Kalisz. By Fallaner - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109880483
I have been busy making great progress with some ancestors who lived in Kalisz, Poland, thanks to various suggestions made by experts who know where to find records, especially The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the Town Leader for JRI-Poland, Janet Rovenpor.
This has allowed me to trace the ancestors of Ari’s 5x great-grandmother Roza Band back to the 1700s. The names Jakob and Esther feature heavily in her tree. Her father, Jakob Band, was a worker with flour (baker?) who died in 1854. His parents were Dawid (1748–1818) and Hinde (1753–1831). Hinde’s father was another Jakob, but I don’t know his surname yet.
Roza’s mother was Estera Barchand (1796–1866). Her parents were Abraham Izrael Barchand, who was a tailor (1744–1811) and Roza Malka Rafael (died in 1807), whose father was also called Jakob.
Translations of records from the FamilySearch film library are sometimes incredibly detailed. This is the marriage of Jakob Band and Estera Barchand in 1819:
“Marriage No. 7, Kalisz, dated the 30th August 1819, of Jakob Band, working with flour, resident of Kalisz, staying with his mother Hinda Band, daughter of Jakob, as his father Dawid Band according to the presented copy from the Civil Records Office, died on the 24th January year 1818, certificate from the Kalisz synagogue that he is 18 years old, presented herself also a maiden Estera Perhent of Malesza, staying with her uncle, Icek Perhent, a tailor, her older brother and other relatives are deceased, she is daughter of Abraham and Roza, married couple Perhendt, already deceased. A certificate shows that she is 19 years old.”
Piecing together clues based on these old Polish records, which have various spellings of the family names, I now have plenty of descendants to follow up. Some lines seem not to have survived (or perhaps changed their names), but I have also discovered distant cousins who left Poland and settled elsewhere, including one branch of several rabbis (surname Messing) who went to Indianapolis, Indiana.
Ari, this is a new fan chart showing the ancestors of Roza Band’s daughter Mindel, who was your 4x great-grandmother.
