Gershon Gindes

[JBA: research on the Gershon Henderson family of Kupiskis, Pumpenai and Baltimore]

[1- the name "Henderson"]

We find Gershon Henderson and his family in the Lithuanian records under the surname "Gindes". In records transcribed by Russian-speakers, the letter G often indicates H, and we can see that the name was "Hindes" or "Hindeson" from later records from English-speaking countries. Even some of the Russian records show up as "Gindeson" or "Gindelson". This name was regularized to the common British surname "Henderson" in the UK and US. The family surname originally comes from the Yiddish proper name "Hinde", meaning "doe". Gershon himself seems to have initially used the form "Hindeson" in the US, which we see in some of the census records and his wife's ship manifest. By the end of his life, he had moved to the standard "Henderson". On his death certificate, his first name is spelled "Gershun", while on his gravestone it is spelled "Gershen".

[2- biography of Gershon]

Gershon was a shoemaker, born in Kupiskis (Yiddish: Kupishok), in the Ukmerge (Yiddish: Vilkomir) district of Kaunas (Yiddish: Kovno) province, in May, 1841 to Eliash Hindes. We don't know about his early life. He married Hene Sandler in Pumpenai (Yiddish: Pumpian), her home shtetl, in Panevezys (Yiddish: Ponevez) district, on November 25, 1865; he was 24 and she was 20. Her father, Abram Sandler, was also a shoemaker. Perhaps Gershon had been his apprentice.

The young family apparently first settled in Pusalotas (Yiddish: Pushelet) a smaller shtetl only three miles away from Pumpenai. The two shtetls often contained members of the same families. There were about 300 Jewish families in Pusalotas and 600 in Pumpenai. In 1877, Gershon was listed, along with his two known brothers, Shmuyla and Mordkhel, on the tax list in Kupiskis, where he was still registered. He was noted as "not poor, no house". By 1876, records show them living in Pumpenai, but noted as "family from Pusalotas". They changed their registration officially to Pumpenai from Kupiskis in 1881, and would remain in Pumpenai until their various emigrations. Gershon and Hene would eventually have nine children, only four of whom would survive to adulthood.

[3- Gershon & Hene's Children]

Their eldest child, Eliash Itsik, was born in 1868, and he also became a shoemaker. He was most likely named after Gershon's father Eliash, which indicates that Eliash was dead by 1868. He is listed as 17 years old on the 1887 family list for Pumpenai. He would marry in 1889 and emigrate, first to England and then to the US, where he became known as "Isaac Henderson".

The next recorded child was a son, Shmuel Leyba, who was born around 1872. He is listed as 14 years old on the 1887 family list. There are no further records of Shmuel, who was likely named after Gershon's grandfather Shmuyla Gindes of Kupiskis. The 1910 census suggests all the children who did not emigrate to America were dead, so Shmuyla must have died sometime between 1887 and 1903.

After that came another son, Shlioma Nosel, born around 1874. He is listed as age 12 on the 1887 family list. There is also no other trace of Shlioma, who was likely named after Hene's grandfather Shlioma (i.e., Shlomo) Sandler. Shlioma Nosel must have also died before the family left Lithuania.

Their fourth child was their first daughter, Hoda Bosha. We have her birth record from 1876, with the surname spelled "Gindesh", and she is listed as age 11 in the 1887 family list. The name is typically spelled as "Goda Basya" or "Gode Basa" in the Russian records. Hoda Bosha would later emigrate to the United States to join her family, where she would later be known as "Bessie Henderson Gordon", my mother's maternal grandmother.

Their fifth child was another girl, Toyba Dveyra. We have her birth record from 1878, with the surname "Gindelson". Since she is missing from the 1887 family list, we can conclude that she died in childhood.

Their sixth child was another girl, Shora Sheina. Her birth record from 1882 was originally transcribed as "Gotseson", but the archivists in Lithuania have corrected this now to "Gideson", indicating that she belongs to our family. She also does not appear on the 1887 family list and thus seems also to have died young.

