the All Lithuania database in 2009 to all other researchers.
Thanks to those members whose continuing support have made this possible!
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Some statistics: mortality in reverse
A warning to readers: this is a somewhat morbid discussion. I guess a consultancy at a life insurance company in 2006 has left its mark.
I recently was given a database of deaths containing about 500 deaths covering a district for 17 years in the 1920/30s. I found 2 people on the list who were from one family I'm researching. Only 2 people for an area that included that family's home shtetl! What was going on? Could I extract any more information from the database?
The average age of death was about 65 (excluding deaths over infants less than 12 months old). This means the overall annual death rate should be about the reciprocal of this: about 1.5% annually. This is a fairly crude basis: any actuary interested should let me know how this ought to be done.
Over 17 years this means that 25.5% of adults might be expected to die. So for any number of deaths the one might expect that they come from a group that is about 4 times that number. So 2 deaths in a family means that the size of the family should be about 8.
But this is only a statistical expectation, the real number could be higher (the family were healthy/wealthy) or lower (the family were poorly/poor). There is a strong correlation between wealth and mortality. What could be the range be? Statisticians use confidence intervals to define a range of likely results. I determined a 90% confidence range, using a roundabout method. I concluded that 2 deaths might mean between 2 and about 22 in the family.
I then looked at the numbers for other numbers of deaths over 17 years using the same overall death rate. My estimates are below [sorry about the layout]:
No of deaths .....Expected family size ....Lower limit ........Upper limit
5 ........................20 ....................9 ..................36
10 .......................39 ...................25 ..................58
20....................... 78................... 61.................. 98
Is this useful information? It told me at least that with high probability very few people in the target family had stayed in the home shtetl over this period - probably around 8 and almost certainly fewer than 22. This suggests that my failure to find significant numbers of people from this family in the home district in the interwar period and in Holocaust records (compared to the hundreds elsewhere at the time) is not a result of poor research technique - almost everyone had gone.
If anyone can suggest a better actuarial approach to this problem, please let me know.
I recently was given a database of deaths containing about 500 deaths covering a district for 17 years in the 1920/30s. I found 2 people on the list who were from one family I'm researching. Only 2 people for an area that included that family's home shtetl! What was going on? Could I extract any more information from the database?
The average age of death was about 65 (excluding deaths over infants less than 12 months old). This means the overall annual death rate should be about the reciprocal of this: about 1.5% annually. This is a fairly crude basis: any actuary interested should let me know how this ought to be done.
Over 17 years this means that 25.5% of adults might be expected to die. So for any number of deaths the one might expect that they come from a group that is about 4 times that number. So 2 deaths in a family means that the size of the family should be about 8.
But this is only a statistical expectation, the real number could be higher (the family were healthy/wealthy) or lower (the family were poorly/poor). There is a strong correlation between wealth and mortality. What could be the range be? Statisticians use confidence intervals to define a range of likely results. I determined a 90% confidence range, using a roundabout method. I concluded that 2 deaths might mean between 2 and about 22 in the family.
I then looked at the numbers for other numbers of deaths over 17 years using the same overall death rate. My estimates are below [sorry about the layout]:
No of deaths .....Expected family size ....Lower limit ........Upper limit
5 ........................20 ....................9 ..................36
10 .......................39 ...................25 ..................58
20....................... 78................... 61.................. 98
Is this useful information? It told me at least that with high probability very few people in the target family had stayed in the home shtetl over this period - probably around 8 and almost certainly fewer than 22. This suggests that my failure to find significant numbers of people from this family in the home district in the interwar period and in Holocaust records (compared to the hundreds elsewhere at the time) is not a result of poor research technique - almost everyone had gone.
If anyone can suggest a better actuarial approach to this problem, please let me know.
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