What we Know About Our Ancestors Five Generations of Busel Family History Judy Duchan February 24, 2016 In 2001, Nancy Felson Brant created and distributed the following ancestral tree, showing the ancestors of Rivel (Esther) Busel Felson, my grandmother and grandmother to my generation of Busel-Felson siblings and twelve first cousins. The red dotted ancestral line in the tree covers 141 years and five generations of the Busel family. This was a period of many Busel marriages and a robust procreation history. At the top of
the tree is Yankel Busel, born in 1740 and at the bottom of the Busel-Felson branch is the birth of Esther in 1881. The actual genealogy doesn t end with Esther, of course. She and Solomon produced ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. We can now track five generations further down the tree beginning with Esther. (See here for Nancy Brant s tree of Esther s children and grandchildren up to the year 2003 and here for my continuation of it up to 2015). When Nancy Brant was collecting information about the Busels there was little available on the internet. Nancy created her tree from her vast knowledge of ancestral resources and archives and from her travels to archives throughout the world. One can get an inkling of what she drew from by examining her source list in the upper left hand corner of the Busel tree that she created. Here is that list, in a more legible form. Reviskii Skasaii 1811, 1816, 1819, 1834, 1850, 1874 (English translation, Revision Lists meaning town census) 1805 Tavern Keepers List 1883-1884 Electors List Minsk State Archives, Lyakhovichi Family history interviews, documents: Irvin Felson, Louise Abramson Nancy died in 2013. To continue and build upon her work on family history, and to pay tribute to her prodigious efforts, I am writing about where she may have found her information and about what we know about each of the people she located in our Busel ancestral path from Yankel to Esther. Nancy Felson Brant (October 18, 1943-April 28, 2013) I show below some of Nancy s sources to indicate what sorts of information she drew from. I also use newly available sources that were not accessible to Nancy. This is a behind-thescenes view of what Nancy gave to us, today s living descendants of Esther Busel s family.
Genealogy Resources One primary resource on the web is a voluminous Jewish Genealogy website that traces the residents of Lyakhovichi, Belarus. Lyakhovichi was the shtetl town where most of Esther s ancestors lived and where Esther was born and raised. See here for my general description of Lyakhovichi. Among the resources on this website are a list surnames of Jews living in Lyakhovichi from the late 1700s to 1942, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, until the Jews left Lyakovichi or were killed there in the Second World War. It includes all Jews of Lyakhovichi whose names appear various lists that serve to track Levokhichi Jews. Some of those on the lists are relatives who appear in our Busel family tree, though it isn t always easy to find them. Here is the Surname Master List of those who lived in Lyakhovichi: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/lyakhovichi/lyakhovichirecordsindex.htm Each person on the Surname Master List is linked historical records that mention that person s name. Some of these sources (Revision Lists and Tavern Keeper s list) are listed in Nancy Brant s genealogy. Mentions of Yankel Busel, for example, can be found by either scrolling down the mostly alphabetical Surname Master List, or by doing a search and find on the name Busel. There are thirteen entries for Yankel Busel on this list, each with links to a different source in which his name appears. For example, one entry links Yankel Busel to an 1816 Revision List or town census, called Reviskii Skasaii in Nancy Brant s genealogy. Such lists were revised every few years in Lyakhovichi. The 1816 Revision List shows Yankel and his son Yosel and says that all members of the household died in 1812. But that can t be true since, on that same page Yosel is shown as still living in 1816. My guess is that the entry is intended to show that Yankel died in 1812 whereupon the family changed households. A posited birthdate of 1740 for Yankel in Caroline Bushel s version of Nancy s tree, making him around 72 when he died. Caroline is our distant cousin and genealogist. Beginning with Nancy s tree, and supplementing it with information from the Jewishgen- Lyakhovichi website, we can get a glimpse of each ancestor of ours who falls along the red dotted line above or the pie diagram below. We begin with Yankel and continue down the tree to Esther, describing what we know about the five generations of families. I will use the male head of each generation to designate the family, in keeping with the biases of the times until I get to Esther. The families are those of Yankel Busel; Yosel Busel, Feivel Busel, Benis Busel and Esther Busel. Here they are in living color, well, in color anyway. The males are indicated down the right-hand side, and Esther is in the center at the bottom.
