SHEVAT AGAIN

2 Shevat 5773, Jerusalem.

Although there were two posts before the beginning of Shevat last year, it is that month when I actually decided to try to do this regularly. Once a week seemed like an enormous task, requiring more discipline than I can usually muster, but I have pretty much done it. I skipped a few holiday weeks, but this post is number fifty-two and we have entered Shevat once again.

Having covered most of the our own personal family yahrzeits last year, I don't really want to do them again, but in case anyone missed them or wants to revisit them, I'll try to link to them at the start of each month, as they come again this time around. There was my grandfather Raymond Gordon, a few of my wife's ancestors (including her father, her maternal grandfather, her paternal grandmother and others), my mother and my sister - all in Shevat.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Most genealogy research includes all kinds of loose ends. People to whom you think might be related, people to whom you know are not related but have similar names, alternate spellings (or alternate identities) of people you know, etc etc. Or, for instance, these three New York graves.

Eva (on the right) had her named changed from Pickholtz (back?) to Barron by court order, after her death.

These three are almost certainly women who married Pickholtz men late in life, but I have not been able to determine who those men were. There is one Pikholz in New York who had at least one wife late in life, maybe even two, but his grandchildren do not remember anything about her/them. I have made inquiry about the three women and in at least one case acquired a copy of the death certificate, but there is nothing to solve the puzzle. So I have these three women as loose ends, of no genealogical significance, but, although they belong in our database, I am not going to allocate resources for that. However, since other researchers will run across them and point them out to me from time to time, I should have a record of what I know.

A reverse example is the first wife of my wife's grandfather, Mendel Baum, whose yahrzeit is this week (7 Shevat). He left Hungary - or more properly, Slovakia - for London before WWI, a childless widower in his forties. The family thinks the first wife died in childbirth, but no one has any specifics.

He had told people both that he was from Tarcal and that he was from Vidrany, so I assumed that he was born in one, but the other was where he lived as an adult, perhaps his last residence in Hungary.

Thanks to the database of the JewishGen Hungarian Special Interest Group, I found the family in the 1869 census, for Vidrany and I ordered the document from LDS in Salt Lake City.

Cemetery in Kurima

The census record shows two year old Mendel (line 4) with his parents (Abraham and Ester) and brothers. The three brothers were born in Vidrany (column 9) and the parents in Kurima. Inquiries in Kurima showed a number of Baum families, but it is not clear how they are related to one another.

So I figured that he had lived in Tarcal later, as an adult. A few years later, when the database expanded, we found his marriage record to the first wife, in Tarcal.

Click on this image to see a larger version

Reading from the left, we have the groom Emanuel Baum (as he was also known), son of Abraham Baum and Ester Baum. Then towards the center we see the bride Rebeka Weisz, the daughter of Israel Weisz and Fanni BAUM. Some kind of cousin, perhaps? I don't see her in Kurima, but the available records there are not comprehensive.

I have not made much effort to follow up Tarcal records. I have not gone into this deeply - there is always so much else to do. I don't see the death of Rebeka or anything about a child.

One thing for sure, this is not a loose end and this first wife must be considered in a study of the Baums of Kurima.

Oh, and while we are on the subject of Baums, last week was the fourth yahrzeit of Fraydelle Goldson, whose husband Jerry is a Baum descendant from the US - a second cousin of my wife. (His grandfather was born after the 1869 census, so does not appear there.)

I participated in the graveside memorial and the following evening we went out to dinner with Jerry, his daughter Adina and Adina's daughter Zehava who is just after high school and is here studying not far from us. I expect we will see Zehava from time to time during the coming months.

My mother-in-law was also there - her first time meeting any of the descendants of her father's brother. She thinks that Jerry looks like her brother Uncle Shia. The nose is certainly the same. 

SHEVAT - My Wife's Ancestors

At least five of my wife's ancestors died in Shevat, all in the last seventy years. Four of those five have their yahrzeits this week. My wife's maternal grandfather, Mendel Baum, died seventy years ago and in reverse order my wife's father, HIS mother, HER mother and HER father - four generations.

MENDEL (Menahem) BAUM was born in Vidrany (Slovakia) in 1867. He went to England a few years before WWI as a widower with no children. His landlady brought her niece from Poland to marry him and they had five children - one of whom died in early childhood.

He was a very learned man and was the study partner of Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael during the Rav's WWI exile. (The Rav was the sandak for his eldest son.)

Mendel Baum died 7 Shevat 5702 (25 January 1942). Three of his four children named sons for him.

MORDECAI DIAMOND was in England in time for the 1901 census, where he appears with his wife Beile Gittel (Betsy) and younger daughter Tova. An older daughter was already married and her husband had preceded them. (The husband is the only one for we have documented immigration information.) I am working with a descendant of the older daughter to nail down as much information as we can about the Diamonds. The family came from somewhere near Warsaw, perhaps Plock, and their name was probably more like Diament.

Mordecai ben Pinchas was born about 1851 and died 24 Shevat 5703 (30 January 1943).

TOVA DIAMOND was nineteen in the 1901 census and soon afterwards married Moshe Avraham Schwartz (originally Scharf).  They had four daughters and two sons. Tova died 5 Shevat 5723 (30 January 1963).


Wedding of Jane Schwartz and Harry Silberstein


JANE/SCHEINDEL SCHWARTZ was Tova's eldest daughter, born 5 June 1903. She married Jacob Harry Silberstein and they had three sons, one of whom died just before his twenty-first birthday.

The family was in the restaurant business in London.

Jane died 7 Shevat 5746 (16/17 January 1986).

Wedding of Arthur Silberstein and Esther Baum.

Jane and Harry's eldest son ARTHUR AARON (Alter Aharon) SILBERSTEIN was born 4 Kislev 5684 (12 November 1923). He married Esther Baum on 23 December 1945 and they had three sons and a daughter. He worked with his father and grandfather in the family restaurant, eventually bringing his family and the restaurant on aliya in 1969.

He died in Jerusalem on 8 Shevat 5765 (17 January 2005) and is buried in Kefar Etzion. He was survived by six grandsons and nine granddaughters and was predeceased by one son and one granddaughter. At present there are six great-grandsons and fourteen great-granddaughters.