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The Early Records of Maria Borisoff's Family is provided by our cousin, Ilya Grigoriev... |
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I have found in
the archive documents the lists of Jews, registered in
Novomirgorod in 1874. Though it is document of 1874, it
was updated through
the years (until ~1910) , and basically for each family registered in Novomirgorod it has a full family list. Based on this
document and 1858 and 1834
censuses I am proud to tell you some more details on
Heinrich Drobatschewsky family. |
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| Drobatschewsky-Borisoff Family Pedigree | ||
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| 1834 State Archives of Kiev region 280-2-572 page556 | ||
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| 1858 State Archives of Kiev region 280-2-1382 page125 |
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On Fri, 16 May 2025
at 22:02, Paul Borisoff wrote: Ilya, I'm wondering if there's any way to get more information on one or both of these sisters. The Fanny you mentioned was buried in South America. Again at this point I don't know whether any of grandmother's family got out of Odessa? Ilya wrote: Paul, Let me answer your questions by asking more questions... The document with the
dates of birth of all Drobatchewsky family members including all
the sisters, that I sent you earlier, is a part of 1874 town of
Novomirgorod census of Jews... Q: Does it mean that all the families listed in that document lived in Novomirgorod? A: Not at all! Because
in Russian Empire all Jews had to be registered at some place.
This registration system was introduced in early 19th century
(together with introduction of the family n ames for Jews).
Registration was 1. expensive to change and 2) it did not stop
from moving. That's why by the end of 19th century many families
actually lived at one place but were still registered on the
other (old) place. Registration, basically, defined the place
where to pay taxes and where the male family member could be
drafted you into the army. Q: OK, in 1874 family
was registered in Novomirgorod. But where did it actually live? Q. Wow, cool! But where's Zlatopol, how far it is from Novomirgorod? A.. Actually Zlatopol was just across the river:
Nowadays Zlatopol does not exist as a separate town anymore, it was merged with Novomirgorod. I think it happened sometimes in the middle of XX century. Q. What's the point then to move... just across the river. A. We don't know exactly, but I would guess that... it was the opposite, the family lived in Zlatopol from the beginning, but changed it's registration from Zlatopol to Novomirgorod's one. I have heard that it was very typical for that place. The reason was that although two neighboring towns were just separated with the river, they also belonged to different provinces. Zlotopol belonged to Kiev province, and Novomirgorod belonged to the Kherson's province. After 1917 provinces were renamed and changed. You can see it at the left top corner of the fragment of the map above... the border between provinces was moved north-west, and Novomirgorod and Zlatopol are now the same province. Q. Why did they change
registration in this peculiar way?
A. This is because there were no more censuses until 1898. Well, there was a special census of 1875 taken for potential army conscription. And most of the data of 1898 census did not survived. The 1898 census was used to compile statistical data on the population of the Empire and then the raw data had to be destroyed as was originally planed. So only in some places 1898 data survived, and then only in fragments. Basically we are lucky with this 1874 list as the additions like this were not common. Perhaps, it was a Novomirgorod initiative. Now there is new information to consider: The registers of births, deaths, marriages and divorces in Odessa for the years 1875-1920 are quite well preserved and are now available online at this link... (Occasionally other dates are indicated there, but in fact the data for 1875-1920 has been mostly preserved). For ease of use, there are even alphabetical lists, which already indicate the location of a particular record in the original registers. All are in the Russian language. The members of the Drobаchevskу family known to us (Genich / Khaya-Rokhl / Fenya / Reisa / Maryam) are absent from these books! That means that they were not born in Odessa... Q. Alright, but where were they born? A. We do not know. Highly likely in Zlatopol, but there is no proof yet. What else is known from
this 1874 census? There are the documents
confirming that the information in the census is listed... this
includes the marriage certificate of Solomon Drobachevsky and
Sonya, number 321, dated February 19, 1888. Q. Is the marriage certificate shown there? A. No, only it's number and the date.
A. Well, it
tells us that Genich/Heinrich was the first child in the
family. The parents married on February 19, 1888.
Genich was born on January 25, 1889. And, as
Solomon Drobatchewsky got married on February 19, 1888
and was born in 1867. We can calculate that his
age was 21 when he was married and its highly likely
that it was his first marriage. We don't know his wife
Sonja's date of birth. (Usually if the
groom got married at the age of 21, the bride was one to
three years younger than him. Before 21 years of
age, men usually did not take older girls as wives.
At the end of the 19th century men were not married off
until they were 17. When did Drobatchewsky family moved to Odessa? In the book you have sent me it is said that Henry's father (Solomon) played trumpet in the Odessa opera (page 12, last paragraph). It could be very well that Solomon lived in Odessa playing trumpet and Sonja stayed in Zlatopol with the children (and it necessarily had nothing to do with possible family problems... no, it was very often practice among the poor families that a husband moved to another city for earnings and the rest of the family stayed the original place for many years. This may also be the reason that there were no additional children in the family, by the way). Q. OK, but the birth records books of Odessa do exist. Are their any records of more Drobatchewsky children after 1896? A. No, there aren't. There's one or or two records on other Drobatchewskys, related to Solomon, but there are no records showing more Solomon children. Q. The death record of Khaya-Rokhl is from Odessa (1919)? A. Yes, this record is from Odessa.
A. Perhaps. I don't know. And the reason for that is that Odessa was a very large city. Half a million of people lived there at the beginning of XX century. 1/3 of them were Jewish. The birth, death, marriage records books are really thick, and being all handwritten it is an enormous task to read them all. Q. But you said
there's alphabets lists making it easy to find a person?
Q. OK, clear. But what's about Fanny Drobatchewsky who was buried in South America? A. I don't know. Maybe it is she, maybe just a namesake. Check this https://billiongraves.com/jewish-genealogy/Fanny-DROBACHEVSKY-Kauffman/116539754 |
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