To: @PIKSKALT.PML Subject: Genealogy #88 Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2017 12:27:31 +0300 Dear Pikholz Cousins, Pikholz events of the past half year include the passing of my brother the day before Hanukkah. Dan had suffered from a spinal condition for over twenty years which affected his breathing and got worse as time went on. After not seeing him for fifteen years, I saw him twice in the past year while in the US and then made a special trip the week before he died. He was in his usual good spirits and on that occasion gave me DNA for the project. We now have the whole set of DNA for the six siblings. My major genealogy event is not Pikholz-related but I want to tell you anyway. My mother's mother went from Russia to the US before WWI as did her younger brother. An older sister stayed behind in Russia and we have a photograph of her with four children in Moscow from the 1920s. No one knew anything about her. I am working on a project involving my grandmother's home town and my partner in this is a Russian-speaking woman who lives near Philadelphia. The Thursday before I spoke in Philadelphia in January, she reported that she had found them. To make a long story short, they had remained in Moscow and were unaffected by the Holocaust, but some have scattered since the fall of the USSR. There were six children, not four. My great-aunt lived to be ninety-three, into my own adulthood.I met one "new" second cousin in Columbus Ohio the week after I learned about them and will be meeting another in Nuremberg in less than three weeks. (That fit with a trip I have been planning - with my cousin Linda - to our other grandmothers' family towns and graves in Slovakia and Hungary.) And my next trip to the US will probably be on Aeroflot with a couple of days in Moscow to see the family there. Finding new second cousins is very exciting. (So far I have DNA from the one in Columbus.) But back to matters Pikholz. My winter trip was built around the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City where I gave a presentation "Jewish DNA: Successes and Lessons from the Journey." I also did programs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Orange County California and Los Angeles. Turnout ranged from thirty-five to at least a hundred. While in Los Angeles, I met a 94 year old half third cousin Erika from the Riss family (from my g-g-gm's first husband). A very lively Vienna-born woman with much to say about her life there, in Chile and eventually in LA. We have her DNA because someone working on another of her families had asked her. I had multiple family members in attendance at the five of the programs. Next up is the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies' Conference in Orlando Florida at the end of July. I am giving four presentations there, three that I have given before and one new one. We are introduced at the conference by whomever we choose and if any of you would like to attend (you can go for the week or by the day), perhaps you could introduce one of my talks. The new one is called "Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?" This program had trial runs during the winter in Baltimore and later in Los Angeles and was well-received. Soon after returning home, I gave the "Lessons" talk in Raanana, in English. Here too, with family members in attendance. The Israel Genealogical Society in Rishon Lezion has been talking about a June program there, but the date and venue are not yet nailed down. That one will be in Hebrew. What with one thing or another, I have been blogging up a storm the last few months with twenty-eight posts in the last six months. You can see them all at www.allmyforeparents.blogspot.com It is all genealogy-related, largely Pikholz-related. The price of the basic DNA test at Family Tree DNA has settled in at $79, but there should be a sale in about two weeks with a small discount. You can order at https://www.familytreedna.com/products . There are still some large swaths of family where no one has tested and I'd be really pleased if we could add some more tests. I have spoken with some of you individually, but any additional test would be welcome. You never know what might show up. We have one outstanding Pikholz test right now and it may be an important one. As I wrote last time, we have two Pikholz women who were born in Nemirow (Podolia) and both had children around the 1890s. All logic tells me that they are sisters. Joyce, the great-granddaughter of Nellie tested at the beginning of our project and Beverly the granddaughter of Sheva tested last summer. There was no match between them. Joyce's first cousin Janet has a test in the lab and I am really hoping to get better results from her. Some kind of significant match with Beverly. I did a bit of reorganizing on the family website and added two new families, which I call Weinstein and Stern, both are five generations and headed by Pikholz women whose parents are unknown. In both cases the children went to the US. I also finally got around to merging the Skalat families based on the DNA work that I have done in the last couple of years. Where we previously had seventeen Skalat Pikholz famiies of four or more generations, we now have only nine. The families called RITA, TONKA and HUSIATYN were all absorbed into the family called LAOR, headed by Nachman Pikholz (~1795). The families DORA, ORENSTEIN and MATI are now a part of the family called ELIEZER, headed by Mordecai Pikholz (~1805). And the families called RISS/BAAR, MIGDEN, PITTSBURGH and ORENSTEIN (from the wife) are all part of ROSA, headed by Isak Josef (~1784). It was a lot of work on the website, which is why I had been putting it off. You can get at all the families via http://www.pikholz.org/General/TreesIndex.html Some additional post-1900 records have been indexed and I am looking forward to the records themselves. Prominent among them are Rozdol births 1907-1915 and Skalat deaths 1908-1915. I blogged about these record groups in February, March and last week. Much new information, both about families we know and about some we don't - mostly married Pikholz daughters, I expect. The Spira connection that I discussed at the beginning of my last summary has been quiet of late, but we may learn more during the summer when project administrators get together at the Orlando Conference. "ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People" is still available directly from me for people in Israeli or at www.endogamy-one-family.com for everyone else. That is quite enough. I hope this finds all of you and your families well. I am always happy to add new family members to this mailing list. (To the new ones, you can read old summaries at http://www.pikholz.org/Mailings/Letters.htm ) I wish all of you a happy Passover. May this month of Nisan bring us renewal and redemption. Israel P. -- End --