I will trace the five generations from Yankel to Stirel (Esther). I have also indicated what we don t yet know. In some instances I have added a backstory that situates the information in the context of the times. 1. Yankel Busel (1740-1812) and family Yankel Busel may have been the first of our ancestors to take that name. That makes him and his family the first Busel in the family, deservedly placing him at the top of the tree. Before his time, Jews in the Pale of Settlement had no inherited last names. In 1804 Russia decreed that Jews all over Russia provide census takers with last names. The edict of Czar Alexander I, issued on December 9, 1804 stipulated: During the census every Jew shall have or accept a known inherited family name or surname/nickname, that shall be used in all documents and lists without any change, with the addition of a name given by faith or at birth. This measure is necessary for a better establishment of their Citizenship conditions, for better protection of their property and for reviewing litigation between them. http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/ 1804_laws.htm.
Given this history, it is likely that our ancestor Yankel took the name Busel around 1804, in response to this edict. The name of Yankel s wife is not indicated in Nancy s family tree, or in any other resource list that I have found on the web. This is understandable, since census takers and other official record keepers of the time tended not to keep track of women. Yankel had three children. In birth order, they are: Israel (1770-1841), Itsko (1772-1834), and Yosel (also spelled Iosel) (1776-1812). (Nancy Brant specified Yosel s birthdate as 1766, but his birthdate on the Tavern Keeper s List is shown as 1776). Yankel died in 1812, in Lyakhovichi, at a ripe old age for those times, 72. 2. Yosel Busel (1766-1839) and Family Yosel, the son of Yankel was a tavern keeper, a common occupation for Jews of Poland before it was annexed to Russia in 1795. Eighty-five percent of the tavern keepers in Poland were Jews during Yosel s lifetime. Here are two depictions of Jewish tavern keepers serving their clientele, much as Yosel would have done. Yosel and
his wife Khana and three-year old daughter Yenta appear in the 1805 Jewish Tavern Keepers List, presented below from JewishGen. Samuel Kassow, a scholar of Ashkenazi Jews, writes tavern keepers of the Jewish shtetlach in his book The Distinctive Life of Eastern European Jewry (2004): One important arenda (contract between Polish Nobleman and Jew) was the right to make and sell vodka. Jews would buy these rights from the landlord, run the taverns and share the profits. Taverns were the social centers of rural society, the place where the peasants would come to drink in the evenings and on Sunday afternoons after church. Much of the time relations between the peasants and the Jewish tavern keepers were good. But there were many potential sources of conflict. Economic logic dictated a skewed alliance between the Polish nobles and the Jewish tavern-keepers. The livelihood of the Jew depended on the power of the Polish lord, and it came as no surprise that all too often the peasants saw the Jew as the hated agent of the Polish landlord. Yosel was married three times. He had a son named Ovser-Mendel (1781-1834) with his first wife. We don t know the name of Yosel s first wife, nor do we know when she was born or when she died, or anything else about her, for that matter. She must have died before 1798, since that was the date of the birth of his second child with his second wife, Khana. Yosel and his second wife, Khana (b. 1777), had five children: Yankel Movsha, (b. 1798), Yenta (b. 1802) Abram (b. 1804), Feivel, (b. 1807) and Chaim (b. 1816). It was in 1805 that Yosel was listed in the tavern keeper s list, so he was a tavern keeper when he was married to Khana. We don t know anything more about Khana except that she helped form our direct ancestry line from Yankel to Esther. She must have died before the birth in 1824 of Anschel, since the mother of Yosel s seventh child was Sura (b. 1794), Yosel s third wife. There is the possibility that Yosel remarried after divorcing his former wives, but divorces were rare for Jews at that time, so it is more likely that they died. Or, as Nancy Felson expansively points out, he could also have been a bigamist or philanderer! In the 1834 Revision List, Yosel s was listed as the head of a household that included many of his adult children and their spouses.
This would not include Ovser-Mendel or Abram who both died in 1832, two years before this 1834 census. But the household might still have included the wives and the children of Ovser- Mendel and Abram, and the wives and children of the remaining five of Yosel and Khana s offspring. It must have been quite a big house! 3. Feivel Busel (1807-?) and Family According to Nancy Brant s genealogy, Feivel Busel, son of Yosel and Chana (4th childj) married a woman named Rochla (b. 1809), also known as Rachel. They had six children, five of whom are listed below in the Patrynomic Table on the Lyakhovichi website. The information in the table comes from the 1834 Revision List (indicated as RL in the table), the 1885 Voter s List, the 1883-1884-1885 Jewish Townsman Lists and the Tax List of 1884. The birthdates and alternate spellings of the children of Feivel and Rochla come from Nancy Brant s genealogy: Khana (Chana) (b. 1829); Zlata (1832); Benius (Benis), (b. 1834); Meyer (Meier) (b. 1837) and Yosel (b. 1840). Nancy has indicated a sixth child of Feivel in her family tree Itsko, who was born in 1850 after the time the lists in the table below were created.
