 Hello, hello everybody. We're here to talk about wiki-3 challenge number 23 for mark Cuban and with me is We have both the other way. We have Thomas We have come to as the captain of the week and also one of the researchers down below me is is Lewis and he is an expert on Jewish genealogy and also one of our researchers Elaine as well Jewish research that we definitely needed this week and It's been a great week. So Thomas. How do you think everything went? well, I mean as per the usual we had some last-minute discoveries that we were not fully expecting and had you know some expansion on lines that We well, I mean Lewis will talk more to that He was the one who brought about the major surprise at the end there, which we're all yeah, very very pleased about but no I mean for the most part there were a few lines that had us stuck the entire week, which was a source of annoyance But there were other ones where we managed to get quite a lot done and we did expand a lot Horizontally as we expected to at the beginning Overall Yeah, I think it did too, you know watching the collaboration between everybody is always exciting and fun and You know just watching people work together and looking at things like the name variations or helping each other translate the tombstones looking for the records on the Jewish Gen site just really a lot of a lot of fun And I do have some slides to show tonight But I think you know unlike we already did a wrap-up in zoom Of course where we went over the points and who won and everything else and tonight I'd really rather talk about You know what we specifically found as well as you know what you guys thought the challenges were with those people and those records and locations, so I'm going to go ahead and put this up here and You know of course the wiki tree challenge has been going for all of 2022 and You know we're covering Shark Tank TV personality and the Dallas Mavericks team owner basically just great entrepreneur Mark Cuban And it's really just been a lot of fun Now the first ancestor we're going to look at and we're trying to look at the new ancestors here I know he does know quite a bit about some of his ancestry as well as his brother, but you know we Dove a little deeper and you guys found out more than what what they had available So this is going to be Mira Kibinsky, and this is one of Mark's third great-grandfathers And so to start here, we're going to be on his father's side Norton Chibinski Cuban On to his father Moish Moses Cuban To his father Nassal And then to his father Yosef Hyam or Yosef Kibinsky and Then we finally make it out to Mira so you guys really made it a long way out on that line and He may have been born somewhere around 1808 We're thinking in Malin in key, which was under the Russian Empire at the time We do know that he later resided there with his wife And is that Sysa? Here's why Sysa, I believe Sysa they had at least one child and a daughter And then this is one of the records of course Lewis down there was able to find from us And it was really we were excited it was fun to see how excited everybody was but and then Lewis led up to it So he's like oh, I have this great, you know great news for you guys And a great surprise and we're all sitting on the edge of our seats, you know And then he didn't tell us right away and then when he did we were just really super excited about it that he was and he had gotten in touch with another expert who is in the midst of a project scanning up records that aren't available to anybody else and his name is Boris Mikowski and This record. This is a piece of the 1850 census there in Malin where we figured he lived and it was reproduced with Boris's permission it's from an entire group once again that he's with that are scanning up these Jewish records from the state archives and You know, he talked about the history of the Kibinsky family from all in and so they can be traced back to 1750s And not only one family with that surname lived there. So There Lewis do you want to tell us a little bit about the possibilities for the father? Well to be honest, I don't know My researcher I and what I did was when I noticed that That the ancestor was from the town of Malin I looked up where Malin was and it's right in the district which my researcher Researches so I sent him a little email and asked him at the beginning of the week if By any chance he had records for a Kibinsky in Malin and A few days later. He wrote back and he said he has quite a bit So he supplied me with one record of Kibinsky as a teaser and He said that he told me about the family. I think I wrote most of the notes On the profile. I am very good at remembering these things like any genealogist I have 1000 genealogy and I can't keep them straight But So so we have the notes and I know my researcher has Quite a few more records for this family and can piece a bit more of the family together so that's and he'll make that available to Mark Cuban if Mark Cuban wants to find out Yep, so I know we'd all be more than a little bit excited if he sees this and he's able to reach out and get even more Information and you know how wonderful that that there is this name that is so unique in that area, right? You know that these are the only possibilities if they are there in that town They are related now from what I saw in the notes. It was a Yosef Volko who was one of the possibilities For the father and he was born about 18 19 But he was a little bit old to be mere father and he already had three children but his nephew who was Yosef Cayenne was born in 1834 and said he was more likely to be the father So even though, you know, we don't have the additional record yet Or anything else from Boris, you know, they gave really good clues on where the next