SCHREINER/LICHT FAMILY
When I
first began researching my family almost 20 years ago, all I had been
told was that they were from "Budapest, Hungary". Well, I have
found them in many places throughout Hungary and Slovakia, but I have
yet to find them in Budapest! Here is the story of how I found
them in Körmend:
I became interested in genealogy after my
father's brother died. His parents had predeceased his brother,
and now my father was an orphan in the truest sense of the word.
At first, my genealogical quest was simply to locate some first cousins
that he had lost track of, in an attempt to restore some of his family
to him. But I was hooked. This soon escalated into an
attempt to find living relatives of my mother, and then into a more
global project to find as many ancestors and descendants on both sides
of the family as I could, and solve the mystery of exactly where the
families were from. The surnames SCHREINER and LICHT are on my
mother's side of my family. I followed pretty much the usual
procedures by talking to my relatives, writing away for any records
that I could find, etc.
Over the course of several years, I uncovered
some tantalizing hints. The 1919 death record for my maternal
great-grandmother, Mary (nee LICHT) STACEL, lists her birthplace as
"Austria" and her parents as Samuel and Minnie LICHT. Mary had a
brother, Emanuel, and I had a little better luck with him. His
death certificate included Minnie's maiden name--SCHRINER.
Naturalization records listed Emanuel's last place of residence as
"Raab", which I soon found out was Györ, Hungary. I hired a
researcher to go through the Györ vital records filmed by the FHL,
with no results. No Emanuel LICHT. Was there an error
somehow? Taking another tack, I managed to find Mary
and her husband Salamon STOSSEL's passenger records on the Hamburg
lists.
They came at separate times, first Salamon and one group of children
from Uzhgorod, now in Ukraine, then Mary and another group of children
from someplace that looked like "Kormonow" on the record.
At this point I hit the proverbial "brick
wall". I couldn't find the family in Györ and
"Kormonow" didn't seem to exist.
So I turned my attention elsewhere
and made progress on other branches of my family. Fast forward
several years, when I became the library director for my
synagogue. We have a set of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and on a
whim, one day with nothing better to do, I looked up the town of
Györ. There was an entry, which noted that until 1840 the
Catholic Church permitted only Catholics to reside in the city and
compelled the Jews to settle on the nearby Györ-Sziget island on
the Danube River. BINGO! When I got home, I looked up
Györ-Sziget in the online Family History Catalog, and found a
different microfilm for those records than the ones my researcher had
looked through years earlier. I ordered it and waited anxiously
for several weeks for it to arrive. It took me several hours to
go through the film, and just when I thought I'd reached another dead
end, on the very last 3 images of the film, I finally found Emanuel,
his wife and the birth records of two of their three children.
The best thing of all was that one record listed Emanuel's birth place
as Körmend! So of course I immediately ordered the FHL films
for Körmend vital records.
I found SCHREINER and LICHT names practically
from the very first page. What a treasure trove! There was
Samuel LICHT (1810-1887) and his wife, Wilhelmina (Vilma) SCHREINER
(1818?-1890) and their eight children. Eight children!! I only
knew about my great grandmother Mary (listed as Maria/Malka in the
records) and her brother Emanuel (listed as Moriz/Moshe). I found
Maria and Salomon STOSZL's marriage record in 1875 that indicated
Salomon was divorced when he married Maria. Who knew? I
also discovered that their eldest daughter, my mom's Aunt Kitty, was
really Gizella with the Hebrew name of Gitl and was the only one of
their children born in Körmend. So much for being from
Budapest!!
All the LICHT names I found pertained to my
family,
but what about all those other SCHREINER names? In addition to
Wilhelmina, there was Rosina SCHREINER (1825?-?) her husband Wilhelm
RITSCHER and their ten children. And Betti SCHREINER (1797-1878),
married to Salamon FURST and their four children. Then there was
Aron SCHREINER (1805?-before 1857) who married Leni HIRSCH and their
six children. Finally, there was Rachel SCHREINER (1820?-?), her
husband Izsak FURST (kin to Salamon FURST?) and their son. I
could follow all these families several generations into the 1890s, but
I couldn't link them together.
