Who Was David Feinberg's Father (Not So Obvious)

For all the great discoveries since I began submitting my spit to the genetic matchmakers, something has been conspicuously missing.

Feinbergs.

Yes, I found many fellow descendants of my great-grandfather David Cecil Feinberg (1871-1934), including many I never met. My goal, however, was to confirm that his brothers and cousins were the people I thought they were. That would be the Feinbergs of Zapyškis in the vicinity of Kaunas, Lithuania.

Their descendants never turned up on my DNA match list. The reason became clear when 23andMe declared me kohen. By tradition, that means I am a father-to-son-to-son descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses and founder of a dynasty of temple high priests. In temple times as in Orthodox synagogues today, kohens recite a special priestly blessing in front of the entire congregation.

The historical veracity of Moses and Aaron may be questioned, but kohen identity is real. Kohen fathers have passed down that identity, and the ritual responsibilities that go with it, to their sons for thousands of years.  In the process, they have passed along what really is their very own mutation of the Y-chromosome.

For the vast majority of Jewish men who are not kohen, some could be Levi, meaning they are descended from patriarch Jacob's son Levi. In other words, they belong to the Tribe of Levi, one of the original twelve tribes and one of only two believed to have survived after Assyria destroyed one of the Hebrew kingdoms in the 8th Century BCE (before the common era). The Levites assisted the kohens in the Temple, and they also play a support role in Orthodox services.

Everyone else belongs to the third category, Yisrael, or Israel. Mordechai Feinberg of Zapyškis was Yisrael. We know this because the Hebrew inscription on David's tombstone does not say "Mordechai ha-kohen" or "Mordechai ha-levi." 

David inherited the Yisrael identity from Mordechai, but someone else gave him his kohen Y-chromosome, an inheritance he probably never knew of. Ninety years after David's death, could we ever know the identity of David's genetic father?

If we do, it is thanks to another David Cecil Feinberg (1943-2024) and to his daughter Amy, who pushed him to send his saliva to Ancestry DNA. Thanks also go to Ancestry itself, for providing a new premium feature within the past year.

When you see someone on your list of "DNA Relatives," as 23andMe calls them, you usually have no idea how that person is related. To help figure that out, you can look at a list people who are "related" to both of you. For instance, if I see that all the people I know on our "shared matches" list are from my father's side, the person I am investigating is also on my father's side.

The trouble is, Basic Ancestry does not tell you how closely shared matches are to that other person. They might share as little as 20 centimorgans (cM). Without trying to explain what that means, trust me that for Jews and other inbred populations, 20 cM is a drop in the bloody bucket. Ancestry's shared matches are rather meaningless unless you pay extra for the feature that tells you the strength of each match (in centimorgans).

When I paid up, I saw that the late David Cecil Feinberg, my late father's first cousin, has a 206 cM match with one Ilene Dunn, who was born in 1934. Based on my own sampling of matches with known cousins, 206 cM with someone of similar age predicts a relation of second cousin once removed or second half-cousin. Either way, the connection would be through grandparents or great-grandparents. I should be able to figure this out.

My own match with Ilene was weak, but two other Feinberg cousins (from the Sam Feinberg and Carrie Pell branches) had strong enough matches that I was confident Ilene was related through the elder David or his second wife Jennie. Since Ilene had no recent ancestors from the region where Jennie was from, it had to be through David.

Besides comparing ancestral regions, I had to see if any ancestral surnames lined up. None did, telling me the connection had to be through the ancestor whose surname was yet to be determined, Old David's birth father. 

Ilene's paternal grandparents were from northeast of Kiev, but her maternal grandparents were from Lida, Belarus, located close to the Lithuanian border and a reasonable distance to Zapyškis. An online photograph of those grandparents' tombstone in a Detroit-area cemetery brought my search to a satisfactory conclusion. 

The tombstone includes the traditional Hebrew inscriptions. Samuel Zalman Slomovitz's father was "Tzvi Hirsch." The father of Mollie Slomovitz (née Berlovich) was "Binyamin ha-kohen[!]." 

From this auspicious evidence it can be reasonably assumed that all three of us David Feinbergs inherited our special, priestly Y-chromosome from Binyamin Berlovich, born 1834, son of Nochim and Bluma (née Aaron), born 1807 and 1808.

This will remain my assumption unless even stronger countervailing evidence emerges. In the meantime, one wonders how it happened that Binyamin from Lida, 160 km southeast of Kaunas, conceived a child with the young widow Chaya Goldring from Šakiai, 60 km west of Kaunas.

