A few years before I found David's diary, I began searching the Internet for passenger lists that might show his arrival in the States, as well as what his family members' original names had been. What I initially found (on Ancestry.com) had enough confusing inaccuracies to cast doubt on its relevance; I saved a copy of it but relinquished the search for the time being.
I revisited the issue in 2011, armed with data gleaned from David's Diary. The facts I had to start with were as follows:
I started my new search at CastleGarden.org (the facility pre-dating Ellis Island, which I had not known about several years ago). Quickly I found the following transliteration of a passenger list, apparently a Blumenfeld family arriving Sep. 10, 1884. They are shown as Russian by birth (Latvia not being a country at that point), and traveling from Hamburg via Glasgow on a ship named the Devonia.
Aradil, male, 14, farmer
Cheim, male 19, laborer
David, male 21, laborer
Leham, male 40, laborer
Maup, female 5, child
Rachel, female 11, child
Sewiche, female 16, laborer
Obviously the names other than David's are pre-Americanized. But they are handwritten rather badly (left-handed, I believe) on the passenger list, and further doubt is cast by factoring in the roll-taker's ear for names and his spelling capabilities. Still, although the transcriptions are dubious, it makes phonetic sense to Americanize Cheim to Herman, Rachel to Rose, Maup (which I read as Marya on the original) to Margaret, and Leham to Leah.
I did wonder, aside from the slight age discrepancy, if "Leham" were Leah, why was she labeled Male? And who was "Aradil"? Why wasn't this person mentioned in the Diary?
I sent this circumstantial evidence to Fred Hertz, who immediately hopped into the fray and discovered a second passenger list online, this one for a steamer named the Prague, sailing from Hamburg to Glasgow, August 24, 1884, with a Captain Mackenzie at the helm. The handwriting was clear and flourished, and listed the following, all from the Blumenfelds' home town of Tuckum (Tukums):
Leha, female 40
David, male 21
Chaim, male 19
Simche, female 16
Fradel, female 14
Rachel, female 11
Margola, female 5
The family's ending destination is listed as New York. David's and Chaim's occupations are encouragingly listed as tailor. This is all pretty convincing in itself, let alone corroborating the passenger list of the subsequent leg of the journey.
So now I had several revelations:
Arguably the biggest revelation was: always go for a second opinion. Whoever created that New York passenger list was unfamiliar with Hebrew names and spelling, and had dreadful handwriting to boot. He also seemed to have a bit of problem with determining gender, or perhaps with simply filling out the correct box on a form! Unless Leah was traveling in drag.
Buoyed by my success with this data I then turned my sights onto David's mother's family.
Leah Blumenfeld's death certificate lists her father's name as Jacob Klashoff. I'd been told that her maiden name was Gottschalk. When I searched for Klashoff and Gottschalk on JewishGen.org, Klatsov is what came up. It made sense that at some point she might Germanicize her name for prestige purposes (or practical ones, i.e., during her flight, to avoid the Jew-hunting Russian military). Deborah Hertz says she believes that German was the cultivated language, the maskilic language, but then again, spellings range widely.
So, assuming that Klatsov was the right name, I located the Russian census for 1897, 13 years after Leah left for the U.S. (Leah is 53 at the time of this census.) Listed for Tuckum, I found:
Minna Gottlieb (nee Klatsov, father Jankel), age 45
Dwore Klatsov (father David), age 20
Frade Klatsov (father David), age 19
David Klatsov (father Jankel), age 42 (b. 1855)
Jankel Klatsov (father Manna), age 80 (b.1817)
Now, there's no "Jacob" here, but interestingly in the Diary David calls Leah's father "Yanke Hennes," and here's a patriarch named (Y)ankel. He's about the right age (born about 30 years before Leah). Also he has a son named David, who'd be a few years younger than Leah (our David refers to Leah's pampered younger brother in the diary). It makes sense that Leah would name her first son after her brother, despite her alleged jealousy. Another coincidence is that David Klatsov's daughter is named Frade (like Leah's daughter Fradel, who would have been the elder by six years).
Leah had two sisters, named in the Diary "Minni" and "Deborah." In this census we have Minna, of an age to be Leah's sister, plus one of David Klatsov's daughters is named Dwore, which I assume is pronounced roughly "Dvorah." He could well have named her after a sister, and this would anglicize well as "Deborah."
At times I feel like a detective, piecing together not only names but dates, given the vagaries of antiquated, badly reproduced, infrequent, and often foreign-language record-keeping. For example, how old is Leah at the start of the Diary? Well, her 1920 death certificate lists her, rather illegibly, as 78, and her gravestone as 71. If Leah's death certificate is correct, her birth year would be 1841 and her age at David's birth 22. But if she were 71 at death she would have been born in 1848, and 15 at his birth, which seems young but not impossible.
However, the 1884 immigration passenger lists show her age as 40. In the Diary, David implies that Leah's brother is younger than her; JewishGen records suggest that he was born in 1845, which fits; thus Leah couldn't have been more than 19 when David was born in 1863. No one of these documents is more reliable than another, so a good deal of speculation and corroborative evidence is required.
Another puzzling situation arises with Lena's mother, who arrives in 1912. David refers to her as Libshe. My grandmother had her name down as Peshe Lipse Loss. Her death certificate and gravestone read Leba Laser.
She had two husbands, the first one of whom was apparently named Lass, since Lena had an elder half-sister named Gittel Lass (not mentioned in the Diary). Leba/Libshe's death certificate says her father's name was Moses Loss. So is Lass a variant spelling of Loss? Is this just a coincidence, or did she marry a relative? Perhaps in time this mystery will resolve itself too....
Sean Bentley