Thread by @MrEdwardRueda

I’m taking a page from @PYMundGenealogy and microblogging a cool #genealogy find via @nycrecords’ NYC Historical Vital Records Project. This new site (thanks to @ReclaimTheRecs) provides FREE access to 13.3 million NYC birth, death & marriage records! a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov

So in one big gulp I found 50+ vital records from my Great-Grandma Bess’ Russian Jewish American family, last name Davis, original name something like Davinsky. I noticed an interesting pattern…

SIX family weddings (an aunt and her five nieces) taking place between 1899-1907 involved the same rabbi, Max Etkes (later Max Etkin)…

The surname “Etkes” sounded familiar… the Davis family matriarch, Esther, had a sister/close relative who married a man named Etkis…

Now Rabbi Max Etkes (of unknown relation) listed his office as 50 Essex Street — in Manhattan’s Lower East Side…

It seems the site of 50 Essex St. has been folded into Seward Park, but around 1900 it was another tenement building a half-block from the hectic intersection of Essex and Hester… Seward Park was less green… tenement.org/blog/where-the…

I searched Google Books for “50 Essex” and “synagogue” and a 1900 directory for Manhattan and the Bronx came up. To my surprise, I saw…

50 Essex Street was the site of the Chebra Bohoslow & Korsun… a chevra kadisha (burial society) for Jewish immigrants from the towns that are now Bohuslav and Korsun'-Shevchenkivs'kyi, Ukraine… and Korsun also struck a bell because…

My Great-Grandma’s uncle is buried in a cemetery section for immigrants from Korsun! (Seen here, the dark Hebrew letters on a light background on a post at the front of the cemetery section.)

Another uncle’s immigration record says he came from Korsun. Case closed? However…

…all the American records of my Davis family said they came from Kiev (now Kyiv). What gives?

Well at the time my Davis ancestors immigrated, Korsun was part of Kiev Gubernia — the Tsarist administrative “state” of Kiev. Now it’s part of Cherkasy Oblast. jewua.org/korsun/

A postscript: I checked Google News for Bohuslav… the top result was an article by someone with the maiden name of Zaslowsky… the same maiden name as Esther Davis, the old family matriarch!

The main image is Bohuslav after a 1919 pogrom: soprissun.com/2022/03/09/ukr…

She says: “Zaslowsky… was a common surname of the people in this shtetl… Most of the Zaslowskys were related. My great-grandfather, Joseph Zaslowsky, aka Yossel HaRav, was the beloved chief rabbi of Bohuslav…”

This writer was vacationing in, of all places, Costa Rica when she met a Russian Jewish woman whose mother was a Zaslowsky from Bohuslav.

“We were stunned. To get a better look at her, I asked if she would take her sunglasses off…”

“…When she did, I instantly saw a family facial resemblance. Her coffee-dark eyes could have been my father’s, who had died many years before.”

So that’s my #genealogy story, of a new website and two old shtetls, Bohuslav and Korsun…

… as for #Ukraine now, here’s some verified charities helping its people: today.com/news/news/5-ve…