Esther Pickholtz and Markus/Max Stern

THE EASY PART

A few years back, my third cousin Joe in Denver asked me about how he - a Francis/Franzos (& Pikholz) descendant - is related to a known Francis relative of his in the New York area. When I looked at the family, I saw that Benjamin's wife Sadie was the daughter of Marcus (Max in the US) Stern and Esther Pickholtz. This Esther/Ester was not anyone I knew.

But I saw death records for three young daughters of this couple among the Zablotow records. 

Zablotow is about an hour and a half drive (today) south of Skalat, near Kopycienice, between Buczacz and Husiatyn - all towns with Pikholz families who came from Skalat. Marcus is from Siemakowce, not far from Zablotow, but there is no indication of where Ester came from. I did find it curious that Ester's surname was spelled PICKHOLTZ, which is a rare spelling in pre-WWI Europe.

Unfortunately there are no birth records for this couple's children, not the three who died nor any others. Such birth records might have named Ester's parents. (Nor are there any other Stern records associated with Siemakowce, in JRI-Poland.)

In the course of my research, I made a brief contact within the family and located New York marriage records for six children of Marcus (sometimes Max) and Esther, including Sadie Francis. Five of the six were married between the 1910 and 1920 censuses and one in 1922.

Later I found the 1907 passenger list for the family, including seven children, with their destination being their son Louis who was already in Newark. So that's eight children altogether.  

Passenger list 1907

Everyone had Siemakowce listed as "birthplace." Sadie (19 years old), Abraham (16), Jetty (14), Pepi (9), Charlotte (8), Berl (7) and Schama (9 months).

The parents, Markus and Ester were listed as being 48 and 42. That would mean Ester was born about 1865, which may or may not be correct.

Three years later in the 1910 census, we have the whole family including Louis, in Manhattan.

1910 census, Manhattan

Marcus has aged considerably, now 60. Esther less so, is now 43. Louis is younger than Sadie. Pepi has become Pauline. Charlotte has become Jennie. Berl is now Benjamin and Schama is now - what else? - Sam.

The six marriage records that I have include all the children except Abram and Sam. The two sons married women named Goldenberg and Goldklang. The four women married men named Francis, Yudin, Patlin and Genzer.

None of this has brought me any closer to identifying Esther's parents.  We have a pretty good picture of the Pikholz family from Buczacz despite their being no records there. Age-wise nothing fits. The Kopicienice family had two sons and then the Pikholz mother died. No way this is Husiatyn.

And there is not much in the way of DNA and we have no one on GEDmatch from this Stern family. Any of the Stern family reading this who has done DNA might want to upload to GEDmatch. It's free. And it might allow us to see how the DNA of the Stern descendants matches the rest of the Pikholz families.

Max Pickholtz witnesses Benjamin Stern's marriage

The one connection to a known Pikholz family

The 1922 marriage record for the son Benjamin has one interesting tidbit. A witness to this marriage was Max Pickholtz. We have one Max Pickholtz in the New York/New Jersey area at this time, a son of Simon Pickholtz and Chana Waltuch from Skalat. Presumably he was a brother or a cousin of Esther Stern. 

Max had two sisters in New Jersey, one married to a Rosenbaum and one married to a Marenus. The Marenus descendant I have been in touch with has never heard of Stern cousins but that is no surprise. She also did DNA for me, so I am curious to see DNA from Stern descendants for comparison.

Max had a sister Ester who died in Skalat in 1872 at age two with no birth record, so there was certainly no older sister named Ester who lived to adulthood in this family. There is an 1870 birth record for a Chaya in this family - perhaps she used the name Ester. 

One other freaky possibility. Chana Waltuch married Simon Pikholz after his first wife - her sister - Dwore died (30 October 1861). Dwore's younger daughter Breine was born 14 January 1860 and we know nothing about her. Esther Stern could in theory be a daughter of Simon and Dwore, a half-sister of Max Pickholtz.

NOW THE HARD PART

Next I had a look at online trees. On Ancestry there were more than I had expected, using the "Pickhold" misspelling. I shall list them below, identifying them by the initials of the tree owners, for privacy reasons.

