How do you find people who didn't give you enough information to find them? I've been searching for my Levins and Scherpers on and off for years. While the actual searching process is part of the fun of doing genealogy, it can be terribly frustrating when you get no results. Oh, I can find my specific Scherpers here in the US and I make contact with more and more relatives as I go along which is wonderful all in itself, but I want to know where they really came from. I want to be able to take a trip to my ancestral hometowns and travel through Belarus and Poland by train as they would have traveled. I want to be able to imagine with knowledge what their daily lives might have been like.
So I've hired a Russian researcher. The actual researcher's name is Oleg and he researches for an organization called JHRG of Belarus. My contact's name is Yuri Dorn. Yuri actually contacted me originally when I first joined JewishGen and had sent an email to one of the discussion groups asking if anyone knew of my Scherpers and/or Levins. He told me that only about 10% of the Minsk records were entered into JewishGen's online database and that when I had more specific information about my family, his group would be happy to help with the research. More specific? How does one get more specific when they have no information? Every piece of documentation I've found so far in the US says Russia and Russia only for place of origin. All my father was told growing up was that the family (assumed Scherper and Levin) was from Minsk. Is that Minsk the city or Minsk the district? Who knows. All Yuri could tell me was that he had never heard the name Scherper in Minsk and he didn't think he had heard it ever before. Now Levin, that could be anywhere. It's like having a last name of Smith in the US.
Then the Hamburg Passenger lists went online this last December. I frantically searched the database looking for Scherper. I knew that my grandmother was born in Russia, so I knew I was looking for 3 passengers with the same last name starting with the letter S. I knew my great grandfather's birth name was Mendel, not the anglicized Max he went by here in the US. I knew (or thought I knew) that my great grandmother's first name was Sophie or maybe Sofia and that my grandmother's first name was Ida. I knew that my great grandmother was pregnant when they came over and that the first child born here in the US was Sam. He was born in April 1900, so they had to have come over within the 9 months preceding his birth. I did an exact search for Mendel Scherper. No results. I did an exact search just for the names Scherper and Sherper. Still no results. I did a sounds-like search for Scherper and a list of hundreds of names came up looking nothing close to Scherper to me. But I decided to look anyway. Who knows how a German port employee would hear and spell Scherper?
I looked through pages and pages of passenger lists looking for any grouping of 3 names that looked somewhat close to Mendel, Sophie and Ida Scherper. I tend to go into robot mode when I look at long lists, so I'm not sure I'm always paying attention to what I'm seeing as I flip pages. I was in the S-E-R section of the list searching in alphabetical order when the hair went up on the back of my neck. I swear it felt like Sophie smacked me, told me to stop immediately and pay closer attention. By the way, I've taken to speaking to Sophie when I research this side of my family. I don't know why. I feel some pull to her. Maybe it's just because she's the oldest relative on this side that I've met. I backed up a page just to be sure I hadn't missed anything. And there they were! Mendel, Sore and Chaie S-E-R-P-U-R. So Sophie's birth name was Sore as in Sarah. And Little Grandma's name was Chaie anglicized to Ida. Chaie was 11 months old when they boarded the ship. And they left Hamburg for London on 17 January 1900.
So what to do next? I contacted Yuri and told him I had new information. I prayed that he would say it was enough to get started with the search. He didn't. He said he still didn't think any Scherpers were in Minsk. So I got a little testy--pushy might be a better description. I explained to him that all the pictures from Russia that I had were from Minsk. I had already translated the Cyrillic and the photography studio was definitely in Minsk and the family had to be close enough to get to that studio. I explained that I had this piece of paper from my grand uncle David kindly given to me by his grandson Burt, a Scherper, that said "Harra-Duk." Now Yuri and I had already been back and forth about the "Harra-Duk" which we both knew had to be a phonetic spelling of Gorodok--Russian for town. There were 20 some odd Gorodoks in the district of Minsk. I had no idea which Gorodok this piece of paper spoke of. So Yuri finally gave in. He was starting with limited information. He said he'd start with the 2 closest Gorodoks to the city of Minsk proper--Semkov Gorodok and Ostroshitskiy Gorodok. I knew the chances were slim that he would find my Sophie and Mendel, but I wanted the search to start, so I was willing to take that chance.
I waited. I didn't expect an answer from Yuri for 2 or 3 months, so I busied myself finding out whatever else I could about the Scherpers that might be of help. I targeted the Scherpers because I've never heard any stories about the Levins coming to America, other than Sophie under the married name of Scherper.
On March 1st, 2007, just about 5 weeks later, there was an email waiting for me from Yuri. The subject line read "research report" and it had an attachment. My heart started pounding. I opened the email. No Scherpers were found just as Yuri suspected. But they did find my Levins. Sophie's family...all her sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews--10 siblings in all--and I could now go back 1 more generation. Sophie's grandfather's name was Leizer Levin. They were from Ostroshitskiy Gorodok, Minsk, Belarus. Sophie also had a brother named Leizer who lived at #7 Bogadelnaya Street in Ostroshitskiy. The house was owned by someone named Yossel. Yossel I discovered was her brother Yankel (Jacob) and either he owned it and let his brother's family live there or both families lived there together. This was amazing! I cannot describe how good it feels to have made this connection. I finally have the first real proof that my family existed somewhere other than the US. I finally have a place to visit, to walk up and down the streets and know that my family walked those same streets. Maybe I'll be able to stand in the exact same location that Sophie stood one day as a young girl. What will that feel like? Maybe I'll be able to find the grave of Leizer Levin, my great great great grandfather and leave a rock to let him know I've been there.
