Genealogists are an extremely generous lot. They love helping newbies like me find their families, and for that I am extremely grateful and extend a very public "thanks".
I joined the Australia Jewish Genealogy Society and, last week, went along to one of their monthly workshops. Now it may have been an advantage that I happen to be related to one of the movers and shakers at AJGS – Reike Nash – a profligate genealogist who has chronicled one branch of my family tree in some depth. She and her husband, Peter, have welcomed me into the AJGS fold and shown me round the reference library.
Reike’s maiden name is Isenberg. My mother’s maiden name is Eizenberg. By a not so strange coincidence they are both descended from the same ancestors - Avraham and Yetta Devora Isenberg (or Ajzenberg as it may have been spelt in the old country, Poland!)
Avraham and Yetta had five children. I am descended from their oldest child, a son, Harris Zvi Yssac Eisenberg, born on April 8, 1853 in Wyszkow, Poland. Reike and her family are descended from their youngest, Morris (Mosche) Isenberg, born 1871. As well as these two sons Avraham and Yetta Devorah had another, Israel (born abt 1864) and two daughters - Feyge (born abt 1858) and Shyfra (born abt 1860). Reike has traced the family back even further and I hope to continue this search when I travel overseas next year.
So what happened to Harris? Harris traveled from Poland to London around 1876 where he met and married Esther Greenbaum, a native of Plotzk (now Plock) Poland, on Valentines Day, 1877.
Harris had already been married once before, prior to coming to London, however the identity and fate of his first wife are unknown. Not very long after his wedding Harris boarded the Rydelmere in Plymouth and set sail for Australia. Although his name does not appear on the manifest he claims this is the ship he traveled on in his application for a copy of his naturalization papers. He arrived, according to his testimony, on the 18th of August 1877.
Esther stayed in the UK where she gave birth to a son, David on Boxing Day 1877, in Mile End Town, Middlesex. Esther and David followed Harris to Australia in 1979 aboard the Peterborough. David was barely a year old.
In 1880 they had a second child, Hannah (Annie) in Sydney. These are the only two living children noted for Harris and Esther but there are two deceased children listed on Esther’s death certificate. I have found no records so far to indicate where these children may have been born.Harris was employed as a Hebrew teacher and a “collector for the Hebrew Benevolent Society”. This occupation is also listed in his request to obtain a copy of his naturalization certificate. In his letter to the Secretary of the Home and Territories Department Harris claims that “the only reason I can account for losing my paper is that my wife can neither read nor write and must have destroyed it in the washing of my coat”. He goes on to add, “I have lost many important papers the same way”… We can only imagine the conversations that went with those incidents!!
Annie married Barnett Lampert in 1900 and David married Ettie Diamond in 1902. That same year Annie’s husband died before the birth of her second child whom she named Barnett Jr. David and Ettie had three children; the youngest of which was my grandfather Leo.
Esther died January 1920 in Sydney. Harris followed her a year later, in March 1921.
Harris and Esther are two ancestors I have to thank for being an Australian. They took the risk to come here and start a new life. What they left back on Poland are some of the stories I hope to discover as I follow their faded footprints back to Plock and Wyszkow.
Genealogy is a bit like hunting for treasure with a map full of holes. You have a little bit of information, and you know there are some more gems out there somewhere, but finding them requires determination, lateral thinking and a little luck. On the other hand, sometimes all it takes is a trip to the cemetery.
This week I went on a field trip to Rookwood to visit the rellies. While there I solved a mystery that had been bugging me since I first joined my family’s collaborative genealogy project… what on earth happened to my great grandmother’s father, Myer Rothbaum?
Myer Rothbaum and his brother, Gershon (AKA George), were born in Cracow, Galicia, Austria (modern day Poland) around 1856 & 1863 respectively. Myer traveled to London where he married Leah Cypres in 1880. They are listed in the 1881 UK census as living at 43 Bedford Street, Mile End Old Town. George also traveled to London and married Leah’s sister, Theresa, in 1885.
Myer and Leah had three children in London – Minnie, Gerald (also known as George) and Henry. They migrated to Australia some time between 1886 and 1888 and Jane Sarah (my Nan - AKA Sadie) was born in Sydney in 1890. George and Theresa also came to Australia about this time so we can only assume the two families traveled together – although I am yet to find documentation to confirm this.
I still have a huge amount of work to piece together the family’s movements however I have some wonderful letters written by Nan’s suitor – Mr Arthur Davis (grandson of Solomon Schlossman, the subject of my last post) – during their courtship, which I hope will give me some clues. These letters will be the subject of another post when I finally decipher Arthur’s handwriting.