We don t know what Feivel did for a living, nor do we know his death date. His last found mention was in an 1850 Revision List, so we know he was still alive at age 43. And, since their last child was born in 1850, Rochla also must have been alive then at age 41. 4. Benis Busel (1834-1913) and Family Benis Busel was the last of our ancestors to live and die in Lyakhovichi. He was born in 1834. Nancy Brant learned from somewhere that he was a rabbi, but I have been unable to find any record of this on the web. There is a web page on Lyakhovichi rabbis put together by Deborah Glassman, the webmaster and Lyakhovichi historian. The page describes types of rabbis in the town and lists rabbis who had lived and practiced there no Benis though. According to Glassman s Lyakhovichi site, there were three types of rabbis who were active in late 19th century Lyakhovichi: Orthodox Rabbis, Hassidic Rabbis, and Crown Rabbis. The Orthodox Rabbis were those who led the traditional religious community. Their job involved, among other things, declaring slaughtering knives fit, writing a get (divorce permission), and maintaining the Yeshiva that provided Jewish education. These rabbis had completed Yeshiva studies, apprenticed with a noted rabbi, and received a recognized rabbi s recommendation for the title Rabbi.
The second kind of rabbi followed Hasidic teachings. Lyakhovichi had several Hasidic shuls and was known as an important center for Hasidic teaching and practice. Crown Rabbis, the third type, were appointed by the Russian government. Their job involved serving as a notaries, mohels, community clerks, animal slaughtererers, and keepers of Jewish civil record books. Velvel Brimberg is listed on the Lyakhovichi website as a Crown Rabbi. He was our relative, husband of Pessia Chaya Busel, and direct ancestor of Niv Schwarz, our Israeli cousin. Velvel s father-in-law was Benis s brother Meier. This was the branch of the Busel family who lost many members to the massacre of Jews in Lyakhovichi during the Holocaust in 1941 and 1942. (See more in my essay on the Busel family.) We do not know whether Benis was a rabbi (where did Nancy find evidence for this?), and if he was, we do not know what kind of rabbi he was. What we do know is that he was an elected official voted in by his neighbors, serving as an official deputy in 1883 and 1884 and an elector in 1884. Does his community activism suggest he was a Crown Rabbi? Benis owned a house in Lyakhovichi. It is possible that this is the same house that was owned by Yosel, his father. The Property Owners Records of 1905 Lyakhovichi show that Benis owned a wooden house on Kletsklaya Street. This house must be the one that our grandmother and her siblings grew up in. Here is our evidence for the house from the Jewishgen website. The map below is of the town of Lyakhovichi today. There is no Kletsklaya Street, at least according to Google maps. There is however a main street in today s town, as well as the town of our family s time, that goes from Lyakhovichi to a nearby town Kletsk. I am guessing that it is the Kletsklaya Street listed in Lyachovichi record the street where the wooden house of Benis Busel and family was located. Also, in an essay about Lyachivichi written by a resident, Avrom Lev, who lived there about the time that Benis and his family did, there is a long description of houses and people located along Kletsk Street. My guess is that that is another name for Kletsklaya Unfortunately, Avrom Lev the chronicler of the inhabitants of Lyakhovichi just before World War I does not include the Benis Busel house in his description. Why not?
Benis and Hannah Sara had three children. The oldest was Nevach Benzion Busel (b. 1866). He was fifteen years older than Esther and may have been conscripted into the Russian army under the 1827 Canonist Decree of Czar Nicholas I which required that Jewish boys between 12 and 18 serve in the Russian military. Here is an eligibility conscription list of males in the family of Benis and Sarah that Benis provided to the Russian government. Nevach Benzion would have been 15 in 1881, an age that placed him within the eligibility age for military service. It is possible that our grandmother Esther never knew her brother. Here is a military conscription record for Benis Nevach Benzion and Benis s brother Itsko and Itsko s sons (Esther s uncle and cousins).
