Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

The Lyakhovichi researchers led by the indomitable Gary Palgon and Dr. Neville Lamdan, provided this list to Jewish Gen researchers almost a decade ago. When I created the first shtetl webpage two years ago, I made small changes for table clarity but the webmaster's main contribution was html coding and layout. I missed a key point about this list and that misunderstanding affected the way I used the data for my own genealogy research. So clearing up the confusion may help your research as well.

This is not a compiled list created in two different time periods of 1811 and 1816, though Revision Lists were in fact created in both of those years. It is not a list first created in 1811 and then further annotated in 1816, with a person checked off if dead or missing since the last tally. It does note each person's age in the two "census" periods, it does note whether they had died or moved away in that interval, but it does not do it for each person at different dates. Instead, this is the 1816 Revision List (not the 1811/1816 Revision List which I have previously titled it). In 1816 each family entry listed the name of the head of the family, the name of his wife and his children, and the relation of other males in the household to the head of family. It lists for all males their ages in 1816 and the age reported in the last revision list in 1811. It lists for all females their age in 1816. There is a "notes" column which reflects the handwritten annotations found in the 1816 Revision List, most relating to the reason that a householder who was found previously in Lyakhovichi, is not present for this Revision in 1816. So the most common notes are "dead." "missing," or "run away." All information from this document, can be tied to a particular date in August 1816.

Still, even though the appearance of having been compiled in two different years is illusory, its use of a current and previous time frame is useful to the researcher. It notes each person's age at the two census dates, and whether they had died or moved away in the interval. You can see when siblings share a home and when they have separate households, and you can see the names of wives and daughters carefully enumerated down to very small children: all this in a period 35 years before a US census named anyone but the head of household!

There is a great deal more work that can be done with this Revision List which has been a valued resource for almost a decade. In the 4 pages of our site titled Fathers of Lyakhovichi (see right hand column for divisions by the first letter of the first name) we have collected information on those listed in the patronymic column. We can begin a list of those who are listed as "died, skipped, ran away," etc. in the comments column and see which correspond to others found in the 1819 list of those previously missed. We can use the ages of children born between 1811 and 1816 to begin reconstructing a preliminary birth list for Lyakhovichi. We can compare the information found in this record with others both earlier and later.

We can also start asking new questions.
    1) The numbers living in Lyakhovichi in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1784 and the numbers living there in the 1819 Revision List, show clear correlations. There are over two hundred family units reported in 1819 but only seventy-six in 1816. The need for the supplementary Revision List of 1819 was clear but is the 1816 Revision Lists are so much smaller because of the Wars with Napoleon that marched through here? Where did our people go during that time period then? How far was a safe enough margin? What kind of documentation might have been created in their flight and return?
    2) When I thought that this was a combined census, I didn't understand why wives were not reported in 1811, why there were 73 reported in 76 households in 1816, and why the number then dropped to a miniscule 12 wives noted in 217 households in the 1819 Revision. Straightening out the misunderstanding about 1811 cleared up the first part of that. Women were reported in 1816 but the earlier ages of women and their presence in the previous Revision List was not reported. Mystery resolved, and that left the question of why only twelve wives noted in 1819? Where are the others? This update cleared up that mystery too. The supplementary nature of the revision list led to some shortcuts in notation. Neither men nor women were regularly listed with their relation to the head of household in 1819. Men were listed on one half of a folio page, women on the other half, and the fact of the woman's presence across from the man's name was considered sufficient indication of their relation. Though a previous survey showed twelve women listed as wives, this newer look at the materials showed that there were actually ___ not reported. For a look at what we can learn about individual women who were wives, daughters, and sisters in the 1816 and 1819 Revision Lists go to our page Tracing Women in Lyakhovichi Revision Lists and to see what new information can be learned about the Family Groups listed in 1819, go to our 1819 Revision Lists
    3) How was the census conducted? Did an official of the crown go door to door in some kind of order we can reconstruct? Did the Jewish population gather in a single place to be enumerated such as the town hall or the synagogue? Have you seen a diary entry, a report to the governor, a painting of a Russian census taker "in action," et al, that could shed some light?
We have solved this one - Go To our page Imperial Russian Revision Lists for a new way to use the placement in the Revision List for genealogical purposes!

