 | Miriam Weiner, researcher, genealogist, author, world traveler. Miriam took us on a guided tour of the many additions and enhancements that she recently posted at the Routes to Roots Foundation website, including:
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| A Walking Tour of the RTRF Website |
Major Additions to the Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation Website
This excellent writeup of some of the new Routes To Roots website features appeared in the 12/20/2020 edition of "Nu? What's Nu?", The E-zine of Jewish Genealogy from Avotaynu (www.avotaynu.com/nu.htm).
In the months that followed the writing of this article, Miriam has been busy adding features to the Routes To Roots website. This article has been lightly edited to reflect the current state of the website.
[Included by permission. Thank you Gary Mokotoff!]
Miriam Weiner is one of the pioneers of contemporary Jewish genealogy. In her 25+ years of research for her clients, she has made more than 100 trips to the countries of Eastern Europe, including: Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Very early in her career she went to countries in the then Soviet Union and Poland to meet with archivists and asked them to partner with her in creating an index to their Jewish holdings. Acquisition of this information formed for the basis of Weiner’s two books, and later was the genesis of “The Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation (RTRF) website. She published this information at the Foundation’s website http://rtrfoundation.org as a searchable database. It remains the most complete index to the Jewish record holdings in the archives of Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. It shows the type of document, available years, which archive has the collection and the archive file numbers.
Whenever Weiner went to a city to do research for a client or take photos for her books and website, she tried to acquire copies of artifacts associated with the city or region. This might be a local telephone book, town map, name lists from the local Jewish community and other similar material.
In visiting archives through this region, Weiner acquired various document copies including city directories, Jewish vital records, indexes (birth, death, marriage, divorce records), family lists and census records (revizskie skazki), voter and tax lists, immigration documents, Holocaust material, property and notary records, army/recruit lists, police files and pogrom documents, school records and occupation lists, local government and hospital records. Also, she acquired numerous archive inventories as well as books published by the archives with lists of holdings. Now she is in the process of placing much of this information on the RTRF website searchable both by a standard surname search and by OCR search.
New Surname Database for towns in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Ukraine. The source is more than 200 collections to date. There are currently more than 2M names online with an anticipated 3M by end of 2021.
Maps. More than 80 town and regional maps located in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Ukraine (www.rtrfoundation.org/maps.shtml) can be searched on the website. This is in addition to 75 Joint Operation Graphic Maps (JOG) maps of Eastern Europe created by the U.S. Army Map Service.
These very detailed maps are on Miriam's website and include every town and village in Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Belarus and some parts of Latvia and Romania.
Ukraine Telephone Directories. A collection of 75 telephone directories from primarily small/medium-sized towns in Ukraine which Weiner has donated to the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC). These books are now searchable by surname via OCR at the RTRF website and also at Logan Kleinwaks’ website at www.genealogyindexer.org. You can click on the search results to see the actual page of the telephone book from the LOC website.
Business Directories & Telephone Books
The following business directories (14) are now searchable by surname via OCR on the RTRF website, with more being added continually. Seven of the 14 are in Russian/Cyrillic and appear via the OCR search.
Image Database. There is a new drop-down menu for images, accessible from the RTRF website Home Page. Currently, there are 2,215 images from 358 towns in six countries, and Weiner plans to add more as soon as possible. (www.rtrfoundation.org/imagesearch.php).
Collection Descriptions are an important part of the new surname databases. Each collection links to a 1–10 page narrative about the origin or history of acquiring the collection, numerous photographs and/or antique postcards views of the relevant towns, and links at the end of each entry leading to lesser-known sources of information about the town.
Visit the RTRF site and browse the collections.
In the months that followed the writing of this article, Miriam has been busy adding features to the Routes To Roots website. This article has been lightly edited to reflect the current state of the website.
[Included by permission. Thank you Gary Mokotoff!]