We know there were Berloviches in the Kaunas area. They were kohens, so they were probably relatives that Binyamin might visit. Maybe Chaya also had a connection to the Kaunas area. Maybe they had a short-lived marriage. Maybe they had an affair. 

Whatever the circumstances, we know the aftermath. Chaya married Mordechai Feinberg to be the father of her son Moshe-Shmuel Goldring and her newborn baby David. Moshe-Shmuel was old enough to know Mordechai was his stepfather. David did not have to know.

Meanwhile, within a year before or after David's birth, Binyamin's wife in Lida gave birth to a daughter, Ilene Dunn's great-aunt Celia. Was Binyamin trying to get away with having two families at once? Such a scandal is not unheard of.

Thirty years later, David moved his family from Chicago to Des Moines. Just around the corner lived  William Berlovich, a kohen. His wife's grandmother, Feiga Ginsberg Markson, a cousin of my Ginsberg ancestors, was from Zapyškis. From 1893-1904 he worked for another Ginsberg relative, furniture merchant Kassel Ginsberg.

The Ginsberg aspect of David's neighbors was equally if not more important than the Berlovich aspect. Either family may have played a role in his decision to move to Des Moines. To understand David's connection to the Ginsbergs, please read my blogpost from December 2021.

As genetic relatives of Binyamin Berlovich, we should know that Ilene's uncle Philip Slomovitz (1896-1993) was the founder and, for over forty years, editor of the Detroit Jewish News. His son Carmi Malachi Slomovitz (1933-2012) was the newspaper's owner and manager.

As for the Berloviches of Des Moines, the most notable story is that of William and Sarah's son Dewey (1893-1972). By the late 1920s, Dewey was so successful that he built one of the finest mansions in Des Moines, at 2200 Chautauqua Parkway. One issue of the Des Moines Sunday Register featured the architect's rendition at the top of the front page. (See my photo below.)

Dewey and his wife Edna moved into their three thousand square foot Tutor Revival house on a two-acre lot in 1930, but they had to sell after just two years as Dewey fended off a series of criminal accusations. He avoided jail until 1935, when he gunned down a man inside his downtown night-club, the Sportsman Garden.  It took only a few weeks for a court to sentence him for life at a different big house, the Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison.

The 1936, Joe and Sarah (Pidgeon) Feintech became the fourth owners of the house that Dewey built. Sarah's brother Dave Pidgeon lived two doors to the south. (Sarah and Dave were niece and nephew of Great-Grandma Jennie Feinberg.) 

In 1944, Joe and Sarah made history. They defied a neighborhood "covenant" and sold their house to a Black couple. After a year in court, the sale went through. Archie and Audra Alexander lived in the house the rest of their lives, except for 1954 and 1955 when Archie was President Eisenhower's appointed Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Governor Robert Blue commuted Dewey's sentence in 1948 and he was set free on parole in 1950. Dewey and Edna lived at separate addresses at least through 1960, but they are buried in separate but adjacent plots at Laurel Hill Cemetery. His tombstone has a Star of David, and her tombstone has a cross.

Known as the Berlovich-Alexander House, the moniker overlooks the Joe and Sarah Feintech's contribution to breaking the color barrier.

Grandpa Maurice's Poor Sisters

Regarding the family of my grandmother Esther Rubinson Marcovis: One of the biggest remaining mysteries has been the fate of her paternal aunts and uncle.

Esther's father Maurice (Moshe Leyb) immigrated to Iowa with his father Rubin in 1891. Initially, they landed in the town of What Cheer, the location of Rubin's sister Chaya Cohn. We can assume that because they used the surname Cohn on the boat that took them to New York. 

While Maurice remained in Iowa, moving to the nearby city of Oskaloosa, Rubin returned to the city of their disembarkation. Rubin Rubinson had made his home on the Lower East Side where his newly-arrived wife and three younger children joined him in 1896.

Those children included daughters Sarah, 19, and Rifky (Yiddish for "Rebecca"), 16, and their 8-year old brother Yossel (Joe). None of the three married. When they died, it is not clear if anyone notified Maurice's family. Maurice's oldest son Sam Robinson listed the three in his brief family history, but made no note of how or when they died. (When Sam wrote about his mother's siblings, he always included some death information.)

Last month (August 2024) I found "Sarah Rubinson" and "Rivka Rubinson" in records of the Hebrew Free Burial Association (HFBA). But how sure was it they were the relatives I was looking for? Although the 1896 ship manifest shows them to be born in 1877 and 1880, later census records showed them born as late as 1889 and 1890. The HFBA records are in line with the unlikely census data. At least the women would have been consistent about undercounting their age.

While one might expect the unmarried sisters to go by "Rubinson," their father Rubin had actually changed it to Robinson, as would most of Maurice's sons. Maybe the sisters used "Rubinson" out of habit.