person can take off with this research If you go back to the record again, can you go back Mindy? Just take a look at that record and people look at that handwriting now This is what you get this is like bad English And you have to interpret the words as to what they mean and you're going through books and books and books of this Not something that the normal North American researcher can do on their own The amazing thing is that these records have just started becoming digitized in the last few years and and people like Boris are starting to go through them and and find names for people and index them and make them available I have personally Really really gained on my own genealogy from researchers like Boris in the various areas of my family Which I would never been able to do on my own So I just wanted to mention that Yeah, definitely outstanding and and you know worth mentioning and I know there was another record Elaine and I had done the same thing We were going back and forth and you know, it didn't fit with what she was translating it as it didn't look like it What it was supposed to be but it was just the lettering like you said It's not like it's typed out or you know, even necessarily neatly printed when you get to those records So but they are really fun to find And then just for a little bit of history on Malin here and that's Malin station showing there But it is currently in Ukraine and it's known now for its paper factory It has an important railroad running through the city as well as a major highway The first record of Jewish people in that city was in 1874 and I noticed in several places that they said, you know Although 1784 seems to be the consensus because that's the first official, I guess document The a lot of the historians believe they were there were Jewish people there long before that time now in 1784 there were 28 and the number jump to 1064 by 1847, you know, which would have been During that time that mirror was there. So just a huge influx and you know I know you guys know more on it than I do the Jewish history is not my In my my realm of experience But I know in a lot of the reading that I've done they talk about how you know They were constantly throughout history pushed out of areas so you'd see these big changes and numbers like that where it was just a few and then a lot and then back to a few and Really interesting how they'd migrate back to those same areas and By the late 19th century the records show that they had a synagogue Two prayer houses and a Jewish hospital there So we also know that a Jew named Yakov Rabinovic and his brother Aaron own a furniture factory some dairy farms and a dairy plant So I mean it was a you know a well-developed although not huge community and Then of course as with many of the Jewish communities throughout the region many of them fled or were killed during the Holocaust but after World War two some of the families return once again and The names some of the surnames like have been ski remained in that area Now here's why still in 1950 or 60 there there. Yeah. Yeah We got an address directory that has the have been ski name in 1950 1960. So that's cool. Mm-hmm. That's awesome I didn't didn't find out too much about his wife's just Stessia, so we know she was born in 1808 Possibly they're also in mom where she later lived that her father was a leg with no documented surname and you know When was it would you say like mid 19th century that the Jewish people were required to have a surname? But before that they didn't necessarily have one. It would be around the early 19th century I don't know the exact date. Maybe Lewis does but I'd say somewhere around like 1805 1810 something like that that's about right in that area of Ukraine mmm and Speaking of actually I want to mention with regards to the Chabinsky name Because we're about to go into this Kostinsky Kostinsky family and everything We do have thanks to Alexander Beider the great dictionary of Jewish surnames from the Russian Empire Which actually tells us the origin of the Chabinsky surname Which suggests that it is probably related to the town of Chabno Which is where the Kistinskis are recorded in one of the records that we pulled up But we did not find the Chabinsky's there yet. So it's they may have originally traced their Thomas and I were chatting before the live cast and he was saying what a great resource that turned out to be like He knew it'd be good, but then he got it. He just keeps using it. So yeah When we had Scott to Rose week a few months ago I checked this out from the local library and I've had it pretty much permanently checked out ever since I keep renewing it Well, it's always good to see that you know We can circle back to some of these Jewish families and you know, especially I'm lucky tree because I don't think a lot of them Have the presence that they should and that's been growing and it's really fun and exciting to see the interest in these families and in honoring these ancestors and so next we do go into the Kistinskis and this again is a third great-grandfather and Valet and for that it we go through his father Norton again still on the dad's side of the tree back through Moines on to his mother Leah then to her father Mordek and then finally to follow and He was born about 1815 so just a little bit later than what the last one was He may have been born in Codna where his son Mordek was born. I can't say the name of that town Paul is skoy Ukraine his wife Daughter of Burko, I may have copied it then before you before you fixed it I know we were both in their editing profiles last couple of days and You know, we do have a notation to from one of the researchers that his grandson Moche probably was named for him Which indicated that he likely