1. Tree owner - BG. Esther's name is spelled Pickhold. Tree includes daughters Pauline and Jennie plus Yetter (sic) and Benj, called "Stern" but from a different unnamed husband. BG is a descendant of Jennie.

BG has Esther's date of death as 25 January 1925. (More on that later.)

 

2. Tree owner - TW. He doesn't seem to be a descendant and his connection is on the Stern side. Esther's name is spelled Pickhold. Only children listed are Pauline and Jennie. He has Esther's death as 25 January 1925 and Max' as 11 March 1922.

 

3. Tree owner - LO. Seems to be closely related to BG above. Esther's name is spelled Pickholtz, no death date. Only child listed is Jeanne/Jean (Jennie).

4. Tree owner - NC. Esther is listed as Pickhold. He is a descendant of Jennie. All the same information as LO but with the death dates the same as TW.

5. Tree owner - AK. This man (whose wife is a descendant of Yetta) has five trees on Ancestry, representing different stages of his research. I shall summarize them as a group here. Esther's name is spelled Pickhold, but on one tree she is called Roth! He has Esther's death as 25 January 1925 and Max' as 2 October 1938. He has the eight children that appear in the 1910 census plus eight others. More on that later.

He does not have spouses for Abraham and Sam so it may be they never married. On the other hand, he has no spouse for Sadie either, while we know she was married with three children..

6. Tree owner - NM. She seems to be a descendant of Jennie. Esther has no surname. Her husband is called Marcus with a death date 23 January 1915. Esther's death date is 25 January 1925. She lists eight children, but only six are correct. 

7. Tree owner - SM. She seems to be a sister or a niece of NM above. Esther's name is spelled Pickhold. Only Jennie is listed as a child. No death date for Esther or Max.

8. Tree owner - MR. The tree owner is a veteran genealogist, related to Yetta's husband's family. She has Esther's name as Pickhold, with two children - Yetta and Pauline. No death date for Esther or Max.

9. Tree owner - AS. He has Esther's name as "Pickhold (Pickholtz)." He lists sixteen children, like AK above. He has Esther's death date as 25 January 1925 and Max' as 2 October 1938. He is a descendant of Louis, who has three daughters and a son.

He has another tree which seems to represent an earlier stage in his research.

 

10. Tree owner - AG. She has Esther's name as "Pickhold (Pickholtz)." The only child she has for this couple is Louis, with four children. She has Esther's death date as 25 January 1925 and no date for Max.

11. Tree owner - M. This tree has Esther Pickhold with no death date. Max' death was 2 October 1938. The only child is Louis, with two daughters and a son.

 

12. Tree owner - AR. She has Esther's name as "Pickhold (Pickholtz)" with the same 1925 and 1938 death dates we have seen so many times above. The only child she has is Philip, who is one of the extra eight listed by AK and AS.

 

13. Tree owner - MK. He does not have Esther's name at all, but has Max with the 2 October 1938 death date. The only child he lists is Sadie, with the correct spouse and correct three children.

Sorting it out

 

To my mind, the biggest problems with these Ancestry trees are

a. The death dates

b. The two trees with an extra eight children

c. The one tree which identifies Esther's surname as Roth

 

I am pleased to say that all of these have a single solution. There are, in fact, two couples named Max and Esther Stern in New York. One Max was married to Esther Pickholtz and the other married Esther Roth. Each couple had eight children living in New York. I have the census records. Two of the online trees combined all the children of the two couples into the Esther Pickholtz family.

Esther Roth Stern's death record

Max Stern and his wife Esther Roth died 2 October 1938 and 25 January 1925 and are both buried in Union Field Cemetery. I have the two death certificates.  I have not been able to find any death records in New York City for "our" Esther and Max, nor do I find any New York records for any Max/Marcus Stern on the alternate dates given in the online trees. (1915, 1922)

Perhaps Max and Esther died outside New York? Doesn't anyone know?

A death record for Esther should list her parents' names, so this is really important.

It would be really nice if the owners of the online trees would make the appropriate corrections (and deletions of duplicates). I am inviting them to read this blog and perhaps see what I have in mind.

 

What's next?

