Introducing our new Secular records Multi search! This is still in the development stage but will contain all our Secular Records so that you can search them all in one go. For now the database contains 400 Australian Mariages, 600 UK newspaper announcements (BMD), 1000 Mason records and 400 settlement records. The search enables...
Read more »

On Thursday 28 July 1869, Jane Mathews stood before Alderman Hale in a London Police Court,   charged with “annoying” her husband, Mr Julius Mathews, an Importer of Leadenhall Street.  From the dock, she stated that she had written to her husband for money, but had only received a note in return and had therefore...
Read more »

And when they do, we hold our hands up and apologise.  We recently found an error in our transcript of the Will of Elizabeth Gompertz NA143. which has now been corrected online.  We do our best to get things right but, regrettably, slip-ups, such as this, do creep in from time to time. As...
Read more »

Few of the abstracts on our site conceal quite so much romance and drama behind the dry, archaic, legal language in which it was written, as the Will of Jacques de Paiva  who wrote his Will aboard the ship Beaufort en route to Madras, and whose widow subsequently became the mistress of mistress of...
Read more »

PORTSMOUTH SYNAGOGUE EARLY MEMBERSHIP LIST 1765 to 1843 (PSEM)       Henry Roche Oct.2012 NOTES:  This list (PSEM) is taken from the Purchases of Membership recorded in the Portsmouth Synagogue First Minute Book (MB1), which covers the period 1765 to 1843. MB1 opens with the events leading to the great Split of February 1766, which lasted...
Read more »

We are sad to report the death of one of the great servants of Anglo-Jewish genealogy. George’s knowledge was encyclopaedic and his generosity in sharing that knowledge was unsurpassed. With nothing more than the most basic information – a name and a date, or an address – you could be certain that, within a...
Read more »

Jacques de Paiva sometimes known as James and Isaac and whose Hebrew name is thought to have been Moses Zagache (according to R.D. Barnett and Edgar Roy Samuel see Jonathan Schorsch, « Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva : An Amsterdam Portuguese Merchant abroad in the Seventeenth Century » in The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and...
Read more »

From time to time, in our work of transcribing early Anglo Jewish community records,  we have come across Hebrew words which translate as “From the Medina“. To our  ill-informed minds, this was romantically suggestive of Morocco, or some other exotic North African or Arab city. and made quite a change from the habitual places...
Read more »

This will fascinated us to such an extent that we attempted to transcribe it all. The vast amount of information covering people, places, trade, possessions and a little family intrigue make it the most interesting we have come across so far. We are publishing here extracts from our transcription, but stress that it is...
Read more »

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 copied...
Read more »

Preparing records for our website SynagogueScribes  consists of several operations. First comes the transcription of the original. This is followed, in turn, by the transliteration \ translation of the Hebrew content; the conversion of Hebrew Dates into Civil dates; the quest for identification of individuals, followed by additional research, including linking to persons already...
Read more »

We have been sent the following list of 394 individuals buried at Green Lane, Jewish Cemetery Liverpool. This Jewish cemetery was acquired in 1839 and used until about 1921 although there was a later burial there in 1952. Unfortunately none of the entries include dates – can you help??   If you can identify...
Read more »

The following is an extract from a post on Jewishgen, published here with the kind permission of Dick Plotz. Dick posted this in answer to a query about a Hebrew inscription which was hard to read. We thought this excellent answer and background description of the name Shraga Feivush would be of interest to...
Read more »

Over 100 further Will extracts have been added to SynagogueScribes Secular database. These can be searched here Plus we are already collating a third batch of extracts to be added soon. Amongst them was a lucky find, which we can’t wait to mention. You don’t normally expect to find detailed information of an individual’s...
Read more »

SynagogueScribes are delighted to announce a brilliant new addition to our special section featuring Secular Records. Ranging from 1682 to the late Nineteenth century, from towns across the United Kingdom and  places as far afield as New York, Jamaica, and Australia, from the wealthy slave-owner to the humble general dealer, from Silversmiths and Quill...
Read more »

I was reading the other day on Dick Eastman’s Genealogy Newsletter that the number of individuals it would take to make up 42 generations is 4,398,046,511,102. Just 20 generations would be over a million, and a more manageable 10 generations would be 1,022 individuals. Given that, in an ideal world, you would need to...
Read more »

Following the very recent addition of over 1,000 Great Synagogue burial records to SynagogueScribes we have now add Hambro Synagogue burial records from 1788 to 1814. Please note that although the transcript is complete, the original record itself may only be a partial coverage of the period. Please see ‘sources‘ for more information. Or...
Read more »

We are delighted to announce the addition of over 1,000 burial records to SynagogueScribes.com There are now over 21,000 records available! These records, from our DPL series, have been transcribed from the Great Synagogue Register of Burials at the German Jews Burying Ground – the New Cemetery Ducking Pond Lane Bethnal Green (Brady Street)...
Read more »

We have just loaded up our new look site and hope you like it. The new style allows us more space and opportunity for detailed announcements and articles as well as all all the information you are used to finding on SynagogueScribes.
Read more »