As exciting to me as all this was, I was not
content to have the relationships between the SCHREINER families
be an eternal puzzle. As I had done transcriptions for the All
Hungary Database "Other Records" project, I knew there was census
information available for some towns that predated the vital
records. Back to the
Family History Library Catalog. Again, I got lucky. There
are two microfilms with early census records from Vas megye, both of
which I ordered.
I found a Jacob(us) LICHT on the 1822 and 1831
censi. Both times he was listed as having 2 sons and 2
daughters. Since Jacob LICHT was old enough to have four children
in
1822, I estimated his date of birth at around 1785. Samuel was
born in 1810, and had a son named Jakab born in 1845, so I believe it's
highly likely that Jacob(us) was Samuel's father.
I found a Moises SREINER in 1796, and again in
1813 as Moyses SCHREINER with 2 sons and 2 daughters. In 1817,
Moyses SCHRAINER had one son and one daughter. Also in 1817 there
is a Mandl SRAINER with 2 daughters. In 1822, Moyses SCHREINER
lived with 1 son, 1 relative and 1 servant. In 1831 Aron SRAJNER
shows up with 2 daughters. No Moyses or Mandl. Looking back
at the 1793 census, which has mostly first names and patronymics, there
is a Moyses Aaron with a son and 3 daughters, and a Moyses Volff with a
daughter.
So I made the following inferences based on
approximate birthdates:
-
Moyses Aaron in 1793 is probably the Moises SREINER in 1796.
-
Mandl SRAINER in 1817 and Aron SRAJNER in 1831 are probably the sons
of Moises SREINER.
-
Betti SCHREINER who married Salomon FURST is probably the daughter of
Moises SREINER.
-
Wilhelmina SCHREINER (married to Samuel LICHT) and Rachel SCHREINER
(married to Izsak FURST) are probably the daughters of Mandl SCHREINER.
-
Rosina SCHREINER is probably another daughter of Aron SRAJNER, since
the 1831 census lists him as having two daughters. According to
vital records, Aron had a daughter Josephine (Pepi) born around 1831,
then 4 sons and finally another daughter in 1845.
Which
leaves me with this possible family tree:
Aaron (~1740-~1800)
|
Moses (~1770-~1830)
_______________________|_________________________________
|
|
|
|
|
Mandl (~1790) Betti
(1797-1878) Aron
(~1800-?)
dau dau?
_________|________
__________|_________
|
|
|
|
Wilhelmina
Rachel
Rosina
6 other children
Based on this research, I feel comfortable
saying that my direct family lived in Körmend from the late 1700s
until the early 1890s, and that related branches lived in Körmend
until the 1900s and probably up until the Holocaust--about 160
years! And since the fun of genealogical research is that for
every question answered one ends up with several more questions, here
are some new puzzles for me to work on--
-
Who are the other children of Jacob(us) LICHT?
-
What about the unaccounted for daughters of Moses SREINER?
-
Of the 8 children of Samuel LICHT and Wilhelmina SCHREINER, 2 died in
infancy and the other 6 survived to adulthood. Two of the six,
Maria and Emanuel, moved to the United States with their families in
the 1890s. One son is found in Körmend muster records, but I
couldn't find a marriage or death record for him. What became of
him? The other three children married and had children of their
own that I was able to trace into the 1890s. How can I find their
descendants? Did they all die in the Holocaust? Did anyone
survive?
-
Same for the descendants of the other SCHREINER branches. I hope
to track them down someday as well.
-
Where were Moyses SCHREINER and Jacobus LICHT born? In
Körmend? Since both surnames are Germanic in origin, could
they have migrated from nearby Burgenland, now in Austria, but which
was a part of Vas megye at one time?
I'm sure trying to solve all these
puzzles will keep me happily occupied for many years to come.
I hope you've enjoyed my story, and that your
own research is equally as rewarding!
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© Copyright 2008 Judy
Petersen