 

I would like to fill out the six families - Max and Esther's married children and their descendants - with names, dates, Jewish names (which might hint at Esther's parents' names), burial information (with grave photographs) and of course spouses. But I am not going to do it myself. I'd like some participation from the descendants.

Perhaps some DNA from the descendants.

I probably wish for too much.

Zvika Sarid z"l

 

BARUCH DAYAN HAEMET

The funeral for Zvika Sarid will be tomorrow (Thursday) at five-thirty at Kevutzat Yavneh. Zvika has led the Skalat memorial group ever since his mother died. He was seventy-five years old.

Zvika at the most recent Skalat memorial service last month (with Bronia)

 

Another Pikholz-Zellermayer Marriage

About a dozen years ago, I wrote a piece about the multiple marriages between the Pikholz and Zellermayer families from the Skalat/Husiatyn area. We can see three marriages between the two families on this chart that I made back then. Those named Pikholz are shaded blue and the Zellermayers are shaded yellow.  I am not sure exactly how the Zellermayers on the right connect to those on the left, but there are clear indications that they do, including the fact that one on each side (in red) was born in Liczkowce. 

   

We also have a Gabriel Pikholz who died in a house which is clearly associated with the Zellermayers and I speculated that Gabriel's wife Sara may have been a Zellermayer. If so, that would be the fourth. But Gabriel is a son of Nachman Pikholz (b. ~1795) so not closely related to the Pikholz descendants in the above chart.

 

Now we have another.

  

My half-third cousin Erika Herzberg Fraga is part of the Riss family. We share a second-great-grandmother (Rivka Feige Pikholz) from her two husbands. I met Erika about ten years ago in Los Angeles, with the assistance of her cousin George Gutman. She had done DNA - including MtDNA - for George and she is part of our Pikholz DNA group.

 

Recently, while looking for something else, I noticed this bit of information on the MtDNA Results Classic page of my project. Erika's most distant female-line ancestor is her great-grandmother Rosa Zellermayer, born 1835, died 1913. I don't know if I simply never noticed this before or if FamilyTreeDNA made a change in the layout of the page.

I wrote to George. He did not recall what was from Erika herself and what was from his research, but he had been able to add Rosa's parents Josef Zellermayer and his wife Fryma. Rosa and both parents were born in Husiatyn. I found the record in JRI-Poland but nothing further.

 

I see nothing that specifically connects Rosa to the other Zellermayers, but they are all from the Husiatyn area and the name is unusual, so it is reasonable to assume they are the same family. Erika's family is closer to the three couples in the chart above than she is to Gabriel, but they are not part of that bit of the family. On the other hand, four other Riss cousins were born in the small town of Liczkowce, where two of the Zellermayers were born. (Liczkowce is only 13 miles north of Husiatyn.)

I have long felt that there is a deeper connection between the Pikholzes and the Zellermayers. This Rosa strengthens this conviction without adding and more proof. There is a lot of that.

CADASTRALLY SPEAKING - The Pikholz Families in Skalat

A few weeks ago, Jay Osborn's Map Room on the Gesher Galicia website added a cadastral map of Skalat from 1862.

The maps themselves are held by TsDIAL (the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine) in Lviv and we are grateful to them for making these maps available.

The value of these maps is in the numbered houses - who lived near whom and where the various houses are in relation to markets, roads, waterways and public buildings. The houses are not laid out on a grid with numbers befitting that structure, but simply reflect the order in which the houses were built. 

Many of the vital records which the Polish State Archives has made available through JRI-Poland have house numbers where the event occurred. These are not necessarily where the family lived, as a young woman may have had her child at her mother's house and of course some people died in hospitals.

Some years ago, I cobbled together charts of where the Pikholz families lived in our main towns - Skalat and Rozdol. These charts are not meant to be comprehensive, but they have helped me to understand which families were connected. 

The names of the families in the charts are the ones I have developed for my own convenience and don't mean much to outsiders, but I recently added some color coding to identify the family groups.

The links on the house numbers lead to details of the records. House 60, for instance.

 

 Jay was kind enough to mark up the relevant part of the Skalat map with the Pikholz houses.

