From: Israel P Subject: Genealogy 57 Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:22:02 +0200 Dear Pikholz Cousins, I have a few things to report and a few minutes to do so, so let me bring you more or less up to date. The JRI-Poland indexing project, which has allowed us to search and order birth, death and marriage records online, will have to discontinue much of its important and valuable work. The Polish archives system has a new director and he has unilaterally terminated the agreements under which we were working It is not clear if this is a matter of principle with him, or simply a ploy to increase their revenue. (I think it is the former.) Some indexed records are still in the pipeline, but probably not a lot of interest to our particular families. What we have online will remain available and people can still order records, but in that respect we are probably returning to the dark ages of cumbersome and expensive bank transfers. I did get one last order in for records in before the deadline and it includes a Spacierer branch of the IRENE family who showed up in Stanislawow around 1900. I expect those records will arrive shortly, though the new policy in Warsaw may slow down that process, just out of orneriness. There will, however, be a new indexing project for those older records, held in Lwow, but it will take time for that to get organized. Those records include Rozdol, Skalat and a number of other towns of Pikholz interest, though I suspect that our families had not spread much beyond those two towns before the latter half of the 1800's. I asked you a few weeks ago to have a look at the photo at http://www.pikholz.org/Faces/1934/AnniversaryPhoto.htm and the names at http://www.pikholz.org/Faces/1934/AnniversaryID.html to see how many other people we could identify. I expect that the nearly ninety people there are mostly family and other Galicianers, though many may just be new friends from New York. We have identified about a third of them. Particular attention please to the couple in the lower right. (He has a beard and a hat.) Since they are at the front, I'm guessing they are family. Earlier, I asked some of you to have a look at the photo at http://www.pikholz.org/marriage.html to see if you can identify either of the two people. Some replied, but I did not hear from those whom I believe to be most closely connected. I have to follow that up again. The BUCZACZ family we have long suspected is a branch of the ELIEZER family from Skalat, that is Chaim Yaakov, the head of the BUCZACZ family is probably the son of Mordecai and Taube who head the ELIEZER family. This is based on both naming patterns and "he was my father's second cousin" testimony from several ELIEZER descendants. Unfortunately, there are no records at all from Buczacz, so we have had no way to confirm any of this. A few years ago, a man from the Boston area with Buczacz connections went and photographed all of the remaining graves in the Buczacz cemetery - something over a thousand stones. I helped with the translations and recently received an Excel file which summarizes the graves and found that there is only one Chaim Yaakov there - and his father is Mordecai. There is a good possibility that this is our guy, but I cannot prove it, since I don't know for fact that our guy's father is Mordecai. On the Pickford front (DORA family), there is so much going on, I don't know where to begin. I will simply tell you that we have made some additional contacts there and there is slow but satisfying progress. I have not updated the website yet as too much is up in the air. I will tell you that one of the more interesting breakthroughs is a contact I made with a woman who lived next door to Sam (Pickholtz) Pickford and knew the family very well. I found this woman working at a cemetery in Philadelphia when I called to ask about the 1938 burial of Ida Brown, Sam Pickford's sister. This family alone and our search for them could probably make a book-length publication. We recently acquired a photo of the graves of Hersch and Henie Pikholz in Johannesburg and they are now on the website. The Budapest researcher whom I mentioned several times recently is finally going to get started on the small project involving some unidentified Pikholz families there. I have made a few changes on the website, most importantly opened a department called Pikholz Places that will show what we know about places where there seem to be several Pikholz families or individuals who may or may not be connected to one another. That department includes thusfar the Rozdol and Skalat house analysis which I put together a year or two ago, the addresses of some of the Pikholz descendants who lived in Vienna and discussions of Pikholz appearances in Grimaylow and Husiatyn, though there are still some rough edges on some of those. I plan to add pages on the towns Kaczanowka, Kopicienice, Brezdowicz and a few others, as well as Budapest and maybe Philadelphia. When I have time. I have not had much response from you for photographs of family members born before World War I. I'd like to add those to the Faces department, which I will reorganize when the number of photographs warrants it. I mentioned in previous summaries about a company called myheritage.com which specializes in fact recognition technology. Their president will be speaking in Tel-Aviv next Monday and I will probably go to hear him. I'd really like to get a handle on how to use this to advance our work. I'd like it even more if someone else would take the lead on this particular project. I'd also like your help for two minutes with something else. Some years ago, I ran across two New York telephone listings, identified only by initial. I assume these are all people we know, but unless someone id's them, they just suit there as though they are distinct people. So can anyone identify: S. Pickholz, 914 44th Street, Brooklyn or R. Pickholz, 501 Surf Avenue B, Brooklyn? I have submitted two proposals for lectures at the Salt Lake City Conference in July. (I suppose I'll have to learn how to put together a Power Point presentation by them.) Neither is specifically about the Pikholz Project, but both will draw examples from our work. The 2008 conference is in Chicago in late August and 2009 is in London. More as it happens. Israel P.