Subject: Interesting Skalat-area discovery Reply-to: Israel@pikholz.org Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 17:24:34 +0200 As you all know, the overall structure of the Skalat Pikholz families is not as neat and clear as is the structure of the Rozdol Pikholz families. In Skalat, we have sixteen defined families and we don't really know how they fit together. In fact we don't actually know IF they fit together. We have, however, created some tentative family groups based on some hints, such as naming pattens. LAOR, RITA and TONKA seem to be connected, based on the names Nachman and Getzel, which appear there and nowhere else. The IRENE and BARNEY families are almost certainly connected. The families ELIEZER and ROSA are connected to MATI, ILAN and BUCZACZ, based on family traditions that we are twenty or thirty years to late to hear first-hand, and my own PITTSBURGH familiy is probably connected to them. ORENSTEIN and DORA are connected to each other and probably to ELIEZER. GRIMAYLOW, STEVE and WELWELE - well, we just don't know. Plus the unconnected individuals and small family groups. I think, however, that we may have a small new development that hints at a connection between the RITA group and the IRENE group. Until now, my only personal connection in the IRENE family has been with Irene Scharf. Earlier this week, I was contacted by Irene's cousin David Scharf, who is about half-a-generation younger than us and lives in New Jersey. In the course of our discussion, he mentioned that his grandfather's grandfather Samson Scharf remarried and had children after his wife Bassie Pikholz died in Zbarazh around 1880. Dave knows the names of some of the children of the second marriage, but not the name of Samson's second wife. None of this was new to me, as Irene had said more or less the same thing when we first "met." But I didn't think it was of interest to us. But when Dave said that he didn't know the second wife's name, I tried looking at JRI-Poland online just for sport and there I found two children born to Samson Szarf and Gittel Kornweitz - a daughter Chaje- Certel (1895) and a son Josef-Leib (1898). Later I found two other children of this couple, born in Skalat. The name Kornweitz appears one other time in our database, as the second wife of Simon Pikholz of Mikulince. Simon is an uncle of Rita and his marriage produced three children so far as we know, including Certel (1897) and Josef-Leib (1895). I am quite certain that these two Kornweitz women were closely related, probably sisters. It was very common then that when a woman died leaving small children, the families made sure that a second wife was found for the husband from within the family - both to raise the children and to protect the inheritance. The second wife might have been a sister or close cousin of the first wife or perhaps a cousin or niece of the husband. So here we have two Kornweitz women, probably sisters, from Skalat, going out of town to be second wives - in one case of a Pikholz widower and in the other of a widower previously married to a Pikholz. In my mind, that says that the three families are closely related - that is, Irene's great-grandmother, Rita's uncle and the Kornweitz women themselves, whom I suspect are also Pikholz descendants. Of course, I cannot prove any of this as yet, but there are many many Kornweitz in Skalat, including one married to a Perlmutter (a LAOR name), so there is much to consider. Since I know the name of the parents of the Kornweitz in Mikulince (Moses and Rivka), Dave will probably order some of the birth records of "his" Kornweitz and we will see if they are indeed sisters. We will take progress wherever we can get it, even in this convoluted sort of way. More as it happens. Israel P.