Myer’s entry in our family tree program did not have any details of his death and I was unable to find any record in the NSW BDM register, but it suddenly dawned on me one day that although I knew my Nan’s name had been Jane Sarah Rothbaum, I also knew that she was known as Sadie Myers. In looking closer at the family tree I realized that several of Myer’s children had the surname Myers as well. I came to the screamingly obvious conclusion that the family had changed their name… the question still stood though: what had Myer Rothbaum changed his name to?
And so we come to the cemetery. As I was planning my field trip I looked up the plot details for each person on the Jewish Cemetery Trust website. The good people at the JCT have documented each and every gravesite and so when you click the link to view the precise location of your ancestors’ grave, the surrounding graves have the surnames of their occupants on the map too.
In the case of Myer Rothbaum it was in finding his wife, Leah, that I found him! Leah, it seems, did not change her name and so was buried a Rothbaum. On the map, in the plot next to her, was a Myers. Was this a coincidence?
I rang the JCT and they told me that the person buried next to Leah was Lewis Myers. I looked him up on their system. I check the NSW BDM and there was a death certificate in his name. So now all I needed to do was go and check it out with my own eyes.
Sunday was fine and mild: a typical Sydney winter’s day. I wandered through the old Jewish sections of Rookwood finding each person, photographing their final resting places and pausing for a few moments to pay my respects. I got to section five and found Leah’s grave. It was a double plot with a single headstone. Underneath the inscription marking her passing were the words: Also Lewis Myers who passed away 23rd April 1937 Aged 81 years G.R.H.S.
So there it was; the undeniable evidence. Myer Rothbaum had become Lewis Myers. But that wasn’t the end of the story. I wondered if he had made the change official so the following day I went to the Department of Lands – housed in that wonderful old building next to Hyde Park Barracks. Up to 1992 it was this department that was responsible for the administration of name changes by deed poll.
According to the clerk only about 20% of people who changed their names actually registered the change so I had a pretty slim chance of finding anything. He seemed excited nonetheless that I was trying and led me to a large room packed with tall metal shelving full of big blue ledgers. We went to the back of the room. He pulled out a single volume and handed it to me. I opened it and turned to the R’s. I scanned the list of names, written in a nice neat cursive, and there it was. About halfway down the page, a single line: Rothbaum, Lewis Myer to Lewis Myer - 1033. He had made it official! We noted the reference number, went back upstairs and I paid the money to get an official copy.
So, there you have it. Myer Rothbaum’s full name was actually Lewis Myer Rothbaum, and he simply dropped his surname to create his, and his family’s new name. Exactly WHY he did it is a matter of some conjecture. If you have any notions please post a comment.
Cheers!
OK… I’m now going to break my own rule… well, more a guideline really. I was going to work back more or less chronologically but this week I found loads of information relating to my third great grandfather, Solomon Schlossman, so I’d like to tell you what I can of his story.
Solomon’s main claim to fame is the fact that he and his son-in-law, John David Davis (my maternal grandmother’s grandfather) discovered a very sizable gold nugget on the German Fields in Rheola, near Bendigo, in Victoria. This hand coloured photograph records that discovery (pictured – Solomon is seated)… but more about that later.
Solomon Schlossman was was born in Yaraslov around 1822 to Aaron and Pearl Schlossman. Yaraslov was established in the 11th Century by the Ukrainian prince Yaroslav the Wise. It was under Austrian rule, in the province of Galicia, from the First Partition of Poland in 1772 until Poland regained independence in 1918. Today the town is called Jaroslaw and is located in modern day Poland.
In 1880 Yaraslov had a Jewish population of around 4500 and was one of the principle seats of the Council of the Four Lands, a major Jewish communal organization. I need to do further research into what life was like in 19th century Jaraslaw (and it will definitely be on my itinerary) but what prompted Solomon to leave is a mystery, as is how he made his way to the United Kingdom.
Around 1843 he married Esther Harriette Gerson in London (or possibly in Hull... I have yet to verify this with documentation). Hull was a major point of entry for Europeans during the 19th century. Over 2 million people passed through the Emigration Platform at Paragon Station, Kingston Upon Hull.
Solomon and his family first turn up in official British records in 1861, in the Census of that year. They are listed under the surname SLOSHMAN and recorded as living on Totty Street Bethnal Green… (Does this street still exist? I can’t find it in Google maps.)
In the census Solomon and Esther are 39 years old. They have two children – Caroline, 15, and Polly (whose name is actually Pauline) who is 7. Also listed as being in the house that evening is Rachel Moses (Solomon’s sister), 33, and Frederick Moses (related to Rachel?) and Philip Faulkenstine, both 28, listed as Visitors.
