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 in Mount Judah Cemetery below for the Musher-Baranovicher Benevolent Society.

There are three pages on our site for the Moosher and Baranovicher Benevolent Association's at Mount Judah Cemetery in New York.
Cemetery Stones, p17 Musher-Baranovicher Mt JudahYou are Here!
Cemetery Stones, p18 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Judah
Cemetery Stones, p19 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Judah
Cemetery Stones, p20 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Judah - Burial Register and Gates

This is the second grouping of Musher Baranovicher listings on our pages. See those at Mount Zion at
on pages Cemetery Stones, p14 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Zion, p1 AND Cemetery Stones, p15 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Zion, p2 AND Cemetery Stones, p16 Musher-Baranovicher Mt Zion, p3 - Burial Register and Gates OR return to Cemetery Stones, page 1 to see additional pages that we have added.

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 graves at MountJudah do have specific plot numbers and we will be able to reconstruct who is buried next to whom.But in the interests of getting a large amount of material online at the same time for our Thanksgiving 2008 update, we are posting them this time, just alphabetically. We hope to add the database info and the proper plot-ordering by the next update. The burial register info is on the page Mush+Baranovichi Mt Judah, p4 - Burial Register and Gates and typically such registers have different information than an examination of the tombstone can provide. The date in the burial register is that of the date of the burial, while the tombstone frequently reports the date the person actually died. The surname in the register may reflect a change in the spelling or formation of the family name by still living family members. First names may differ markedly from the name the decedant was known to the Lechovicher community and the way it appeared on a death certificate. Whatever information you can share about your ancestors buried here, will help us learn more about these particular records and the problems and opportunities these records offer.