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Wales (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Wales => Merionethshire => Topic started by: bykerlads on Wednesday 06 July 11 22:40 BST (UK)
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( hope I'm in the right county with this )
I was wondering what the origins of the name Pollecoff were - I was visiting Pwllheli recently and was struck by the name, as in the ladies dress shop in the High Street.
It doesn't look very Welsh to me - is it perhaps a corruption of the Russian Poliekof/v?
I'd be interested to know.
PS- lovely shop- I bought a hat.
PPS- Pwllheli is such a very pleasant place to visit - many assets, not the least being several excellent, independently owned dress-shops!
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On census there are Pollecoffs in Lancashire and Holyhead
Seems they were in Lancashire first
1901 census there is Solomon Pollecoff age 33 Occ Draper b Russia with wife and family
Most of the pollecoofs are b Russia and their wives too -children b UK.
1931 there is a Pollecoff birth reg in Pwllheli
Suz
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Hi I have just been looking at a photograph of the store you visited by just entering Pollecoff in Google, along with the picture it states:-
The Pollecoffs were a number of East European Jews, which established thriving businesses in the market towns of North Wales.
Keyboard86
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Pwllheli is actually in the old county of Caernarfonshire, which is now, like Merionethshire, part of the present county of Gwynedd. Pollecoffs also had branches in Blaenau Ffestiniog and Bangor, this latter taken over by Debenhams.
Pinot :)
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There was a synagogue of sorts in Bangor at one time - it might have been in the old Tabernacle chapel in the Garth area . I think the Pollecoffs were prominent there.
The book 'Bangor : a pictorial history ' by John Cowell shows a picture of Philip Pollecoff in front of his Bangor store , which is stated to have expanded in the 1920's from a drapers to a department store.
It also notes that his father was from the Ukraine.
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Thanks for replies - interesting to see how the surname was modified, I wonder when and why this happened?
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1901 census there is Solomon Pollecoff age 33 Occ Draper b Russia with wife and family
Most of the pollecoffs are b Russia and their wives too -children b UK.
Suz
It's not hard to imagine Solomon and his like being asked to spell his name by an immigration official; Pollecoff seems to be a a very fair approximation of what he would have heard. Moreover, it's lasted well. That's the why, I think; the when is another story . . .
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Thanks Pinot- I've heard of such surname modifications being made by immigration officials on Ellis island wirh immigrants to the USA in the past.
This seems to have happened even with Uk census ennumerators as we will no doubt have all found during our family history researches.
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What a blast from the past !!!!!!
We spent many years visiting relatives every summer, between Porthmadog and the Lleyn.
I well remember shopping in that store in Pwllheli in the late 1940's and onwards.
Thanks for the memory
Maddie
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Just following the theme of Jewish history, I've recently been in Berlin and walked down Giesebrechtstrasse off the KU-damm in the Charlottenberg district ( on my way to the Harp Irish Bar, actually) and noticed brass plaques set into the cobbles which commemorated many Jewish people who had lived there before being "exported" and sent to their deaths in October 1941 by the Nazis. They mainly seemed to have been older people in their 60's + 70's- I wonder if the younger ones had managed to get away?
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Yes, there was a Pollycoffs (sp) shop in Bl. Ffestiniog, so well known that it became the name of a bus stop. As a temp. conductor on the Crosville services from Dolgellau in the summers of 1961/2 I was well aware of it. I couldn't position it accurately now but recall it was on the road south from the town - on the way to Cae Iago.
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The birth in Pwllheli in 1931 was my father. His father Jacob was born in Anglesey and his grandfather was en route to America when the boat actually docked in Hull from the Ukraine. Family history records that it was indeed the nearest that the immigration officer got to the name given by the 2 brothers it was probably Poliakov!