Ari’s 5x great-grandfather Shaya Hatskelzon (or Khatskelzon) was born in Silale, Lithuania, some time in the 1820s, and we know that he was still there in 1896 when he was recorded as a tax-payer. What else do we know about him? The main evidence is the Lithuanian tax and voter lists on JewishGen: This shows us Shaya in Silale in 1877, 1885, 1892 and 1896. Shaya had married Jennie in about 1843. The fourth record is obviously a relation, and it turns out that Basia Ziv (or Si

The mother of Missing Minna was called Jennie, Janie or Gesa. How do we know this? On 29 May 1858 she appears in a Lithuanian Revision List as Gesa, wife of Shaya Hatskelzon (Chaskelson). Her age is given as 31, so we can put her date of birth at about 1827. She is living in Silale, which is in Kovno, Lithuania (see https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_lita/lit_00683b.html). In the Comments field, the family are described as “petit bourgeois”. The other information about h

Minna Chaskelson was Ari’s 4x great-grandmother. She was born in 1852 in Silale, Lithuania, and died at the Carlington Nursing Home in Johannesburg on 9 Aug 1930. She had emigrated in 1903 with her husband and children, following her brother Bernard (or Benhard) who had emigrated in 1895 and set up a mattress company. The family had lived in Memel (Klaipeda), where the family kept an inn. In her will, obtained from the South African archives (thanks to the very helpful servic