Boston: Maps and Mapping Tools, March 14

Web-based maps and mapping tools are the focus of the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston on Sunday, March 14.

The program with Ron Arons and Jay Sage begins at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, Newton Centre.

Ron will discuss websites that provide a broad range of historical maps.

He’ll demonstrate basic and advanced features of internet-based mapping facilities developed by Google (maps.google.com) and Microsoft (www.bing.com/maps), as well as lesser known mapping facilities provided by whitepages.com, Microsoft’s MapCruncher, and IBM’s Many Eyes.

Jay will feature Google Earth – the web-based software and data that provide an amazing high-resolution three-dimensional model of the earth, based on satellite and aerial photographs – and explain how it can be used to map one’s family history or to make virtual visits to places where family events took place.

Ron has spoken at several international conferences on a variety of genealogy topics. He appeared in the PBS TV series, “The Jewish Americans,” to discuss Jewish criminals of New York’s Lower East Side and his book, “The Jews of Sing Sing,” appeared in 2008.

Former JGSGB president, Jay is current co-editor of the Society’s journal and has given lectures at international and local conferences.

Fee: JGSGB members, free; others, $5.

For more details, click here.

Melbourne: Meeting the family – at last!

Thirty years ago, Alexander Katsnelson, his wife Jenny and toddler Nelly arrived in Melbourne from Bobruisk, Belarus.

Later on, his father and brother Leon arrived from Bobruisk. Alex and Leon’s mother was a TALALAI whose family was from Mogilev.

In the photo below are (from left) Leon, Schelly and Alex.

About seven years ago, members of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society – notably the late Les Oberman – located Alex and Jenny after information from new-found Moscow cousins indicated they might be in Melbourne.

We communicated for awhile until I experienced a major computer malfunction and lost much data (including emails). Yes, I know. Tracing the Tribe always advocates backing up, backing up, backing up. I goofed and thus our family lost years during which we could have been in contact.

However, as soon as I landed in Melbourne, I told my hostess, Ziva Fain, that we needed to find them. Fortunately, we found L. Katsnelson in the online phone book (cousin Leonid), who gave me Alex’s number.

Today was cousin day.

Alex and Jenny came to take me to their home – which is very close to Ziva’s – where Alex’s younger brother Leon, their older daughter Nelly and granddaughter Miliana, 2, were waiting. Later that day I also met Nelly’s son Jordan, 5, and Nelly’s sister Fleur.

Nelly has a degree in journalism – is it genetic? – while Fleur is an attorney. Our daughter is Liana, Nelly’s is Miliana.

We went over family charts and photographs. Leon told us many anecdotes from his childhood. As the younger brother, he was closer to his grandmother and he remembered a large photo on the wall of his mother’s family in Mogilev.

When Alex and Jenny left, they could not take any family photos with them. When Leon left, he took many small photos, but was not permitted to take other family memorabilia. His mother’s sister went to Brooklyn later on and took other items, including the photo. She has since died; no one knows where the large photo of the Mogilev family is now, but Alex and Leon said they will try to find who has it (and many other photos) and have them scanned.

After lunch, Jenny showed me a Russian-language site that translates as “classmates” – sort of a Russian Facebook. We checked for TALALAI and were amazed to find so many, although some I knew. This could be a very valuable resource for genealogists. Names can be typed in English, but everything else seems to be in Cyrillic.

I showed Jenny and Nelly how to use both Ancestry and JewishGen. Everyone was surprised to see how many FamilyFinder entries for KATSNELSON from Bobruisk were listed. A few years ago, Leon had been contacted by a US researcher who sent him information and charts but they couldn’t see how they were related; he did not hear from that researcher again.

Many of the KATSNELSON researchers in the Family Finder are either deceased or have not logged in since 2004.

Jenny is also looking for her HEIMAN (sometimes written KHAYMAN) family of Bobroisk. Her grandmother lived in Bobruisk, but her family had moved to Riga, Latvia, where she grew up and attended school. How and why they moved to Riga is a story in itself.

Jenny and I later went to dinner and we didn’t stop talking all evening. There was an instant connection, as if we had known each other for a lifetime.

There will be more to tell. And this time we won’t lose the connection!

JGSLA 2010: Program highlights

The JGSLA 2010 program committee is releasing names and topics of some speakers.

Acceptances have been received by presenters.

As Tracing the Tribe has previously posted, author Daniel Mendelsohn is the keynote speaker while the first-ever scholar-in-residence will be pioneer Jewish genealogist Arthur Kurzweil.

Among the speakers:

— New York University geneticist Dr. Harry Ostrer: “The Jewish HapMap: What Genetics Has Given to Jews and What Jews Have Given to Genetics.”

— The American Joint Distribution Committee’s Linda Levi will demonstrate how the AJDC archive is organized and how to research.

— USHMM Registry of Holocaust Survivors director Lisa Yavnai will speak on that registry. Other USHMM repeat speakers Megan Lewis and Jo-Ellyn Decker: “Improving Your Research Experience.”

— The Lucille Gudis Memorial Lecture will be presented by University of Massachusetts Professor Vincent Cannato on his book, “American Passage: The History of Ellis Island.”

— Yad Vashem Hall of Names director Zvi Bernhardt: “Using the Yad Vashem Database (of Shoah Victims’ Names) for Beginners.”

— Genealogy’s well-known “Photo Detective” – Maureen Taylor – will offer her expert forensic advice on photograph interpretation and preservation.

There will be international experts from Vienna (Wolf-Erich Eckstein, Israelitische Kultusgemeinde); Prague (Julius Muller, Toledot Jewish Family History Center); Vilnius (Dr. Egle Bendikaite, Vilnius Institute associate professor); and Warsaw (Yale Reisner, The Jewish Historical Institute’s Jewish Genealogy and Family Heritage Learning Center).

Tracing the Tribe will present three programs: an update with new information on the IberianAshkenaz DNA Project, as well as “The Wonderful World of Genealogy Blogging” and “Sephardic Genealogy: Trends and Resources.”

Stay tuned for more!

Melbourne Conference: Writing Ancestral Stories

Following Ambassador Yuval Rotem’s family history journey, Australian author Arnold Zable discussed techniques involved in writing family stories.

His own family is from Bialystok; his books and stories reflect those roots.

At the heart of good writing, he said, is imagination. He clarified this by focusing on the meaning of “image,” and the process of creating and seeing the image – of a place.

“If you can ‘see’ it, you can write it,” he said. Walking the streets of that place, talking to people who came from there – all adds to the “image.” Newspapers of the time provide more material and photographs. “If I can’t ‘see’ it,” he said, “I know more research is needed.”

He described a Melbourne place called Cafe Scheherezade, named for the woman who told 1,001 stories. Zable said the place was once – it no longer exists – filled by people, each of whom could tell their own stories – just as many and just as well.

He discussed the scenes that Ambassador Rotem used in his own family history journey, describing vignettes and memoirs, all of which provide missing links in an ancestral chain, and help to explain the mystery of those missing links.

Zable advised researchers to look for their ancestry, to find where they come from and to share their stories.

Melbourne: State Library of Victoria

Tuesday was tour day for conference attendees.

While some visited the National Archives of Australia (NAA) and the Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV), others visited the State Library of Victoria (SLV).

SLV genealogy librarian Anne Burrows – who presented her institution’s holdings to conference attendees on Monday – was the guide for our group. Her colleague Grant led another group.

The SLV’s main reading room is a busy place, offering desks, computers as well as comfortable chairs for visitors. The room was full of people busily working away on their own laptops as well as the library’s computers.

Just off the main reading room is the Genealogy Library, which is located in a former outdoor courtyard, now roofed over. Once considered for a restaurant, the space features elegant marble floors and tall stained glass windows of the surrounding buildings’ exterior walls. Sunlight streams through the roof’s glass panes into the room which holds shelving units, microfilm and microfiche cabinets and readers, as well as computers.

In honor of the Australian Jewish genealogy conference, a dual-sided display of Jewish genealogy books, journals and newsletters was at the entrance to the room.

Standing by the book display (left) is an old genealogy friend – Dr. Albert Braunstein of Melbourne – whose family, like mine, has roots in Mogilev, Belarus.

Anne took us through the room describing holdings in more detail.

In addition to the display at the entrance, there are more Jewish genealogy books on shelves, including many of Avotaynu’s publications – even Jeff Malka’s “Sephardic Genealogy” – and the Avotaynu journal. Of course, there are extensive general genealogy reference works and materials.

Microfiche includes holdings of the Australian Jewish Historical Society and other resources as indicated on this drawer label.

Computers also hold reference materials for those searching Jewish genealogy, such as databases on this computer in the center. A search for Australian Jewish Historical Society pulled up hits in the manuscript collection.

Patrons and researchers have access to printers for microfilm and microfiche images; digital cameras are allowed or users may download images directly to their own flash drives or memory sticks.

There are numerous GenieGuides covering Australian states and topics, such as convict material. Each binder holds many pages of additional sources of information (including selected microfiche, microfilm, CD and online records in the Genealogy Center. Although now only in hardcopy, future plans include online accessibility to this information.

Although I’m focusing in this post on the specific Jewish resources at the SLV, its extensive holdings include immigration records, vital records and much more, including the Ancestry.com Library Edition, available to all library visitors.

While the SLV’s Genealogy Collection focuses on sources from Australia, the UK and New Zealand, it also reflects Victoria’s ethnic diversity with an expanding range of Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Jewish material.

Core sources include indexes to civil registration for all Australian states and territories (as they are released), Australian cemetery and immigration records, electoral rolls and directions, and much more, including collective biographies and “how-to” guides.

The SLV’s Newspaper Reading Room holds more than 91,000 newspaper volumes in its Newspaper Collection – almost every newspaper published in the state since 1882, as well as earlier papers 1838-1880 (with some gaps).