My first attempt to verify their identity was to visit the graves. The HFBA buried Rivka Rubinson at Mount Richmond Cemetery on Staten Island on March 27, 1961. On July 8, 1966, they buried Sarah Rubinson in a plot a few steps away. The graves, I discovered, were chiseled solely in English; they lack the traditional Hebrew inscription that might say "daughter of Rubin." 

My second thought was to check the death certificates, which list parents if known to the informant. But while death certificates through 1948 are public, the New York City Department of Health makes getting later certificates difficult. An email to DOH requesting just the parental information received a prompt, terse refusal.

Luckily, I found an email for the HFBA, which responded the next day. Immediately after explaining that I was, presumably, a great-grandson of their brother, Dana Riess attached facsimiles of the burial applications. Rivka's application, submitted by Sarah, listed the parents as Rubin and Ida (Cohen). The application for Sarah's burial just said "Rubin."

Both Sarah and Rivka died at the Home and Hospital of the Daughters of Israel, located in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue at the corner of 108th Street.  Both were welfare recipients. The only compensation for burial expenses was provided by the Home: $150 in 1961 and $250 in 1966. 

The 1961 application gave Rifky's address as 225 Henry Street. The small, red-brick three-story building, which dates from 1901 and still stands, is three blocks from where the Rubin's family once lived on Madison Street.

Sarah's application did not show any address other than that of the Home. If we trust she was 19 when sailing from Europe in 1896, she was close to 89 at the end and must have received long-term care at the Home. 

Maurice's daughter-in-law Annette believed the sisters and their brother always lived on Henry Street in the Lower East Side, but this was the first evidence of that. Already in 1915 Rubin's family lived on East 103rd Street, in an area now known as Spanish Harlem.

In 1948, when Annette and her groom Norton Robinson were in town for their wedding, Uncle Joe Robinson brought them to Henry Street to meet Sarah and Rifky. Norton recalled that they still looked and dressed like they were from "another country." He did not think they spoke any English despite having lived in the US for 52 years. The sisters did not attend the wedding.

When Uncle Joe registered for the draft in 1917, he claimed his entire family was dependent on him, including a "sickly sister." Did he mean one sister or both sisters? A second cousin of theirs, who nonetheless knew the family well, told me the sisters were delusional, always believing Joe was in danger.

Thus, it would be no surprise if Maurice's sisters relied on a charity to cover their burial arrangements. Joe, according to that same cousin, survived the sisters. He might have asked Maurice or a nephew for assistance, but maybe he was too embarrassed. When the Rivka in question died on March 25, 1961, Maurice, debilitated by a stroke, was himself a nursing home resident in Des Moines. Grandma Esther was one year away from dying of cancer.

Meanwhile, the fate of Joseph Herbert Robinson remains even murkier. His last known residence, in 1950, was the Irvington Arms Rooming House on Riverside Drive and 95th St. on Manhattan's Upper West Side. When Rifky died on a Saturday, according to HFBA notes, "Joseph" pushed to delay the funeral by one day. This was a determined effort, as he made several telephone calls to the cemetery. Did he need extra time to arrange transportation for Sarah, coming from the Upper East Side to the middle of Staten Island?* 

The application for Sarah's burial in July 1966 made no mention of Joe. The second cousin, however, remembered a conversation with him in November 1966. Joe does not appear in records of the Hebrew Free Burial Association. Whenever he died, there was nobody to report the incident to the Social Security Administration, let alone to next of kin.

* A similar predicament clouded the burial plans for my grandfather Max Feinberg. My Aunt Betty pleaded with the Orthodox Rabbi Malcolm Berg to wait longer than the religiously-mandated three day maximum in case my father could not return in time from a business trip to Japan.

Who Was David Feinberg's First Wife? (Scandalous!)

The historical record of my great-grandfather David Cecil Feinberg begins with his 1894 marriage to Jennie Katz, his second wife, in Chicago. 

Missing from the record are the birth records of David's two children from his first marriage: Anna and my grandfather Max. Also missing is any evidence to help identify that first wife, the subject of this entry.

Grandpa Max had no interest in discussing his biological mother, whom he was too young to remember in the first place. His slightly older sister Anna Ginsberg might have been more helpful, but she died before I was even born. Filling out her death certificate, her son Joseph could not identify Anna's mother. Luckily there were others who could help me solve the mystery.

My late aunt Helena Rosenberg claimed to be named after that mysterious woman. As the eldest daughter, one would expect she would receive the name of her deceased grandmother.  Their Yiddish name was "Chayka" (hard "Ch" like "Chanukah"), a diminutive of the common Yiddish name "Chaya." For reasons unknown to me, immigrant Jews named "Chaya" often changed their names to "Helena" or "Helen."

