To: @PIKHOLZ.PML
Subject: Genealogy #31
Reply-to: zach4v6@actcom.co.il
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:15:38 +0200

It has been a busy time here, but I wanted to get a quick update off to
all of you before the holiday.  It thought this would be a brief summary,
but as I prepared a list of subjects, I saw that there has been progress
in more than a dozen directions, so I shall try to touch on each briefly. 
Some of you have already heard in greater detail about developments 
that relate to you personally.

Thanks to all of those who pitched in for the last batch of records.  We
received a few, but most are still in preparation.

The records we received are from Kopicienice and they gave us 
answers regarding several families.  The family of Leo Pickholz (son 
of Lea Pickholz and Berl Pfeffer) has been  tentatively identified.  
Skipping over how we arrived at the conclusion, it seems that Lea 
(whose children were born in Kopicienice and who later lived in 
Vienna) is the daughter of Simon Pikholz, the head of the DORA family 
whom we know from Skalat and Elizabeth NJ.  But Lea is from the first 
wife, Dwojre,  who died in 1861.  What we don't yet have is a grave for 
Leo and any information about his siblings.  We don't even know if 
they went by Pfeffer or Pikholz. I also expect that there is information 
out there regarding others of Simon's children.

Another Kopicienice birth record was that of Eliezer Pikholz (later
Haniel), the first known Pikholz descendant to come here.  We knew 
that he was born in 1880 to Avraham Grunfeld and Rivka Pikholz, and 
that Rivka died when Eliezer was very young.  I had been guessing 
that Rivka's parents were Eliezer and Chane Chaje of Skalat and that 
their first names were the source of the eventual surname Haniel.  
The birth record confirmed that, but gave us a surprise – the mother 
was listed not as Rivka, but as Gittel.  Her 1884 death record is also 
Gittel.  I figured that since his mother died when he was so young, he 
may not have known that she had a double name.  In the course of 
recording the information, I saw that there was a Gittel Riwke born 
1886 to Cirl and Josef, both Pikholz, of Skalat.  Cirl was a first cousin 
of Eliezer's mother and presumably named her daughter after her, but 
for her to name a child after a first cousin in a different town seems to 
me a stretch.  On the other hand, Josef is also Pikholz and it fits that 
he would have been a brother of Eliezer's mother.  That makes perfect 
sense for naming, so we have tentatively put Josef as another child of 
Eliezer and Chane Chaje.

A third Kopicienice record adds a complication to a small family group
that has conflicting records all across the board and one of these 
days, I will put them all in one place to see if we can make any sense 
of them. The surnames in this group include Gottlieb, Riss  and 
Tennenbaum.  

One of the new surnames we came up with in the Rozdol index 
(records on order) is Hubel.  I found a Hubel family from Stryj in 
Jerusalem, Rosh Haayin and Milwaukee, but these are descendants 
of a brother or a cousin of the Hubel who married the Pikholz.  So no 
progress there, but perhaps the connection will help us later.

In Komarno, we uncovered a death record for 2 year old Chaje, 
daughter of Malka Pikholz and Isak Segal.  This couple is part of the 
Brezdowicz family and we had no previous indication that they had 
lived in Komarno. This record is of particular interest, because I had 
been guessing that Malka's father Isak Pikholz was the son of Aron 
and Chaje Pikholz of Rozdol and this is the first Chaje we have as a 
potential descendant.  So that is indirect evidence in support of our 
tentative placement of the Brezdowicz family. (Aron is the son of 
"Original" Pinchas, so this would be the only living descendants we 
have for this branch.)

Speaking of the Brezdowicz family, Tova Ben-Yaakov came over the 
other evening with her husband and two of her three children.  Tova's 
late husband was Sheldon Seigel of the Brezdowicz family and 
although she lives in Efrat, just five minutes from us, we had spoken 
but never met.  Tova had extensive notes from interviewing her late 
father-in-law Max and was able to add some bits of information that I 
didn't know.  Plus it is nice to meet another Pikholz family personally.

Steve in New Jersey has been pushing ahead with his inquiries into 
an elusive Smith-Pickholtz family who lived in Philadelphia.  When last 
seen, son Leonard (b. 1907?) was in an orphanage (1920) and his 
sister Selma / Ida was in New York City (1933-34).  We have an 
orphanage record with a precise (but not necessarily correct!) birth 
date for Selma/Ida in 1903,so I looked at the Social Security Death 
Index for any Selma or Ida born on that precise day, figuring that she 
may have married or changed her name after 1933-4. No Selmas 
came up, but there were thirteen Ida, including two named Smith, one 
of whom lived in NY, so perhaps she took her mother's maiden name 
at some point.  There was another of the Idas in NY as well.  The next 
step will be finding death certificates, not so simple in NY.  (Life would 
be easier for gen researchers if everyone died in Pennsylvania or 
even moreso California.)

People in the JewishGen community keep giving us interesting leads. 
 One ran across a 1912 NY marriage certificate for Rosa Pickholz and 
Samuel Greenberg.  We have determined that this Rosa is a sister of 
Barney Pickholz (BARNEY family) of Skalat and New York, but looking 
for descendants of Sam and Rose Greenberg is no simple matter, 
even if we assume they stayed in NY.

