Newsletter

Return to Newsletter Menu!

You have selected:

March 26. 2005
Joy is Finding More Cousins!!
by - Hazel Sandow Boon

I was very lucky with my HABER family. My cousin Susan, unknown to me, had spent about 10 years collecting information on our living relatives. When I told her that I’d decided to give Genealogic research a try, she was nothing less than overjoyed because she wanted to be rid of this project. She got started trying to create a family tree as she’d promised said tree to cousin Aliza as a wedding gift. Her plan was to chart our family and be done with it whereas I saw the creation of our tree as a continuing process. She was interested only in taking information from living relatives whereas I wanted to confirm that the information was accurate, especially for those no longer with us who couldn’t speak for themselves.

Susan had done a tremendous job, but as I attempted to transfer her information to my computer program, I realized that some of it couldn’t possibly be correct. Susan had interviewed relatives on the phone, at simchas and anyplace else she might find a cousin. She’d frequently try to remember what they’d said and then enter the information onto her long paper tree. I tried to decipher what she’d written, but sometimes the information looked as if it applied to what turned out to be the wrong family and other times what had been written down was just plain wrong. The major problems were in the first 3 generations and I was determined to straighten them all out with documentation since we also had conflicting memories from some of the family elders, one of whom was Susan’s Mother, Beatrice née HABER.

We knew that our HABER family came from Zurów, but I had no idea where that was. I’d been told Austria, but that gave only a small amount of guidance due to ever changing borders. To find this shtetl, which even then was so small that it didn’t appear on most maps, I had to learn a bit about the history of the Jews in the Austro - Hungarian Empire and how the area had changed hands throughout history. Still, I wasn’t sure which of the many sound alike shtetls was mine. Another confusing factor was a listing in “Where Once We Walked” which seemed to identify what turned out to be the wrong location. I finally asked an expert…Mark Halpern who is the JRI-Poland (Jewish Records Indexing – Poland) Archive coordinator for Galica. Mark asked me a few questions about my family. I told him that my Great-Grandfather, Akiva Hirsch HABER was the caretaker for a Count’s estate. He felt that it was more likely that our Zurów was located at 4919, 2427° and was now Zhurov, Ukraine. I now have a few maps on which I’ve marked Zurów myself, and one map on which Zurów actually appears!!

So my Mother’s parents were Galicianers from what is now Ukraine. Her Mother, née STARK, was from Bóbrka (only 23 miles NNW of Zurów) and her Father from Zurów. My Father’s parents hailed from Lomza and Piotrkow Gubernias in what is now Poland

I had searched the Ellis Island database (www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellis.html) hoping to find the ship on which my Grandfather, who I knew as Hyman HABER, had arrived. I found many Habers, but no one who I could be certain was my Grandfather. My cousin’s grandfather was Hyman’s older brother William, so I searched under W Haber from Zurów using a search tool created by Steven Morse. I eventually found a Wolf Haber, but I knew Susan’s Grandfather as William. I emailed cousin Susan and she confirmed that her Grandfather’s Hebrew or Yiddish name was Wolf…. I celebrated!! I had tried a few searches prior to the successful one but because the volunteer indexers had listed his nationality as Hungarian I hadn’t found Wolf. When I looked at this manifest it clearly said Austro-Hungarian. Lesson learned -- sometimes entering too much information is counter-productive! The manifest also told me that Wolf would be staying with brother Issak, who I knew to be the 1st born son of our Great-Grandfather and his 1st wife Rifka Brull, so I knew that this entry was part of my family

Feeling that I was on a roll, I then searched JRI-Poland online (Jewish Records Indexing-Poland - www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/jriplweb.htm) entering surname-HABER and town-Zurów. Wolf appeared there as well and the parents (our Great-Grandparents) whose names were close enough (Kiwa & Rivka) that I felt this was correct, so I sent for his record.

Even though this record arrived as a chart, I wanted to be certain that I was interpreting correctly, so I had it translated:

Wolf HABER
Polish entries)
Wolf HABER was born on 25 October 1880 in house 84 in Zurów and circumcised on November 1, 1880 by Mohel SCHECTER. He was born allegedly in wedlock, the son of Akiva HABER, a farmer and Rifka, daughter of Golda BELY (daughter of Taube) and Aby BELY from Rzeszow (Poland?). Witness Dov BIRNBAUM from Zurów, midwife Reizel (Reizic?) SCHEIN. Remarks: Akiva HABER claims Rifka is his wedded wife but could not produce a marriage certificate.

So from this certificate I learned the names of my Great-Grandmother Rifka’s parents and where they lived, as well as the name of my Great Great-Grandfather. Also in my research I’ve learned that because of government restrictions/fees, it was common for Jews to have marriage ceremonies performed by their Rabbi, but these ceremonies would not be registered civilly. Therefore the remark at the bottom of the translation.

I was finding out quite a lot about cousin Susan’s Grandfather, but had yet to discover anything about my own. I decided to try a different route so I requested information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the US government. It took awhile, but I eventually received photocopies of documents, some of which were very difficult to read. These included Grandpa Hyman’s Petition for Citizenship and Certificate of Citizenship. From these documents I learned that his name in the old country was Wohamja HABER born January 15, 1884 and that he arrived at Ellis Island on February 14, 1903 on the ship Bulgaria. I was then able to find the arrival and manifest of this arrival of the Bulgaria on the Ellis Island site by finding the ship’s manifest and searching through each page one by one. The manifest told me that his brother paid his passage and that he would be joining Wolf HABER who lived at 49 Clinton St., NYC. Finally I’d gotten some information on my particular line!!