The road to the northeast leads to Novosielke, where much of the killing was done in 1942-43 and where a memorial site was established nearly thirty years ago. The road leading south in the center of the image leads to Grzymalow where there were additional Pikholz families.

Most of the Pikholz houses are just east of the road to Grzymalow. Most of the families there are descendants of (Izak) Josef and Mordecai, who are known to be closely related. West of that road is house 132 - descendants of Nachman Pikholz - and more of that family lived in house 23 (up towards the market). House 418, also near the market, was the family of Peretz Pikholz. 

There is no doubt that all these families are related, but they had drifted apart over the years. Living descendants of the different families told me "We are not related to them." The fact they lived in different areas testifies to the distance within the families themselves.

Another Etta Bryna - Is She One Of Ours?

I have written in this space about my mother's mother's mother, Etta Bryna Rosenbloom, over the years. She died young - maybe her late thirties - and we know very little about her. Not even her birth surname. From her 1896 tombstone, we know that her father was Yehudah and he was a Levi. She lived in Borisov, but that was her husband's town, not necessarily hers.

We know that her maternal haplogroup is U1b1 as I did that test myself. Ten years ago, I wrote about finding a MtDNA match, with a fairly close autosomal match. And that tester's great-grandmother was Yenta (or Yetta) Bryna, probably ten years younger than our Etta Bryna. The given name combination is unusual and I am quite certain that these two women are first or second cousins.

That led me to adopt a strategy based on that given name combination. I discuss it with DNA matches and occasionally search the Belarus database on JewishGen. I have even paid a research organization a significant sum for document searches, but they had nothing that was not available from public sources.

Recently a new search on JewishGen turned up. 

A death record for Ita Brama Levit, died at nine months on 2 December 1872, the fourteenth of Kislev. The original includes some Hebrew and it is clearly Ita Bryna.

The full record is below.

Her father is Arya (Aryeh), which is interesting because our Etta Bryna's father is Yehudah and those male names are similar.

In the Hebrew, the surname actually appears to be Levite (pronounced with three syllables) which is not necessarily a form of "Levi."

This death was in Mogilev, about 154 km east of Borisov.

I wrote to a few Levitt/Levite researchers in Mogilev and elsewhere, but no one seems to know the family of this child. There are a few Arya in the 1858 revision lists for Belarus, but nothing I can do anything with.

So we file away another lead. Perhaps for future reference.

SKALAT - Judenrein for Eighty-Two Years

Yesterday, the seventh of Sivan, we met at our regular time, in our regular place, along the eastern fence of the cemetery in Holon. There is a long row of monuments in memory of communities which were destroyed in the Holocaust. There are now a few rows of graves between the monuments and the fence, graves that were not there last year.

We were about two dozen people, including a few children who are three generations removed from Skalat. The only actual survivor in attendance was Bronia, thinner and frailer than last year, and using a  walker. But of course nearly everyone there is a survivor, children and grandchildren of Jews who lived through Skalat's last days eighty-two years ago or who managed to leave before 1941.

One of the two monuments in Skalat

Zvika spoke as usual. He updated us about the maintenance of the two memorials in Skalat and collected some money for the two local caretakers. Bronia spoke briefly. Amnon Weissman spoke
eloquently. Haim Bronstein's son spoke. (Haim, who wrote the yizkor book for Skalat, used to run these memorial meetings.)

We said kaddish together and a couple of prayers (one chapter of Psalms was read by Shammai Segal's grandson).

After about forty-five minutes, we bid our farewells, hoping to see everyone next year. 

Uncle Selig and Why I Do Genealogy - Hebrew

 

ביום חמישי האחרון, כ"א באדר (20 במרץ), הקדשנו ויטרז' של שבט אשר בבית כנסת ברנע באשקלון לזכר אמא של סבא רבא שלי רבקה פייגע פיקהולץ ואחיה אשר זעליג.

להלן דברי בהקדשה. (יש גם תרגום לאנגלית.)