Grandpa Max's sister Anna Ginsberg also named a daughter "Helen." On the 1925 Iowa State Census, which asks for names of parents, Anna identified her mother also as "Helen." (Max lived in Nebraska in 1925 and did not have to respond to that question.)

Their cousin Dora Pidgeon Wolfson told me Chaya's maiden name was Goldring. Her source was none other than her Aunt Jennie Katz Feinberg.

Combining these clues, we get Chaya Goldring as the maiden name of David Cecil Feinberg's first wife. She should not be confused with the David's mother, also named Chaya. That Chaya, whose maiden name was Epstein, was previously married to Lev Goldring. They were the parents of David's half-brother Moshe (Maurice) Goldring, born 1862 in Sakiai, Lithuania, and who later lived in Canada, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Ashkenazi Jewish marriages in the "Old Country" usually involved some sort of family connection.  Thus it appears David Feinberg's first marriage was to one of his mother's former Goldring in-laws. While there are many vital records for Goldrings in and near Sakiai, none have been found to show just how Chaya was related to Lev Goldring. So while I can identify Chaya Goldring as my natural great-grandmother, my family tree cannot go any further back with any certainty.

Nevertheless, there is a good chance Chaya's mother was named Chana-Bayla, which happens to be Anna Ginsberg's full Yiddish name, as inscribed on her monument at Des Moines Glendale Cemetery. Just as Max and Anna would later name daughters after their deceased mother, it was reasonable that Chaya named Anna for her own deceased mother. 

The family tree can now show a qualified "Chana-Bayla?" as my great-great grandmother. Is that all we will know about her?

Suppose I found a second Chana-Bayla who was born around the same time as Anna Ginsberg and who had some connection to my family. People with the same name born around the same time are often cousins, namesakes of the same grandparent. It so happens that "Chana-Bayla" is a relatively rare name combo, so if I did find another, it would be worth checking out.

I never did find a perfect candidate, but I did find a woman of interest.  Her legal name was Anna, which of course in Hebrew or Yiddish is "Chana." Growing up in Iowa, her nickname was "Billy." How could a Jewish girl be known as "Billy?"  Perhaps it was an Americanization of "Bayla," the other part of her traditional Yiddish "double-name" used by her Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents.

Anna "Billy" was born in 1900 when Anna Feinberg was age 9, so yes they could have been cousins. The trouble with this "Billy," however, is that she is not related on Grandpa Max's side, but on Grandma Mae's side. In fact, Anna "Billy" was Mae's sister.

Billy, Mae and the other children of Nathan and Lizzie Chapman had a maternal grandmother identified in Lizzie's transliterated birth record as Gena Pakalnishki, the second wife of Avram Ginsberg. "Gena" (hard "g") must have been a variation of "Chana," because on vital records, along with that same 1925 Iowa State Census, Lizzie and her Ginsberg siblings referred to her as "Anna."

If Gena (Chana) Pakalnishki was the mother of the Ginsberg family, how could she also be the mother of Chaya Goldring Feinberg? The answer, as always, boils down to remarriage. David Feinberg was married twice. His mother was married at least twice. Lizzie Chapman was born to her father's second wife. Who is to say her mother Chana-Bayla was not also previously married - to a Goldring.

This possibility would explain why Max Feinberg and his sister both married descendants of Gena Pakalnishki and Avram Ginsberg. Anna married their son Hyman Ginsberg in 1913. Max married the daughter of Lizzie Ginsberg Chapman in 1915. Earlier in this posting, I said it was a common practice in the "Old Country" to arrange marriages between connected families. Clearly, Iowa's immigrant Jews had not yet abandoned this tradition in the early 20th Century.

Often the connected families were so close as to make newlyweds out of cousins. There is no secret that two of Mae's Chapman cousins from Centerville married each other. However, no marriage record is found in Centerville for Max W. Chapman and Ruby Voxman. Perhaps they married in Missouri, where, unlike Iowa, cousin marriages were legal.

If my theory is correct, my grandparents, who would have had the same maternal grandmother, were also cousins. Because their mothers would have been half-sisters, they would technically have been "half-cousins."

By the same token, it would mean that Anna Feinberg had married her "half-uncle" Hyman Ginsberg.

Both the Feinberg-Chapman and Feinberg-Ginsberg weddings were in Iowa.

As I stated at the top, Grandpa Max spurned questions about his biological mother. He insisted that "Jennie was my only mother." Others told me he wanted to discourage the notion that he and Anna were separate from the nine children born by Jennie. 

