From: "IsraelP" Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 22:12:06 +0300 Subject: Genealogy #79. Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org . Dear Cousins, The New Year was a bit too close to my return from the US, so I missed my usual Rosh Hashanah target date for catching up on our genealogy activities. Then the holidays themselves took over, so now we are the end and it's high time I wrote - while I can still offer new year wishes. Those of you who follow my weekly blog - http://allmyforeparents.blogspot.c om - already know something about my twenty-seven days abroad. The timing was set by the Conference at the beginning and my grandson's bar mitzvah at the end, with two weeks in between which I used to see family. After Boston, I went to south Florida for the first time, to see a cousin of my father's who has been an interested follower of the Pikholz genealogy and a participant in the DNA project. The only time I had met him was when I was fourteen, but he said "You look just like your father" and there we were. While I was in Florida, I met a number of other Pikholz families and visited graves in two cemeteries. The rest of my travels (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indiana and Chicago) were more of a personal nature. The biggest genealogy story involves our DNA project which has demonstrated beyond a doubt that the Pikholz families from Skalat and Rozdol are from a single source. But the odd part of that is that the overlap between the two groups is not consistent with the idea of a split two hundred years ago. As we have received more results, we have some Skalaters fairly closely matched with Rozdol families and vice versa. So either there was some mixing in the intervening generations or - more likely - the "other sides" have some as yet undetermined significant common ancestry. Combined with the randomness of DNA inheritance. We are now at the point where we have autosomal results from nineteen Pikholz descendants, plus two other non-Pikholz who match almost everyone. Three others have submitted tests and we await results, one has results but has not signed the release form so we don't know what they are and a couple of others ordered kits but haven't sent them back yet. We also have a few other non-Pikholz who match many of us and some of them will be joining our project. This sounds like alot of people, but in fact we would like to test as many others as we can, especially in families where we don't have anyone yet. But even in a family where we have say two second cousins, those two share only about three percent of their DNA, so more cousins there could tell us alot. I sent out a summary of interim results and remarks to those who have tested as well as the five people who pitched in for funding. We can use more of both. (The Family Finder test is now down to $99.) So we are still looking for additional family members willing to test (a simple cheek swab) and for contributions to the project. My blog next week will probably discuss some of the numbers. I'll also say a bit about the Y-chromosome (male line) DNA that we have tested. The next step will be more detailed analysis and I am in the proicess of learning some of those techniques. In addition, there is a week-long course I hope to take in Pittsburgh, the week before next years Jewish genealogy Conference in Salt Lake City. We have a few more records of the more traditional type coming available - some fully indexed and others less so. I have decided to pass on the ones that are indexed only with names, for budgetary reasons, but the others are quite interesting. One of them gave me the name of a missing daughter of Eliezer and Chane Chaje Pikholz of Skalat. Her name was Ettel and she would have been born in the late 1850s. She married Zalman Juda Zellermayer, whose name we also didn't know. But we know the names of two sons and I am even in touch with some living descendants. We also have two new records associated with Husiatyn - in both cases marriages of Pikholz women in Podwoloczysk. Their married names give us two new lines to look for - perhaps among the living. (One married Wolf Feldman in 1896 and the other Schashon Duwid Sirki in 1911.) A really odd one came from a 1938 Polish telephone directory. There is an entry in Skalat for "Picholz i Wachs" which appears to be a business partnership. Their phone number is 8. No indication what the business may have been or who the people were. We know of no Wachs in Skalat, but we do have a Pikholz-Wachs connection in Zalosce/Podkamen. I have asked some of the older Skalaters if they have any idea who these folks were. Oh, and one other thing. There has been much activity in the last few years in Collaborative Online Genealogy, where people put their trees online and they get stitched together into a bigger family tree. Some of these allow other people to insert additions and corrections, sort of like wikipedia. There was a presentation in Boston on this subject by two people affiliated with the online company Geni, purporting to explain that this is the inevitable wave of the future. They both have articles in the magazine Avotaynu (the issue coming out right now) rehashing much of what they said in Boston. I have submitted an article for the next Avotaynu taking isue with what they have to say and I hope it will spark a major discussion of the principles of genealogy research for the coming decades. My piece should see the light of day in the Fall isue.My critique of Geni and its ilk is on a number of levels, though I certainly agree that the younger generation needs tools that have not been prevalent until now. (I halso have an article in the current (summer) Avotaynu called "Getting It Wrong" about the dangers of recording incorrect information. My very best wishes to all of you and your families for a healthy, happy, prosperous and meaningful 5774. Israel P. -- End --