died before Moche was born in 1882 and you know, I noticed that It wasn't always easy To necessarily get a death record for these So do you guys think that it's maybe just because the tombstones aren't all documented yet? Or why do you think it's so difficult on their destroyed? Okay, I Don't know about the death records, but I know there are ton of tombstones that were destroyed anywhere between 1900 and 1945 tons of them Yeah, it's different areas, but But yeah, I don't know a thing about that paper death records though The birth marriage death records are hit and miss it depends on Which particular town? Some of them and and I My research you would know better than me, but they generally start around 1850 1860 at the best Before that you just have these revision lists which are like censuses which help you put the families together Previous to that. I'm curious really valuable Louis if you know how far back the revision lists on average go in this region of Ukraine offhand because Some go to the early 1800s like 1815. I believe there's also a revision list 1780 or so That is available in some areas, but again, it's hit and miss. Yeah, absolutely Now I know that with birth marriage death at least in my experience The best bet in being able to find them just in general, but especially digitized is again Lithuanian records Which we'll get to in a little bit Because they have a excellent indexing project going Yeah, and now, you know, that's one of the problems too when you wind up with these families were you know We see that a lot of his family members were in Malin. They were in plunge. They weren't caught now You know, if they're staying in these tight little areas and they stay there for generations You know, somebody comes in and something happens and records are wiped out Then you're losing records first generations of that family not just the families that live there at that time very very hard for the researchers and Here once again was Boris that Lewis had contacted and notes that he had taken about from scanning documents in the area And he had been able to provide a couple of documents But also, you know these clues that talked about the different families who could have possibly been the parents some of the names were assessed and Like they were talking about and they were not able to find Leia Socia, I know there were a couple of things of people talking about that as far as With her name and that was the Susa one Correct and yeah, and you know is pretty much been determined that that most likely was just an alternate given name Not her actual surname So we should probably get someone in there and good stuff The last name at birth. Yeah And you know, it just it just goes to show to you how how valuable and important these research notes are And I've had people come to me and say, you know, oh well we fixed this problem We found out what her surname was can we just delete all those notes? You know, please don't because I like other people to be able to come in and go Oh, this is why they didn't think this was her father You know because otherwise sometimes people are gonna come back and go Oh this record makes sense I'm gonna add it because they don't have those notes there that explains, you know why that record would not work So I always leave the research notes there and we like, you know helping out other Researchers and not making them do something twice That's already been done. So Now here is one of the areas that of course was occupied back at that time more background information on comm now it was part of the Russian Empire once again and It was in the rata missile Government in the 1990s it was resettled after Chernobyl of course the huge nuclear disaster Happened and there was a lot of radioactive pollution And so it's actually no longer registered as a place of habitation and the visits are only allowed by special permission But Elaine didn't you tell me this they actually like get the town up and moved it. I mean as far as the townspeople I Think so I didn't really understand the whole story, but that there weren't many people left anyway But yeah, they had they moved west by about 50 miles or so if I remember correctly But yeah, I didn't know the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was so big haha. I did that in about 15 If you go to that website at the teeny tiny at the bottom I should have made it bigger than you can see that actual image, but we didn't I you know permission But what I liked about that one was it wasn't a flat roof pretty much all the other wooden synagogues you see have That kind of ordinary looking roof It now what's do you have the next slide Bindi? Is it the The really big one hold it to me. I don't it's in Poland. Okay Yeah, well anyway, yeah, go to the website. It looks even worse on the computer I think I'll try yeah, but yeah, well kids who actually went there Yeah, you know and like Elaine was pointing out earlier It is kind of like how they put false fronts on some buildings because it really allows them to make the building up Here larger than what it is, you know with the big peaks up there that are Actually like a functional part of the building But really really nice I think a lot of the tall peak synagogues actually have space up there But this is one that was just like one of those old western Towns like those ghost towns where you put the false front in front. I think that's what that was Is all really neat wood paneling and stuff Let's move on Jesus, I want to put like a net Now that I look at it And and if you look at the other buildings that they have though too, they have that same like style right there in that particular location Now burko was one of the ones that uh, of course we had no surname born that goes back