The next child we have a record for is a boy, Leyzer. We have his birth record from 1883, with the surname "Gindeson", and he is listed as age 4 on the 1887 family list. Leyzer would later emigrate to the US to join his family, where he would be later known as "Louis Henderson".

The last child that we have Lithuanian records for was a girl, Gita Riska. We have her death record, with the surname "Gindeson", in 1894 at age 8, of typhus. In the 1887 family list, there is a one year old girl named "Golda" listed, this has to be the same child, with a presumed birth year of 1886, and with Golda as a variant of Gita (albeit not a standard variant) or an error by the census-taker. Any other child aged 8 in 1894 would have been expected to be listed on the 1887 family list.

The youngest surviving child to emigrate was the boy tentatively identified as "Frank Henderson" in the 1910 census, living with his parents, aged 21. This suggests a birth year of 1888 or 1889. Thus far, no other trace of him has been found, and we don't know his original name. The 1910 census indicates that Hene had 9 children in all, and the discovery of Shora Sheina now accounts for all of them.

[4- Emigration and life in America]

Eliash Itzik Hindes, a.k.a. Isaac Henderson, married Bosha Malka Leizerik (a.k.a "Bessie Lesser"), a girl from Pumpenai, in 1889, and they emigrated in the same year, first to England, where Gershon's first grandchild was born, and then later to New York, where a second grandson was born. The family subsequently moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Isaac and Bessie had four more sons, and a daughter who unfortunately died as a young child.

Gershon himself emigrated to America in 1899, sailing to Philadelphia. His passage was paid for by his sister, who was also his destination person. We presume this to have been Sheyna Pumpian, who had emigrated to Baltimore in 1893 and was the first family member in America. We don't know how long Gershon stayed in Baltimore, but his son Isaac was by this time living in Savannah, GA with his family, and Gershon moved there in time to be included on the 1900 census as a member of their household. He appears on the 1900 census with them as "Genman Henderson".

We don't yet know why Gershon did not bring his wife and other children initially. His married daughter Hoda Bosha (Bessie) emigrated with her husband in 1902, as did Gershon's son Leyzer. On Leyzer's 1902 ship manifest, his destination address was his uncle, Moses Pumpian, and his father Gershon, in Baltimore. This indicates that Gershon had moved back to Baltimore and his sister Sheyna by 1902, so he did not remain in Savannah for long. Bessie and her husband supposedly also went initially to live in Savannah, but it seems like they were back in Baltimore by 1903, where their eldest son Israel (Jack) was born.

Gershon's wife Hene finally rejoined the family in Baltimore in 1903, sailing from Bremen to Philadelphia on the SS Willehad with no other family members apparently present on board. The mysterious third son, whose name appears to be "Frank" in the 1910 census, would have come over within this timeframe, perhaps on his own, since he did not seem to have traveled with his siblings or his mother: the census indicates 1902. We do not yet know what became of him. Son Isaac moved his family from Savannah to join the rest of the Hendersons in Baltimore some time around 1905. In 1906, Leyzer, by now calling himself "Louis", married Anna Levin in Baltimore. But by 1906, daughter Bessie, who had given birth to her first two children in Baltimore, had moved with her husband to New York, where their third child was born in September 1906.

In the US, Gershon learned English and continued to work as a shoemaker. Whereas they had all lived together in Savannah, the married family members apparently moved to separate houses in Baltimore as they had their children. Gershon, Hene and the youngest son were living at 1532 E. Fayette Street in 1910. Hene died in 1916, and Gershon continued to live at the same address, appearing on the 1920 census alone as a widower, listed under the name "John Hindeson". By 1920, nearly all the Hendersons had adopted anglicized given names to go along with their anglicized surnames. While Gershon had only spoken Yiddish in 1900, he was listed as an English-speaker by 1910.