Now we see another, more pressing reason for Max to bury the subject. Cousin and uncle-niece ("avuncular") marriages were illegal in Iowa.  If somehow it became known that such marriages had taken place, they could be declared illegitimate. What would that make the children of these marriages?

The stigma of "illegitimacy" is not so burdensome today, but it is possible that maintaining a secret about David Feinberg's first wife saved my father, his sisters and his Ginsberg cousins from tremendous grief.

Rubinson or Robinson? You Have No Idea!

In October 2020, I stumbled across some records of interest to my Rubinson-Robinson cousins, and perhaps my Rothschild cousins, too.

My great-grandparents Emma Rothschild and Maurice Rubinson's 1899 marriage was arranged in Oskaloosa, Iowa, 40 miles southeast of Des Moines. My great-uncle Sam Rubinson, himself a family historian, explained that bride and groom were both related to Oskaloosa resident Morris Gould. I realized long ago that Emma was a first cousin to Morris's wife Ida, who is buried in a plot in Chicago with Emma's brother Kalman and whose monument actually says she was a Rothschild. As for Maurice's connection to the Goulds, that was still a mystery.

Wandering around the Ancestry website this past Saturday, I stumbled on several family trees that included Morris Gould under his original name Moshe Gold. His father was Jacob Gold and his mother was Devorah Garber. Devorah's father was Benjamin. 

The name "Benjamin" gave me pause. Maurice's father's father was supposed to be Benjamin Rubinson. My great-uncle Ben Robinson must have been named after him. 

A few years ago I searched Benjamin Rubinson on the Jewish Genealogy site (JewishGen.org). The only good search result was Benjamin Rubinovich of Vilkiya, Lithuania, who lived from 1824 to 1914. He was old enough to be the father of Rubin Rubinson, Maurice's father. In addition, some of the other Rubinson's in Des Moines, said to be related, had documents in Ancestry that said they were from Vilkiya.

There was just one problem. Uncle Ben Robinson was born in 1910. How could he be named for his great-grandfather who was still alive? For that reason, I was willing to consider a Ben with a different last name.

I knew from experience that some families in the 1800s had alternate last names.  Some last names are known as "patronymics." They originally referred to a father's name. Think of "Johnson" or "Davidson" or even "Rubinson." Other last names were derived from a place name or an occupation. "Garber" means tanner in Yiddish, and it is related to the German word "Gerber."

The Golds and Garbers lived in Cekiske, Lithuania, which is maybe ten miles from Vilkija. JewishGen has many translated vital records from Cekiske, including Benjamin Garber's death record, which tells us he lived 1806-1889, and he was the son of Rubin.

Another record is for Taube Garber, who lived 1811-1898 and who was the widow of "Benyamin Rubinovich" whose "paternal name was Rubin." This was an unusual notation, as if someone reporting Taube's death felt it was important to emphasize it.

By the way, Uncle Sam did say that Maurice's grandmother was "Tobey." I felt I was getting close to a big discovery, and when I checked the Garber birth records for Cekiske, there it was: Moshe Leib, born June 28, 1871, to Rubin (son of Benjamin) and Chaya. This was a perfect match for Grandpa Maurice, whose Americanized middle name was Lewis.

But how do we know for certain that it's not some wild coincidence that these Garbers had identical first names to my Rubinsons? I looked at the other families in Cekiske descended from Benjamin and Taube, and then I looked at Ancestry. Maurice had a cousin Aaron "Gerber" who sailed to Philadelphia in 1913. When the immigration officer asked Aaron to name the relative he was going to meet, Aaron said, "my brother Simon Rubinson." Sure enough, there was a Philadelphian who identified himself to the draft board as "Simon Garber Rubinson."

Simon himself immigrated to New York City in 1904. Asked at Ellis Island to name his nearest US relative, Simon said: Morris "Rubinsohn" of 142 Madison Street. I immediately recognized that address as belonging to Morris and Emma from about 1903 to 1907.

There you have it. Grandpa Morris was born Moshe Garber in Cekiske, Lithuania, in 1871, and he really lived to be 92. His Aunt Devorah was actually Morris Gould's stepmother, but for all intents and purposes, Moshe Garber and Moshe Gold were two cousins growing up in the same small town.  When Garber smashed the glass under the wedding canopy in Oskaloosa, he was "Morrice L. Rubinson." Morris Gould was the witness.

I still think our Garbers were related to the Rubinovich families of Vilkija. All were descended from an original Rubin who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s. After reading up on the Jews of Cekiske, I think it is very possible that Benjamin and Taube moved there from Vilkija in the mid-1800s. When Benjamin was a child in the 1810s, surnames were not yet required, so he was simply Rubin's son.