While this was going on I was also trying to locate my 1st cousins.. the family of my Mother’s brother Kermit. This was a brother and sister who really didn’t get along…so much so that Kermit wasn’t informed of my Mother’s death. I remembered that they last lived in Spring Valley, NY, so I emailed an inquiry to the JewishGen email list asking if anyone knew the family. I received a number of replies making suggestions about how I could research their location, some amounting to phoning every HABER in the phone book. One kind soul offered to go to the library and search the newspaper records. She got back to me with his obituary, which was fairly long and detailed. It mentioned that one of Kermit’s sons was a Professor at Stanford University and this allowed me to make contact. Oddly, my daughter had been on the Stanford campus the previous summer. They say timing is everything. Cousin Stephen was thrilled to hear from me!! Subsequently another HABER cousin, a retired Professor at Stanford, contacted me. I already knew that a cousin who I was close to as a child was a retired Professor at U of California, Berkeley, so I was able to bring these 3 HABER cousins together. I’ve since gotten together with Kermit’s older son Mark, who lives in the NYC area. This was one of the most rewarding moments of my research to date.

I still was having trouble with some of the information I’d gotten from Susan. She insisted that there was a Mordechai in the 1st or 2nd generation, and there seemed to be a disagreement as to where another branch headed by Samuel and Bryna HABER belonged. I had one cousin in NYC who I felt might be able to fill in the blanks for me. The thing was, every time I’d been in NY and tried to see her, something intervened on her end. Then last June, my dear Father suddenly passed away. Cousin Betty, the cousin I just referred to, paid a Shiva call at my Dad’s apartment in Fort Lee, NJ. We didn’t discuss the family tree at all, but while she was there a couple that belonged to my Dad’s synagogue and lived in his building visited. To make a long story short we discovered that Eileen’s maiden name was HABER and she was our cousin!! This was a miracle!!! Hers was a branch for which I had sketchy information, so in the months that followed during which I made frequent trips back to New Jersey to settle the estate, I was able to fill in a fair number of blanks. I also finally had a long telephone conversation with Cousin Betty who helped me place Eileen’s HABER line. Cousin Betty felt that there wasn’t a Mordechai in the 1st or 2nd generations and that Samuel, husband of Bryna, was the brother of our Great Grandfather Akiva Hirsch Haber. This made sense to me, but I still hope to find some documentation to “prove my claim”.

Now I felt that I was getting somewhere. I was happy that I was bringing the information we’d gathered to a more accurate state, but I still intended to find additional documents that would confirm everything we’d gathered. Cousin Betty had told me that her Grandmother Katy was named Golde at birth, the 1st child of Akiva with his 2nd wife, Rifka BELY. I went back to JRI-Poland and searched leaving out Zurów. I found what seemed to be Golde’s birth record and ordered it. What a surprise when it arrived and I had it translated to find that the mother indicated was Akiwa’s 1st wife Rifka BRÜLL and not the 2nd wife Rifka BELY as everyone had told me. So far I’ve met resistance to the possibility that Rifka #1 was actually Katy’s Mother and Betty’s Great-Grandmother. For now I’ve left our tree unchanged in this respect until I can prove the alteration further.

There was only one part of this birth record with major information, and getting it translated was difficult since it was in German Gothic Script. I did find a kind soul who was able to assist me.

Here is his translation:

Birth Entry for Golde HABER
(Latin Headings – German Gothic Script)
Record Number – 112
Kiwa HABER appears personally to declare that he is the Father of Golde HABER who was born on 26 November 1876 in Koniuszki (Kininski? -could be name of a farm, estate, hamlet or some other place not having civic numbering) as an illegitimate child. He asks that the child be registered with his surname. The Mother is Rivka BRULL; Abraham Isak BADER is witness.

Es erscheint Kiwa HABER persönlich bekennt sich vor dem Zeugen Abr. Isak BADER zur Vaterschaft und verlangt die Eintragung des Kindes auf seinen Namen Mutter Rifke BRULL

I’m currently awaiting 3 additional documents, always with the hope that they will hold information that will answer questions without creating new ones. I’ve also recently applied for the same documents (under FOIA) that I received for my Grandfather Wohamja, but for all of Kiwa’s children who came to the US. Should I still require information there are other avenues I can explore, especially since more and more information is becoming available both online and elsewhere due to the efforts of the Jewish Genealogical community in finding and transcribing records.

I still consider myself a novice in this type of research. I’ve learned a great deal about Jewish history of the period, Jewish Geography and the culture that formed my ancestors. I’m beginning to understand things about my Grandparents and Parents that never made sense to me before. There’s still lots to learn and many more pieces of this puzzle for me to put together, and this is part of the pull for me towards my research. The joy, which I experienced in finding my 1st cousins and in finding that my cousin Eileen had been right there under our noses and living in my Father’s building for many years and I had finally made contact, was beyond description. My hope is that all of you may have similar experiences as you continue your research.