From: IsraelP <IsraelP@pikholz.org>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 01:10:51 +0300

Dear Cousins,

I see that it has been a full year since I sent out one of these summaries, so 
I shall skip the births, marriages and deaths (not enough of the first two 
being reported, folks) and get on with it.

Two families have had births which brought them into a new generation.  
The TONKA family of Skalat now has six generations and the IF4 family of 
Rozdol now has eight.

Another development in the IF4 family is that the Schaffer family of Lwow 
(first mentioned here in summary 65 and later in 68) has been identified.  
Turns out that Yetta Pickholz who married Josef Schaffer of Lwow is in fact 
Jenta (b. 1883) the youngest daughter of Scheindel Pesche Pikholz and 
Salomon Striks of the IF4 family.  Yetta and four of her five children were 
killed in the Holocaust. The one daughter went to the US earlier, lived in 
Philadelphia, where she had two sons, one of whom was the person who 
had made the contact with me.

A friend of the Pikholz Project in Sweden has been reviewing some of the 
microfilms from Lwow that became available a few years ago and has been 
passing on bits of information that show up there.  Some refer to people we 
know and other are people we do not know.  Unfortunately, most of these 
records have very little information.  One worth noting is the 1889 
Podwoloczysk birth of Isaak Halpern, son of Joel Halpern and Chanzie 
Pikholz, a couple we have seen before. Some discussion of this family 
appears at http://www.pikholz.org/Places/Husiatyn.html

There are some batches of early 1900s records now available at the 
archives in Warsaw, but we cannot order them since they are not indexed.  
However, a client of mine wanted to search the ones from Boryslaw and 
Drohobycz, so I worked it out with a researcher in Warsaw that he would 
look for ours as well and while I was at it, I arranged for searches in Rozdol 
and Skalat as well.  The results of those searches just arrived and we have 
the following Pikholz extracts: Boryslaw 3 births, Drohobycz 4 births, Rozdol 
30! births and Skalat 13 births and 13 deaths.  Most of these seem to be 
familiar families and when I have a chance I'll analyze them properly, 
probably ordering the most important ones.

One of those Skalat deaths is eighty-one year old Perl Pikholz, widow of 
Peretz.  That's the couple that sits atop the IRENE family

I have done a DNA test to examine my direct paternal (Y chromosome) and 
direct maternal (mitochondrial) lines.  When I see what turns up and learn to 
discuss this more intelligently, I'll share with you.  In fact, I may try to 
encourage certain of you to do these tests as well.

JewishGen has a project they call Family Tree of the Jewish people, which I 
have been a small part of since it began, though I have not updated any 
data there in more than ten years.  It allows researchers to lay a net to 
"catch" others researching the same names and I found a new Pikholz there 
as recently as this morning.  People can upload entire databases and FTJP 
eliminates information on living people (dates and places) except the names 
and relationships.  Earlier this week, one of the Pikholz descendants asked 
to be removed from this database.  The problem is it cannot be edited 
without deleting the whole submission and resubmitting after much work.  
Way more work than I have time for.  So our information has been deleted 
and that's that.

I plan to be in the US for four weeks beginning 11 August, for three 
occasions.  The Conference of the International Association of Jewish 
Genealogical Societies will be held in Washington DC 14-19 August. I'll be 
speaking there on the first day.  I also plan to attend the bar mitzvah of my 
second grandson in suburban Chicago and the wedding of my second son 
in NY.  Good times.

Wishing you all a happy, kosher and meaningful Passover.

Israel P.

-- End --