Family Trees Project
Ancestor Trees of Jewish Lyakhovichi
by Deborah Glassman, copyright 2008
This page is a first-look at some of the genealogies that can be drawn from the Lyakhovichi records. The pages in this first offering have been researched and compiled by me in my role as webmaster of the Lyakhovichi shtetl site. Each page has its own annotations citing sources.. This is a wonderful chance for you to join us in our efforts. Many of you have already made family trees. Share the ones with source citations and we will edit them to end in the first generation after emigration or seventy years ago whichever date was earlier.
But don't stop there! Post your research on JewishGen's Family Tree of the Jewish People. We found Bernie Kouchel's contribution to Lyakhovichi's Brody families there. Tina Levine has determined that the best way to learn more is to share more and you can see her Kirschner family research there as well. Let's see if Lyakhovichi researchers can knock the socks off our fellow researchers with a combined effort to put 100 new Lyakhovichi genealogies on the Family Tree of the Jewish People.! If you put yours there, I will index the Lyakhovichi names that appear on it, so please share the info with me as well.
Indexing these Family Trees
All of the names on these pages are now found in the All Lyakhovichi Name Index tab in Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog. Remember we want to add an index to the Lechovicher part of any family tree you are currently posting anywhere!
Family Trees of Lyakhovichi
by Deborah Glassman, copyright 2008
On each of these pictures, click on the image itself, to go to a larger chart. The smaller image is an abbreviated pedigree, the larger an ancestor chart.
Pilnik and Malovitsky
Paternal Ancestors of my grandmother Rose Pilnick Kleiman. This chart begins with a Mordechai Malovitsky born 1743, who is a cousin to the great and famous Rabbi Mordechai of Lyakhovichi aka Mordechai Malowitsky. They and two other cousins with the name were all born in a five year period, suggesting that a great-grandfather by that name preceded all of them!
Aronchik
Leizer Aronevich had no surname in the 1784 GDL Poll Tax. It was Leizer's son Aron who in 1834 was the first known member to use the family surname, having used Aronevich in 1819. Eleanor Newland has done extensive work on tracing the descendants of Moshe and Golda (Razouska) Aronchik's.
Kirschner
In 1784 Nathan "Nosel" Yankelovich was a kusznierz, that is a furrier. In 1819 the surname was Kushner, in 1834 it changed to Kirschner. All of the information on the last few generations shown (and many descendants not included) is the product of the work of Tina Levine, a diligent researcher of the descendants of David Kirshner/Cohen of Lyakhovichi. She would be interested in hearing from any branch of this family!
Nathanson-Palevsky
The great Lechovicher Rabbi - Rabbi Moses Aron Palier of Kobrin (c.1784-1851/1858) lived and studied in the homes of the Holy Elder, Rabbi Mordechai of Lechowitz (1740-1810) and Mordechai's son Rabbi Noah (1770s-1832). In the 1816 Revision List, Moshe Aron son of Shmuel Leizer is among the dozens of people falsely reported as having died since the previous Revision in 1811 (most reappeared with a different surname in the 1819 Revision List). Rabbi Moshe Aron Palier eventually moved to Kobrin but his older children had married in Lyakhovichi and eventually he had descendants in both places. The Lechovicher settlement in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island included the descendants of Rabbi Moses of Kobrin's son-in-law Srol Palier of Lyakhovichi! The ramified descendants of Moses of Kobrin carrying the surname Palevsky, are the subject of a DNA study. My compliments to Elise Friedman who has been tracing her Palevsky relatives including those from Lyakhovichi and created that site. Contributors to our site who also contribute there include : Harriette Gerson and Michael Paley and all of these people would like to hear from you if you are working on Palefsky lines. The tree that Deborah Glassman included above, has significant differences from the tree related to the Nathanson family on that referenced site and the Lyakhovichi webmaster is solely responsible for the research and conclusions that produced such differences.
Levy-Litovsky-Ratner
The immigrant generation of this family included most of the children of Shimshon Ber Lew and his wife Dvosha Ratner. It also swept up the widowed Dvosha (Ratner) Lev in her sixties and she lived another thirty years in NYC surrounded by children, grandchildren, and her Ratner and Litovsky nieces and nephews. The surname changed from Lyakhovichi's form of Lew (pronounced Lev) to the American "Levy '' and intra-marriages between in-law branches of the family were encouraged. Lechovicher communities in Nova Scotia, Montreal, New York City, and in US states as far away as Kentucky, housed Levys and Litovskys and old Lyakhovichi surnames were joined in marriages in all of those communities among their kinsmen. The second generation listed on this chart werechart, were all elder, respected, members of the community leadership in the tax lists and government petitions of Lyakhovichi in the 1880s. This family is being actively researched by various descendants including: Harold Levy, Mark Horn, various members of the Leith (ne Litovsky) family and members of the Gavzy families. Share what you know with them and with all of us and widen our knowledge base!
Boruda, Brevda, Brody
In 1805 Aron b. Lemel Boruda, with children, and son-in-laws, registered to operate a tavern and become townsmen of Lyakhovichi. They used the surname Brevda in Revision Lists 1816-1850. We don’t know their relation to other Brevdas contemporary to Aron b Lemel. Bernie Kouchel documented the family from Reuven and Ethel (Malowitsky) Brody until today, in a tree he has shared on Jewish Gen’s Family Tree of the Jewish People. He also shared his info on the youngest immigrant generation with the webmaster (differences are the webmaster's responsibility). Match Bernie's example of generosity and post your trees there too, so we can find those working on Lyakhovichi families.
Gavza
Edward Porter of Moscow has created this beautiful Gavza family tree. He is the son of Henrietta Gavza. All four of his great-grandparents can be traced for a number of additional generations in Lyakhovichi, his great-grandfather Aron Lemke Gavza is the same Aron Lemke Gavza son of Moshe and Daykha in the next tree by Maris Gavzy Rabolini.
Gavza
Maris Gavzy Rabolini supplied detailed family trees of several branches of the Gavza family lineages to the webmaster. She diligently gathered details on all of them while hoping that eventually she would learn how her great-grandfather Pinchus Gavzy connected to the rest of the family. She had known that he was raised in the household of a relative Aron Lemkes Gavzy but not what their connection was or why he should be part of that household. The 1874 List of Males and the 1858-1884 Revision List Supplements (Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog) finally lets the webmaster show her how her great-grandfather's family fit with the branch of the Gavzys headed by Aron Lemke Gavza. Aron Lemke's mother Daykha Brevda Gavza, a key figure in Lyakhovichi life for generations, had raised her husband's orphaned young cousin Azriel b Yehiel and then Azriel's son Pinchas, as well. Maris's trees go down to the youngest in the family, we followed to the emigrant generation in Maris's family and also showed the connection to Genya Gavzy, the mother of Edward Porter in the chart adjacent.
Adukhovsky
Dave Love is researching his Adukhovsky family which changed their name to Adukoff in the US. His great-great-grandfather Mordechai Meir Adukoff came here as an elderly man in 1921 and is buried in the Pinsk society's graves in a New York City cemetery. He had not known of a Lyakhovichi connection but the name which was found in Lyakhovichi, was so unusual that we thought it worth comparing data. We have since found in the records of the 1874 List of Males and the 1858-1884 Revision List Supplements (Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog) the proof of his family's removal to Pinsk from Lyakhovichi. Lyakhovichi's published records from the Revision Lists, back to the 1784 Grand Duchy of Lithuania Poll Tax, are what allows us to follow this family for more than 200 years. And it may have one of the older traceable mother-daughter connections as this surname traveled in Dave's branch of the family through sons-in-laws.
Time Constraints on this update leave us with the following genealogies not yet uploaded.
- Budovlya
- Rabinowitz
- Slonimsky
- Chait
For other families - If you have already done such work and would like to share info on the generations up to US immigration, I can edit them for sharing here, under your name.