In the last posting of this material we mentioned that the webmaster has done a preliminary examination of individuals on the Revision List on this page to to determine if they had also been included in the 1784 Grand Duchy of Lithuania Census. We will be posting the individual names on the earlier census in an update already scheduled, but we can share some preliminary findings. The Grand Duchy Census does not include any surnames but lists family groups with the head of family's patronymic commonly included for those who were resident in Lyakhovichi proper. (It seems that the town of residence was considered sufficient to identify the head of household in the small towns with just one to three Jewish families living there.) So the search of the webmaster was for people who could be exactly matched between the 1816 Revision Lists to families which were not yet using surnames in the 1780s. The search methodology was very straight-forward. The 1784 Grand Duchy of Lithuania Census and the 1816 Revision Lists were studied side by side. If a male who was an adult past the age of fifty in the 1811 Census, matched the first name and patronymic, of only one person who was also a head of family in the 1784 census, then it was considered a match. If there was more than one person to whom he could be paired, it was not considered a match, as no conclusions could be drawn. If a male who, according to his reported age in 1811, would have been under twenty in 1784 was exactly matched by first name and patronymic to a dependent listed in 1784, then that was considered a match. There are 76 households listed in the 1816 lists. There are 137 households within the town of Lyakhovichi and an additional 114 families in small towns around Lyakhovichi, in the 1784 GDL census. Of the 42 Men who were aged 40 or older in 1811, and so easiest to use this process with, 27 had matches to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania census. An additional ten had matches to the 1805 Taverners list, which had given reasons why many of those would not have appeared in the 1784 list. So at least fifty percent of the older adult men in 1816, had much older ties to Lyakhovichi. Meaning that if your family who was living in Lyakhovichi at the end of the nineteenth century can be tied to a Lyakhovichi family of the early part of the century, you can most likely keep moving well into the seventeen hundreds.

When we publish the material from the 1784 Census directly, your feedback about your own families in that document and in the Revision Lists, will be able to deepen our knowledge considerably as more data will allow us to make better judgements about the material already in hand. The 1816 Revision List, for instance, shows Leib Gavza's household, number 28. We know him as a witness to the 1819 Revision List in which he signs his name and his father's name and title of Rabbi, in Hebrew and Polish. Simply viewing the data in the 1816 Revision List doesn't tell us why he is enumerated in the order he is, or his relationship to his neighbors. But the 1784 Census shows that his eldest daughter was Vishnya and that all of his children and all of his siblings' children, each named a child Azriel. In 1816 we find his household enumerated sequentially with a family that has taken Vishnya as its surname with a grown son named Azriel. If Leib Gavza is enumerated next door to a son-in-law and grandchildren, that is an important fact for studying this document. What other neighbors are family groups of adult children? The 1784, and eventually the 1764, Grand Duchy of Lithuania Censuses will be incredibly helpful in that determination. Then we can investigate other questions about the order of our lists. Why were they ordered in the manner they were? Why was young Leiba Busel, aged 24 though married with wife and child, the very first householder listed in 1816? And why then is he the first head of family listed in 1834 and though dead, still reported in the first household in 1850? The twenty people who make up households #74, #75, and #76, were all recorded as present in 1816 with the notation that they had been missed by the enumerator in 1811. What can make a census taker miss twenty people in three sequential families? Was it a geography issue - did they all live in a single building or was there a street missed by the enumerator? If there was a book whose order was being used, what might make a page get overlooked? Had they convinced the enumerator that they had been present when they weren't, not "missed" but absent? Had they fled to avoid Napoleon's armies or did these households include those who had supported Polish independence in 1812 and thought discretion the better course in 1816? If your researches about your family have included details about people on this list, please share them with the webmaster. What you know, can help us learn more about the documents that are our source material!