to what we've already talked about He just may not have had a surname and you know, and usually they were like burko son of lee As far as what their name was that was their name They didn't say oh, you know john smith They always added that as part of their name who the father was and or still on his father's side of the tree Going to uh morris once again over to lia over to her mother sosia pestle And then burko And we didn't have a whole lot of information on him except for you know Just what we were finding about malin for the actual area He was born about 1820 in malin and he was mentioned in his daughter sosia's records But I don't believe that anybody found anything directly with burko. Is that correct? I think Yeah, I think I think he kind of remained a mystery and you know Also, there was the whole thing about some of these other lines were so complicated and complex That you know, people were focusing on them and just trying to make sure they had everything straightened out Now, I believe boris may have records about burko Uh And actually the whole Family going back there, but the only record he supplied just gave burko's name So we didn't have a record for wiki tree To supply any more information So yeah, and mark cuban need to call it Or message him They need to get a hold of him once again He is going to be the person to contact now to go further on these lines Because of course the challenge only lasts for a week So even though, you know, some of us kind of dally in there and we play a little bit on the profiles afterwards Our research is for one solid week to see what we come up with So there's always more that can be discovered No matter how difficult the ancestry is So, you know, definitely you're going to want to get ahold of boris and find out what else he's got for you Now here again, they're talking about malin and how in 1793 When polin was divided for the second time, that's when malin became part of russia Now in 1797 the government authorities formally incorporated it into the rhodomitial district of the key governor, so The 19th century saw a lot of jewish families migrating through this area And those years 1793 is very important because I think I think it's actually a year after 1794 that Russia establishes the the pale of settlement, which is that mass migration into that region Which is why all these families end up there in the first place a lot of them at least Yeah, and that's pretty much the solid cutoff here that I saw everywhere was the 1794 as far as them establishing that the jewish families were in fact, you know Located themselves relocated into that area Now here we found several people which was fun, you know really fun to watch people just researchers take off with this And the zipline and so we're going to start out with another third grade grandfather this time It will be leave a zip And so this time we're going to move over to mark's mother's side of the tree Go through her mother sarah frantel felman To her mother syvia ziv grudez Then to her father yuzel ziv And finally to his father leave a zip And you know as you see we don't have the wives for yuzel or leba This is really common with the research during this time is once again people were named as so-and-so And then son or daughter of but the father's name So you know that combined with the fact that there are so many records that are either lost Or not scanned yet and in the middle of projects like what oris is doing You know that may be the only clue we have is those particular records and so we can follow the paternal line But we don't necessarily always get the wife Now here is one of those locations that You know I mentioned and leba was born about 1799 and most likely in plunge He had two no sons. So he had yuzel born in 1820 and zelman in 1824 Now he died three years later though, and he was only about 28 years old So likely his death was in plunge, but it was one of those death records that we definitely were not able to find And Leave a zip how that is there was the spelling in the earliest record Which was one of those revision lists in 1834. So that's the spelling that's being used But there were some records where his first name was spelled as leave so le yb and then here you can see him listed as son of olayesh and marque and This is one of those records that you know thomas was saying it's more like a census and it really is You can see the household composition This shows that there's two grandchildren in the home and of course They're the sons that I had just talked about you zelman zelman And so this was the record where we learned that leba died in 1827. So just after three years after zelman was born Those quick kids were quite little now Any of you I know That you know that it was common to marry within faith not necessarily taking into account relationships, but You know how common was it for somebody with small children like that a widower to remarry right away? Is it just like in other locations? Where they marry quickly so they have a wife to take care of the children or generally Men did not go without wives for very long And in fact, uh quite often uh A man would marry his wife's sister if his wife passes away and Which is something that we saw on one of the other branches of the family. I'm not sure if that's in the interesting finds or not Yeah, I'm not sure if it made it or not And that was more recent too like when did Because they remarried They married in the u.s. I think 1920s. Yeah, they um, yeah 1923 was the remarriage Yeah, and I noticed some, you know conversations about that as far as you know, were they allowed to do that or there any restrictions on doing that? um But fairly common and you know, and I know in some other locations too Even in the united states