Mazal Tov - Uncle Selig Gets Married

The find
From the JewishGen SIG announcements from Friday.

Gesher Galicia is pleased to announce the addition of new sets of
Jewish records on the All Galicia Database
<https://search.geshergalicia.org>.
            <snip>
Tarnopol (Ternopil)
- Jewish marriages, 1859-1876. State Archive of Ternopil Oblast
(DATO), Fond 33/1/716. (379 records)

 I went in and used the new "Records Added in the Past Month" function and this came up.

I am assuming that the wife's name is Rachel.

The only Selig Pikholz we have is the brother of my great-great-grandmother Rivka Feige Pikholz. I have written about him in this space numerous times, most recently here. I even have a presentation called "Why Did My Father Know that His Grandfather Had an Uncle Selig," which I gave at JGS Maryland last winter and at the IAJGS conference in Orlando.

This find - and it is not a full document, only an simple index record - answers and documents several open points and opens the door to a possible significant new development.

Identifying Uncle Selig
This is definitely Uncle Selig, not only because there is no one else, but because the age (43) in January 1874 fits his 1830 birth year (based on the age in his death record.)

Many years ago, I concluded that Uncle Selig's (and therefore Rivka Feige's) father is Izak Josef Pikholz (~1874-1862), who was known as Josef. This was based on the fact that Uncle Selig named his son Itzig Joseph right after Old Izak Josef died and the fact that Rifka Feige had a grandson called Joseph Yitzhak but who was actually born Isak Josel.

I also have DNA evidence, as I discuss in Chapter Seven of my book "ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People."

But I never had an actual document. Now I do, for the marriage index calls him "son of Josel Pikholz."

Of course that also verifies the identity of my own third-great-grandfather, even though that has been settled in my mind for probably eighteen years. I can now totally ignore the fact that Selig was born when his father was at the relatively advanced age of forty-six. We finally have a document.

Uncle Selig in Tarnopol
Uncle Selig and his wife Chana lived in Skalat, where most of the Pikholz families lived. Chana died 11 September 1873 at age forty-five of cancer (raka).

But later in life, Uncle Selig lived in Tarnopol. And his youngest son Meir, who was born about 1872 or maybe 1874, is listed as being from Tarnopol, not Skalat where Selig and Chana lived. After visiting Meir's grave in Vienna a few months ago, I suggested:

The thing is Uncle Selig's wife Chana died of cancer in September 1873 at age forty five, so she could have had a son in 1872 but not 1874. Of course Meier could be from a second wife, but we have no evidence that Uncle Selig remarried and certainly none that he remarried so quickly after Chana died.

Except that Meir was born in Tarnopol and Chana died in Skalat, where the family lived. Maybe Uncle Selig married a second time, this time to a woman from Tarnopol. And they lived in her hometown. Where Meir was born.

So do we reopen the question if Meir was born to Chana in 1872 or the twenty-four year old second wife in 1874? That marriage was 21 January, so birth the same calendar year was certainly possible.

But we do know that Uncle Selig married a woman from Tarnopol and that is likely why he lived there from the time of that marriage.

And speaking of the second wife...
This young woman is Rachel Nagler (b. ~1849) and he married her barely four months after his first wife died.That sounds like the standard practice when a widow or widower is left with young children. (For this reason I believe that Meir is the son of Chana. We know of no other "young children.")

The new spouse is often from within one of the families.

So who might Rachel Nagler be? Peretz Pikholz (~1820-1873) is the son of Berl Pikholz (~1789-1877). We do not know how he is related to my Pikholz families. Perhaps Berl is the brother of Old Izak Josef - or a cousin or a nephew. Peretz was married to Perl Nagler (~1823-1904). Selig's wife Rachel is surely related to Peretz' wife Perl, a niece or cousin, perhaps.

Perhaps this points to a Pikholz-Nagler connection that is more substantial than the Peretz-Perl marriage. Perhaps the actual record will tell us something. Thus far, the folks at Gesher Galicia are not encouraging regarding getting an actual record from the Tarnopol archives.

