25Th Anniversary Issue
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SHEMOT JEWISH GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN AUGUST 2017, VOL 25, 2 25th Anniversary Issue Shemot_25.2.indb 1 7/26/17 1:01 PM Contents Reminiscences Anthony Joseph 1 Changes David Fielker 3 How I see the future of Jewish genealogy Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus 4 Jews in Ayrshire Harvey Kaplan 5 25 years of JGSGB – 10 predictions for the next 25 years Leigh Dworkin 11 Researching the Anglo-Jewish newspapers Doreen Berger 13 The genetic genealogy of our heirs Israel Pickholtz 15 An appreciation Henry Roche 16 Reminiscences Raymon Benedyk 17 My interest in genealogy Cynthia Shaw 18 The mystery of the French pilots in Wolvercote Jewish Cemetery, Oxford Michael Ward 19 Burial authorisation documents Leigh Dworkin 25 Routledge of Darlington Harold Pollins 32 Litvaks on the move – finding Cousin Zara Eli Rabinowitz 33 Some Jews in the Royal Navy before Trafalgar Alan Cohen 52 American censuses and substitutes: finding censuses Ted Bainbridge 59 Tracing infant deaths Stanley Melinek 62 The fate of the Feingold family of Krakow David Conway 63 Ney Elias Anthony Joseph 66 Book review 67 Cover photo: Silver filigree spice holder, late 17th century to early 18th century, Dr W. L. Hildburgh Bequest, V&A Collection M.434-1956. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary year of the Society, the cover illustration is a silver spice holder, probably made in Lvov. It is described as a silver filigree spice box with a moulded stem, standing upon a hexagonal base mounted upon five (originally six) cast ball and claw feet. The container is in the form of a three-tiered tower with a railed parapet around the bottom. The middle and top tiers of the tower represent the belfry and lantern respectively, and the whole is surmounted by an onion dome and a flagpole flying a small silver ‘burgee’ emblazoned with an engraved motif on both sides. At two opposite corners of the lowest tier are small flags, without engraving, mounted on two small silver filigree balls. On one face of this tier is the small hinged door through which spice was introduced. In the belfry tier immediately above hangs a small gilt bell. Mounted on the angles of the parapet are six cast gilt figures, three of them playing pipes (orshofarot ?) and the other three clad in long robes, buttoned up the front, and wearing circular hats (probably emulating Jewish costume of the day). Each figure appears to have had a pendant, possibly a bell, hanging from the crook of the left arm but all are now missing. Shemot is the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. It is published three times a year and is sent free to members. We publish original articles, submitted by members or commissioned, on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to our readers. We particularly welcome personal experiences that include sources and research methodology, explanations of technological developments and innovations, articles highlighting archival material and the work carried out by volunteers to preserve our heritage, biographical or historical accounts, and practical research tips. We also publish book reviews and letters. If you would like to write or review for Shemot, please contact the Editor at [email protected] to request our guidelines for authors. This issue of Shemot was edited by Jessica Feinstein, typeset by Integra Software Services Private Ltd in Pondicherry, and printed by The Print Shop, Pinner, London. The journal is published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. © 2017. ISSN 0969-2258. Registered charity no. 1022738. Shemot_25.2.indb 1 7/26/17 1:01 PM Reminiscences Anthony Joseph I suppose I must by now have acquired an accolade of some sort for both length of time spent being fascinated by genealogy and length of time committed to pursuing its technologies. Born in Birmingham on 23 April 1937, I was around ten when my interest was aroused and although I cannot recall the exact day I remember the circumstances very clearly. A friend of my parents came to visit and, knowing I was at home convalescing from a respiratory infection instead of being at school, she brought a book “to amuse the boy”. This book was a lengthy textbook on English history and tucked within its frontispiece was an unfolding large sheet with the pedigree of the English royal house from the then current monarch (George VI) backwards to the Saxon kings and commencing (I think) with Hengist and Horsa. As the sheet dropped out and unfolded I was immediately fascinated to see such a chart: I was hooked! That evening I asked my father where our family history was kept and his reply was to the effect that that chart was