Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

We so far, have not found birth, marriage, and death records, created in Lyakhovichi for any parties. We have in November 2008 sent out a query to the Brest ZAGS office to determine if any such records might be in their jurisdiction and we will keep you informed on the outcome of that search.

We do have some other sources on Births, Marriages, and Deaths, in Lyakhovichi of varying degrees of reliability and access.

Deaths in the Revision Lists
The Revision Lists taken by the national government of Imperial Russia in Lyakhovichi in 1816, in the supplement of 1819, in 1834, in 1850 and its supplements 185-1852, all list deaths that occurred between the previous enumeration and the current. But there are clear attempts to subvert the effort in 1816 when we can demonstrate that the Revision List reported a number of people as died between 1811 and 1816 who reappeared with a different surname in 1819. Others reported dead in 1816 reappear in 1834 as “missed” in the last census. See on our page for the 1819 Revision List the Table: Dead/Missing 1816 with Correspondents in the 1819 Revision But the problems with the Revision Lists as a reporter of deaths does not end in 1816, new investigation now shows a number of families that between 1834 and 1850 report a draft age member as dead, absent, or recruited, for whom evidence exists that they have taken a new surname and continue to live in the town. We hope to shortly add a list long in the works: Dead, Absent, or Recruited 1834-1850 but you can use as of the July update Mortality Lists in the Revision Lists of 1834 and 1850 for a record of 350 deaths in those sources.

So is this a useless line of inquiry? Is there a value in finding a person reported dead in a Lyakhovichi Revision List? There is a significant value in such an id. First, the Revision List required an accounting of each person who had appeared in the previous enumeration. They were marked as dead or absent or runaway or recruited. We can often use these notations in tandem with other information in the same record, to determine their likeliness. An adult male whose children are grown and reported with families that include their own grandchildren, probably did pass away on the date supplied in the record. A younger male whose name is then given to his own grandchildren also is moved up the evidentiary scale as likely to have died.

Deaths in the Revision List do not include any females. And it is difficult to determine deaths of women by negative information – if a wife of one name is replaced with a wife of comparable age and a different name, we can’t tell if she has been replaced or is using the other part of a two-part name. Hannah Malka may show up in one record as Hannah and in another year as Malka or there may in fact be two different women recorded. The age relative to the husband’s age is the best indicator if a wife has been replaced between one census and the next. There is no way to account for the deaths of unmarried females in the Revision Lists, though provision for such reporting existed in the registers of Lyakhovichi Births, not yet found.

Marriages in the Revision Lists
Please note the information in the last paragraph above. It is difficult to determine if a wife has been replaced in divorce or death unless there is a significant difference in relative age to the husband between two enumerations in which both parties appear. But examine our Tables: Women in Revision Lists 1816-1819 and Women in Revision List 1834-1850 for clues on who may have married who.

Widows are only reported intermittently in 1834 but in 1850, those still living in the households of their husband’s children are reported in greater numbers. I hope to create a table of widows in the Revision Lists for the next update.

Births in the Revision Lists
There are two sources of information on age in any one Revision List. There is a column recording the age of the person in the current enumeration and another column recording the age of males in the previous census. For a male whose name was not reported in the previous Revision List because he was too young, or because he was born since that date, the notation “newborn” appears. So a list of such newborns using their reported ages in the current Revision List, would give you a last date by which that person would have been born. The ages were often emended downwards for males still living at home. Conversely, a male reported “missed” in the previous enumeration might have his age advanced to move him up out of the draft range in the subsequent enumeration. We have just as this update goes to press, compiled a separate table of Newborns in the Revision Lists. It is important to note that large numbers of Jewish male children were kept off the draft registers by the simple expedient of not reporting them in the Revision Lists, so this is not a complete register of males born in Lyakhovichi. The Revision Lists also report only those infants whose fathers were registered as legally resident in Lyakhovichi and those who were eligible to be recorded, certain guild level merchants were not reported and it seems that largely their sons had the same excemption until some later date. Also new in the November 2008 update, we have compiled a list labeled Missing in the Previous Revision which show additional male births not previously reported. The Missing Lists can't be used as a straight-forward supplement to the newborn list, though. In the 1850 Revision List, it is apparent that almost all of the men reported missed at the previous enumeration were draft age men at the height of their eligibility. Now they are registered with ages that make them seem too old to be selected for military service. So the ages are suspect and families with members who would still be in the vulnerable group, may be not recorded for two whole census periods. These tables appear on our New Page New Information Tables in the Revision Lists

Marriage Events in Lyakhovichi in NYC Death Certificates
Tina Levine extracted the death certificates of people buried in Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz plots in the New York City area. We were able to determine 140 marriage events that took place between 1818 and 1920 from those certificates, a full 100 of them before the year 1900. See our Table: Marriage Facts in Lyakhovichi in NYC Death Certificates

What kind of “marriage fact” can be determined? When Meyer Goldberg died in 1905, he was reported as age 87. The error rate on ages is usually in the direction of making the person younger on government records in this time period. So he was born not later than 1818. His parent’s names are given as Berkp Goldberg and Dora Failevitsky so sometime before 1818, we have a marriage fact for Meyer Goldberg’s parents, Berko and Dora. Notes on the table created share the fact that we have found Meyer in the 1834 Revision List where his father is using the surname Falevich and living in the household of what may be a brother-in-law. So a New York City Death Certificate for Meyer Goldberg in 1905, points us to an 1834 Revision List, which may give us the patronymics of both his paternal and maternal grandfathers.

Married Couple Database
This is a collaborative database created by our community. It has been seeded in the May and November 2008 updates with a number of reports derived from the Immigration Records and from Holocaust Reports. Ages are as reported in those sources; relationships and the names of other parties, are also from those sources. Go to Married Couple Database to learn how to contribute your data and to benefit from that already shared.

Sourced Family Trees
We have started a page of Ancestor Trees of Lyakhovichi. The parts included on our page, go from as far back as we can document in Lyakhovichi records to the generation that emigrated from Lyakhovichi. We also will index those trees that people with Lechovicher connections post on JewishGen’s Family Tree of the Jewish People site. Most of the vital events cited in those trees comes from records that you can examine on these pages including the Revision Lists; Lyakhovichi civil documents; and other records created in Lyakhovichi.

Cemetery Stones
A matseva, a traditional Jewish cemetery monument, has obvious genealogical value at many levels. But it is less clear on what events that took place in Lyakhovichi could be indicated by a cemetery stone in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania or Sydney Nova Scotia. But if we know that the person was "of Lechowitz" it tells us of his birth and frequently of his connection to a previous generation of Lechovichers with the name of the decedant's father. Go to our page Lechovicher Cemetery Stones for a list of the pages on which they appear as photos, as entries in burial registers, and more.

Holocaust Testimony
The purpose of the pages of testimony provided to Yad Vashem is very straight-forward. To give a clear depostion of facts by witnesses to the events of the Holocaust; to make sure there is a full accounting for every person whose death was caused by the actions of the Nazis; and to assure that these individuals are not forgotten simply because the Nazis accomplished their murders and the elimination of those who could testify to their loss. On the Lyakhovichi pages, we work hard to keep these members of the Lyakhovichi community an integral part of our community. Learning how their families connect to ours, as kinsmen and neighbors. Births, marriages, and deaths, previous to the Holocaust can often be learned from their records. When an old man was reported murdered, his parents who died thirty years earlier may also be named, and the deaths of small children born in the 1930s may show in their naming their links to Lechovichers who also died long before. In November 2008, we have multiple pages with such information from Holocaust testimony, linked through our Documents Key page.