Wednesday, July 6, 2011

A false lead

This morning I got an email from my Russian translator. She was able to read the 1874 birth certificate, which she says was written in "old Russian" and sent me the following translation:

At 8am on April 15th (27th), 1874  Mendel Kershenbaum (34 years of age) living in Radlin of Gorno Gmina (Gmina means 'county') appeared personally (at the vital statistics office?) together with Maneli Rubinshtein (45 years of age) and Mikhel Shafir (26 years of age) living in (???) to present a boy and to announce his birth in the village of Radlin on April 7th(19th) of the current year at 8pm. The boy's mother was his (Mendel's) lawful wife Udli Shlyamovich (could be Shiyamovich, I did a search and both last names exist) (25 years of age). Some words in the last sentence are unclear, but the main meaning is The boy was given a name Leibus.
Signatures of the ones appeared.

So this is not "our" Leibl. But I am fascinated by this document - that the father needed to present the baby and two witnesses (attesting to the parent's identity?), and that this occurred 8 days after the baby's birth, which would have been appropriate to the Jewish tradition of not giving a baby a name or presenting him in public until after the bris on the 8th day. Hopefully we will somehow find similar documents for our family members, as they will obviously be treasure-troves of information.

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