Russian Pogroms

During the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, Jews who were living in the Russian Empire went through a lot of persecution, and faced what are called pogroms. Pogroms are essentially an order or demand to persecute or exterminate a specific ethnic group, and in this case these pogroms were aimed at Jews.

In looking up the definition, the word pogrom is Yiddish meaning “destruction”; “po- like + grom thunder”. Pogrom comes from the Russian word pogromu.

These pogroms repeatedly took place in locations like Odessa, and what we know today as Poland and the Ukraine.

In consequence of the pogroms, there were many Jews who fled to Great Britain and the United States between 1880 and 1914.

Significance in family history

In the early 1880’s, 1881 through 1884 specifically, a pogrom occurred when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. And of course, the first group that was convenient to point figures at were the Jews. The Jews were conveniently accused of assassinating Alexander II, even though their accusers had no evidence to prove this, but it served as an excuse to attack Jewish residences anyway. Anarchists rose up against the Jewish communities, and destroyed the homes of Jewish families, and many of them had to suffer through poverty.

With how my third great-grandparents fit into this picture, I had to check census records. The 1900 census indicates that my great-great-great grandfather, Samuel Glasser, came to the United States as early as 1885 and as late as 1887, according to the 1920 census. My third great-grandmother, Sarah Miller, immigrated to the United States in 1887. At this point, is undetermined whether Samuel and Sarah traveled to the United States in the same passenger vessel. I believe they came to the United States on separate ships. And it seems like they immigrated to the United States for the same reason: to escape religious persecutions and the pogroms in the Russian Empire.

There is still a lot of research and analyses to make concerning the evidences at hand, but this is what I have come to thus far.

A Second Look...Epiphany!

During this summer I was making efforts in discovering who my ancestors are on my mother's side of the family, and was privileged to go back at least two generations. I have been successful thus far in identifying my grandmother's predecessors.
My grandmother's grandfather, Harry Glasser, was listed as a son to Samuel and Sarah Glasser, who were living in New Jersey at the time the U.S. Census had been taken in 1910.
It can be understood that while discovering the names of our ancestors, that the mothers are usually the more difficult to identify when we are seeking to find out their maiden names. However, earlier this week, as I have been preparing this current post, I had discovered Sarah Glasser's maiden name, happens to be Miller.
This occurred while I was making Google searches on possible names that are related to my research, when the 1910 U.S. Census record showed up under Mocavo.com. The digital image was available to look at, to which I took the liberty to do so, despite the fact that it has been previously downloaded onto my laptop. I decided to make a "cross-examination" of what I had in my personal collections, with the census which I had found on Mocavo.
Mocavo, like Ancestry, has the ability to highlight a household you desire to look at. And as I had selected the household which I desired to see, I discovered a man by the name of Jacob Miller who was a brother-in-law to Samuel Glasser. Once I looked upon that, a light bulb turned on and I came to realize in that moment: I had just found Sarah Glasser's maiden name.

(I could only upload this image from my computer, so I apologize for making this image rather small. I did included a hyperlink in which this image may be viewed, however.)

The funny thing about Sarah Miller is that she and her brother, Jacob, are both from Russia. And yet, they have English names for some unbeknownst reason. I have found, however, that the name Miller may or may be Jewish, since both Jewish and non-Jewish people tend to have interchanging names.

I would like to mention however, that both Sarah and Jacob Miller were naturalized citizens, which means they did immigrate to the United States, which leads to believe that they changed their name some time after they sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to the significance with this census record as far as Jewish heritage is concerned are the origins of all the adults which were recorded: "Russ Yiddish". Yiddish is what the Ashkenazim sect of Judaism speaks.

Discovery of Jewish Ancestors

My experiences with family history research have been quite adventurous this year. I have been able to trace ancestry on my mother’s side as far back as the sixth generation. I started out with the name of my great-grandmother, Beatrice Glasser (1919-1972), and have been blessed to go as far back as two generations.

While I was busy doing my summer research, I discovered that I have some Jewish ancestors who immigrated from Russia to the United States during the second half of the Nineteenth Century.

I had wondered why my third great-grandparents had immigrated from Russia to the United States during the late 1800's. So, I made my inquiry by searching the Internet, and had found that they were among many other Ashkenazi Jews who fled the Russian Empire in order to escape religious persecution.

In addition to this investigation, I learned that Glasser was a spelling variation of Glaser, which happens to be German and Jewish (Ashkenazic), according to Ancestry.com.

The map below is a rendition of the Russian Empire during the 19th Century.

(Image Source: http://www.ulm.edu/innovator/lessons/revolt/pre1917/mapeuro19thc.html)