The 1910 census gave us the following unidentified NYers: Isaac age 
23, born Russia; Thomas age 30, born Austria; Lena age 18, born 
Austria; Sillie age 20, born Austria.  Isaac is in Brooklyn, the others in 
Manhattan.   No idea who they are, but I'm open to suggestions.

Another helpful researcher sent me to a list of surnames of Jews 
killed in a 1919 pogrom in the Ukrainian town of Tetiev, which is not 
terribly far east of Skalat.  All we have so far is that there were five 
people (one family unit?) and the owners of the database itself haven't 
decided how to make it available.  But Tetiev now joins Kharkov and 
Poltava as places in Ukraine where Pikholz families lived.  I expect 
these are all Skalaters but that remains to be demonstrated.  People 
from these places would have listed Russia as place of birth, rather 
than Austria or Poland.

One such family is the Rochesters whom I discovered some time ago 
in the California death index.  Reuben Rochester and his wife Nellie 
or Nettie Pickholz had children in Kansas City Missouri shortly after 
arriving in the US in the early 1900's.  They were last seen in the 1920 
census, with these children and an older daughter born in Russia.  
We found that two of those children died in California.  I began 
chasing this again recently and someone suggested I send a letter to 
the editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.  Well, lo and behold, 
the couple has a living great-granddaughter in KC and her husband 
and I have been carrying on a spirited discussion for the last week or 
so.  It seems that the 1920 census didn't include the eldest daughter 
who was probably married by then and who remained in Kansas City 
until her death in 1957.  The rest of the family in fact went to California 
and we are trying to check out all that now.  One of the California 
sisters lists her mother's maiden name as PECKWOOD, an 
interesting variation of Pikholz.  This family has five generations that 
we know of and we have welcomed them to the project, to be known 
as KCMO.

At the same time as our original discovery of the Missouri Rochesters, 
we also found a Kaplan-Pickholz family from Omaha Nebraska.  This 
family too ended up in California and we are now trying to trace them 
as well.

We are in the process of acquiring access to a database of Polish
passports issued for emigration to Palestine before the war.  I don't 
know what we will find there.

I have been trying to learn more about the family of Josef Bierer of
Zurawno and Haifa, who died in 1982 at age seventy-six, with no 
children.  His mother was a Pikholz, born in Rozdol and I expect that 
he is a descendant of the elusive "M."  In an optimistic moment, I 
wrote to a local radio program which asks the listening audience for 
information about missing relatives and earlier this week I actually 
received a reply.   The gentleman I spoke with knew Josef Bierer, but 
could not help re relatives.  He did tell me that Josef had been 
president of the Haifa chess club and that he had worked for a major 
insurance company that has since gone bankrupt.

One of the important tools I have developed for the Pikholz Project is 
the given name analysis, where each given name has its own web 
page and all descendants with that name are listed there.  This has 
proven very valuable, particularly in identifying people who appear in 
different sources but who are in fact people we already "know."  With 
given names that appear thirty to fifty times, it would be impossible to 
keep track without this analysis. I mention this for two reasons.  A few 
weeks ago, I wrote an article on the given name analysis as a 
research tool and submitted it to the American gen magazine 
Avotaynu.  They say they will probably use it but are not sure when.

The other reason I bring this up is that I am considering two other
analyses of this sort, one for me and one for you.  Quite a few of our
sources have street addresses and I for one cannot keep track of 
them, especially in New York.  One of these days, I want to prepare 
page for each of the three major boroughs with any addresses we 
have for the period before say 1945.  The other thing I want to do is to 
ask you for photographs of Pikholz grandparents and great-
grandparents.  There are some of you who ask from time to time 
about family resemblances and I have neither the pictures nor the 
talent necessary to make that judgement.  So if you can send me 
photos or scans of Pikholz descendants born before 1900, I'll 
organize them on-line and ask for your comments on resemblances.

The Galil Genealogy Society has asked me to give a talk about gen 
methods, based on the Pikholz Project work and I plan to do that on 
Sunday evening, 7 April.  It will be in Kiryat Tiv'on.  One of the things I 
want to do on the way there is to meet with the folks at the Diaspora 
Museum regarding the gen research of the late Dr Paul Jacobi.  
Ephraim Pickholz told us several times that Dr Jacobi had done some 
work that touched on Pikholz, but I have as not as yet succeeded in 
getting access to any of that.  (Dr Jacobi's papers were supposed to 
be available over a year ago at the Hebrew University, but there was 
some kind of dispute between his family and the library…)  I tend to 
think that we have much more than Dr Jacobi had about us, but 
perhaps a few gems will turn up there.

The United States census of 1930 will become available in April and 
that may give us help with some unidentified people.  It is not indexed 
yet and it will be in great demand, so I do not have it as a priority item.

That's enough for now.

As in the olden days, the month of Nissan brought us redemption from
slavery, so we hope that this month of Nissan brings us redemption in 
our own troubled times. Wishing you all a happy and kosher Passover.

Israel P.