How do deal with elusive ancestors (German Jewish)

[Zrg]

I have a 3rd & 4th great grandfather who came to London in the early/mid 1800s, I've found more info on my 3rd GG than my 4th and I've found some death registers and found where they were buried (Stepney area) . I searched Deceased Online and found a document I can buy but will it give me much information such as where in Hamburg he was born? Ideally I'd like to find out more about their time in Germany. I've not found any passenger lists or anything that relates to their time in Germany. I've tried JewishGen but there isn't anything on there and found a marriage on Synagogue Scribes which was also on Ancestry. Apart from that I've only got bits and pieces that doesn't build too much of a picture.

Names are Vigidor (Victor) Lazarus And
Hyman Lazarus.

[PaulineJ]

Welcome,

Deceased online will tell you where & when buried, age and last known address, occasionally who organised the burial.

No parents/origins where the deceased was an adult. You sometimes see parents given for a child burial.

IF you want help, then we need dates, not just names. as it is, We've no idea.

eg  Hyman: is he the parent or the child?

Is this him in 1871? https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VRJQ-D6G

Pauline

[JustinL]

At some point during the 20 or so years that I have been researching my German-Jewish ancestry, I acquired the transcribed Jewish birth records of Hamburg for the period 1760 to 1865.

May 1826 Mendel son of Victor Lazarus (from Lissa) and Rieke Mendel (from Moritzfelde)
[Lissa is now Leszno, Moritzfelde is Morzyczyn; both in Poland]

Mar 1833 Heymann son of Victor Lazarus (from Lissa) and Rahel Rahles (from Hamburg)
[Victor and Rahel had married on 1 May 1832 in Hamburg. She may have been a daughter of Heymann Rahles.]

10 Nov 1834 Hanna dau. of Victor Lazarus (from Lissa) and Rahel Rahles (from Hamburg)

The original records are held in the State Archives of Hamburg.

The marriage record you found on SynagogueScribes (pinched by ancestry) is of use because it reveals the Hebrew name of Victor's father, i.e. Eliezer. Victor was born long before the Jews of Lissa had adopted fixed surnames. He would have been know by a patronymic name Victor Lezer. He obviously chose to adopt a biblical form of his father's given name as a fixed surname.

I have also found Victor in the following censuses:

1841 at 29 Old Compton Street, St. Anne’s, Soho: Victor, 35, cap maker, b. Foreign parts
1861 at  39 Gun Street, Old Artillery Ground: Victor, 60, cap maker, b. Poland, 3rd wife Rebecca, 45, b. Aldgate, daughter, Hannah, 23, b. Hamburg
1871  at 10 Emanuel Almshouse, Wapping: Victor, b. Germany, with 3rd wife, Rebecca, and daughter Anna, 25
1881 at 10 Emanuel Almshouse, Wapping: Victor, widow, 84, annuitant, b. Poland

His death was registered in Stepney in Q1 1886. I haven't managed to locate his place of burial in the numerous Jewish cemeteries of East London.


 

[Zrg]

Apologies for the very late reply! I had a massive house move then just starting and haven't been able to do any research till now. Many thanks for the replies.

JustinL, thanks for this, it is brilliant!

[sandiep]

oh how lucky you are to know what part of Germany your ancestors came from, I have been doing my husbands family and have all information from hubbie  up to when his great great grandparents married in 1833 in the Great Synagogue and that ggrandad was born c1798. But Germany is all ever put down or Prussia by some of those who went to USA  no alien registration or passenger info and there have been a lot of us looking, I even bought all record books for Great synagogue and Bevis Marks as one of family was Ashkenazi and one Sephardic because as family had left the faith a few generations back it was a learning curve so to be able to get such great information as Justin gave you I am quite jealous 

[JustinL]

Welcome back.

I was rather surprised, and indeed concerned, that you seemingly lost interest in your elusive ancestors.

I've done a bit more digging in the various sources and managed to establish a few more details which I have included in the attached PDF file. I hope all the hyperlinks work.

You'll notice that I managed to locate images of the original Hamburg birth registers on familysearch.org. The original entries included the occupation and street address of the child's father. You can see the streets on the snippet of the city map of 1841.

There was only one Rahles family in Hamburg in the first half of the 19th century. Unfortunately, the births of girls were not recorded until 1811, so there is no definitive proof that Victor's second wife was a daughter of Heymann Lazarus Rahles, but it is the logical conclusion.

HLR was a dealer in Dutch cheese, cucumbers and olives. Entries in the Hamburg directories suggest that he swapped around his names, or perhaps his name was misinterpreted. It appears that he died in about 1816, followed by his widow in 1841.

Regards, Justin