To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy #34 Reply-to: Israel@pikholz.org Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 13:06:47 +0200 Dear Pikholz Family members, Mazal tov to Rivki and Rabbi Yerachmiel Pickholtz of Buffalo Grove Illinois on the birth of their fourth son, Binyomin. To wish mazal tov to the grandfather, just press "reply." Miriam (Manya Pikholz) Reiner of Skalat and Netanya died three weeks ago in her eighty-ninth year. (see TONKA family) Manya died on the seventh of Elul, the same as her brother David twenty-two years ago. Neither of them had any children and the closest relatives at the funeral were the children and grandchildren of one of her first cousins. Speaking of the seventh of Elul, we have had it recorded that the yahrzeit of Rav Juda Gerson Pikholz is 8 Elul 5674 (1914). That information is based on the book Meorei Galicia, which I have mentioned before. I checked his sources and it turns out that this date refers to Rav Juda Gerson's mother's brother of the same name and Meorei Galicia had gotten it wrong. So all we know about the death of Rav Juda Gerson is that it was sometime in the period 1905-1919. I have finally made contact with a granddaughter of Harry and Minnie (Pickholz) Kaplan, who had children in Omaha Nebraska in the 1890's, before moving to California. Minnie was from Skalat but we have no idea who her family is. The granddaughter hasn't a clue either. I have someone taking pictures of the graves of Minnie and her family and perhaps we will learn something their. (We already have a death certificate and it doesn't help much.) Since writing the draft of this letter, we have acquired the marriage certificate for Minnie and Harry and my guess is that Minnie belongs to the MATI family. See http://www.pikholz.org/Volunteer/Puzzles/PuzzleIndex.html and choose "MINNIE KAPLAN." We are getting closer to the Philadelphia-New Jersey Smith family. Closer but still not there. I found a sister-in-law of the son of Sammie Smith. She says that her sister and brother-in-law are not well, but agreed to forward a letter from me to their children. I still believe that Sammie Smith's father Joseph Pikholz was a brother of Dora Marenus, Beatrice Rosenbaum and Max Pickholtz of the DORA family. I mentioned a poster with names of Rozdolers in my last update. I have seen but not analyzed a scan of the poster and it is a list of death from their Rozdol burial society. NY Rozdolers, that is. We should have it in hand soon. The Ellis Island data base has just become much more difficult to use. It has a wealth of information for immigration via Ellis Island during the period 1892-1924, but it is very difficult to use. So a gentleman named Stephen Morse created a website which searches the Ellis Island site and even locates passenger lists which the Ellis Island site itself cannot find. Now the folks at Ellis Island have forced him to close that site because it links into their site and not to their home page. While it lasted, it was great. Without that shortcut, there was for instance no way I would have found the passenger list with Minnie Pikholz going from Skalat to Nebraska. We did make a passenger list discovery in Canada. (Well, "we" didn't…) A gen researcher was going through the unindexed Canadian passenger lists and happened upon Itte Pikholz and three young children arriving in Quebec City or Montreal from Liverpool in August 1904, on their way to Pittsburgh. This was my great-grandmother and one of the children was my grandfather. We later found a record of their crossing into the US at St Albans Vermont, the standard immigration point from Canada. Yesterday evening I gave a talk about our project to the Negev branch of the Israel Gen Society. The Tel-Aviv group wants me to speak for them as well and we are discussing a date. That is enough for now. Let me wish all of you and your families the best for this new year and may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life. Israel P.