Early Jewish Immigrant Databases Now Available

150YearsofCare.org website header

Since most of what I view on Youtube are genealogy subjects, and I subscribe to some genealogy channels, much of what is shown at login is genealogy. RLP 378: Interview with Gavin Beinart-Smollan* showed up, and I wanted to listen because my most recent genealogy project is all Jewish immigrants and their descendants, who mostly came to New York City from areas then called "Russia." Wikipedia says, "The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation."  Part of what makes this population challenging to research is the difficulty in locating records, and the confusing, even overwhelming DNA data. This is a result of the laws and customs governing life in the Pale of Settlement, described by Wikipedia: "The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire... that existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915) in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well." An excellent map is available from David Rumsey: https://easteurotopo.org/maps/pale-of-settlement/.

The oppressive laws, along with rampant and sometimes vicious antisemitism led Jews to emigrate when possible.

The reason for writing this post, however, is that I was surprised, as were the Family Locket team, by these rich datasets even existed. The historian interviewed was surprised as well when he fortunately uncovered and then worked with the archive Yivo Institute for Jewish Research to create the website. If you have New York City people, you can look at the map and see where your people were in relationship to both charity donors, who were wealthy, and the recipients, who were the poor. If found, you can request case files. 

Portion of map from https://150yearsofcare.org/worthy-and-unworthy/

RLP 378: Interview with Gavin Beinart-Smollan, Public Historian in Residence at the Jewish Board, one of New York State’s largest and oldest mental health and social service agencies. Gavin is also a PhD candidate at New York University, researching the history of Jewish immigration and the Jewish immigrant family. He is the project lead for 150yearsofcare.org, a digital history exhibition and genealogy database. 

In this episode, Gavin discusses two incredible resources: the National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog (1911–1935) and the United Hebrew Charities of New York Recipients & Donors (1869–1877) database and map. 

Diana asks Gavin about the National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog, an index to cases where an agency helped women track down husbands who had abandoned their families. Gavin explains that the catalog includes husband and wife names, case dates, referring agencies, and causes of desertion, which can include "another woman," "lack of support," or "laziness." He also mentions that longer case files contain even more information and sometimes even photos. https://150yearsofcare.org/ndb-database/ 

I searched for "goldsmith" the main paternal surname, and got 15 matches, which can be downloaded as a CSV file, which can be loaded into a spreadsheet. The card to the right is the first one clicked on that had some details. Requesting the file connected to this card is free, and the records, if they still exist, are provided free of charge!

Nicole asks why a mental health and social service agency would build a genealogy database, and Gavin explains that it connects people in poverty to the past. He discusses how the Desertion Bureau functioned, including advertising cases in Yiddish newspapers to shame men into returning, and discusses the ethical considerations of making this material public.

Diana then asks Gavin about the United Hebrew Charities of New York Recipients & Donors database, a dataset of recipients and donors from New York City’s United Hebrew Charities in 1873. This smaller dataset includes names, street addresses, amounts of aid, and “worthiness” notations. Listeners learn how to search these unique databases, the type of genealogical data they contain, and the historical context of charity and social services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The summary was generated by Google Gemini on Youtube, and edited for this blog post. 

Links 
* Research Like A Pro podcast: https://familylocket.com/the-research-like-a-pro-genealogy-podcast/

• Look Up Names in National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog: https://150yearsofcare.org/ndb-database/
• Look Up Names in United Hebrew Charities Recipients & Donors: https://150yearsofcare.org/uhc-recipients/ 
• View the map of worthy, unworthy recipients: https://150yearsofcare.org/worthy-and-unworthy
• The Forward: A Gallery of Missing Husbands (1908-1920) by Michael Morgenstern at JewishGen.org:https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/usa/missinghusbands.html
• Yivo Institute for Jewish Research: Yivo.org - https://yivo.org/ 
• Giving the Gift of Family History to the Homeless: Olive Branch Connections by Sarah Clift: https://familylocket.com/giving-the-gift-of-family-history-to-the-homeless-olive-branch-connections/ 

 

Valorie Zimmerman

 

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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