We don't know how closely the Hendersons remained in touch with one another. Presumably Louis and Isaac and their families were in close contact. For many years they lived only a few houses away from one another on Hollins Street. This was 2.5 miles away from their parents on East Fayette Street, which was on the other side of town. I have wondered why Gershon and Hene chose to live on the other side of town from their children. Meanwhile, daughter Bessie was having her family in Brooklyn, NY, far away from Baltimore. We don't know if she ever came down to visit her parents or how common interstate travel was in the 1910s and 20s. Nat Gordon specifically stated in his family history that the Gordon children only saw the Hendersons when they were grown up. Of course this does not exclude Bessie having gone to Baltimore on her own to visit. It is always possible that she went down when her mother died in 1916, although she would have had a two-month-old baby (Gert) at the time. But she should have had no impediment when her father died in 1925. She must have kept in touch with her brothers, at least by letter, since that eventually culminated in some family visits in the late 1930s. But lacking further info, the degree of contact can only be guessed at.

[5 - Death of Gershon]

Gershon died in 1925 of chronic nephritis, which he had suffered from for 6 years, in "the Hebrew Incurable Home" in Baltimore. His age was listed as 85. He died on August 21 at 9pm; his tombstone lists August 22. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery on August 23rd.

Thanks to Gershon's death certificate, we can now confidently connect our Henderson family to the records of the "Gindes" family found in the Pumpenai, Lithuania records preserved at JewishGen.org, a connection initially discovered for me by genealogy researcher Chaim Freedman, who shares Bessie Henderson's maternal DNA haplogroup.

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[6 - The Genealogical Proof]

The "discovery" of the Baltimore Hendersons has been an incremental process that I have been working on from August 2008, and did not arrive at a complete genealogical proof linking the Baltimore Hendersons to the Lithuanian records until January 2012.

[6a - the limited primary data and problems]

The initial primary data consisted of two short paragraphs in my great-uncle Nat Gordon's seven page family history narrative, in which he mentions his mother Bessie Henderson's two brothers, Isaac and Louis Henderson of Baltimore. Nat and his wife Rose had visited the Louis Henderson family in Baltimore and stayed in their house. Louis's son Eddie, a pharmacist, was named, and two daughters were mentioned. For Isaac, whom they met only briefly, the information was less clear, but it seemed he had some daughters and they had "inter-married", i.e. married non-Jews.

The only data reaching back to his parents' life in Lithuania was Nat's mention of a shtetl, "Kovno geberniya", the fact that his parents had emigrated to Savannah, Georgia, then moved to Virginia and Maryland before settling in Brooklyn, and a single photo of Bessie's gravestone taken by my Uncle David Colchamiro, naming her as "Hoda Bosha bat Gershon" and providing her birth date in 1881.

"Kovno Guberniya" was in fact not a shtetl, but the name of a large province of the Russian Empire, in todays' Lithuania, containing hundreds of shtetls as well as the large town Kaunas (Kovno), with a population of 25,000 Jews or more. Bessie's true birth year turned out to not be 1881 - she lied to appear younger than her husband. Ship manifests for Savannah, Georgia are not available online before 1905, if that was even their landing place. And "Henderson" was clearly an anglicized name, there were no other Jewish Hendersons in the Lithuanian records. And her husband's surname, "Gordon", while an authentic Lithuanian Jewish surname, was most likely not original - his family was also nowhere to be found in the records. The search for the Henderson had begun rather inauspiciously.

[6b - United States records]

It was fairly easily to find Louis Henderson and his family in Baltimore in the US census records. The 1920 and 1930 censuses showed Louis, a furniture merchant, with his wife Anna and children Edward, Evelyn, Bessie and Freda, living at 1205 Hollins Street. Edward was a "helper in a drugstore" in 1930, so this matched Nat's description of him as a "pharmacist". The family was "Hebrew" from "Russia". There was no other Louis Henderson in Baltimore with this profile. The only issue was three daughters instead of two.

Isaac Henderson was more of a challenge. There was one Isaac Henderson in Baltimore that appeared to be Jewish from Russia, a shoemaker with a wife Bessie, and also living on Hollins Street, at number 1213, by 1930. But he had nine children, only the last three being girls. His eldest son, Joseph, was born in England, which was unexpected. The next son was born in New York, and the rest in Georgia. His daughters were born in Maryland. So he could have been the right Isaac Henderson, but there was no proof, and that was as far as the limited initial information could bring me.

