Saturday, November 14, 2015

Surname Saturday ~ Moskowitz of Romania

I am using the Surname Saturday prompt to review the ancestral lines for my husband's family.

Abraham D. Moskowitz appears as the father of Morris Moskowitz on the 1904 New York City marriage license of Morris Moskowitz and Liza Blumenfeld.

Also on this marriage license is Morris' mother's maiden name: Chana Sharf.

New York, New York, Manhattan Marriages, FHL Microfilm 1556816, Certificate No. 13533.
Morris Moskowitz and Liza Blumenfeld, June 29, 1904.; Family History Library microfilm.

According to my mother-in-law, Morris Moskowitz was a brother of Sheva Moskowitz, so I am assuming that Sheva's parents were Abraham and Chana.

All I know about Abraham is that he lived in Romania, probably in Iași. He likely died before 1910, when Chana appears as Hanna Moskowitz in the 1910 U.S. Census as mother of Morris Moskowitz. I haven't found any more information on Chana/Hanna.

Generation 2: Sheva/Sarah Moskowitz lived in Iași, Romania, and was married to Isaac Goldstein. Family lore said that she came to America but was turned back because of health reasons, but I have never found proof of that story.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Handler Birth Record Transcriptions at JewishGen

I subscribe to the H-SIG (Hungarian Special Interest Group) email list because of my father-in-law's Hungarian roots. (Click here to see the various JewishGen mailing lists you can subscribe to.) I was excited early last week to see that there was a new upload to the JewishGen Hungary Database: an individual has transcribed all the births, marriages and deaths from registers from a couple of small communities that are now in present day Serbia: Erdevik and Sid, and has provided these transcriptions to JewishGen.


Erdevik is a familiar place name because Sam Handler reported it to be his birth place on his 1919 naturalization papers, so I was very excited to take a look.

At the JewishGen search page for the Hungary Databases, I searched for Surname: Handler, Town: Erdevik, and GivenName: Sali. (Note that, although JewishGen is free, I make an annual donation to JewishGen, which provides me with this searching flexibility.)