Some time between 1861 and 1867 the family migrate to Australia. Many of the ship manifests for this time do not list specific passenger names in steerage, just how there are, so it's difficult to find out exactly when they may have arrived and on which ship… I will, however, keep looking.
In 1867 Solomon’s daughter, Caroline, marries John David Davis in Melbourne. Curiously their marriage certificate gives her maiden name as APSTEIN. This is also the maiden name used on the birth certificate of their first child, Catherine. I’ve come to the conclusion this is their certificate by cross referencing all the birth certificates of John and Caroline’s subsequent children (they had nine altogether; my great grandfather, Isaac Arthur Davis, was their eight child, and youngest son. Caroline lists her maiden name as SOLOMON on the BC of her second child – Israel (AKA Isadore) but on all the other children’s BCs it’s listed as Schlossman. Why this is so is just one more mystery to be solved.
So, back to Solomon… He and Caroline’s family found their way from Melbourne into country Victoria. In 1870 John and Solomon were hawking wares through the Victorian goldfields. Presumably Harriette, Caroline and the two children accompanied them. The men decided to try their hand at mining.
“On 31st May 1870 on the Berlin-Rheola diggings, S. Schlossmann, J. Davis and another miner named Rendisch dug up the eighth-largest gold nugget ever found in Victoria; it was named the Viscount Canterbury and weighed 1114 troy ounces (34.6 kg).”
(www.teachers.ash.org.au/dnutting/germanaustralia/e/diggers.htm)
According to www.geocities.com/mrgoldnugget/ the Viscount Canterbury was, in fact, the 10th largest Gold nugget found in the world. It is listed in a 1913 geological survey as the 9th largest found on the Victorian fields. The gold was assayed as being worth 4482 pounds!! Big money in 1870!!
So what happened next? My grandmother used to take me into the Australian Museum in College Street and show me a replica of the nugget in their rock room. She used to tell me that the family bought a slice of Collins Street in Melbourne… then sold it, went back to the fields and found nothing. Somehow I don’t think the Collin’s street part of the story is true, however from what I’ve found the family didn’t exactly live in the lap of luxury after their big windfall.
By 1877 John and Caroline moved to Echuca in Northern Victoria. I’ll expand on their story in a later post. For now, let’s follow Solomon.
He may have gone to Echuca with Caroline’s family but there is no record of him having been there. The next time he pops up officially is in 1879; listed as the publican of the Royal Hotel in Balranald, Western NSW. This is the first record of his career as a publican.
He’s listed in the Sands Directory of 1884 as residing at The Harp of Erin in Bellevue Street (not sure which suburb though). Then in 1886 he’s the registered publican of the Union Inn in Newtown. It’s at this time that John and Caroline join him in NSW.
In 1889 Solomon changes career again and becomes a Hebrew (ie kosher) butcher - in partnership once again with his son-in-law John - working and residing at 69 Liverpool Street in Sydney.
Solomon’s wife, Harriette Esther, dies in 1892, and the following year he marries 53-year-old Rachael Schaya in Melbourne. John dies suddenly in 1893 (although i am yet to find the documentary evidence of this event) and Solomon closes the business. In 1894 he and rachael travel to WA aboard the Bullara, and settle in the mining town of Coolgardie, near Kalgoorlie. Solomon’s younger daughter, Pauline, is there with her second husband, Edwin Sharpe, and Solomon and Edwin run the Vienna Café on Bayley Street (the Great Eastern Highway) until Solomon’s death on April 3rd 1894. Rachael passes away September 1896. Both Solomon and Rachael are buried in Coolgardie.
I still have so many questions about Solomon... Why did he move around so much? What prompted him to leave Yaraslov in the first place? What was life like for him there? Which boat did he come to Australia on, and when? This story is certainly not complete. Guess I just have to keep following each clue to find out what happened and why! I'll keep you posted!!
Cheers!
Every genealogy site I've read says to start in the present and work your way back one generation at a time, so that's what I'm going to do with this blog... start with my family and wander back through time.
