Author Archive

We are pleased to announce that thanks to photos provided by Boreenatra we will be able to record the names of Jewish service personnel who served their country during the World Wars. The United Synagogue Roll of Honour at East Ham Cemetery has been added along with a searchable table of names.  See here
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Guest Blog by Hannah Renier, Hannah has ghost-written several family histories, edited others and edited some nineteenth-century journals, besides ghost-writing books for a well-known historian. History and genealogy have become her passion and she’s writing a book about Leicester Square. Last year I was working on a book about London’s horses, and how they...
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What happens when you are looking for both names for 1 person? A couple of years ago we received an email from Belgium asking for more information on an entry we had under Lauriston Cemetery. The enquirer was interested to know whether Solomon JONES was his ancestor. Now to be honest, my initial reaction...
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What are the chances of two sisters – Abigail and Sarah – both marrying someone  with the same, very distinctive name,  within one year of each other?  Pretty slim, you would think.  I certainly doubted it,  although both marriages appeared  on the Synagogue Scribes database, albeit the grooms’ Hebrew patronymics were different.  My immediate...
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Like many Jewish families, my ancestors were great mythologisers.  They polished and shined our family story until it gleamed, leaving no trace of past crimes and misdemeanours.  Thus, one of my great uncles could write, in all sincerity, a couple of years before he died aged 102: “King Charles banished all Jews when he...
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Two and a half years have passed since we wrote about the Brady Street memorial to Miriam Levy. Her much vaunted connection to the founding of the Jewish Soup Kitchen still eludes us but, thanks to Dr. Phillip Kirby, we have now at least been able to identify her descendants. Some of  these were...
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Lyon Samson died in Liverpool on 26 January 1843. His name and occupation, Optician, appear regularly in Gores Liverpool Directories 1823-1844 and in the more exclusive Baines Lancashire Directory 1823\4  He is also listed in the Liverpool Poll Book 1832 Sampson,Lyon,Optician,Roden Place, Percy Street, Liverpool. A man of substance, one would suppose; yet he...
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We have been robbed!.  Not once, but twice!   Firstly, by a Very Large, Highly Respectable, Organisation.  We still aren’t  clear what  possessed them.  Over-enthusiasm? Naievete? Or sheer thoughtlessness?   Whatever the cause, the result  has been highly damaging. Whole datasets from our SynagogueScribes database and large amounts of data from our CemeteryScribes website have been...
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In the many years I’ve been researching my ancestors, Wills have never figured as a source of information. I’m not sure if it was lack of money, lack of education, or lack of trust in lawyers, but the fact is, my early Anglo-Jewish ancestors didn’t go in for them.  They were, in the main,...
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Benjamin Jacobs, Isaac Lev Lyons and William Shannon.   On 6th November 1810 Benjamin Jacobs made out his will leaving all his “goods, chattels, money and wearing apparel” to his “good friend” and sole executor Ann Taylor. The witnesses to the will were Isaac Lev Lyons and William Shannon and the address given was...
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