Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

This is a page in our Documents section. Click the button labeled "Documents" in the left-hand column to reach all of the other resources of the Document area. It is also a part of the Current Projects listed in the Welcome section, so you may also click that button to read about other current collaborative projects on which we are working.

The Cemetery Stone Project now encompasses around two dozen pages. Please go to Cemetery Stones, page 1 to find out what is included in these pages, to find the links to all of the pages we have created documenting Lechovicher burials, and to learn about the key role of Tina Levine in creating this tremendous collection of data for Lyakhovichi researchers. She photographed every stone in every NYC plot related to Lyakhovichi and Baranovichi, over 1200 photographs including the ones on this page.

Cemetery Stones, page 1 also describes some of our new discoveries that allow us to determine key facts about the deceased even when their stone is damaged, eroded, or missing. Please check the introductary article on that page to learn what the symbols and shapes of the monuments may tell you as well as details we can learn from the Hebrew names on the markers. The database of stones that the webmaster created, based on the images created by Tina Levine, is what you are using as you examine the listings created for Mount Zion Cemetery in New York City, below.

There are three pages on our site for the Moosher and Baranovicher Benevolent Association's at Mount Zion Cemetery in New York.
Cemetery Stones, p14 Musher-Baranovicher at Mt ZionYou are Here!
Cemetery Stones, p15 Musher-Baranovicher at Mt Zion
Cemetery Stones, p16 Musher-Baranovicher at Mt Zion - Burial Register and Gates

Why look in Baranovicher burial associations for Lechovichers?
Many people from Lyakhovichi did not move directly from Lyakhovichi to the United States. My great-grandfather and his childhood family moved to Slutsk in the 1890s and the grave he bought for his first wife in the Philadelphia area is among Slutskers. Other families moved to the nearby community of Baranovichi which was on a railroad line, had renowned religious leaders living in the community, and had diverse business opportunities. Lechovichers in Baranovichi were a significant portion of that new city's Jewish population. When the immigrant landed in the United States, they were just as tied to the communities in which they had lived for a dozen years or in which their families still lived, as they were to Lyakhovichi which their families may have left a dozen years earlier. Social networking - looking for jobs, marriage partners, customers, vendors, et al, would easily expand to include those from their old country settlement in Baranovichi as from Lyakhovichi. Speculation aside, we can tally huge numbers of Lechovicher families with Baranovichi sojourns. So while for other communities, it will be sufficient to look for specific Lechovichers in those towns, for Baranovichi it makes sense to examine every gravestone.

The Musher and Baranowitcher Benevolent Association was a younger organization than the Lechovicher Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz by twenty years, but it also chose to follow a different pattern. Baranovichi was at the start of its growth towards being a substantial city and social groups were being formed across different strata. The Benevolent Society model was one that could cross the divide between townsmen who could belong to labor organizations, left-wing and right-wing and religous Zionism, and could pray and study in widely divergent traditions.

The Musher and Baranovicher Benevolent Associations first known burial at Mount Zion was in 1906. While burials continue there today, the organization bought additional plots at Mount Judah and then at Wellwood Cemetery, in different time periods. The graves at Mount Zion are not indicated with a specific plot number so we need to find out where each one sits in relation to its neighbors. This first posting is alphabetical as is the Burial Register on our page Moosher Baranovicher Society at Mount Zion. As we noted in the earlier pages, there is different information between the Burial Register and the Matsevot. Many people - especially children - will never have had a monument constructed. A grave might have been purchased with a different name than seems to appear on the burial in that plot - most often for married daughters. You may have information about a burial that we can not obtain, sharing it would not just illuminate your ancestor, but help us understand the records better for everyone.