JGSLA can help you accomplish your Jewish genealogical research
February 2007
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JGSLA DATES AND UPDATESJEWISH GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY of LOS ANGELES February 2007 |
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• Monday, February 19, 2007 • Assisted Research Day at the LDS Family History Center |
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Join fellow JGSLA members and mentor-volunteers at our assisted research day. Our members will assist you in the microfilm room and at computer stations, showing you how to access records on Ancestry, JewishGen, JRI-Poland and the ItalianGen/New York City vital and naturalization records websites. Search the newly-added Ancestry.com databases for the Hamburg emigration lists and Ellis Island records. There will also be demonstrations throughout the day on using the FHC’s new facilities for uploading microfilm images onto your computer’s hard drive or flash drive. The following classes, taught by our knowledgeable members, will be offered in the classroom:
Directions: Important Reminders: |
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JGSLA Board The following individuals were elected to three year terms at the December meeting of the society; Ann Harris, Mel Sofian Pamela Weisberger, and Marion Werle. The officers were elected at the first board meeting of the year. Below are the officers and directors for 2007:
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Help Carry On The Roots-Key Tradition Sandy Malek, President [president@jgsla.org]JGSLA is looking for a creative, organized, inspirational, dedicated, eager, and genealogically driven person to be editor of our award-winning quarterly journal, Roots-Key. Our editor is retiring and we need a creative individual to set the tone for the journal, determine its content, and encourage authors. Once articles are obtained, the editor ensures their professional editing and layout, and that publication is completed on schedule. The editor works closely with a publications committee, copy editors, proof- readers, and others who provide expert assistance under the editor’s direction. If you have an interest in continuing the great tradition and have some ideas about what you would like to see in the journal, please contact Sandy Malek [president@jgsla.org] to discuss your interest and learn more about this opportunity. |
| UK Outbound Passenger Lists Bobby Furst [bobby@jgsla.org]Findmypast, a fee-based service, now has records of people leaving the United Kingdom on long-distance voyages between 1890 and 1899. Records vary, but transcriptions usually provide name, age, occupation, destination, travel and ship details as well as other people of the same name traveling on the ship. While you can find whether a record exists for a particular name without cost, viewing the original document requires a fee. To view these records and original documents you will need to buy pay-perview units from the website. Units are available from £5 ($9.80) for 50 units. It costs 5 units to view each transcription and 30 units to view high resolution color images. [www.ancestorsonboard.com] National Archives Records available on Footnote Footnote, a fee-based service, is now digitizing vast amounts of documents from the National Archives and making them available at [www.footnote.com/nara]. 4.5 million pages of microfilmed documents have been digitized thus far with millions more to be made available each month. The agreement allows for no charge access to this material from the National Archives research rooms in Washington D.C. and regional facilities across the country (the closest one to us is in Laguna Niguel). After an interval of five years, all images digitized through this agreement will be available at no charge through the National Archives website. There is no fee to register with Footnote and once registered, you can search their databases of scanned documents. You can easily find out how many documents they have scanned that fit your criteria, can see a little about the document and view a small version of it. However, for full information on the document and a larger, more readable, view of it, you must have a paid subscription (at a cost of $10/month). A search for Bookbinder / Buchbinder returned 132 documents. A search for Barenberg / Berenberg found 65. These are the surnames of my paternal grandfather and grandmother. Many of the hits seemed worthy of follow-up. Poland maps 1919-1939 The Polish Military Geographical Institute (1919-1939) developed and printed topographic maps of pre-WW2 Poland, which may be used to locate villages which have disappeared and cannot be found on modern maps. These include a wide variety of maps in scales from 1:300,000 down to 1:25,000. The Archivist for Maps of the WIG (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny) is scanning the maps and making them available online at [www.mapywig.org]. Four hundred eleven 1:100,000 maps covering about half of prewar Poland are included (as of mid January) with half of these loaded in the last few weeks. These maps have terrific detail, even showing streets, cemeteries (designated by a cross or a star of David), and even individual buildings. View the site in English or Polish. The English index page for towns in the 1:100,000 series is [www.mapywig.org/viewpage.php?page_id=12] Be aware that these are large files (greater than 10MB) and may take a while to download and view. |