Samuel Kassow had this to say about the disruptive Canonist decree: Unlucky parents who lost their children knew that they would never see them again. Military service in the Russian army was for 25 years! To make matters worse, the term of service only began at the age of eighteen. If a twelve year old entered the special camps for boys (the cantons) then he served an extra six years before his term began. The second oldest child of Benis and Hannah Busel was Rivel (Eva) Busel, who was born in 1880. She and Esther were virtually twins (one year apart) and must have been quite close as siblings. Rivel married Joseph Berman. We know little about him. We don t even know if he was from Lyakhovichi. We do know that he was a hatter and that they were married before they emigrated to the US in 1904. Click here for the details on this branch of the family in the US and the unfortunate life of incarceration experienced by Eva. 5. And then there was Esther Esther Busel Felson (1881-1941) The third sibling in the Hannah/Sarah and Benis Busel family was our grandmother Stirel (Esther) Busel. She was born in 1881 (1880 in some of Nancy Brant s documents). At that time Lyakhovichi had about 5000 people, 58% of whom were Jews. Esther s birth year of 1881 was a watershed year in Russian history. It was the year that Alexander II of Russia was assassinated. Alexander II s reign represented for the Jews an era of enlightenment and hope even though they were still required to live within the Pale. Czar Alexander shortened the period Jews were required to do military service, provided them with educational opportunities (high school and college for Jewish males) and allowed educated Jews to live outside the Pale. His assassination and the ascendance of his son Alexander III turned all these reforms around.
During the period that Esther lived in Lyakhovichi, Jews would have said they were Russian, but would have remembered the better years prior to their annexation, when they were part of Lithuania and Poland. Indeed, Esther indicated in the 1920 census in the US that she and her father were from Russia/Poland: Another set of circumstances (besides Russian oppression) that must have impacted on Esther as a child was the widespread influence of the Haskala movement, whose followers challenged traditional ways of life for Jews in the shtetls. Those in the Haskala movement advocated for educational, religious, and economic changes in Jewish life. They proposed moving away from Torah-centered studies in schools to broader curricula including studies of the Bible (not just the Torah) as well as secular subjects. Esther left Lyakhovichi for Warsaw when she was still a teenager. It is likely that her desire to do so not only came from the oppressive tactics against Jews promulgated by the Russian government but also from the progressive attitudes she gleaned from the Heskala movement. In Warsaw Esther connected with Solomon Felson, a Jewish radical and tailor, who probably was even more influenced by Russian oppression and Haskala progressivism than Esther. He was a political activist who was likely to have been a member of the progressive Bund movement that was gaining momentum in Warsaw and throughout Russia at that time. We, Esther and Sol s grandchildren have a romantic vision of Esther going to a political rally where the charismatic Sol was speaking and her falling in love with him at first sight. (Remember, this is our romantic view.) We have very few pictures of Solomon here the best one, taken when he was older
Esther and Solomon were married in 1901, when Esther was 20. Later in 1901 they had their first child, Sonia Felson (Sophie). In 1902, while still in Warsaw, Esther became pregnant again with their second child Itzak Meier (Irv). During the first months of Esther s second pregnancy, Solomon left Russia for the United States. Before his departure he and Esther and daughter Sophie traveled back to her home town of Lyakhovichi, (probably by train and stagecoach) where she stayed until Irv was born and until Solomon found a place for them in America and could afford to bring them. There is some evidence from family lore that Esther and her mother did not get along. Drawing from what we know of the Jewish history and literature of the times we can imagine several reasons for this mother-daughter pair to have their differences. Maybe Hannah Sarah was like Tevya s daughter Tzeitel in Sholom Aleichem s story, who violated family expectations by wanting to marry a lowly tailor. Maybe, heaven forbid, Esther got pregnant before she married Sol (they met in 1901 and Sophie was born in 1901). Maybe, by leaving home in 1901, Esther was violating traditional practices and her mother s expectations of what good daughters should do remain in the community with her nuclear family, have her marriage arranged by a matchmaker, and carry out the religious and family obligations established from long Jewish traditions. The story that has most traction in the family is that they had a falling out when Hannah Sarah expressed doubt to Esther that Sol would ever arrange for her transport to the US. Sol proved Hannah Sarah wrong by providing Esther with money and then, as he describes it, he sent for her. Whereupon Hannah Sarah tried to convince Esther to leave her baby Irv in Lyakhovichi rather than take him to America. This could not have helped their relationship and suggests that Hannah Sarah did not approve of Esther s decision to move with the children to the US. As far as we know, Esther and Hannah Sarah never saw one another after Esther left Lyakhovichi in 1904. Poor Esther, poor Hannah Sarah, poor us.
Go here for more on what happened in the lives of Esther Busel, her husband Solomon, and her sister Eva, after they arrived in the US.