there were areas where that was fairly common And if you were widowed then you went to the sibling, you know, you went to the brother-in-law and If the woman was to have him take care of it or you married his sister or so Now Zellman's daughter Sylvia was born in 1867 in Darbenay and Her name in Hebrew in her cemetery stone is Sylvia daughter of yosef She first married samuel frankel and had two daughters now samuel by 1915 And Sylvia, um, I was surprised didn't remarry until 1927 and so, you know another 12 years later And by that time, of course, she'd migrated to the united states. She was the first generation American for that line and she was living in tratton, new jersey So She married mordecai grunez. He was also born on the russian empire and also widowed And uh, she lived to be about 75 years old dying in patterns in new jersey Now do we know uh, why this particular family wound up in that location or Well, I remember the first passenger listing I came across did list, um a Don't remember if it was a cousin or an uncle or something like that. I'm gonna try to pull that up now But there was mentioned another relative. I believe which is usually the case Yes Uh, uh, yeah Oh, no Hessel was left back in the old country Yeah, okay the other way Yeah I think that's always fun though when you first start researching the ones that migrated and you're like Oh, they're in the household with this person and it isn't until you get further back that you realize Oh, that was like the uncle. You know the dad's brother or you know, you really start seeing relationships and the family dynamics And here, you know plunge once again was one of the Locations that several of the families were in and they stayed there for a while It is a city in modern-day Lithuania Of course for our needs We named the locations a wiki tree what they were Historically at the time and so a lot of the places just say russian empire But uh now would be Lithuania and it's thought that it was inhabited Actually as early as the fifth century So it remained an ordinary what they call an ordinary settlement until the 16th century And that's when it really started to explode and grow quickly So about six years before lee was born It was granted rights by the holy roman emperor And during lee's lifespan it belonged to um laton zubov of the russian empire The palace feud above wasn't built until 1879 So after his death and during his son yuzel's lifetime But you know, he was there to see the population Really expand It's about 50 miles from the ocean And then here, you know As we see And a lot of the research and it's it's always so heartbreaking to go through this jewish research because There's always some point in time You know historically that they had tragedy But in 1941 about 1800 jews in the plunge district were murdered and buried there So some of them have been kept in the synagogue for like two weeks with no food sanitary conditions You know, they made them walk five kilometers. Would you be about three miles? And once they were there, they were told to dig this massive pit, which of course was A mass grave site. So they had to actually dig the pit that they were Buried in And the very last surviving plunge jew, which was yakka funka who was awarded Orders and medals for battle merits and He lost his grandparents his father his youngest sister and his brother during the war But he still devoted his life later to the remembrance of everyone there that was killed And so he founded the cosini memorial with a few friends And they created these memorial items from 1986 to 1989 Further marking the events and those that they lost so If you look there on the left, uh, there's a lot of the wood features like that that were carved out the oak ones weren't added until later But there's also some earlier, um Wood features carved out along with the wall that you see that has the names Also on the zipline was aliyah said So here we're still on the mother side To her mother sarah To her mother civya To her father yuzelle To her father leba zib and finally to his father aliyah Now here was uh one of the young sisters that was born About 1777 and most likely in plunge So he married murky and they had at least three children We know he had leba born in 1799 No, some were in 1805 And then their daughter minda born in 1818 And This kovno gobernia is one of the biggest administrative districts in imperial russia's province lithuania So the jewish community in plunge was among the first in lithuania and They say in 1847 the jewish community there had a population Uh, um almost 2200 people And then here again, it was fun, you know that that researchers were able to find specific records and documents instead of just indexes And you know here we see that aliyah was taxed in 1846 So we do know that he was residing there still and he was listed as well to do in the tax record Now two years later though, he was listed as unable to pay the tax With one adult male in the family and then they marked and notated that aliyah died in 1848 This is him with his wife marca and children leba no son at minda And at least two of the children pre-deceased him by more than 20 years So, uh, minda I think is the only one we did not have a death date for and or unsure of when she died And this is uh, just a rendering of one of the forts There were several of them that were built fort three fort nine and fort ten And I think for these ancestors they were actually by uh fort nine And you know when the jews did arrive and lithuanian and a lot of them settled in trochae and brisk and later came to kovno as merchants You know a lot more jewish families came into those areas and settled there permanently And here again was you know tales of how they were periodically just exiled by