Yesterday, I indulged myself with research into my own family. I didn’t start with anything particular in mind. I thought I would look at JRI-Poland and see if there was anything new I could find of interest. I was looking in the Galicia province of the Austrian Empire – specifically the part that became Poland after WWI. My father’s maternal family came from what was Stanislau, Stanisławów, Galicia, Austrian Empire and is now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. Every once in a while I find new information about them which sends me back to examine records I’ve already looked at and ignored because there was no previously known connection. Just to be clear, I re-examine databases and records constantly.

My 3x great-grandparents were Markus Shmiel Braunstein and Libe Zweifler. They had at least children: Rechel born in 1839, Sheindel (my 2x great-grandmother) born in 1846, and Itamar Sumer born about 1850. Obviously there must have been other children, but I haven’t found them yet. Itamar was generally called Sumer or Simon. He married a cousin, Sheindel Devorah Zweifler. It’s particularly confusing because due to the restrictive and complex laws about marriage registration, Sumer wound up using the surname Braunstein sometimes, and Zweifler at others. His father-in-law was a Zweifler and his mother-in-law was a Haller, and the 3 surnames – Zweifler, Braunstein, Haller have to be thrown into the mix whenever looking at the records.

While I was surfing the indexes, I came across something intriguing. I knew Sumer and Sheindel’s daughter Breina wound up in the U.S. and I knew she was married to someone whose surname was Peckerman. But I found a record that was very curious. It was a 1903 marriage record for a Brane Braunstein and a Chaim Mortko Lerchenfeld.

It was late in the afternoon on a Friday but I was hoping that one of my intrepid team members at AncestryProGenealogists who knew Polish was still working and had time to help. Sure enough, Marek Koblanski, a research manager on my team jumped right in. The translation of entry 95 reads:

Married on 6 December 1903 in Stanisławów
Chaim Mortko, 2 given names, Lerchenfeld, bachelor, 42 years and 7 months old, born and residing in Stanisławów, merchant, son of Schloma and Keita Lerchenfeld, allegedly married couple residing in Stanisławów, and
Brane Braunstein correct Zweifler, allegedly 32 years old, single, allegedly born in Stanisławów, residing in here, daughter of Sumer Braunstein and Scheindla Zweifler, residing in Stanisławów
Present Rabbi: Alter Nebenzahl, the deputy Rabbi in Stanisławów
Witnesses: Gerson Kriegel, merchant in Stanisławów, and Israel Rosenkranz, privatizing in Stanisławów
Remarks:

1. The groom’s birth record
2. Conscription extract in the Magistrate of Stanisławów of 17/7 1903 No. 3020/903
   for the bride
3. Recommendation of the local government of 17/9 1903 No. 26981 to perform this marriage without the bride’s birth record
4. The certificate of banns in Stanisławów on 14, 21 and 28 November 1903.

This was my Breine! What happened to her? What happened to him? In the U.S. I discovered that in 1921 she married Wolf Schwind under the surname Lerchenfeld and she was a widow. She was widowed again in July 1934 and in September 1935 she married for the last time to Nathan Peckerman. Wolf and Nathan were both widowers when they married Breine who became Bertha in the U.S.

Then, knowing when she arrived in the U.S. she probably was on the manifest under Lerchenfeld not Zweifler or Braunstein which were the names I previously searched for her under. I found that she left from Le Havre, France on 3 December 1920 and arrived in New York on 17 December 1920.

Now I had significant questions. My paternal grandmother, Blima Rose Grass arrived in the U.S. in December 1920 and left from Le Havre. Were they on the same ship? I looked at my grandmother’s manifest and found she left France on 28 November 1920 and arrived 7 December 1920. I knew her sisters Clara and Fanny left a few days earlier with some other relatives. They left from Rotterdam on 23 November 1920 and arrived in New York on 4 December 1920. My great-grandfather, Zelig Grass, Blima, Clara, and Fanny’s father died in Europe right after his daughters landed – he died on 12 December 1920 in what was by then Stanisławów, Poland.

The questions are about why so many in the family left in such a short period of time. Many of My great-grandmother Chana Jetta Zweifler Kreisler’s siblings left Europe long before 1920. They however left more than a decade earlier. What happened? Why 1920? Why did they leave over those couple of weeks?

Oh, the questions that may never be answered. The questions we didn’t know to ask.