Saturday, August 17, 2013

A FAMILY TREE

Below is a beautiful hand-drawn family tree from David Wasserman, 

showing the generations of our family back to our Polish ancestors, 

Zelman Meekorborsky and Leyb Finkielsteyn. 

David says of this work:

This family tree clearly showing the relationship of the Abramsons to the Hollanderskys, and then Plattuses.  It also shows, of course, Mimi Bessie's relationship to Abbie Abramson through his daughter Anna from his first marriage.  It clearly depicts the relationship of Abe Hollandersky to the Plattuses and back to Abbie Abramson.  

It also shows the Hollanderskys more distant relationship to Jerry Abramson through Gitla Meekaborsky Finkielsteyn, Abbie Abramson’s sister, according to Aubrey Abramson’s notes.  I think it is possible that Rabbi Finkielsteyn lived a very long life, or it might have been Peretz Hollandersky.  Abe said his grandfather lived over one hundred years in his book, though I take that with a grain of salt. . . . Logically, this would have been the Rabbi, since Peretz would have had children named for him, Perry Hollandersky, and Perry Plattus, long before his death if he had lived this long.  We are not completely certain of Peretz’s birth date, but we think around 1812, the same year as Rabbi Finkielsteyn, which we are more certain of.

Jerry Abramson was descended from a child of Abbie Abramson's second marriage.  So Abbie Abramson was related to the Hollanderskys through Gitla Meekaborsky Finkielsteyn, the Rabbi's wife, and Falk Hollandersky's mother-in-law. This background may explain why Falk was one of the last highly religious Hollanderskys.  There is also a small, but interesting chance that Morris Plattus was named after his mother's grandfather Mowsza (Moshe) Finkielsteyn, as Morris's Hebrew name was Moshe. It would not be to difficult to trace our ancestors back to the 1700's through either Mowsza Finkielsteyn (bc 1812) or Peretz Hollandersky (Ollender?), the oldest ancestors.  We do know the name of Moshe Finkielsteyn's father who would have been born in the 1700's for sure.

Anyway, this family tree took several months of research, and a large team of people to come up with this including Aubrey Abramson, Perry Plattus, Linda Hollandersky Speer, and most importantly Marlene Silverman, the geneologist who found the more critical Polish records.