the town's leaders And they were you know often forced to leave kovno And so, you know, luckily they didn't have to go that far And they would just turn around and wait for a little bit and they'd move back So, you know, they slowly trickle back into this area and it would just start the whole cycle over again And you know as it says in the history That during uh, uh, almost every new ruler they were once again expelled So You know later than what some of these relatives were that we just recently looked at at the end of the 19th century So it's still the 1800s The city of conus was fortified and by 1890 it was encircled by eight forts and nine dead batteries The construction of the ninth fort began in 1902 And was actually completed on the eve of the first world war So, you know, just really interesting to be able to look at these buildings and You know, if you look at a clearer picture, they're not in great shape now, but it really gives you an idea of How they changed the landscaping of those towns Now we've gone further out to israel and this is mark's fifth great grandfather So you guys stretched way out there for this one One of the oldest ancestors that was found And here we're still on his mother's side to her mother sarah her mother sevilla her father yuzelle His father liba then his father elijah and then finally to israel And once again the oldest ancestor that we found I believe And if not, it was one of them. He was born about 1750 in plange Which we you know learned a lot about now that we've been researching into the area He was listed as the father of elijah in the 1834 revision list And it's not known where he was born, but his descendants were living in plange in 1834 So it is possible that he was born there. You know, once again, we don't have the Availability that some countries would or some locations would for the birth records and whatnot. So we're not really sure And here they were talking and the history of this town, you know, this community belonged to And was one that where many of the jewish people were relocated to the pail But I think don't you think tom is that further research could probably be done on this line as well to find out at least Um, you know if he had other children and whatnot, it's hard to say What research could be done, I guess is the way to put it because there is always the possibility of records being able to be found But it's not necessarily likely because you know, it's not an issue With regards to birth records at least it's not as much of an issue that records Were destroyed as they were in other locations But for this time period that you know, they were lost or even not kept in the same format that we would hope for And so it's really difficult to say whether or not we could find them And then also there's all that migration and everything that's going on It's the establishment of the pails right after 40 years after he's born And so there's a lot of movement that isn't going to be accounted for no matter how hard So it really Maybe it could be traced further. Who knows Yeah And you know, so what are the options though for researchers? I mean if if you know, it's before that 1834 revision list What options do you have for trying to? Track down the families Well, I say, you know, there's all sorts of clues that can be picked up based off of context One thing that can always be done is looking into for instance the origin of the surname that can point to specific Meanings if you find two people in the same town who have the same surname chances are they're related It's just a question of how and you know, we're able to piece together some of that Thanks to the records that were pulled up on mark's father's side But you know with other sides, it's going to be more difficult So, you know, there's there's all sorts of different things But looking at specific lines of design The difficulty of it is that, you know, we have this These tightly knit communities and these communities where there's a lot of you know endogamy Where, you know, like genetic testing and way things like that that we might rely upon For solving these sorts of mysteries and other families aren't going to be as helpful Especially this far back, but you know, there's just all these overlapping lines that it's just It becomes very complicated Lots of lots of challenge for our researchers out there And you know, this is just a quick look at where the ancestors came from The same cluster of locations and there was Darben Eye, which was much further west than the others But otherwise they were fairly clumped together Except of course once they migrated to the family there in the United States Did we get your map in here, Elaine? Oh, no, it's not. Can you maybe you can go to discord and share screen at the end or something Yeah I like my little map. I was really excited about that. I just wrote a few Uh, I wrote. Yeah, it was all I did last minute. Oh Hey, nifty It got kind of busy once I added so many names But um, you could see at the top left. There's Darvani and Bada Bright is so knee pro or how do we say that that was a catarita sloth Like they changed the name at some point. So If you look at our wiki tree records, it's all good to say a catarita sloth But yeah, then the Feltman family is at the and the Alpern family too is at the tippy edge What's now the border of Romania in Ukraine, but at the time that they were born it was Romania Uh, yeah, and it's really fun to see this. Yeah And elaine you do a great job at this I know you've done this for some of our other families You know and done the the name overlays like this onto the maps, but it really gives you a good idea You know how far apart they were or were not from each other and We had so many interesting finds this