Miriam Weiner is one of the pioneers of contemporary Jewish genealogy. In her 25+ years of research for her clients, she has made more than 100 trips to the countries of Eastern Europe, including: Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Very early in her career she went to countries in the then Soviet Union and Poland to meet with archivists and asked them to partner with her in creating an index to their Jewish holdings. Acquisition of this information formed for the basis of Weiner’s two books, and later was the genesis of “The Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation (RTRF) website. She published this information at the Foundation’s website http://rtrfoundation.org as a searchable database. It remains the most complete index to the Jewish record holdings in the archives of Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. It shows the type of document, available years, which archive has the collection and the archive file numbers.
Whenever Weiner went to a city to do research for a client or take photos for her books and website, she tried to acquire copies of artifacts associated with the city or region. This might be a local telephone book, town map, name lists from the local Jewish community and other similar material.
In visiting archives through this region, Weiner acquired various document copies including city directories, Jewish vital records, indexes (birth, death, marriage, divorce records), family lists and census records (revizskie skazki), voter and tax lists, immigration documents, Holocaust material, property and notary records, army/recruit lists, police files and pogrom documents, school records and occupation lists, local government and hospital records. Also, she acquired numerous archive inventories as well as books published by the archives with lists of holdings. Now she is in the process of placing much of this information on the RTRF website searchable both by a standard surname search and by OCR search.
New Surname Database for towns in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Ukraine. The source is more than 200 collections to date. There are currently more than 2M names online with an anticipated 3M by end of 2021.
Maps. More than 80 town and regional maps located in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Ukraine (www.rtrfoundation.org/maps.shtml) can be searched on the website. This is in addition to 75 Joint Operation Graphic Maps (JOG) maps of Eastern Europe created by the U.S. Army Map Service.
These very detailed maps are on Miriam's website and include every town and village in Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Belarus and some parts of Latvia and Romania.
Ukraine Telephone Directories. A collection of 75 telephone directories from primarily small/medium-sized towns in Ukraine which Weiner has donated to the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC). These books are now searchable by surname via OCR at the RTRF website and also at Logan Kleinwaks’ website at www.genealogyindexer.org. You can click on the search results to see the actual page of the telephone book from the LOC website.
Business Directories & Telephone Books
The following business directories (14) are now searchable by surname via OCR on the RTRF website, with more being added continually. Seven of the 14 are in Russian/Cyrillic and appear via the OCR search.
- Address Book: Town of Lwow (Lvov), 1897 / 17,025 names
- Address Book: Town of Lemberg (now Lviv), 1916 / 24,060 names
- Telephone directory for districts of: Bydgosz, Gdansk, Krakow, Katowice, Lublin, Lwow, Poznan, Wilna and Warszaw, 1934 / 88,560 names
- Address Book for Poltava and Poltava Guberniya, 1914 / 9,614 names
- Address Calendar, Podolia Guberniya, 1909 / 6,840 names
- Telephone Directory for Boryslaw, Drohobycz & Lwow (& nearby towns), 1930 / 15,875 names
- Telephone Directory for Lvov, Boryslaw, Drohobycz (& nearby towns), 1938 / 13,500 names
- Address Calendar for Kiev Guberniya, 1914 / 1,960 names
- Volhynia Address Book, 1895 / 5,540 names
- Volhynia Address Book, 1915 / 3,600 names
- Galicia Address Book, 1891 / 11,875 names
- “All Russia” Business Directory, 1902 / 140,400 names
- Vsia Rossiia — ”All Russia” Business Directory, 1903, entries from Mogilev Guberniya (partial)
- Vsia Rossiia — ”All Russia” Business Directory, 1911, entries from Mogilev Guberniya (partial)
Image Database. There is a new drop-down menu for images, accessible from the RTRF website Home Page. Currently, there are 2,215 images from 358 towns in six countries, and Weiner plans to add more as soon as possible. (www.rtrfoundation.org/imagesearch.php).
Collection Descriptions are an important part of the new surname databases. Each collection links to a 1–10 page narrative about the origin or history of acquiring the collection, numerous photographs and/or antique postcards views of the relevant towns, and links at the end of each entry leading to lesser-known sources of information about the town.
Visit the RTRF site and browse the collections.
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