To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy #29 Reply-to: zach4v6@actcom.co.il Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 19:56:30 +0200 This is going to be a brief one – if we define that by the number of topics. Some time ago, I got involved in a project to index Jewish records from East Galicia in the AGAD archives in Warsaw. The idea is that we get researchers from each town to contribute to the cost of indexing the available records and put the index online. Then people can order the records from Warsaw as they like. My role was town leader (asking for contributions etc) for a number of towns of interest to us. I am pleased to say that of the seven towns I signed up for, we have completed four and nearly two others – and that without putting much of that on Pikholz descendants. (The one problem town is Skole – anyone who wants to help with that should speak with me separately.) We are talking about birth, death and marriage indecies for parts of the 1800's – in some towns many exist and in some just a few years. Furthermore, many records to not include important information (such as father's name in birth records), but by and large they have proven very useful. As of now, the indecies for Skalat and Zalosce are completely online and Zbarazh is online except the deaths.Zurawno is indexed and is being put online now. Rozdol is supposed to be ready in January and Komarno in February. Other towns of interest to some of us include Tarnopol and Podhajce (online now), Kopicienice and Rohatyn in December and further down the line Stryj in June. Next fall they are doing Kolomea, Drohobycz and parts of Lwow. I will keep you informed as things develop, but if any of you have other sides of your families from these same areas, you might want to have a look at I have been somewhat distracted from genealogy the last couple of months, but Steve has picked up some of the slack. He has been chasing down a Philadelphia family which we previously understood to be Sophie Pikholz (spelled in the 1910 census Picultz), daughter of Jacob Smith. In 1910 she was living with Jacob Smith and his wife Sarah, along with his grandchildren Samuel, Selma and Leonard Picultz, ages three to nine. In 1920, we find Selma and Leonard in Philadelphia orphanages with no sign of any of the others. Quite independent of these, we had a 1900 census record of John and Katie Pickhaltz and brother-in-law William Smith, also in Philadelphia. The names John and Katie didn't look like they belonged here at all, and I have been assuming that this a non-Jewish family having nothing to do with us. Steve did some work and came up with the original census record from 1910 and a birth record from 1901 for a son to Joseph and Katie Pickhaltz, living next door to the Smiths. (Joseph make more sense and Samuel would have been born 1901.) Turns out that Sophie is not Picultz, but a servant of the Smith family who lived with them. The Smiths had four grown children, three living and two of those living with them. That brings us to the conclusion that Katie and William were the children of Jacob Smith and that Katie and her husband Joseph (aka John?) died before 1910, leaving the children with her parents. We have no idea when or where they died nor where they are buried, but Steve is checking that out in hopes that a death record will tell us who Joseph's parents were. We have no record of Samuel after 1910 or of Leonard after 1920, but Selma appears in a Manhattan city directory in 1933-4, living at 328 W 27th Street. Perhaps the 1930 census, which becomes available in April, will tell us more. Another curiosity that Steve ran across is the following two brief paragraphs: Gold, David L. "Your Name: Installment No. 169," The National Jewish Post and Opinion, 59 (37), June 2, 1993, 6. Discussion of the meaning of the Jewish surnames: Gruenspecht (green woodpecker), Specht (woodpecker), and Pickholtz/Pickholz from the Yiddish for woodpecker "pikholts". The above was found in the book Sourcebook for Jewish Genealogy and Family Histories, by David S. Zubatsky and Irwin M. Berent. 1996 published by Avatoynu, Inc. With Avotaynu's kind permission, I have added this quote to the main page of the Pikholz Project web site, below the woodpecker. More as it happens. Israel P.