about well-documented royalty whereas our data was of unrecorded immigrant-to-UK Jews. “You will be able to find out very little on us”, he said. I refused to believe Dad when he said there were no records for us and vowed there and then to prove him wrong! Although my late and very dear father was never interested in genealogy (and could not understand how fate decreed he would sire a son who was so committed to the subject), he was also the most loving of fathers and did all and more to support his two sons and their interests. By the end of his life (1974) he was amazed at the quantity of information I had located and he conceded his initial opinion had been unfounded. My teenage years were spent questioning as many senior relatives on all sides of my ancestry as I could find (and who were willing to be interviewed on family history, warts and all). In many cases they were personal discussions and in many others they were in letters (most of which I have kept for all time). A fortunate chance early revealed that several strands of my lineage could be traced back to the earliest Ashkenazi families in seventeenth-century London and to early eighteenth-century Jewish communities in the West Country, notably Plymouth, Falmouth and Penzance. Other sides of the family were more “conventional” Jewish immigrants to the UK from nineteenth-century Eastern European towns (Polish, Lithuanian, Russian). However, one line of my ancestry has imparted a colourful characteristic to my genealogical searching: my maternal grandmother’s mother was born a Gentile in Kidderminster. She was the eleventh of thirteen children of a local pork butcher but at the age of thirteen came into service in Birmingham to an immigrant Lithuanian Jewish family. After five years with them she underwent a conversion to Orthodox Judaism and married the eldest son (my great-grandfather) but she never lost contact with her own cultural associations. Investigating this line through parish registers and so forth has established a fully Gentile English base to my tree roots into seventeenth-century Shropshire and Worcestershire. It has been as interesting a voyage of discovery as all the other quests and it has not escaped me that, ironically, by some interpretations of the Halacha my Jewishness could be under challenge! It has also not yet allowed me to show descent from Hengist or Horsa. By the time I started the Cambridge University medical course (1955, aged eighteen), I was also ready to formalise my genealogical activities more definitively and I joined the Society of Genealogists (SOG, founded 1911) of which I am still a member. I was elected to the Fellowship of the Society in 1970. Being under twenty-one (then the age of majority), when I entered into SOG membership I needed a sponsor and my father wrote to one of his actuarial colleagues, Sir William Elderton, asking for assistance. The reply was delightfully positive and I still have the correspondence exchanges between Sir William and my father although I did not learn of them until I was handling my father’s papers as his executor. Sir William wrote “I am happy to sponsor your son and please give him a word of advice: if he minds what he finds he should not look!” My Dad replied, characteristically, that it was not me who minded at all but he (my father) who was filled with apprehension as to just whom he might be related! His final sentence in thanking Sir William was “it is my current relief that Anthony is concentrating on his mother’s background at present”. The SOG was at that time virtually the only learned Society that had some interest in Jewish genealogy although the Jewish Historical Society of England (JHSE, founded 1893) covered the topic to a certain extent. I became exposed to the work of Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson (not a Jew but his second wife was, being also descended from a Dutch and Anglo- Jewish illustrious patriarch, Levi Barent Cohen). The papers of another scion of an illustrious Anglo-Jewish family (Albert Montefiore Hyamson) were also available. I met too Wilfrid Samuel (Edgar’s father) and Ronald D’Arcy Hart: all of these people were pioneers in charting our genealogical heritage. Later came Isobel Mordy (halachically Jewish through her mother) and of course my contemporary, Charles Tucker, but I joined a very select band of the few of us who worked in this specialised field. At one period, about forty years ago, if somebody wrote for genealogical advice to the Jewish Museum or the Board of Deputies or the JHSE or the SOG or the Anglo-Jewish Association (or any other likely sounding communal body to be named in the Jewish Year Book) the letter was most likely copied and one each of such copy was sent to Charles and/or myself.