From: "IsraelP" Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 06:20:03 +0200 Subject: Genealogy #33 A few people have asked why I have been quiet lately, so let me tell you what interesting developments the last few weeks have brought. First, condolences to Bill Pickholz (YITZHAK family) on the loss of his wife Harriet and to Ira Siegel (BREZDOWICZ family) on the loss of his mother Rose. Both these women passed away the week before my last summary, but the news hadn't reached me yet. Interesting to note that Bill's father and Ira's father – both named David – came to the US on the same ship (Susquehanna) in September 1920. So there is no question that the two families are fairly closely related, but we don't know quite how yet. Both the Davids had grandfathers named Izak Pikholz. Mazal tov to Jacob Laor on the birth of twin grandsons – Ori and Eden. Jacob is a first-time grandfather. Mazal tov to Sheldon Pickholz (PINCHAS/RACHEL family) on the birth of a daughter, Yosepha-Moriya. Sheldon and his wife Dena now have four girls. About two weeks ago, a man called me from the US - it seems that in the synagogue where his family goes in the Catskills in the summer, he found an old poster for a Rozdol Society with lots of names. It is in delicate condition and would normally have been thrown out, but he figured we might be interested. He and Sheldon live in the same area and Sheldon has agreed to help us get this poster so we can see what it's all about. You may recall that in my last summary, I was quite excited about a report that Dora Marenus and Max Pickholtz (DORA family) of Elizabeth NJ had a sister Beatrice (Mrs. Max) Rosenbaum in New York and I guessed that this Beatrice was Rifka, for whom we have a Skalat birth record. Well about a week later, someone in NY came up with a NY Times death notice for Beatrice and it identified her as Beckie, so Rifka is right. It also mentioned her two daughters by name (Theresa Baumgarten and Maude Aldoroty) and I am pleased to report that in the past week, I have made contact with descendants of both of those daughters. We have a January 1900 passenger list included a family Max and Bune Pickholz and daughter Chana, US citizens all, returning from a visit to Europe. This list is curious in that Max is not listed together with Bune and Chana, but several lines above them. It is fortunate that I noticed that – Max is listed in the computer as Rickholz, so I might have missed him. Anyway, I mention this because there is an unclear reference in Buna's entry to "brother-in-law Max Rosenbaum." Perhaps Beatrice Rosenbaum's brother Max had an earlier family that no one seems to know about. I have to get a better analysis of that passenger list. I have also made email contact with one of the Poland-raised descendants on the Mensch family and we welcome him to our list. We have an interesting development in the Mensch family. The earliest person we have is Sara-Rivka Pickholz, daughter of Aron and Gittel. As it happens, earlier this week we gained access to an index of seven years of Lwow birth records and we find there the first two children of Sara-Rivka and Salomon Mensch, one of whom is the grandfather of the new member I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. Anyway, Sara- Rivka is listed in those birth records not as Pickholz but as Kranter. That tells me that Pickholz and Kranter were her parents names, but I can only guess which is the father and which the mother. What makes this extra curious is that Sara- Rivka's one daughter who survived the Holocaust (she had come here earlier) submitted a Page of Testimony for a "cousin" named Fanka Kranter, maiden name Pickholz. I'm not sure how this fits together. Eventually we will order some more records from Warsaw and this one may give us some clue. The only other Lwow record for Pickholz is Peter Pickholz who eventually died while serving in the Austrian army during WWI. (We have a photo of the location of his grave in Vienna, but it is unmarked.) The Austrian military records indeed said that Peter (Peretz) was born in Lwow, but I was not sure because we have seen birth records for his three older siblings and one younger one in Tarnopol. This family must have moved to Lwow then returned to Tarnopol before going to Vienna. Peter Pickholz is from the IRENE family. Speaking of which, I found the passenger list for Philip (Peretz) Scharf of the IRENE family, from 1906. It lists him as going to his brother (a teenager) who was living with S. Grunberg, whom I was able to identify as a Skalater. In 1912, this same Samuel Greenberg marries Rose Pikholz of Skalat, sister of Barney (Peretz) of the BARNEY family. It has long been my feeling that the IRENE and BARNEY families fit together easily and this connection to Samuel Greenberg supports that. We are checking this out with the son of Philip Scharf. Incidentally (and it probably doesn't mean much) but the mother of Samuel Greenberg was an Augenblick and we have a Pittsburgh Pickholtz who married an Augenblick back then. Another Ellis Island discovery is the May 12, 1893 landing of twenty-four year old Minna Pikholz of Skalat on her way to Nebraska, traveling alone. (This record was not available from the "normal" Ellis Island lookups and required some special attention.) As it happens we have a death record for Isadore Kaplan stating that he was born 15 May 1893 in Omaha, to Minnie Pickholtz and Harry Kaplan. The timing here is problematic, but we have a search with the Nebraska Historical Society for the marriage certificate for Minnie and Harry and we will probably splurge on Isadore's birth record too. I have some theories, but let's wait and see what turns up. On the index for vital statistics for the town of Strzeliska Nowe (near Stryj) – and don't ask why I was looking there, it wasn't intentional – I found four births for Samuel Pikholz and his wife Rifka Fenster. This couple's descendants ended up in Buenos Aires and in South Africa. One of the four we know (Abraham – his descendants in Buenos Aires go by Pikholc today - and don't seem to be online), two died in childhood and the fourth is listed as Moses Rywen (Reuben) and we don't know what happened to him. I have had a more detailed look at the scroll of Holocaust victims from Stryj, which I mentioned at the end of my last summary. There are indeed several entries that are not in the Stryj book, including one David- Samuel ben Zvi Pickholz. There were two David-Samuel Pickholz in Stryj, both born about 1860. One (ben Pinchas of the PINCHAS/RACHEL family) died in 1932-3. The other, whose father's name is not known, died in 1937. That David-Samuel is the top of the DINA family. There are some definite errors on the Stryj scroll and one might be the inclusion of someone who died in 1937. That is, I think that David-Samuel of the DINA family was the son of Zvi (Hersch), perhaps the same Hersch who was born to David and Gittel in 1835 and whom we know (?) to have been living in Stryj in the 1880s. I have asked David-Samuel's granddaughter Dina to have a look. Eventually we will have the Stryj index of vital statistics and perhaps that will help here. Another small project I have begun putting together (I should finish the others first, no?) is a list of Pikholz Pioneers – those who left Europe before 1939 – including the ship names and dates. There are many we know left but don't know when, so I'm not sure how to list them. The New York Times death notice I mentioned above came from a database that is accessible to members of the New York Gen Society. It seems silly to me to spend fifty dollars a year for membership in this society when most of what they do is connected to old Dutch families and other items of no specific interest. Besides, most of our NYers probably didn't get themselves listed in the Times anyway. I'm still considering what I want to do about this, if anything. (They claim to be very strict about members' doing searches for other people, even members of the same household.) Last, I made a suggestion in Gen #31 that we put pictures of ancestors on the web site to see if people recognize family resemblances in other people's branches. (I had suggested people born before 1900, but I'm flexible.) No one has responded to this suggestion. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --