EURO-JEWISH-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [EURO-JEWISH-L] Success story in finding out more about living members of your family trees.
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 13:49:27 EST

Dear Genners

A few weeks ago I wrote on this digest that my husband had bought me a CD.
Since then, I have been entering into this family tree on CD, the huge amount
of data I had accumulated over the years for 6 different grandparents (four of
mine and two of my husbands) in six separate files. I have always felt that
it was important to get down all the trees from the time the immigrant arrived
in England/USA/Canada to the present day first whilst there were enough people
living to ask questions and bring it down to the present day. Then, I felt,
that would be the time to go back into Europe. For us, mainly Poland and
Lithuania.

Wherever I found myself short of information, I have been printing out a
particular part of the main family tree and sending it to someone on that tree
asking them to fill in the missing parts and bring it down to the present day,
with dates of births and deaths, marriages, and names that were missing. Of
course I send a covering letter explaining what I want them to complete, a
letter I keep on my word processor. So easy!! In all, in four weeks I have
sent 14 of these to different people on only two of my family trees and have
had them all returned with complete success and am then able to quickly fill-
in missing details that I would not have been able to obtain had a telephoned
these people as most people are not interested in genealogy and whilst you are
fully acquainted with the work you are doing on these family trees - they are
not. They get confused and cannot be bothered talking to you any more, in the
main.

This way however, they see it down on paper and suddenly Hey! Presto it means
more to them and they don't get frustrated and nasty because they feel at a
disadvantage. They become extremely co-operative, and sometimes somewhat
interested. I log all the part-family trees I send out so that I can chase
them up if necessary, but in fact, I have not needed to do so.

I wonder a) if anyone else has done this before and what results they got and
b) if anyone wants to copy my method (and I would advise all Genners needing
this kind of further information to try) I would be interested to hear how
they go on.

Wishing anyone who tries it as much success as that which I am experiencing!!

Rica B Goldberg
Manchester, England

Researching:

KAMINSKY from Yanova near Kovna, Lithuania: DIAMOND (Probably DIMONT or
similar from Kovno, Lithuania: Chaim ESTRY - a glazier from Poland: GOLDBERG
possibly Schelenger/Shlesinger/Shloozitel: COHEN from Poland!!!!! BERLINSKY
from ???????

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