time. It's always hard to pick interesting finds You know and what I would say is since we're focusing more on talking about the research and you know the process tonight Is if you really want to see all of the interesting finds definitely go to wiki tree dot com And look in the g2g which is our genealogists to genealogists for them And look at the highlights for mark cuban. We had 21. I believe distinct unique finds For you know, which were just interesting things that happened to either the direct ancestors or the cousins And you know take a look at the rest of what we found, but I did bring a few of them in here and this one was interesting it was not in a good way, but Mark's second great-grandfather motion frank tail was an innkeeper there in darbeni And he was in a list of residents who suffered from fire in october of 1882 And that actually resulted in 40 buildings being burnt down So there were 84 records of individuals who suffered in that fire and You know just like anywhere else sometimes it takes the tragedy to You know Cause a record to reflect that somebody was there where you might not see their name otherwise But just really sad that their that fire was so severe And here is the relationship. So this is a relationship actually by blood Now, you know, we're all related though really by blood or marriage and you think about your modern day families And you know the people you interact with and you talk to and you meet with and you know I know that I have cousins that are very important to me and you know, they kind of affect Also your view of the world sometimes and so cousins are are important to find also Now this was another one and this was his great-grandmother's sister-in-law So we have bella alpurn who had gone to visit her parents and those sellets in The russian empire in the summer of 1914 Now, of course two days after she arrived world war one started So she was forced to spend the next 21 months there And you know, she was fearful of traveling across the Atlantic during the time when the germany boats were sinking ships So I just you know, we talked about this a little bit in our wrap-up and Just how tragic that would be and how awful to be separated You know from her family for so long And you know, here is uh, how wiki tree will display the connections really great to see how you're connected to people And this one is a relation by marriage. So Where one of them is yellow and then it goes to the green color That's where the connection is no longer by blood. It was by marriage just for that very last step This one we had uh, was marx grandmothers per second has been mordecai. So max gurnes and The direct ancestor, of course, was the first husband, but this was mordecai And he'd only been in the country for two years when he was assaulted in 1905 by young men throwing black paper towels at his head and you know, I just I know kids are kids, but You know, really that uh, he must not have felt very welcome at that time And then years later in 1946 someone sneaked into his house. They stole his wallet containing 30 dollars And really the thing that was more valuable was they stole 10 pounds of sugar So, you know at that time it was a really valuable commodity because of the post war rationing Of sugar was still in effect and that was that was a better than gold there for a bit And here we can see that connection and once again, it's by blood connection until we get to that last step And it's by marriage Now on wiki tree, we're all cousins by blood or marriage So right now there are 27,875,864 cousins on wiki tree alive or not. So those are our connected people And then here are a few of the notable cousins And you know, we have fun finding this now during the challenge. We work out to seven degrees So we'll go up that's quite a ways seven steps out from our primary people And but sometimes you do find some really interesting cousins So we have here mark is related to abraham goodman man Now he's notable as an award-winning screenwriter with his most notable works Being judgment at nuremberg, which was initially a television drama He also created the series kojak starring telly savalas boy flashbacks to the past some of us will be aged ourselves Yes, we remember that The second one Is related by marriage to william robert schildl Now he was a fairly famous artist at first working in pittsburgh area Before moving to hollywood where he painted movie stars including ronald colman And then the third one Related by marriage to russell ross. He received many awards and honors and he's known for his work With our tear sclerosis theories, which you know result in some profound improvement with vascular biology and Just give a quick. Thank you again at the end here. There's thomas our captain The Challenge captain and then cilia mars. She was our mvp. So our most valuable participant We don't do this for the points, but the points are a fun way to keep track of You know how you're doing and get a little healthy competition going And then donna bowman had the most bounty points, which are awarded for special discoveries And then just to thank you again to for us Who provided some really immeasurable insistence during the challenge You know, we couldn't do it without everybody That participated though. So, you know a big thank you to all of the rest of our researchers So, you know now that we're done with that. Do you guys have any tips For others trying to research ancestors from these locations? Yeah, one thing that was mentioned was the different spellings of the names Have to remember that the original spelling was in russian or in yiddish And all the records are either in russian yiddish or hebrew and so these Anglicized names are simply the transliteration that Uh Whoever was indexing