INTRODUCTION

My name is Andrew Ira Sverdlove. I live at 1 Franklin Ave, Apt. 3-F; White Plains, New York 10601-3808). Cell Telephone 917.863.4559. e-mail

This is a work in process.

YOUR INPUT TO ENHANCE, CORRECT, OR UPDATE INFORMATION

1. Origin of the name Sverdlov.
Two theories. Viking and Toponym(Excerpts from A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire by Alexander Beider. Avotaynu, 1993)

2. What life was like in Russia-Poland (White Russia) in 1850.
A Story - Excepts from Yesterday, A Memoir of a Russian Jewish Family by Miriam Shomer Zunser and How I Wrote My Songs by Eliakum Zunser(1840-1913). Harper and Row, 1978

3. Laws - Excerpts from The Jew in the Modern World, A Documentary History

     ALEXANDER I
     Statutes Concerning the Organization of Jews
     (December 9, 1804)

     NICHOLAS I
     Statutes Regarding the Military Service of Jews
     (August 26, 1827)

     ALEXANDER III
     The May Laws
     (May 3, 1882)

4. A HISTORY OF RUSSIAN ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES (XVIII - XX centuries). (by) Irina Merzliakova, Ph. D. Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow and Alexei Karimov, Ph.D., Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Excerpted from web site.

Stage of stability (1775 - 1917). In1775 Catherine the Great among other reforms introduced the reform ofadministrative division and boundaries. This reform summarized the long periodof changes. The surveyors of late XVIII - early XIX centuries were to adjustboundary lines in accordance with the lines of rivers and lakes, and to"round" the wedged borders. From one hand, it was the adaptation ofthe conceptual political models to the variety of nature and historic life,from the other - the adjustment and clarification of the very models ofgovernance and regional administration. At that time the administrativeboundaries really became to mean something practical. It was also an attempt todivide the country to the regions with equal population. 41 guberniawere introduced each consisting of uezd and volost'. Thisadministrative division the same as the whole procedure of territorialgoverning in general remained untouched until 1917. During the next 130 yearsonly a few new gubernia had been founded.

6. Go to Downloads  or click on Family Group Record - pbs kbyu  print and mail as many FGS as you can for each family branch or email the information; or click on Pedigree Chart - pbs kbyu

If you do not have Acrobat reader go to http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

7. Where does this information come from? I started collecting my Denburg family trees in the early 1950's. This is my maternal grandmother's side of my family. My Tante Reizel (great-aunt Rose) was my grandmother figure. I started computer program use in the 1980's. On-and-off over the years I have gather information from telephone books, city, state, and federal archives, research libraries. A major source was and continues to be, the archives of the Family History Library, research center's of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon's). I researched government archives in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia; I have been to the Library of Congress, National Library, Philadelphia Free Library, New York Public Library and various National Archives regional offices. NARA Waltham, MA for the St. Albans Canadian border crossing records. Also Pittsfield, MA, Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

In 2003 I computerized "Teller Family in America - 100 Years". I started with records from Jane Simon's Aunt Evelyn Kornberg and used records from Philadelphia Free Library and the Family History Library. I added the immediate family. I was contacted by 95-year-old Lucile Fleisher Bernstein (Wyncote, Pennsylvania) and added research she and her daughter had done on all the branches of her family. That is all under my Teller data.

In 2005 I started the web site because I am digitizing the family trees and records of descendants from Shchedrin (near Bobruisk, Belarus). These are handwritten family trees collected at gathering in Pittsburgh and Florida in the '70's and '80's organized by Harry L. Katz. Starting with these handwritten family trees I search the genealogy web sites for Census, telephone directories, immigration records, and similar public records. I have a number of errors. The wrong Social Security Death Index or a Census records for a similarly named person, a mistake in spelling, etc. For these I apologize.

The most important contribution is from people who are alive and can share the family tree and stories. Since there is nothing collected about people's financial affairs, there is no interest from those who want to steal a credit card, bank account, etc.

The part of our heritage that fascinates me most are the stories of the generation that left Europe and started a new life elsewhere. My favorite web page is the stories.

I hope you will contact me and update and correct the family tree and perhaps send along the story you like. If you give me all sides of the tree I will include it.

I went to the Bar Mitzvah of my childhood friends' grandson in October 2005. He had to do a family tree for a school project. With my help we produced a tree going back five generations!

Why? My obsession/hobby may be rooted in a desire to preserve our heritage; the wanderings, sometimes thrown out, sometimes for economic reasons. The stories, sometimes told, often implied by life events.

We used to have extended and large families. Now we are often small, and disbursed. This genealogy allows someone to follow a family line and see how we have changed from large families in one town to small families scattered around the county and even the world.

I became interested in my family from my maternal grandmother's sister (Tante Reizel Weiner nee' Denburg). I would bicycle to her two-family home on Summit Avenue in Mt. Vernon, New York from Pennington School, my Elementary School. I would delight in her fine, home-made pastries, and ask her to tell me stories about growing up in Shchedrin, a shtetl in today's Belarus. It was unique in that the Jewish inhabitants owned. That was 1950 and I was 10-years-old. Over the years I asked cousins about other cousins; Aunts about siblings. Pretty soon, it gets like a gigantic jog-saw puzzle. At first, my records were hand-written box charts. I stopped for a little over 10-years then retired. I am currently working on that shtet and ALL it's descendants. Of course, that will never happen 100%, but I have dozen's of family names from the original 300 settlers in the 1840's and 1850's. Since most clans intermarried, there are repetitive surnames in everyone's genealogy. Enough of that database.My father, Harry (Hirsch) was born in Lepel'. When his father (Louis (Nachum Leyb) was in the Russian army he meet and befriended the brother of his future wife, Sonya DAVIDSON. Dad grew up in Montreal and loved meeting his cousins. Perhaps because Sonya, his mother, died so young (she was only 38-years-old), dad was well acquainted with many cousins. My father emigrated to Brooklyn, New York at 18. I, during my youth, was introduced to these dozens of cousins in New York, Montreal, and Florida.

 Polish Jews in Buffalo

      Excerpts from
     Second Looks: A Pictorial History of Buffalo and Erie County, by Scott Eberle and Joseph A. Grande. Donning Co., 1993, p. 85

     The census of 1850 lists only fifty people born in Poland, and these were not the Roman Catholic peasants we most often think of as Polish immigrants, but Yiddish-speaking Jews who fled persecution and discrimination in the Russian-Polish pale of control. Czar Nicholas I broke his covenant not to draft Jews into the Russian army before they were granted civil rights, and this prompted others to leave.

     After 1830 the Niagara Frontier settled rapidly. The population of Buffalo, for instance, doubled, doubled, and then doubled again in the first three decades after it was incorporated. The county experienced growth that was only slightly less dramatic.

     The many new households demanded all the little useful utensils, "Yankee notions," and modest fineries that elevated material life in a frontier and boom town. The invention of the department store was decades off, so peddlers supplied these needs. Many of the peddlers were Jews.

     With a small investment in goods, and a sturdy pair of shoes, (later, perhaps, a wagon) peddlers on the Niagara Frontier looked forward to quick returns. However profitable, this life was not easy. It required a great deal of time away from home.

     Jewish peddlers endured anti-Semitism that denied them credit (a special disadvantage to peddlers). Nevertheless Jewish immigrants from Poland prospered in this occupation. Over time they established a stable community.

 Some genealogical links

Web sites

• The Diaspora Museum (Beit haTefutsot), Tel-Aviv
  
• The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC
  
• Yad Vashem. The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem
  
• Jewish Genealogical Society (Jewish-Gen)
  
• Israel Genealogical Society
  
• Canadian Institute for Jewish Research
  
• Jewish Web Index ("...you will find that each LINK provides you easy, one-click accessibility by Country and/or by specific Subject..."
  
• Family History Library Catalog,
  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City Utah
  
• Stories from Holocaust Survivors

Archives

• New York City Municipal Archives
  

Contents of this website Copyright © 2004-2008 by Andrew I. Sverdlove. Reproduction for commercial purposes prohibited. Reproduction for non-commercial purposes permitted, provided acknowledgement is given to researcher(s).