For as long as I can remember, I have known that I was named for my great-grandmother, Breina, in the Ashkenazic Jewish tradition of naming a baby after someone deceased. I knew Breina had been my paternal grandfather’s mother. That’s all I knew.

I lived in ignorance about my heritage and my connection to Breina until I began researching my family’s history in 1989 following the birth of my son. A call to my father’s cousin revealed a set of facts:

• Breina had immigrated to America. She and the rest of the immediate Krasner family lived at 65 Boston Street in Newark, New Jersey.

• Her maiden name was Dvorkin.

• When she died, her daughter Bessie threw herself onto the coffin.

Within the first year of my research, I was able to turn up more facts about Breina and the female Krasner line. I began with local sources.

I grew up across the Passaic River from Newark and never knew that my great-grandparents had lived so close to my home many years before. Using entries from the Newark city directories, I located three residences for Breina between her arrival in the United States in 1901 and her death in 1937. I took a driving tour of the city. The part of Boston Street where she lived for many years now housed the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The other sites included a condemned building and an empty lot.

I received her death certificate from the New Jersey state archives. Her parents were listed as Hillel and Michla.

A cousin I had not known before sent me photos of Breina. She wore black taffeta, a kerchief in some photos, and her traditional wig worn by married Jewish women in others. Her cheeks were sunken, probably due to the lack of teeth. According to the 1910 federal census, Breina was the mother of seven children. Six were living. I knew of four who had lived in Newark. I had heard of two older, married daughters who had stayed behind in Russia. Who was the seventh child and how long had that child lived?

I wanted to know more about the woman I was named for. What was she like as a woman, a mother, a widow of more than twenty years, a sister who left for America, and an aunt to an immigrant generation? How had she felt leaving behind two daughters, knowing she might never see them again? I was determined to learn where Breina was from and her age. Then I wanted to learn about Breina’s mother.

Finding Breina’s mother was a bit more difficult. My findings only resulted in a hypothesis.

A scan of the 1834 revision list for Borisov caught my eye. I saw the name Shavelson, a name allegedly connected with Breina’s family. Yet upon closer scrutiny of the Cyrillic handwriting, I found that the entry was not "Shavelson" but "Shevel, son of"–and Shevel was the son of Meyer Guryevich (Horowitz). I recalled seeing the surname Horowitz on alleged relative Nathan Fine’s death certificate. Family members told me Breina’s family was related to Nathan’s family. Could the connection have been through his mother, Anna Horowitz?

The family listed in this tax list also included a daughter, Michla, born in 1814. Could this Michla be Breina’s mother? Could the surnames have been confused since this revision took place before the mandatory adoption of surnames among Russia’s Jewish population? It was certainly possible and it would explain the relationship to Horowitz and Nathan Fine. I formed a hypothesis that this was the case.

Now I went in search of Breina’s daughters: Doba, Malka, Chaika, and Bessie.

I spoke with Nathan Fine’s ninety-year-old son, Meyer, in 1990. He did not know the actual connection but he hypothesized that it was on his mother’s side. His mother was Chaika Anschelevitz. Chaike married Nathan Fine in Europe. Oral history suggested that Chaike’s brother, Aron, was visiting the couple in New York at the same time a relative of Nathan’s, Fanny, was visiting. Aron and Fanny married in New York City in March 1908, had two daughters, and returned to Europe in 1912, not coming back to America until the late 1930s.

I was able to get Chaika’s and Aron’s death certificates but could find no connection to Breina or her family. I reasoned that since Aron and Fanny married in New York, I should be able to obtain their marriage record. I searched the New York marriage records for several days at the Family History Library but couldn’t find the right one for this particular Aron. Then I remembered the Bride’s Index for New York. I called Aron’s eighty-year-old daughter in Florida and asked her for her mother’s maiden name. "Belous," she replied. I had no trouble finding it in the index and quickly retrieved the marriage certificate. I scanned Aron’s parentage. It matched the information given on his death record and revealed nothing new.

Then I read Fanny’s information. Fanny was the daughter of Doba Crasner and Ber Belous. Fanny was Breina’s granddaughter! I called the woman in Florida to announce that she and I were second cousins, albeit fifty years apart in age. Her granddaughter sent me a photo of Breina and her family taken about 1912 in Newark, before Aron and Fanny returned to Europe. We could now identify both the New York and New Jersey branches of the family. I thought to myself, "Breina, I found Doba for you."

According to another granddaughter, Doba died of bacterial pneumonia in 1917 at about the age of fifty-two. This granddaughter sent me a copy of a photo of Doba dressed in a tunic. I could now see where Fanny got her cheekbones, a physical clue that suggested a connection to Breina and the Krasner-Dvorkin family. The photo included Doba’s five daughters.

I was not successful in finding Malka, although I was able to find Minnie’s daughter. I do believe that a box of photos taken from my grandfather’s house after his death in 1969 had a photo of Malka. The box was destroyed when a boiler burst in my parents’ house just prior to the beginning of my family research. The waterlogged family photos were discarded.

She married Sam Williams in September 1901 much against her parents’ better judgment. (Her parents arrived in America in May 1901.) Williams, about ten years her senior, had a very shady past and some previous child-bearing liaisons. Chaika became the mother of those children in addition to her own.

Chaika died in 1917 of a post-partum hemorrhage twelve days after giving birth to a son, Joseph, who died as well after twenty days.

By the end of 1917, Breina had outlived two, if not three daughters, as well as her husband. What was it about the female Krasner line? I wondered how she felt and how she had dealt with the loss. Perhaps she relied on her remaining daughter and grandchildren and great-grandchildren for comfort and support.

A call to the granddaughter of immigrant Benjamin Wisch revealed that the surname had been Vecherevin, which appeared as Wiczerewin, a Polonized spelling, in the ship manifests. Tracing Kean through the Social Security Death Index and the Hamburg Emigration lists over the course of six years yielded no concrete results. It was only after I formed a hypothesis–perhaps "Kean" was a truncated version of Dvorkin–that I began to learn the truth from immigrant Max Kean’s daughter-in-law: the original name had indeed been Dvorkin.

A member of the Shavelson branch of the family mentioned a related family name of Novoselsky.

Upon examining Minsk birth, marriage, and death records filmed by the Family History Library, I came across the surnames Vecherevin and Novoselsky. The entries listed the patronymics of the mothers as daughters of Ilya. The Hebrew entries stated that in both cases, the mothers were daughters of "Hillel." Since Hillel was Breina’s father’s name, I formed another set of hypotheses: Sora Vecherevin and Pesia Novoselsky were Breina’s sisters. Breina, then, was indeed Benjamin Wisch’s aunt and an aunt to the immigrant generation of Novoselsky. It is still uncertain, however, whether Breina was Max Kean’s aunt or great-aunt.

By focusing on Breina, her mother, sisters, and daughters and using a combination of city, state, federal, and European records, I have pieced together Breina’s family. I hope I have done her proud.

Barbara Krasner-Khait, avid genealogist, lecturer, writer, and researcher, is the author of Discovering Your Jewish Ancestors (Heritage Quest, 2001). She is the contributing editor to Family Chronicle and the contributing editor on Jewish genealogy to Heritage Quest.

Return to the Ancestry Magazine January/February 2003 table of contents.