Center for Jewish History Integrated Index Now Online from: Nu? What’s New The Center for Jewish History now has an integrated online index to the holdings of the institutions located at the Center. This includes the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sefardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Considering the diversity of these groups and their extensive holdings, the index provides an excellent source for determining what material is available on a given subject. The search engine allows wild card searches for many languages, including Yiddish and Hebrew. It can search over the entire contents of the catalog entry including author, title, subject and description. It can be accessed at [catalog.cjh.org]. Note that certain collections at the Center are stand alone and have their own indices which are not integrated into the combined index. For example, it does not include YIVO’s photographic collection, which can be found at [yivo1000towns.cjh.org]. This collection includes many photographs of the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Hamburg Departures Ancestry, a fee-based service, has the passenger manifests for Hamburg departures. Only the years 1890-1913 have been indexed so far. However, all of the images for 1850-1934 are available for browsing. LDS Family History Centers provide free access to its patrons to access Ancestry. [www.ancestry.com] Free Access to Historical LA and NY Times The Ventura County Library System (VCLS) offers free Internet access to ProQuest Historical Los Angeles Times (1881-1985), the New York Times (1851-2003) and 350 current newspapers (1980-present) to those with VCLS library cards. California residents can obtain a free library card at any of the 15 libraries comprising the Ventura County Library System. You must present a photographic ID with your California address to obtain the library card. The Oak Park Branch, 899 North Kanan Road, is the closest one to LA County. For more info, see [www.vencolibrary.org]. Alternative Searching of the Family History Catalog Periodically, I check the Family History Catalog, at [www.familysearch.org], to see if the Family History Library has acquired any new items for my ancestral towns. One of these towns is Soroca, Moldova (then Soroki, Besarabia). Recently, I tried this, by typing “Soroca” into the “Place Name” search. To little surprise, I found nothing new and nothing Jewish. But, I then tried typing “Jewish Soroca” into the “Keyword” search. To my surprise it returned, “Посемейные списки : еврейская колония Вертюжаны, 1859 Бессарабия (губерния). Казенная палата”, and when I clicked on the details, it explained this to be “Family lists (tax poll census) for Vertiuzhany (Jewish colony), Soroki, Besarabia, Russia; later Vârtejeni-Colonie, Soroca, Romania; now in Moldova. These lists were created to record information on the representatives of the taxable social classes. Text in Russian.” They contain the names and ages of all family members for about 1,800 individuals. So, use the keyword search, as well as the place name search! |
| New Galician Resource Hal Bookbinder [hal@jgsla.org]During this past year, the Genealogical Society of Utah filmed Jewish metrical books from the L’viv archives. This includes congregations in Galicia, Austria; later in Poland; now in L’viv, Ternopil’ and Ivano-Frankivs’k districts, Ukraine. Most film notes cover inclusive dates and events may be missing for some years. Text in Latin with some German, Polish or Ukrainian. Below is a list of the various record groups in the 33 films that make up this series. The series is available at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and may be a great resource to check on your trip there for this Summer’s Conference. If you cannot wait, consider putting some/all of the films on loan at the LA Regional Family History Center. They are LDS film #’s 2,405,309 to 2,405,328, 2,405,335 to 2,405,344 and 2,405,430 to 2,405,432. Births, marriages, deaths 1820-1864 (Berezhany) Deaths 1852-1876 (Hlyniany) Births 1859 (Kozel′nyky) Births, marriages, deaths (Liubych) |
Births 1896 (L′viv) Index 1852-1939 (L′viv) Certificates 1890, 1902-1912 (L′viv) Births certificates 1844-1850 (L′viv?) Births, deaths 1820-1876 (Mel′nytsia) Death index 1835-1858 (Mykulynisii) Deaths 1877, 1885, 1887-1899 (Mykulynisii) Marriages 1900, Births 1901, Name changes 1905-1922 (Mykulynisii) Deaths 1929 — Marriages 1932-1936 (Mykulynisii) Births, deaths 1827-1885 (Mostys′ka)Births, deaths 1877-1881, 1881-1899, 1899-1907 (Navariia) Births 1850-1865 (Nadvirna) Births, deaths 1839-1898 (Naraïv) Births, marriages, deaths 1900-1936 (Naraïv) Births 1876-1898, 1886-1942 (Ozerna) Birth and deaths indexes 1877-1900 (Pidvolochys′k) Births 1832-1860 (Radekhiv) Births 1829, 1833-1852 (Sambir) Births 1815-1856 (Tartakiv) Births, deaths 1813-1876 (Velyki Mosty) Deaths 1855-1870 (Z’Hovkva; now Nesterov) |