From: Israel P To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy 48 (maybe 48a) Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 18:44:45 +0200 Dear Pikholz descendants, I was hoping to get a summary out before the recent International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, which was held in Jerusalem last week, but I didn't, so this may be a long one. Or I may make it 48a and do 48b later in the week. Mazal tov to David Scharf and wife Jennifer on the birth of Stephen Charles, who is in generation 7 of the IRENE family. Mazal tov to Grampa Raymond Pickholtz and wife Eda on the birth of Mara to daughter Julie Ginsberg. Mara is in generation 6 of the IF1 family. The Conference was wonderful and I won't bore you with details. Suffice it to say that meeting my text-friends face to face and hearing talks by the serious names in Jewish genealogy was great. Following are a few items from the Conference. A woman named Heidi Urich remembers going to the Catskills in the 1950's with a Pickhol(t)z family from NY, but doesn't remember specifics. Anyone recognize this contact? Records from forty towns have just been transferred from the civil records offices to the AGAD archives in Warsaw and will be microfilmed and indexed over the coming months. These are mostly records from the late 1890's until about 1903. These forty towns include Skole, Zbarazh, Komarno, Stryj, Lwow, Boryslaw, Drohobycz, Tarnopol, Mikulince and others of interest, but not Rozdol, Skalat, Zalosce, Podwoloczysk and Zurawno (for instance). Alexander Beider who had previously published books on Jewish surnames in Russia and Poland, spoke aboout his newest book on Jewish surnames from Galicia. In his talk, he mentioned Pikholz as a name which Jews chose for themselves, rather than having been assigned by the Gentiles, because it is Yiddish rather than German. During the Conference we had free access to ancestry.com and I used the opportunity to find a 1891 passenger list which included Skalaters Divora Pikholz and Sara Frankel travelling together. Sara Frankel was my grandfather's first cousin and her descendants live in Denver. I don't know if Divora (Dora Marenus) and Sara travelled together because they were related or just from the same town. This passenger list doesn't say where they were going. The one and only Stephen P. Morse (stevemorse.org) spoke three timnes, one of which was on his One-Step search tools which he has made available for our use. I am considering making a One-Step searchable database for the pikholz.org website, but the database itself is a lot of work and I don't know if people will use it. (In his previous life, Steve developed the 8086.) Stanley Diamond, the head of "Jewish Records Indexing - Poland" (which includes the AGAD project) spoke of his personal use of genealogy as a tool for tracking genetic diseases and of the importance of maintaining a family disease database. I am not sure I want to get into that actively, but I will be happy to serve as a storehouse of medical information for anyone who wishes to submit it. I mean not just causes of death, but non- fatal gen-type diseases and conditions like diabetes, beta-thalosemia (Stanley's interest) and others. All that will be confidential, needless to say. But someday your grandchildren might need to know. We had a lecture about family newsletters and one example included New Years cards which included authentic signatures of ancestors of the sender. I'm tempted to run with that idea, but it's more work than I want to start on just now. Like so much else we learned. That's enough about the Conference. The eight records I spoke of last time have been ordered. The ones which were ordered before that have been received, recorded and the data uploaded. Nothing earthshaking, but some puzzle pieces and items of personal interest to a number of family members. I also received a number of new grave photos, which have been placed on the website. Speaking of graves, there is a wonderful new website where you can lookup Jewish burials in Buenos Aires. Since these are Spanish-style names, the maiden names of women appears as well. I rounded up most of our missing Argentine burials and hope that eventually someone can get some photographs. We also have at least one Pikholz grave (from the RISS family) in Cochabamba Bolivia - in case any of you are in the neighborhood. Shemuel Galinsky, a young man whose wife is in generation 9 of the FISCHEL branch of the RavJG family, published a lovely booklet (all in Hebrew, with no index) on his wife's family history. He used some of our sources and I in turn have used some of his. Some time ago, I spent a lot of time trying to find Sam and Rose Greenberg, who were last seen with five year old son Max in the 1920 NY census. But these are common names, so we didn't get far. (Rose is the sister of Barney Pikholz, of the BARNEY family.) Sam's mother was an Augenblick and when someone in California who is doing that family contacted me about something else, we found this family of common interest. He knew that Max was know as Martin, but we still have not found them. At least we have some hope now. That particular incident led me to decide to record spouses' parents' names in our database - a project I haven't started on yet. But if anyone gives me that type of information, I'll record it. The NY Times carried a brief death notice in February 1990 for a woman named Salome Johannes-Pickholz who died in Vevey Switzerland. That's all the Times had. I contacted Vevey and learned that this woman was born 8 June 1896, but they don't know where. They think her maiden name was Biermann and she had lived previously in Bienne Switzerland. I have contacted the authorities there to see what they can tell me about Salome's Pickholz connection, place of burial, parents' names and descendants. We have taken another stab at the mysterious Pickholz-Smith family of Philadelphia and perhaps we will have more on that by next time. Steve's forays into the hitherto unknown London Pickholz burials and records have produced some interesting but unclear results. Morris P died in 1933 at age 40. We have his grave and his death certificate, but have no sign of his widow Dora or any children he might have had. This Morris may be Moses Ruwen ben Samuel of the southern hemisphere branch of the IF1 family. We also have deaths of Jacob, Annie and young daughter Becky around 1900, as well as a broken grave stone for Annie. Steve is leading the pursuit of these families. We have received some problematic results from the magnate search from the Lwow archives. I'll save that for later, when Jacob and I have made more sense of them and clarified some matters with Lwow. Finally, I put up a new page at http://www.pikholz.org/Volunteer/Project50.html with some small projects looking for sponsors. That, dear cousins, is everything. All at once. More as it happens. Israel P. Israel P. -- End --