Ruchla (or Rochla) Andrelewitz / Morgowicz Morgovich

I'm wondering if anyone could look for some more records for me because I am not fluent or proficient in Polish, and I find it difficult to find quite a few still-needed records and other information. I found a few via Genetka.Genealodzy.PL. I also help some on here before help me and searched other sources, such as JewishGen and Ancestry.com. One record to which I am referring is that of Ruchla (or Rochla) Andrelewitz bas (bat; daughter of) Gilya (or Gilka) Andrelewitz born in Vilnius around 1885. She was a relative of my great-great-grandmother Aleksandra Alicja (or Aleksjondria Alicja) z Andrulewiczów Czerniecka.

I am also still looking for Great-Great-Grandma's record, and she was born on June 26, 1882 to "Antoni" Andrulewicz and "Katarzyna" z Margiewiczów Andrulewiczowa allegedly in Bossę. Her parents left Stokliszki in Lithuania after the death of her mother's cousin, Szmuil Morgowicz (Lithuanian transcription: Shmuil Morgovich and Shmuil Morgovičius), son of Mowsza Morgowicz (Lithuanian transcription: Movsha Morgovich and Movsha Morgovičius; Yiddish-Lithuanian Shmuil ben Movsha Morgovich), because he died of tuberculosis on April 4, 1882.

I am also looking for Great-Great-Granddad's birth record. And I know he was born on December 24, 1875 in Lipsk nad Biebrzą. As I understand it (per a record that someone here had found for me), he was named in honor of his brother whom was born on October 14, 1874.

Just to recap, meanwhile, Great-Great-Granddad's were those whom had the names of "Antoni" and "Katarzyna", with the former born to Paweł Czerniecki and Dominika z Wierzbinskiego Czerniecka in Krasne in Krasnopol around 1840; and I do not know when he was given the name "Antoni". Regarding the latter, she did not receive "Katarzyna" until her Crypto-Jewish baptism in February 1843, well after her birth on October 26, 1838 (and her parents were Abram "Wojciech" Daniłowicz and Marianna z Kruszyńskiego Daniłowiczowa. Incidentally, I still marvel at how they and the priest got away with the "neglect of the parents" excuse Now that I think about it, there must've also been some sympathetic openly-Jewish Jews as well as Anusim and sympathetic Poles in the parish and regsitar offices whom were not going to betray them to the Russians.) . Remember, too, that his parents at some point returned to Judaism and had the farm in Lipsk nad Biebrza; and that he himself rebecame an Anusi after the Farber-Kogan incident, which of course did not sit well with his parents. Thank you for your time and help.

PS I know that "Somovo" had to be "Szumowo" unless it was Shamovo. In Lithuanian, "Sumowo" is "Sumavas". Also, Szumowo is much closer to Antwerpen and further from Lipsk.

google.com/maps/dir/Szumowo,+Poland/Antwerpen,+Belgium/@52.2806428,9.2945416,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x46e016d2aa981b25:0xf071bd091dd6d4e1!2m2!1d23.1580916!2d53.4520712!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c3f68ebfc3887d:0x3eaf448482a88ab8!2m2!1d4.4024643!2d51.2194475!3e2

They did not want us near them after his reconversion to Crypto-Jewish Catholicism!

google.com/maps/dir/16-503+Sumowo,+Poland/Lipsk,+Poland/@53.9122185,23.0449303,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x46e0f00edfa7cfd7:0xd140a46eae8d61a0!2m2!1d23.2880333!2d54.0880528!1m5!1m1!1s0x46e065dfc39c1213:0xd668a605706eac2b!2m2!1d23.3921628!2d53.7370364!3e2

Oh....and Szumowo was closer to Congress Poland, away from the Pale or main part of the Pale at least!
polishjews.yivo.org/content/pale-settlement-ca-1855

I have always been lousy at genealogy so I can`t help you.

But sth occured to me - shouldn`t you look for that info in Lithuania? Yes, Vilnius was under Russian partition, then after 1918 in Poland, but the archives should be still there. I don`t think anybody bothered taking them when Poles were leaving Vilnius for Poland after WW2 due to border changes and mass resettlement.

That pogrom was in 1906 so it can't have made people living a century earlier hide their ethnicity.

As for geneaological research, the most important sites would be:
Geneteka
szukajwarchiwach.pl
genpol.pl or genbaza.pl
As for Vilnus I think (but I'm not sure some might be in Archiwum Akt Dawnych) and there's a Lithuanian site with some records online. Some links are here but they're RC.

kresy.genealodzy.pl/gub_wil_87/ap_litwa_II.html

The tricky part is that not all records are in one place and not all of them are available online. So you need to know what place and years you're looking for.

Or simply contact the archives in Białystok if you have information about the place and year of birth. I doubt it will cost you a fortune. Just ask what they can do for you. If you think the price is too high, don't get into it.

But usually it costs really little. A scan may cost you about 2 zł which is less than a dollar. But I'ma not sure so ask. I don't know how it works from abroad but I don't think it's much more.