In November 2007 an interesting set of discoveries were made. The names of men described as "runaway" or "missing" in the 1816 Revision List, are not surprisingly often found in the 1819 Revision List of men "missed" in the earlier lists. But very unexpectedly, a huge percentage of those recorded as "dead," "died in 1813" or other such report that one would expect to be final, have a name and patronymic and age grouping that exactly corresponds to a single person in the 1819 Revision List. Each of the correspondents in the 1819 Revision List have not previously appeared in 1816, or under its notations for 1811, by the surname with which they are reported in 1819. A list of the individuals in both Revision Lists has now been posted on the page for the 1819 Revision List. You can see an untabulated list of surnames below who appear in that Dead and Missing List.

These are the surnames in that "Reported Died" list, used in 1819. When a name appears more than once it is because there were multiple instances.
The surnames used in 1819 were: BERKOVICH BLYAKHAR BUDOWLYA BURSHTEIN DOBES DOBES EPSHTEIN GAUZA GELFAN GIZ GIZ GOBSHTEIN GOLDBARG? GOLODGOR GOUZA GRINBARKH GRINGOR GRINSHTEIN GRINSHTEIN GUK GULICH KACHER KACHER KAPLAN KAPLAN KAPLAN KHARACH KHARLET KHOZAK LOES MALOVIDSKY MALOVIDZKY MENAKER MUKASEY MUKASEY MUKOSEY NEIMAN ODAKHOVSKY OGINSKY OLKHA PREN RIBNIK SHELTS SNOVSKY VALOFINSKY VINGER YEBSHTEIN ZALTSMAN ZATTS ZATZ ZAYETS ZHMOYDZYAK

The related surnames that were used in the 1816 Revision List were: BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BERKOVICH BREVDA BURSHTEIN BURSHTEIN BURSHTEIN BURSHTEIN BUSEL BUSEL BUSEL DAREVSKY EPSHTEIN EPSHTEIN? EPSHTEL EPSHTEL FARBOTNIK GAVZA GAVZA GAVZA GLINA GLINA GLUKHOVSKY GRABINA GRINSHPAN KACHER YABLONA KACHER KAPLAN KHARLIP KHAVZA KLEYMAISTER KUSHNER KUSHNER LEV MALINA MALINKI MALOVICH MALOVITSKY MALOVITSKY MALOVITSKY MALOVITSKY MALOVITSKY MUKASEY MUKASEY MYKASEY MYKASEY ODUKHOVSKY ODUKHOVSKY OGINSKY OGINSKY OLKHA RIBNIK ROZH ROZHANSKY RUNIK SHKOLNIK SHLEFER SHMUKHLER SHVETS SNOVSKY TKACH VALOKHOYANSKY VALTSMAN VATNEMAYSTER VINGER VINGER VINOGRAD VINOGRAD YABLONA YABLONA YOSILOVICH YUDELYOVICH ZADVORSKY ZAYETS ZHMUDYAK (and for Peisakh ben Meir who took the surname DOBES in 1819, no surname in 1816)

Finally, some specifics about the table below. This file was acquired early in the history of the Lyakhovichi Research group. It is not clear if some of the households where there was only one male but no designation of head of family, is a transcription error or reflects the information in the original. We will be reexamining the copy at the Family History Library (see the samples of some pages from that microfilm). In this edition (Winter 2008), the webmaster has designated a relationship to the head of household or to another person in the house for every person but makes those notations in brackets and italics. Where it was not clear in our information, who was the head of household, it is noted for reinvestigation of the original. I also noted whether a person listed in the household was dead. In the 1834 Revision we find that members of households previously recorded separately are, after their reported death between Revision Lists, included with the next previous family with living members, if that is also the case here, we may be able to learn something about previously recorded households in the community.

The 1816 Revision List
All indices on this page are ©Deborah Glassman 2007 and may not be reproduced in whole or part without her written permission.