Housekeeping notes
I have three talks coming up, all here in Israel. All are in Hebrew.

19 November 2017, 7:00 – Israel Genealogical Society, Bet Sapir, Sderot Yerushalayim 2 (second floor), Kefar Sava.
Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey

8 January 2018 as part of the Yad Vashem / Central Zionist Archives series “From Roots to Trees” at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. 

5:30-6:15 – The Importance to Genealogy of Understanding Jewish Culture and Customs
6:16-7:00 – Using Genetics for Genealogy Research

Wendy and Carolyn

About a week ago, I received an inquiry about a week ago from a woman named Wendy who begins:

Hi Israel,

I am trying through a process of elimination to figure out my mom’s fathers side. Through Gedmatch, there are 3 relatives that you tested who have matches with my mom. She doesn’t know who her father is but she is 20+% Ashkenazi.

She gave me her mother Carolyn's GEDmatch kit number and the three of my kits that she matches and the chromosomes where the matches occur. I didn't pay much attention to the three people she mentioned but went straight to Carolyn's match list where I saw that she actually matches thirty of my kits.

In looking at the list of thirty, I saw that one was a match of nearly 12.5 cM with my father's second cousin Shabtai. This would be on my grandmother's mother's Hungarian side. I did a chromosome browser for that part of my family and quickly saw that all the action is on chromosome 21, at the far right end.

To remind everyone, Susan is my second cousin, Aunt Betty is my father's sister and Sarajoy is one of my sisters. So this is a nice family group. Not a large segment and probably not much use for someone looking for a birth father, but it does hint at geography as we know our Bauers were in the same area since the 1700s.

So I reported to Wendy:

This group points to my pgm's mother's family. her father is a Bauer from Apostag and Kunszentmiklos in Hungary and her mother is a Stern from Kalocsa.

I don't have more but that will give you some direction.

I also saw in the match list that Carolyn has matches with two second cousins on my father's father's (Galician) side, Rhoda and Roz who are first cousins to each other. But there were no matches with other of my Pikholz second cousins. There is, however, a match with my third cousin Pinchas. Pinchas is a third cousin to Rhoda and Roz as I am but is also a third cousin to them in a direction having nothing to do with me - their Zwiebel and Lewinter families, also from the same area of east Galicia. (It could be a Kwoczka match, but no other second cousins of mine appear.)

So I did a chromosome browser for just those three. And got this:

OK. So Carolyn has a match with the Zwiebels or the Lewinters.

Then I realized that this too is chromosome 21 and that a chromosome browser for both groups gives me this:

This really looks like one group, especially when I note that my start point (41,302,925) is the same as Shabtai while my end point (45,746,864) is the same as Pinchas.

I triangulated the two groups just in case one matchs Carolyn of her mother's side and one on her father's side. (This was unlikely as Carolyn's mother has no known Jewish ancestry.) The two groups triangulated perfectly.

So it appears clear that someplace back in genealogical time there is common ancestry between Shabtai's Hungarian Bauers or Sterns and the east Galician Zwiebels or the Lewinters. Back in time, but recent enough that segments in the 11-13 cM range were preserved in both groups.

Here's to endogamy. Even if it doesn't help Carolyn very much.

Carolyn and Wendy live in Maryland and both plan to attend my presentation at JGS Maryland at 1:30 on the twenty-fourth. That's at Hadassah, 3723 Old Court Road, Suite 205. Come join us. It's my one non-DNA talk other than Seattle. Maybe they'll meet their cousin Pinchas, if he comes.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt:

What We Know

vs

 What We Can Prove

Housekeeping notes
I'm off to the US for the next four weeks. GRIP, the IAJGS Conference, programs in half-a-dozen places, some private mentoring on Y-DNA and meeting with a few relatives I haven't seen in forever.

Perhaps the most exciting thing will be meeting a male-line descendant of the Pikkel family from Vajnag, which is across the river from Vyshkovo. If you have forgotten the significance of that, review this blog from six weeks ago. I'll have a DNA test kit with me.

I'll blog as I can.