One of Ari’s Lithuanian ancestors was Moses Gurvich, the father of LK Hurwitz. Moses was known as Movsha or Moshe, and his middle name was Nison. He was Ari’s 4x great-grandfather.
Moses was born in about 1847 in Svencionys, Lithuania and died aged 73 in 1920, also in Lithuania. He worked as a timber merchant.
The middle name proved to be the clue that enabled me to discover relatives in Wisconsin a couple of years ago (before that I had no idea about his parents or brothers and sisters).
This was discovered from the birth record of LK’s son Khatzkel (Charles) in the Lithuania Database on the JewishGen website:
The second column gives the names of his father, grandfather (top row) and mother, grandfather (second row).
Other records show him aged 11 with his family in the 1858 Revision List in Svencionys.
He must have married in about 1868, and five children were born between 1870 and 1881. They were Leah, Gittel (Gertrude), LK, Sorel (Sara), and Chasel (Charlotte).
A small diversion
Leah married Moshe Michelson and owned a flour mill. She was killed in 1943 in Lithuania with three of their children (a grandson, Khaim Mikhelson, has submitted testimony to Yad Vashem). One of her sons, Jacob (Yankel) married Jehudith Kuritsky. She has written an account of what happened to the family in Svencionys when the Germans arrived in 1941. This is just the first page.
Back to the story
From the records giving me his father’s name, I was able to match someone in America who had been contacting me wondering whether our Hurwitz familes were related. At that time I had no way of telling. She turned out to be descended from Moses’s brother Vulf, who emigrated to the US in 1921, providing us with many new relations in Milwaukee.
Here is the record of Moses’ second marriage at the age of 64 on 30 July 1909 (I knew that after his first wife Annie had died he had married her sister). What I don’t know from this is whether Tzimerman is their maiden name or whether she was a widow.
As far as I can see, all of his grandchildren were born before he died in 1920, so nobody in that generation is named after him.
Ari, this shows how you are related to Moses:
