More on marriage

I am very pleased to be able to acknowledge the donation by Maria Krane, a former district co-ordinator, of an interesting set of records. The dataset contains records for 242 marriages and 7 divorces of people connected with Salakas from 1877 to 1915. This will be made available to qualified donors once editing is completed.


I have carried out a preliminary analysis of the data: and this posting is to share some of the more interesting findings. Note that the data before 1886 and after 1913 is sparse.


Age at marriage

There is data on age on marriage for most of the women and about half the men.

The average age of men on marriage was about 26 and for women about 23 1/2. The chart on left (click to expand) shows the annual average age for men and women and the rolling 5 year averages. The annual variability is due to the small number of marriages in each year. But the pattern over the period becomes clear when we look at the rolling average: the average age increases by about 1 year every decade. This appears to be the continuation of a longer term trend. From about 1909 the average age drops for men and from 1911 for women. This may be because mass emigration had by those times eliminated many older men and women from the marriage pool, as the eldest generally left first: only younger sisters and brothers were still in Russia.

The youngest age for men was 19 and for women 18. The oldest man was 40 - and he was a widower. The oldest first marriage for a man was 32. The oldest woman on first marriage was 34.

The chart on the right (click to expand) shows the frequency of each age for men and women.



You'll see that the male age curve is about 2 1/2 years to the right of the female curve.





Spouses' hometowns



For most of the marriages we can identify the hometowns for both the bride and groom. In only five cases did a woman from Salakas marry someone from elsewhere - and in every case the groom was from Dvinsk/Daugavpils. So was this also the case for the brides of Salakas men?




The chart on the left (click to expand) shows the home towns of 186 brides of Salakas men over the 25 years from 1886 t0 1910 in five year blocks. I grouped the data together to see trends more easily.

The answer is no.

It is interesting that the total number of marriages rises over 20 years and then drops in 1905-10. This may be an effect of mass emigration - or it may reflect differential survival of records.

In summary, for the whole period to 1913 the statistics are :

• Salakas 17%
• Other Zarasai district 22%
• Vilkomir district 9% (about 1/2 from Utian)
• Other Kaunas Gub 4%
• Dvinsk district 20%
• Other Vitebsk Gub 3%
• Vilna Gub 11% (about 1/2 from Sventysyan district)
• Other Pale Guberniyas 6% (Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, Podolia, Suwalki)
• Latvian provinces 5% (Courland and Livland)
• Other Russian Empire 5%

Perhaps unsurprisingly 3/4 of brides were from the district and the immediately adjacent districts. But there are some very far found brides including Tiflis in Georgia , Dagestan in the Caucasus and Kamanets in Podolia.

Interestingly there were very few brides from the major Lithuanian cities. Over the period there were only 4 from Kovno city and 2 from Vilna. By comparison, there were 38 from Dvinsk and 4 from Vitebsk city. This is reflective perhaps for most people of effective local contact networks (perhaps a local shadchan), but for a few, much broader contacts across Russia. These may have been family, trade, educational or religious affiliations. In one case, in my family, the groom had already emigrated internally to a farm colony in Minsk Guberniya and found a wife there.

In the vast majority of cases the marriage took place at or near to the bride's hometown. And with kest in mind, we can surmise that perhaps 80% or more of the new families started their marital lives outside Salakas. Many indeed in this time period will have left for the US, Canada, the UK or South Africa within a few years after the marriage. But even if they stayed in Russia the associated vital records (such as children's births) will probably be found elsewhere, while the family registration and the list entries will be mainly in Salakas.

The rabbi

For many marriages the officiant (and in some cases the names of witnesses) are given. For Salakas from 1891 the rabbi is G. Lopaiko. This is probably Gershon Lopayko described in the 1912 box taxpayers list as a "wealthy peddler". It's probable that this is the Movsha Gershon Lopayko whose father Binel brought the family from Onikchty/Anysksciai by 1880 (according to the 1887 Family List). On the 1901 town plan Gershon owns 2 properties, number 2 and number 19. Number 2 is a building in the middle of the northern part main square. On the map it is shown with a balance drawn on top - so this seems to be the market. Number 19 is a property just off the northwest corner of the main square. Neither of these buildings now survive.

Does anyone know anything more about the Lopayko family?

Kest and marriage

What was "kest"? and why is it so important for the Jewish genealogist?

Kest (or Mezonot) was the practice whereby a bride's parents gave room and board to a newly wed couple for an agreed number of years.

Professor ChaeRan Freeze of Brandeis University describes this is in her book "Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia" (University of New England Press, 2002). The relevant pages are here: http://tinyurl.com/nwe3hc.

For a poor Jewish father unable to afford a significant dowry for his daughter kest would have been an important part of the marriage agreement.

Now the shidduch itself could very easily be made outside the shtetl. For centuries at the large markets held in the big cities Jewish men could be found making matches for their sons and daughters. And we all know from Sholom Aleichem that there was a shadchan in the smallest shtetl - did they form a loose network across the Pale?

The net result of all this activity was that men often married out of their shtetl - and as travel became easier with the advent of the railway - farther and farther away. And then thanks to kest they stayed away for at least some years. At the end of the agreed time they had work, were settled and many would not have resettled their new family to their old home shtetl.

The implications for the genealogist are:

1. The vital and some other records for the new family (often starting with the marriage) are in the bride's town.
2. The groom often maintains his family registration in his hometown, so entries in the family and revision lists are there - sometimes registrations are transferred to the bride's town, but this is not common.
3. The children of the marriage will normally think of their mother's hometown (and usually their birthplace) as their hometown: but as far as the Russian bureaucracy was concerned this was usually wrong.

This last point needs to be grasped with both hands. In my family, a putative cousin was totally adamant that his family came from Rakushik (Rokiskis) - and he was correct, in part: but it was his grandmother's family shtetl. His grandfather was born and registered in Salok (Salakas) and never transferred his registration. We needed to look at Salok lists to find the family link.

Why this discussion? watch this space...