| |  so what were the steps needed to find Seide - We had his name, his wife's name (that turned out to be less than accurate), a few family stories and a picture of seide's grave stone.
We collected all the data relating to Hyman Bernstein and we started there. The Gravestone gave us an idea of Hyman's year of birth (remember the information on a gravestone is not composed by the deceased, it may not contain accurate data!!) and, as a Jew on the stone was his Hebrew name and fathers Hebrew name inscribed on the stone in Hebrew script (translation required).
Hyman's father was called Peretz (Percy). Hyman called his first son Peretz and as the Jewish faith has rules about naming (more research) Hyman's father must have died before his 1907 Hyman's son (Percy) was born in 1907 in London.
- After adding Peretz Bernstein to the tree (with rough data) We created a timeline for the relatives we knew about and added new data for Hyman and his Father. Where did he live? When did he marry? Where did he come from? We knew from the gravestone that Hyman was age 64 in 1942 could we find a birth or marriage certificate. Hyman and Yetta had their first child in 1907 (my Grandpa) so they had to have married before that. I use 2 sites to research Births, Marriages and deaths the books are organised quarterly so having narrowed our search down to 5 years before 1907 we logged on at FreeBMD as the title suggests the site is free BUT it is incomplete and very slow I also use 1837online which has a complete set of indexes of Birth, Marriages and Deaths for England and Wales from 1837 to date. In this case I found two records that may fit on 1837. I took the reference numbers then Mum went to the Family Records centre to order the documents somehow on advice from the assistant we ordered 1 certificate from the October to December book 1902 we found what we believed to be a copy of Hyman's marriage certificate. 6 days later (now known as the GRO General register office you can order certificates online) it arrived and it was our Hyman's civil marriage certificate. We had learned from it that he and Yetta married in 1902 the name of Hyman's father was confirmed and his profession added to the family tree. It also had Hyman's address.
- We now knew where Hyman lived in 1902 but where did he live before he married? A look at the UK 1901 census site and this 1901 Census tips site helped. We discovered his address in 1901 and added it to the growing data.
- Well now it was back to the oldest member of the family to share the new information and to jog a few more memories. This is an important step it as it may allow you to confirm the data you have collected. After an hour on the phone my aunt remembered that Seide had a hobby (he was a coppersmith!!) and he used those skills when he fought in WW1. I got home logged on and spent some time surfing the UK Public Record office website. A quick search of Bernstein brought up 2 days of reading and 4 possible Hyman Bernstein's further research on the long long trial website allowed us to ignore 1 record because the army reference number was for a south African Hyman Bernstein and the other due to a name change to Lawrence so we had only 2 choices. Then a thought crossed my mind If he fought in the war he may have been become a naturalised citizen, so back to our two records and another search and two more Hyman Bernstein's in the naturalisation database 1920/ 1921 which was ours.
- A visit to the public records office at Kew by my mother and Daughter (age 12) located Hyman's Naturalisation file and we where lucky enough to get photo copies of the contents. This was the file used to create the naturalisation certificate and it had much more detail than the certificate itself. from the copies we where able to confirm Hyman's parents names, his place of birth and details of his war records. More to follow
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Last updated 10/11/2004 |