Moshe Garber

1871-1963

Fanny Ginsberg of Lancashire

For Ashkenazi Jews, most DNA Matching tools are effective at identifying relatives near the top of the match list. Further down there are matches who are really not matches. They may have an insignificant amount of DNA from multiple ancestors which, combined, appears like a significant match. This can happen with all matching services, including Ancestry.

Sometimes the match includes DNA on the X chromosome, where matches rarely indicate a recent common ancestry. It may also include DNA that is so common to the ethnic group that again it does not signify an actual close relation. Ancestry avoids these errors, which is why I think it does the best job predicting cousins.

One match on my Ancestry list, listed as "J.C," is stronger than that of any documented third cousin. Ancestry also shows that all of our top mutual DNA matches are related through my paternal Grandma Mae or her mother Lizzie Chapman, nee Ginsberg. When I saw on 23andMe exactly where on the genome Joanne and I match, every large segment was in an area inherited from Grandma Mae.

Joanne Clarke is 22% Jewish. She knew that one of her grandmothers was adopted by the McCradiey family, which lived in a village south of Manchester, Lancashire, England. One story told by her family was that a Jewish couple boarded with them but left behind an abandoned baby girl later known as Florence McCradiey Birchall, mother of nine.

This story did not provide the names of these Jewish visitors. Meanwhile, for some reason, Joanne's uncle Harry Birchall had in his possession a 1911 naturalization paper for a 32-year old Russian immigrant tailor who identified himself as "Chiel Blum, also known as Leon Ginsberg." ("Chiel" would be a rare shorthand for "Yekhiel," a not-so-rare Hebrew name.) The paper did not name his wife, but did name his son, 3-year old David Ginsberg.

Searching the 1911 UK Census on Ancestry, I found Leon and David along with Leon's slightly-older wife Fanny. They went by Ginsberg. I also found the McRadiey's. Both families lived in Salford, Lancashire.  Searching the birth registrations, I found that both Florence McCradiey Birchall and David Ginsberg were born during the last three months of 1907.

In 1901, a Chiel Blum sailed across the North Sea from Hamburg, Germany, to Grimsby, England. His previous residence of Schweksne (the German spelling) resembled the name of "Swesni" given on Blum/Ginsberg's naturalization papers. Now it was indisputable that Leon completely changed his surname. There is no documentation showing Fanny was a Ginsberg, but that could help explain Leon's decision. It also could explain how Joanne's strongest Jewish DNA matches are all Ginsberg descendants.

Leon Ginsberg may have rented a room from the McCradiey's when his wife Fanny was expecting a child. Imagine if she unexpectedly had twins, a boy and a girl. Barely able to support one child, they offered the girl to their landlord for adoption. In 1916 Fanny had another girl named Minnie who in 1939 was a piano teacher still living with her parents in Salford. The 1939 Register notes Minnie's eventual married name: Simon.

Was Fanny a daughter of Avram Ginsberg and his second wife Gena Pakalniski? Their known children were born from 1870 to 1885, so Fanny would have been in the middle of the pack. Perhaps a death or marriage record will turn up to confirm. Meanwhile, we can guess that son David was name after Gena's father, as was Lizzie Chapman's son David, who was born ten years earlier.

Avram and Gena had two sets of twins: Lizzie and Sol was one, and Harry and Rae (Cohen) was the other. If the tendency to have twins is genetic, the possibility is greater that Fanny would have twins David and Florence.

"Avram," the original name of the Biblical Abraham, means "great father." Avram Yosef Ginsberg was known to be a prolific progenitor. If Fanny was his daughter, he had at least ten known children from two marriages. Fanny would be the only one of them known to settle in the UK.

Footnote: The magistrate who presided over Leon Ginsberg's naturalization was a Member of Parliament from the Manchester area named Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.

DNA Origins of the Rise/Reis Branch

Since early 2018, I have spent an inordinate amount of my retirement time trying to use DNA matches to discover new family tree branches and to gain insight into ancestral origins. The return on investment of time has been paltry, but I did recently make a discovery of particular interest to my Marcovis 2nd/3rd Cousins and my Leon/Schevach/Reiss 3rd/4th Cousins.

This discovery was only possible by the willingness of my mother and sister to spit into a tube for 23andMe. That allowed me to identify which DNA matching segments were from my maternal chromosomes. 

It also helped that many of you cousins did the same autosomal DNA test and shared the results so I could see where in the genome we match. If they tested on Ancestry, which only gives the total amount of shared DNA, they uploaded their Ancestry DNA to Gedmatch (it's free), which displays the actual matching segments.