So I've hired a Russian researcher. The actual researcher's name is Oleg and he researches for an organization called JHRG of Belarus. My contact's name is Yuri Dorn. Yuri actually contacted me originally when I first joined JewishGen and had sent an email to one of the discussion groups asking if anyone knew of my Scherpers and/or Levins. He told me that only about 10% of the Minsk records were entered into JewishGen's online database and that when I had more specific information about my family, his group would be happy to help with the research. More specific? How does one get more specific when they have no information? Every piece of documentation I've found so far in the US says Russia and Russia only for place of origin. All my father was told growing up was that the family (assumed Scherper and Levin) was from Minsk. Is that Minsk the city or Minsk the district? Who knows. All Yuri could tell me was that he had never heard the name Scherper in Minsk and he didn't think he had heard it ever before. Now Levin, that could be anywhere. It's like having a last name of Smith in the US.
Then the Hamburg Passenger lists went online this last December. I frantically searched the database looking for Scherper. I knew that my grandmother was born in Russia, so I knew I was looking for 3 passengers with the same last name starting with the letter S. I knew my great grandfather's birth name was Mendel, not the anglicized Max he went by here in the US. I knew (or thought I knew) that my great grandmother's first name was Sophie or maybe Sofia and that my grandmother's first name was Ida. I knew that my great grandmother was pregnant when they came over and that the first child born here in the US was Sam. He was born in April 1900, so they had to have come over within the 9 months preceding his birth. I did an exact search for Mendel Scherper. No results. I did an exact search just for the names Scherper and Sherper. Still no results. I did a sounds-like search for Scherper and a list of hundreds of names came up looking nothing close to Scherper to me. But I decided to look anyway. Who knows how a German port employee would hear and spell Scherper?
I looked through pages and pages of passenger lists looking for any grouping of 3 names that looked somewhat close to Mendel, Sophie and Ida Scherper. I tend to go into robot mode when I look at long lists, so I'm not sure I'm always paying attention to what I'm seeing as I flip pages. I was in the S-E-R section of the list searching in alphabetical order when the hair went up on the back of my neck. I swear it felt like Sophie smacked me, told me to stop immediately and pay closer attention. By the way, I've taken to speaking to Sophie when I research this side of my family. I don't know why. I feel some pull to her. Maybe it's just because she's the oldest relative on this side that I've met. I backed up a page just to be sure I hadn't missed anything. And there they were! Mendel, Sore and Chaie S-E-R-P-U-R. So Sophie's birth name was Sore as in Sarah. And Little Grandma's name was Chaie anglicized to Ida. Chaie was 11 months old when they boarded the ship. And they left Hamburg for London on 17 January 1900.
So what to do next? I contacted Yuri and told him I had new information. I prayed that he would say it was enough to get started with the search. He didn't. He said he still didn't think any Scherpers were in Minsk. So I got a little testy--pushy might be a better description. I explained to him that all the pictures from Russia that I had were from Minsk. I had already translated the Cyrillic and the photography studio was definitely in Minsk and the family had to be close enough to get to that studio. I explained that I had this piece of paper from my grand uncle David kindly given to me by his grandson Burt, a Scherper, that said "Harra-Duk." Now Yuri and I had already been back and forth about the "Harra-Duk" which we both knew had to be a phonetic spelling of Gorodok--Russian for town. There were 20 some odd Gorodoks in the district of Minsk. I had no idea which Gorodok this piece of paper spoke of. So Yuri finally gave in. He was starting with limited information. He said he'd start with the 2 closest Gorodoks to the city of Minsk proper--Semkov Gorodok and Ostroshitskiy Gorodok. I knew the chances were slim that he would find my Sophie and Mendel, but I wanted the search to start, so I was willing to take that chance.
I waited. I didn't expect an answer from Yuri for 2 or 3 months, so I busied myself finding out whatever else I could about the Scherpers that might be of help. I targeted the Scherpers because I've never heard any stories about the Levins coming to America, other than Sophie under the married name of Scherper.
On March 1st, 2007, just about 5 weeks later, there was an email waiting for me from Yuri. The subject line read "research report" and it had an attachment. My heart started pounding. I opened the email. No Scherpers were found just as Yuri suspected. But they did find my Levins. Sophie's family...all her sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews--10 siblings in all--and I could now go back 1 more generation. Sophie's grandfather's name was Leizer Levin. They were from Ostroshitskiy Gorodok, Minsk, Belarus. Sophie also had a brother named Leizer who lived at #7 Bogadelnaya Street in Ostroshitskiy. The house was owned by someone named Yossel. Yossel I discovered was her brother Yankel (Jacob) and either he owned it and let his brother's family live there or both families lived there together. This was amazing! I cannot describe how good it feels to have made this connection. I finally have the first real proof that my family existed somewhere other than the US. I finally have a place to visit, to walk up and down the streets and know that my family walked those same streets. Maybe I'll be able to stand in the exact same location that Sophie stood one day as a young girl. What will that feel like? Maybe I'll be able to find the grave of Leizer Levin, my great great great grandfather and leave a rock to let him know I've been there.
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