Research

Ellis Island and Other U.S. Arrivals

The Ellis Island website contains records of more than 22 million passengers, immigrants and ship crew members who arrived at the Port of New York from 1892-1924. The original manifests are viewable on the web, and the passengers have been indexed and much information about them transcribed. For passengers from Porozow who arrived via Ellis Island, click here. For those who landed in other ports, click here.

1912 Grodno Voters Database

JewishGen has published a database of more than 26,000 male residents of Grodno Gubernia eligible to vote in 1912 parliamentary elections, about 80 percent of whom were Jews. Most of the records did not name the town of residence, but those that specified Porozow have been included in this website. you can view the records here.

Hamburg Jewish Emigrants

Hamburg was one of Europe's principal gateway cities for the mass migration to the United States and elsewhere that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Hamburg Ship Passenger Lists from that era are preserved, and while they are often difficult to decipher, they do reveal that at least few dozen of those emigrants originated in Porozow. You can see information about them and look at the original manifests here.

1897 All Russian Census: Grodno Jewish Records

This January 28, 1897 census resides in the Grodno branch of the National Historical Archives of Belarus, and includes the name, relationship to the head of the household, age, name of father, place of birth, place of registration and place of residence of those enumerated.

While 169 records contain references to Porozow, only one refers to a person - Moshka Prybulski - who was living in the town on that date. The rest pertain to members of households listed as having been born in Porozow or registered there. This is strong indication that there was a good deal of commerce among the towns of Grodno Gubernia, and much intermarriage among the residents of Porozow, Bialystok, Jalowka, Volkovysk, Grodno and Swisloch and Zelwa.

A full explanation of what the database contains and how it was compiled and transcribed can be found here, and the database can be searched by clicking here.

Porozover Benevolent Association

Among the types of assistance provided to their members by landsmanschaften, Jewish mutual aid societies formed by immigrants from a common town or area of Eastern Europe, were financial assistance in times of crisis or sickness and burial benefits. Such organizations frequently included a chevra kadisha, or burial society, to provide aid to grieving families and access to burial plots, which were purchased in tracts and offered to members individually at affordable prices. These societies not only purchased, but also maintained the gravesites, which typically were located in defined areas of Jewish cemeteries.

On February 17, 1906, sevens sons of Porozow filed papers with the Supreme Court of the State of New York to incorporate the Porozover Benevolent Association. Morris Levy, Morris Levinsky, Sam Zisser, Max Davidson, Morris Levinsky [apparently not the same individual named above], Isaac Zipnick and Charles Krinsky became the first member of the board of this organization, whose purposes were "to promote friendship, to voluntarily aid and assist financially or otherwise, such member that may from time to time be found to be sick or in distress; to bury such members that may from time to time decease." The organization was to operate pricipally in New York.

While the society itself does not appear to have survived into the twenty-first century, two of its cemetery tracts have. According to listings from the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York website, the group maintained sections in two cemeteries: Mt. Zion Cemetery at 59-63 54th Avenue, Maspeth, New York (Path 44 Right, Gate 24) and Old Montefiore Cemetery at 121-83 Springfield Boulevard, St. Albans, New York (Block 50, Gate 667/W).

Madeline and Julian Goodstein graciously offered to photograph gravestones from the Porozover section of Old Montefiore Cemetery for this website, and these are viewable by clicking here. While this is not an exhaustive collection (they ran out of film!), it includes most of the markers on the left side of the section. A list of the occupants of the Porozover section of Mt. Zion Cemetery, together with grave location and burial date, can be found here.

Other Sources

Archival Holdings. Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Foundation website contains a comprehensive list of archival holdings for Porozovo. You can visit it by clicking on the title above.

Burial Societies. The Jewish Genealogical Society of New York has collected data on Burial Societies in the New York Metro Area and has identified two cemeteries in which the Porozover Benevolent Association had plots, Mt. Zion and Montefiore. For details, click on the title above.

Family Tree of the Jewish People. This cooperative project among JewishGen, Inc., the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (Beit Hatefutsot) invites researchers to submit information about people on their family trees and others to locate them by searching the database. To use it, you will first need to register as a JewishGen user here.

JewishGen Discussion Group Archives. Inquiries and comments posted on the web in various discussion groups are saved and can be searched for keywords, including town names. You will need to register as a JewishGen user here first.

Jewish Genealogical Family Finder. Many people who have ancestors or relatives who originated in Porozow have placed their contact information on the JewishGen website and welcome inquiries from others who may be researching the same family names.