Thanks to all these available clues, I can usually tell if my mother's DNA match is from her mother's or father's side. In some cases, I can even identify which of her grandparents handed down a given DNA segment.

Getting to this level of "DNA Painting" (sorting the genome by ancestor) allowed me to better evaluate DNA matches with four of Mom's presumptive 3rd Cousins. 

Linda and Robin and their 1st Cousins Janet and Susan are all descended from a David Reiss (born 1853), who raised his family in Buhusi, Romania. Our ancestor Leah Rachel Reiss, later known in Des Moines, Iowa, as Leah Rachel Leon (born 1840), also grew up in Buhusi, along with her brothers David (born 1836) and Alter. Both David Reisses named a son "Wolf," suggesting a common ancestor by that name.

Ashkenazi Jews are believed to descend from a small number of people who lived about a thousand years ago. As a result, any two such Jews could share some DNA. Thanks to my "DNA painting," I could filter out matching segments that came down through my other maternal grandparent.

One of the remaining segments is near the high end of Chromosome 1, where my mother matches with Susan Reiss Roscoe. Also matching that segment are Barbara Gibian Heinrich and her 3rd Cousin Elyse Lipkin-Katz. Their common ancestors, from the Schaeffer and Wolensky families, were not from Buhusi, or even from Romania, but from a shtetl called Lunno, in the northwest part of present-day Belarus.

Yet another person matching our DNA in this region is Leo Kliot, a 90-year old Holocaust survivor from Dzisna in northern Belarus who now lives in Montreal. While we do not have a known cousin of his to confirm how we are related, his mother Esther Kulvarsky came from Pieski, a village very close to Lunno.

Ashkenazi Jews only began to arrive in Buhusi in the 1820s, meaning Leah Rachel Reiss's parents were born somewhere else. The DNA evidence says they most likely came from somewhere near Lunno and Pieski. In the days of the Russian Empire, those villages were part of Grodno Guberniya (province). In terms of Yiddish culture, they would be classified as "Litvak" (Lithuanian) Jews, whose territory ran far beyond today's Lithuanian borders.

Newly-arrived Jews living among the Romanians would eventually develop their own cultural features. Romanian Jews who moved to Israel, especially after the Holocaust, had to contend with distinct and not-always-flattering stereotypes. But when Leah Rachel's son Solomon Leon arrived in Des Moines in 1882, the cultural gulf between him and the Litvak majority may not have been so wide. Solomon wasted no time marrying a Litvak woman, and fifteen years later became a factional leader in the local Hebrew Republican Club.

Discoveries like this require as many clues as possible, both in terms of DNA and old-fashioned documentation. If you have done a DNA test, consider downloading the DNA file and uploading it for free to Gedmatch, which has many free tools. Here are the instructions: 

http://www.irelanddavis.com/dna/gedmatch/default.aspx

If you have not done such a test yet, I am happy to answer your questions before you order a test kit.

Behind the Marriage of Max and Mae Feinberg

Behind every marriage is the question, "How did they meet?" According to the norms of "Traditional Marriage," they met by arrangement of their parents or extended families. This clearly was how things worked in the "Pale" of Eastern Europe, as many weddings turn out to involve families related by earlier weddings.

The arranged marriage did not necessarily give way to the love marriage on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. In an earlier blog, I showed how the earliest Romanian-Jewish immigrants in Des Moines arranged the marriage of my maternal great-grandparents Aaron and Clara Marcovis in 1888.

The Feinberg-Ginsberg Connection

I have long suspected that the 1915 marriage of my paternal grandparents Max Feinberg and Mae Chapman was also arranged. Mae's mother was a Ginsberg. Two years earlier, in 1913, Max's older sister Anna married Mae's Uncle Hyman Ginsberg. Seven years before that, in 1906, Max's maternal uncle Hyman Cohen married Mae's Aunt Rae Ginsberg.

What's with the Feinbergs and the Ginsbergs of Des Moines and Centerville, Iowa? I have not found any Feinberg ancestors of Mae Chapman. As far as Max Feinberg's ancestry, nothing is documented save for his father David Cecil Feinberg.

Earlier in 2018 I tested with Family Finder DNA and Ancestry DNA. On Ancestry, I found several Feinberg 2nd Cousins. One was descended from Max's half-brother Sam Feinberg. Another was descended from Max's half-sister Carrie. Both of these half-siblings, born to David's second wife, married non-Jews.

This means that any DNA I shared with those cousins must have come through no one other than David Cecil Feinberg, the last member of our only shared ancestral line. Any more distant DNA matches that I share with these cousins must be related through David Cecil Feinberg.