Every now and then I might post a short "Eureka" post if I find something particularly interesting.As I said in my previous post my father passed away on Boxing Day last year. His story is like that of countless other immigrants to this country. He came, he worked hard, he provided a good life for his family.My father, Andre, arrived in Australia in 1949 after the creation of Israel triggered an exodus of Jews from Arab lands. He came to Australia with no English and very nearly embarked on a life of crime as the leader of a gang in Marrickville, where they settled when they first arrived. His mother chose to put him in a local Christian Brother's school and he soon shaped up.The family moved to Bondi and dad went to Waverly college. He became a doctor - a GP and had a private practice in Bondi Junction for nearly 30 years. He also consulted at St Vincents Hospital and, during his residency at South Sydney Hospital, was team doctor for South Sydney Football Club in their premiership winning seasons in the mid 1960s.Dad was always tinkering, he was a fixer - both people and things - and in the 1980s he invented a grip strength monitor called the Dextrometer; sadly this never got beyond prototype stage. although he did gain his Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering with his thesis on grip strength and grip rate.He passed away after many years of illness, having suffered diabetes, heart disease, DISH and dementia. He will be missed.My mother came from what would be considered today a "battler" household. The family of five - mum has two brothers - moved to a two bedroom flat in Maroubra after my grandfather went bankrupt and lost their lovely little house in Melody Street, Coogee. Mum did well at Sydney Girls High and became a radiographer. She met my father over a dying patient at Prince Henry Hospital in 1962. They married in 1963.I came along in 1967. After completing Sydney Girls High (like my mother and grandmother) I went to art school to study fashion design. I took a bit of a left turn and ended up working in theater, film and TV wardrobe for about 10 years, before moving into art department, production management and finally producing. In 1996 I did a Grad Cert in TV production and multi-media, going on to produce video for online delivery before broadband had taken hold in Australia.In the early naughties the stress finally got to me and I fell down for a year or two with severe depression. Today I work as a professional autocue operator (a highly underrated skill I might add) and am working on the family history that is the subject of this blog. I am also developing some children's stories and whatever else catches my fancy.OK, enough about me... on to my siblings.Two years after I was born my brother, Benjamin, came into the world. Sadly, he was taken from it in 1979, dying in a car accident outside Bourke in Northern NSW. He was a fun loveing, happy-go-lucky child... wise beyond his years.My brother's death triggered a change of direction for my mother. She began studying again and, after gaining her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (with Honors) she has become a sought after psychotherapist. In 1973 my brother Joel was born. Joel wanted to be a pilot when he grew up and by george he did it. Today Joel is, quite literally, the Red Baron, taking happy customers on scenic and aerobatic joy flights over Sydney in the open cockpit, Pitts Special bi-planes and the Red Bull Stunt Plane, and Extra 200 high performance aircraft and training new pilots to fly safely (www.redbaron.com.au).In 1975, Eliane (known to everyone as Eli) arrived. Being the youngest she had to make herself heard and so she's developed a strong and unique voice. Eli gained a degree in fine arts with a focus on jewelery design and went on to gain her gemology and valuers qualifications. She went traveling in the late 90s and came back with George Njoroge, a nice young man from Kenya. They married in 2001. So far Eli is the only one of us to procreate, with Isaac Wilson born in 2006 and a new addition due in October.So that's us, your typical Australian, Jewish, middle class menagerie.In my next post I'm going to talk about my grandparentsSee you then!
"Where are you from?" Most Australian's get asked this question; particularly if, like me, you have dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion. Most people just assume you must be from somewhere else especially since, according to the 2006 census, over 20% of the Australian population were born overseas. If, like me, you were born here there's still a pretty high likelihood your parents or their parents or grandparents were not.
Growing up I was never particularly interested in my family history. My grandparents used to tell me some great stories but I never really paid attention to the details. So that's what this project is all about... the details. I've started following those faded footprints and have rediscovered those stories, and found some remarkable new ones.
Let's start with my immediate family. My father - Dr Andre Haski - died on Boxing Day 2008. He was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1937. His family were affluent, with servants and a comfortable life, but then, with the creation of the State of Israel, life for Egypt's Jewish minority became untenable. He migrated to Australia in 1949 with his parents and his older sister. His mother was of Polish stock. His father's family had been in Egypt for a generation - his grandfather possibly coming from Ottoman Turkey. Check out the photo of my father's grandfather standing to attention in his full Ottoman Army uniform complete with Fez, sword and mustache. Who was he? What was his life like? Is it true he had to leave Turkey because he was found in bed with his commanding officer's wife (that's the story anyway!!)?
My mother's family (Eizenberg/ Davis) have been in Australia since the 19th Century. They were shop keepers and publicans, lawyers and fishmongers, some even discovered gold! What was it like for a Jewish family on the goldfields? What inspired them to leave their homes and come to Australia?
This blog is about answering these questions, sharing my serendipitous discoveries and tapping into the collective wisdom of the Internet to help fill in the gaps. If you read this, find it interesting and think you can help me out please post a comment.
My intention is to follow each family line as far back as I can and see where the trail leads. In 2010 I will travel to the towns, cities and shtetls my forebears traveled from to try and gain some insight into their lives to figure out just exactly "where I come from"