 תודה לכלכם שבאתם. גם אם לא לגמרי היבנתם מה הענין. כוונתי כרגע שתהינו, גם אם לא תקלטו את כל הפרטים. הנושא המשפחתי מורכב אך לא יהיה מבחן. העיקר ההתרשמות והרשם. והמסקנות. ולמה אנחנו במקום הזה במועד הזה.

לפני כמה עשרות שנים, שהתחלתי להתענין בהיסטוריה המשפחתית, אבי ספר לי שֶלְסָבִיו, הרש פיקהולץ, היה דוד בשם זעליג פיקהולץ. מעבר לזה הוא לא ידע.

אבא נולד בארה"ב וגם סבא הגיע כילד בן שבע – כך שלא היה זכרון משפחתי לגבי מָה – ומי – היה באירופה.  המקומות סקאלאט, זלושצ'ה, פודקמין ואפילו טרנופול לא היו מוכרים לאבא כלל וכלל. אבל היה ברור שהיתה חשיבות לקיום הדוד זעליג, מבין כל הדודים.

כאשר התחלתי לפני כשלשים שנה להכנס ברצינות למחקר המשפחתי, סבתא ספרה לי שלאמא של סבא רבא הרש פיקהולץ קראו רבקה פייגע.  (את שם אביו כבר ידעתי מהמצבה.) השם רבקה פייגע היה מוכר לי כי לסבי היתה אחות רבקה פייגע שנפטרה כעשר שנים לפני שנולדתי והיום היארצייט שלה, זו הסיבה שקבעתי את המועד לארוע זה. הרי לא ידעתי מתי נפטרה הסבתא רבקה פייגע – לא שנה, ולא תאריך. אפילו לא העשור. ידעתי רק שהיא נפטרה לפני שנולדה האחות של סבא, דודה בקי, בשנת 1885. זה גם לא נראה לי חשוב במיוחד.

עם קידום המחקר ובסיוע דנ"א, גליתי ששני הוריו של סבא רבא הרש פיקהולץ היו פיקהולץ – בני דודים בצורה זו או אחרת. ושדוד זעליג היה האח של אמו רבקה פייגע ולא של אביו. שני האחים -  רבקה פייגע וזעליג היו שנים מילדי יצחק יוסף פיקהולץ (שהיה ידוע בפי כולם בשם יוסף) ואשתו רוזה (עליה לא ידוע דבר, גם היום).

כאשר כלים חדשים נכנסו למערכות המחקר – ארכיונים באינטרנט, בדיקות דנ"א ועוד – למדתי שרבקה פייגע היתה תחילה נשואה לאיש בשם גבריאל (שם משפחתו לא ידוע) ושנולדו להם שתי בנות בריינה ושרה בסביבות 1840. גבריאל נפטר ושדכו אותה עם בן דוד ממשפחת פיקהולץ (כפי שהיה מקובל במקרים של אלמנות או אלמנים עם ילדים קטנים). כך נולדו לה עוד ארבעה ילדים שהקטן סבא רבא שלנו צבי הרש, כנראה בשנת 1853.

בריינה – הבת הראשונה מנשואי רבקה פייגע עם גבריאל – נשאה לאברהם אהרן ריס משם יצאו כמה דמויות ידועות, ביניהם פרופסור אגון ריס, קרדיולוג בעל שם שעבד שנים רבות בבית חולים רמב"ם בחיפה וקודם היה רופא העיר העתיקה בירושלים של תש"ח.

שרה – הבת השניה מגבריאל – נשאה ליצחק באאר ועברו לצכיה ומשם לארצות שונות – רק לא לארץ ישראל. אני בקשר עם צאצאים של שתי הבנות היום. אבל משחשוב לעניננו, שתי הבנות בריינה ושרה נתנו את השם רבקה לבנותיהן הבכירות. מזה הסקתי שרבקה פייגע הסבתא נפטרה לא אחרי 1862, כשהרש, הסבא רבא שלנו, היה לא יותר מבן תשע. ואולי אף צעיר יותר.

וזאת המפתח לכל התעלומה. מי גדל את הילדים היתומים? לא אחר מהדוד זעליג ואשתו חנה. לא חשוב כרגע איך סגרתי את הפינות. המסקנה ברורה וחד משמעית. הילדים שנולדו וחיו בפודקמין עברו לדוד זעליג בסקאלאט, מקום  לידתה של רבקה פייגע.  שנים מילדיה אף התחתנו עם בני סקאלאט. 