Those Ancestry shared matches included my Ginsberg cousins. In addition, a large DNA segment was shown on My Heritage to be shared with both a known Ginsberg relative and a definite Feinberg match. Clearly, David Cecil Feinberg was related to my Ginsbergs. But how?

It could not be too complicated, because David himself had to be familiar with the relation. Living in the U.S. without his parents or any known siblings, there was nobody else to advise him.

The Feinberg-Goldring Connection

When my father of blessed memory Ted Feinberg was in the service based in San Diego following the end of World War II, he visited his Aunt Fannie and her husband Uncle Leo Schutzbank in Los Angeles. The Schutzbanks introduced him to a Goldring family. Dad knew from Grandpa Max the Goldrings and Feinberg were connected, but neither of them knew how. One relative thought David Feinberg changed his surname from Goldring to appear as an only child in order to avoid conscription in the Russian Army.

Long ago I called up Aunt Fannie's daughter Pat Engle. Pat recalled a Minnie Goldring Wolfe who attended her wedding. I tracked down Minnie's niece Sarelle Riave Friedman (1932-2017) who remember the name Fannie Schutzbank. "Who could forget it?"

Minnie's Wolfe's father was Maurice Samuel Goldring (1862-1937). His obituary said he was born in Sakiai, Lithuania, and when Sakiai birth records were found and translated, Moshe Shlomo Goldring was there. Death records included Moshe's father, who died in 1867. David Feinberg was reportedly born in 1871. They could not be full siblings, but they could have been half-siblings, born to the same mother but different fathers.

The birth record shows Moshe's mother was Khaya Hinda, maiden name unknown. Both Maurice Goldring and David Feinberg had daughters named Ida, a common translation of Khaya.

The Goldring-Markson Connection

Moshe brought his wife Khana and their infant son Leib to Canada in 1882. On the same boat, and originating from the same town of "Budkin," were Notel and Etel Marksohn. Nathan and Ethel Markson moved from Montreal to Lewiston, Maine, in the late 1890s.

Hannah Kert Goldring (1858-1920) and Ethel Kert Markson (1855-1924) were sisters, the daughters of Moshe and Rachel Kert.

The Markson-Ginsberg Connection

Nathan Markson (1857-1943), born in Pilviskiai, Lithuania, was the son of Moshe Tzvi. The Hebrew "Tzvi" corresponds with the Yiddish "Hirsh."

Abraham Markson (1839-1901) was also from Pilviskiai, Lithuania, and he also lived in Lewiston, Maine. His parents were "Harris and Fanny."

Itsko Markson was listed in the resident book for the town of Zapyskis, Lithuania. He was born in Pilviskiai in 1843 to Hirsh Markson and Feiga Ginsberg. Itsko (Isaac Lewis Markson) died in Polk County, Iowa, (near Des Moines) in 1899.

Seeing Ginsberg and Zapyskis in the same record, it is likely the Feiga Ginsberg Markson was the daughter of Avram and Khaya Ginsberg of Zapyskis. While nothing directly connects my own Ginsberg ancestry to Zapyskis:

• Many known Zapyskis-Ginsberg descendants settled in Des Moines.
• Grandma Mae's Uncle Ike Ginsberg came from Pilviskiai.

[Initial] Conclusion [as posted in 2018]

I am certain that David Cecil Feinberg and Maurice Samuel Goldring were the sons of the same Khaya Hinda. Because of Maurice's association with a son of Feiga Ginsberg Markson, Khaya Hinda may herself have been a daughter of Feiga. Feiga's link to Zapyskis, Lithuania, means her father was probably Avram Ginsberg.

Accordingly, my grandfather Max Feinberg was son of David Feinberg, grandson of Khaya Markson, great-grandson of Feiga Ginsberg, and great-great-grandson of Avram and Khaya Ginsberg of Zapyskis.

My grandmother Mae Chapman was daughter of Lizzie Ginsberg, granddaughter of Abraham Joseph Ginsberg, great-granddaughter of Isaac (Yitzkhak) Ginsberg, and great-great-granddaughter of Avram and Khaya Ginsberg of Zapyskis.

My paternal grandparents were 3rd Cousins.

Correction

Chaya, the mother of David Feinberg and Maurice Samuel Goldring, was in fact an Epstein. This is stated in Goldring's remarriage record in Los Angeles, which I came across in late 2019.

The connection between the Goldrings and the Markson can only be explained by Chaya's remarriage to Mordechai Feinberg, who in turn had a family connection to the Ginsbergs. The conclusion that my paternal grandparents were 3rd Cousins may still hold true, given their common Zapyskis ancestry.