the record decided to spell the name English spelling really Doesn't matter Which is so do you know? If I It's it's too bad that jewish gen doesn't allow searches by Hebrew or yiddish like you can do it in russian But as far as I can tell you can't do it in hebrew or yiddish But I guess if all that if so many of the indexes are only written out of the romanized letter and the And the researchers the indexers aren't putting it in all the different languages that they saw it Maybe that's why maybe it's left to right thing. I mean right to left I don't know I believe almost all the jewish gen indexes are in english Yeah So golly, why can't they just put both on I wonder Well, they do have the sound x Uh, because the main thing is you're just trying to catch The sound of the name anyway Yeah and jewish gen is I believe based in new york. It's primarily catering to american genealogists, which is understandable We can't expect every genealogist to have a grasp of all the different languages involved in this research But it would be very useful If they offered it in all of the relevant languages Personally, I mean that's part of the reason why I do my best to record all the information I find in the original language as accurately as possible because you know, it's You aren't going to get those spelling variations in the yiddish It's every record is going to have the same thing unless it's a different form of the name it's um Makes life a lot easier all things considered fun. Yeah, it's just too bad. You can't search using those names like on jewish gen or whatever um Maybe someday. Yeah something there's always room for improvement. Maybe they're here taking notes Be nice If you're listening The other fun we had all week, I do think their their sound x is pretty good though What was that louis go ahead louis The the other fun we had we all have this week were jewish headstones. Yes, and there were a lot of different headstones posted uh for interpretation And it's through the headstones. We found many of the connections and verified Parent child or father child or uh that a person might have been a cousin etc And that was really one of the most interesting parts to me Up the week Yeah, that's one of the really I think Unique aspects of jewish research in general is that you know Occasionally you'll find gravestones for other groups of people where it will say mention other relatives names or towns or things like that But it it's not as widespread anywhere else here. We can get some incredibly You know, sometimes it's more than even just the parent's name. Sometimes it was both parents. Sometimes it'll list town sometimes it'll List, you know specific lineage lineage. It's an incredibly useful resource that Isn't always It's not available to us in other areas of research and it's really quite wonderful And it seems like the you know, the tombstones that were looked at for this challenge were actually nicely legible so Where you know, I know some of our researchers In translating Which is why we have live discord you can go in and go hey, can somebody tell me what this tombstone says But you know, but the stone itself the stones themselves were in good shape Now speaking of legibility. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to go on find a grave and request a new photo of a grave because a person who took a photo Did not know that that is the thing they should be focusing on That annoys me to no end every time I have to do that Yeah, clear photos are worth their weight in gold Yes, they are Yeah, I've done a lot of uh tombstone photographs and I'm really careful about not putting shadows or you know Taking a second picture if another angle will show something better But I have seen people that take like a picture of six stones And then they just clip each stone out of it so that they're not taking as many pictures And you just don't get the clarity when you do that you need, you know, especially what you guys are dealing with doing these translations You need every nuance of the letters You can't you know have somebody that stood off to the side of it and kind of took a side shot at that that tombstone It's just a lot harder to to read Yeah One really nifty thing I found just yesterday was um steve morse.com or.org. I forget who does the Census matching. There's also a russian print and cursive feature Yes, and so I yeah, so I don't I I know a few letters, but not a whole lot So I was able to use that to to some degree Especially with shorter words, but yeah that and you can click different fonts like bold and italic and whatever And it'll tell you what it's supposed to look like Yeah, it was pretty exciting And I don't I don't know what steve morse is up to these days in general But he really is a giant in terms of this area of research him and beider because you know the sound decks the whole Uh program that exists in order to match those different variations of the surname was developed by steve morse in conjunction with alexander beider And that's just an incredible resource that we use constantly Well, I think unless we have something else we'll go ahead and wrap this up. We're hitting our hour mark Um, I want to thank you guys for for joining us. Thomas. Thank you for captaining this week And louis and lame we always is such a pleasure when you jump in and you join us on a challenge so we did especially uh Need your presence this week though so that you know, we had a nice really nice selection of jewish experts And you know, you guys watch we've only got one more challenge left for the year And mark if you're watching this right now get a hold of boris if you have any questions And we'll help you get a hold of boris and so, you know, thank you wiki treers and we'll see you in the next one