I don't know about Jewish records but Polish records from roughly 1850 -1918 from that area are in Russian so be prepared to ask someone to translate them for you.

Also contact some Polish Jews or their descendants to check how they look for records. There are fb groups devoted to geneaological research with lots of helpful people. Also people who help in translating.

Great-Granddad was born in 1904, when the Faber-Kogan incident happened. The incident became the catalyst for the Anti Semites to find another excuse for a pogrom, this time the Belostok Pogrom. Great-Great-Grandma and Great-Granddad could not leave until 1908. By the way, the Anti Semitism began to be really bad in 1795 under Catherine the Great, and a census in 1787 (eight years before the First Partition, which came 20 years before the Conference of Vienna) has a really-interesting comment for one of Great-Great-Grandma's paternal relatives in Kuty, Ukraine: "Żyd". I doubt that it was meant to be just descriptive:


To pawian as well, I have tried almost everything and am now also reaching out to Genekta and Genealodzj.PL as well. Also, Ruchla (as the manifest actually reads, I realized upon more closely reading the manifest) gave "Wilna" and "Wilne", not "Vilna" and "Vilne". So, she gave the Polish transliterations of the Russian and Yiddish names. I will also look at the sources that you provided, though.

I'm actually surprised with using the word żyd.
I have only come across starozakonny and wyznanie mojzeszowe (the previous in the books I have personally gone through and the latter online but I guess it all depended on the parish and the years). What kind of document was it? Perhaps it's because it wasn't a church book.

As for geneteka -not all parishes are indexed. IME some of my ancestors are indexed, others are not -like great grandparents and their ancestors on my paternal site - even though the books from the parish are available at szukajwarchiwach.pl. or another great grandfather - I know the year he was born, his parents names and even though his siblings' births are indexed, his isn't. He's not in the parish books so they must have been living in another, not yet indexed parish. There are parts of my family I have been able to track online up to 1770s and others where I got stuck in the 1890s.

As for metryki at genealodzy -there are even fewer parishes as at geneteka people index also books from other sources. Finally, there are very few Jewish books there I believe so need other sources as Jewish births, marriages and deaths were recorded in Catholic books only till 1820s or so.

So please keep in mind that some people you find at geneteka might not be your ancestors but someone with a similar name - you need to know the parents names to confirm it's the person you're looking for. Some records give lots of information (like the mother's father's name) but you need to find the correct record.

As for baptisms of Jews I have come across one or two records in allegata books. I don't know if that was the rule but that's a clue of where you might be looking. There's other information there as well, of course.

Finally, the language. Keep in mind, you're not looking only for a Polish speaker but also someone fluent in Russian if it's about 1900s in Eastern Poland. And it's not modern Russian. And it's cursive.

Sometimes it gets slightly easier as there are indexes of people born, married or dead in a given year at the end of the book but the indexes are in the cyrillic usually. In most books written in Russian even though the entries are in the cyrillic, the names of people it concerned are in the Latin alphabet in brackets - although I have come across a church book entirely in Russian.

For other regions you may need someone fluent in German and Latin. If your ancestors converted only in the 1900s, then their birth records should be in Jewish books and I don't know what language they were held in. It might have been Hebrew, Yiddish or Russian (since Catholic priests were told to keep their records in the cyrillic, I guess the same rule applied to rabbis).

Have you tried contacting the state archives in Białystok? What parish are you looking for in Vilnus?
Archiwum Państwowe Białymstoku
ul. Mickiewicza 101, 15-257 Białystok
sekretariat_ap@bialystok.ap.gov.pl

Wow, Kaprys, that is a really impressive genealogy explanation. Respect. :)


No, stick to Kaprys with that search, she knows much more than anybody else.

@Nickidewbear
Another thing: have you tried the Pradziad database?
baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=en
It may help you find information what branch of state archives you're looking for. I just tried Szumowo and it turns out the records for the village are actually in the Łomża branch of Białystok archives.

As for transliteration of Polish words on manifests, keep in mind that it wasn't the immigrants who filled in the forms but immigration clerks. Polish 'w' is pronounced as English 'v'.

A lot of immigrants were illiterate. Lots didn't know English. That's why a lot of names of people and places were basically butchered on the forms and now their descendants find it hard to look for their ancestors.

Again I have seen such mistakes in fb groups and believe me people brainstormed ideas and were able to help the poster.
Look for fb groups devoted to Polish and Jewish geneaological research.

@pawian
I've been into it for about a year and as satisfactory as it may be at times, sometimes it's quite frustrating. Like when you read your ancestor's birth record and find out his parents were colonists in that place but it doesn't give you information where they came from. Or a death record which says someone was born in Prussia - but where? ???

And it can get quite frustrating when you have to deal with several languages and pales or 'picturesque' cursive :) or different spellings of the same surname.

I agree and have encountered all of that. I am also a member of Tracing the Tribe, etc.. Incidentally, Ruchla/Rochla was surprisingly literate and able to write.

PS Thank you so much.