זו הסיבה ששמו של הדוד זעליג היה חשוב עד כדי שאבא שלי שמע עליו.

הדוד זעליג, דרך אגב, נפטר בט"ו בניסן תרע"ג (1913) בגיל 83. ארבעים שנה אחרי אשתו חנה, שהיתה שותפה עד מותה לגידול הילדים של רבקה פייגע.

 אנשים עושים מחקר משפחתי מסיבות שונות ולפעמים ללא סיבה בכלל. אני הרגשתי דחף פנימי לתעד את המשפחה מאז הייתי ילד. ועכשיו אני מבין. זה היה היעוד שלי. אנו, כל המשפחה שלנו, חייבים חוב גדול לדוד זעליג על החסד שעשה לאחותו וילדיה ונפל בחלקי לגלות זאת ולהכיר בכך לעיני כולם במקום זה היום, כפי שמשתקף בארוע הזה ממש. ועל זאת עוד אפרט.

והנה ספור. בשלב מוקדם במחקר שלי, לפני כעשרים וחמש שנה, קבלתי רשימה של כל הפיקהולץ הקבורים בבית הקברות בוינה. חלק הכרתי, חלק לא. במשך הזמן, קבלתי צלומים של המצבות אבל אלה לא תמיד עזרו. חלק מהמצבות נראו לי חלקות לגמרי, ללא כל כיתוב. ביניהם אחד בשם מאיר פיקהולץ שנפטר בשנות הארבעים לחייו בשנת 1916. אשתו, לרה, נפטרה כשנתיים וחצי אחריו.

הרגשתי קשר בלתי מוסבר לאותו מאיר פיקהולץ וגם מצאתי תכתובת בין בתו יחידתו (שהיתה אז באיטליה) לבין מוסדות העליה אך לא יכלו לסייע לה והיא נספתה, כנראה באושוויץ.

לפני שבע וחצי שנים נסעתי להונגריה עם בת דודה שלי מארה"ב וביום האחרון עשינו בוינה. ואני הלכתי לבית העלמין האדיר עם רשימת קברים משפחתיים בידי, כולל שבעה בני דודים ממשפחת ריס. לקראת הסוף, מצאתי את מאיר והמצבה אכן נראתה חלקה.  הצלחתי בכל זאת לחשוף את סודותיה של המצבה והנה ר' מאיר פיקהאלץ בן ר' אשר זעליג מטארנאפאל.  מאיר. בן דוד ראשון של סבא רבא שלי.  ושם המלא של אביו, אשר זעליג.

והמצבה ממשיכה "נפטר בתוך הגולה פה ויען." מצלצל ממש כמו הפסוק הראשון בספר יחזקאל "ואני בתוך הגולה על נהר כבר."

כיתוב של יהודי ציוני.

משוכנע אני שאלו היה עובר את מלחמת העולם הראשונה היה חי את שארית חייו כאן בארץ. והקשר שלי עם משפחת הדוד זעליג רק מתעמק.

עם בן-דודי גיל, בן-נינו של הדוד זעליג

אבל זה עוד לא הסוף. לפני עשרים שנה,  מצאתי, כפי שהזכרתי, את הקבר של זיגמונד מיגדן, הנין של הדוד זעליג.  ליד זיגמונד קבור אחיו, מאיר שנולד ב-1916 סמוך לאחר פטירת דודו מאיר בוינה. ופגשתי את בנו של זיגמונד שידע לספר ששמו של זיגמונד, בעצם אשר זעליג.

וקברים אלה בחלקת "אדיבי" ליד בית העלמין הישן כאן באשקלון. בבית קברות פרטי שהיה בתוך פרדס. פרדס שכבר איננו, אבל עוד היה כשבקרתי לראשונה.

מישהו עוד רוצה לשאול איך נרקם הארוע הזה להנצחת רבקה פייגע ואחיה הדוד זעליג, כאן באשקלון? לקדוש ב"ה יש דרכים משלו.