Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Joe Dershowitz comes to America

A couple of week's ago I had finally found the Ellis Island record for Johann Dersowitz (Joe Dershowitz) after many futile attempts. Again the surname changes bit me.... Once I found the record I ran into another problem. It seemed that the actual passenger manifest image did not match up with the text version of the manifest. Johann Dersowitz was shown to have arrived on August 22, 1905 on the SS Ryndam which had departed from Rotterdam on August 12th. When trying to view the actual manifest image, another ship's manifest was shown in error.

I sent off an email to Ellis Island support and received a reply a few days later. Ron Moldanado of donor services pointed me to JewishGen and had me do the following:

Good news! I may have found your ancestors. To view the manifest you go to http://www.jewishgen.org/ Scroll down to HOSTED ORGANIZATION. Once that is done Scroll down to the 3rd link / ELLIS ISLAND DATABASE. Then scroll down to the 5th link and click on / MISSING MANIFESTS. At the bottom of your screen you’ll see a tool bar. At the Left magnify to 0.7. Adjust to Series T715 After that is done on the same tool bar you’ll see ROLL and FRAME, on the roll you adjust the number to 612. And the frame to 725 . You’ll see the passenger there. If you want to purchase the manifest you must call 212-561-4550 and give the same information I gave you

Johann (Joe) was found on line #5. What was very interesting was that all the people in the first 5 lines (including Joe) were related in one way or another to Max Heller of 345 W. 38th St, New York City:

0001. Deutelbaum, Rose F 16y S Austria, Hebrew Neusandes
0002. Deutscher, Moritz M 27y M Austria, Hebrew Krakan
0003. Deutscher, Rosa F 25y M Austria, Hebrew Krakan
0004. Jacob, Helen F 17y S Austrian, Hebrew Krakan
0005. Dersowitz, Johann M 19y S Austria, Hebrew Krenicza

All were cousins of Max Heller except Helen Jacob who was a niece. Moritz Deutscher was listed as a furrier and Johann (Joe) Dersowitz as a waiter. The Polish place names were all in the general area that other relatives have come from: Nowy Sacz (Neusandes), Cracow (Krakan) and Krynica (Krenicza). Here is the link to the original manifest image.

Another great find yields more family history clues.