[6c - the Lithuanian records]

The breakthrough came in early 2010, thanks to the Israeli genealogist Chaim Freedman, whose interest in Bessie Henderson's family stems from our common maternal DNA haplogroup. Chaim realized that the name "Henderson" must be an anglicization of something based on the Yiddish given name "Hinde", which means "doe". He took the names "Hoda Bosha" and "Gershon" from the gravestone, and combined them with his knowledge that Russian scribes transliterate the letter "H" from Yiddish as "G", and searched the Lithuanian archives on JewishGen.org. There he discovered the 1887 family list from Pumpenai featuring the "Gindes" family, as well as the birth records of "Gode Basya Gindesh" in 1876 and "Leyzer Gindeson" in 1883, the death record of "Gita Riska Gindeson" in 1894, and the marriage record of "Eliash Itsik Gindes" and "Bashe Malka Leizerik" in 1889. He also found Gershon Gindes's brothers, Shmuyla and Mortkhel, who had their own families, and Gershon's father, Elyash ben Shmuyla Gindes. Gershon's wife was identified as "Gena", which Chaim informed me was the Yiddish name "Hene". No maiden name was listed for her.

He was convinced this must be my Henderson family, and it turned out that he was correct. But there were some initial concerns I had about this identification, the main one being the date of birth for Bessie Henderson. The day and the month did not correspond to what was on her tombstone, and the year was off by five years! There were also a number of unknown extra siblings. I felt the need for more proof before fully accepting this identification of the "Gindes" family as my Hendersons of Baltimore. So I began to work on developing a genealogical proof based on further information.

[6d - re-examining the US records]

The first dividend that came from this new data was to positively identify Isaac Henderson in the US census records. Knowing his name was "Eliash Itsik" rather than just "Isaac", a 1900 census record for "E Henderson" in Savannah, Georgia was located. This contained the older children seen in the 1920 census, but some had more authentic Jewish names, which had become anglicized by 1920. "Joseph H" was revealed as "Hyman Joseph", and his birth record from 1891 in London was quickly located, indicating that Isaac and his wife Bessie had initially emigrated to England, a common destination for Russian Empire Jews in the 1890s. The 1900 census listed birth years and months, marriage length and the number of living and dead children, providing more precise age information for all parties. The length of Isaac and Bessie's marriage indicated a date of 1889, matching the Lithuanian marriage record, and their ages also corresponded to the Lithuanian data. Isaac's year of immigration was also listed as 1889, but we know that this is when he must have left Lithuania for England, probably just after his marriage. His second son Samuel's birth in New York in 1895 puts a limit on how long the family may have stayed in England.

It also suggests the route via which the Russian "Gindeson" turned into the common English name "Henderson": the Whitechapel, London birth record indicates "Hinderson". A further link to the Lithuanian record was the child's name: the marriage record from 1889 indicated that Bessie's father was named "Chaim Josel Leizerik". The name "Hyman Joseph" seems to be an anglicization of his name, suggesting he was named for his maternal grandfather. This suggests that her father had died young, which seems to have been the case: his widow is seen remarrying in 1895 in the Lithuanian records.

The second breakthrough in the 1900 Savannah census record was the presence of Isaac's father, "Genman Henderson", a shoemaker speaking only Yiddish, who arrived in the US in 1899. This is the first evidence in the US for Gershon, whom I previously assumed had never left Lithuania. He is listed as married, suggesting that his wife is still alive and remaining behind with his other children. Since Gershon is no longer living with the family on the 1910 census, this invited a search for his presence in 1910. The result was a poorly legible census sheet showing a "Gershen Gunderson" and his wife "Hanna" living at 1532 E. Fayette Street in Baltimore. The data seemed to match the expected ages, but there is a previously unknown son, whose name could be "Frank" or "Franz", age 21. Hanna has had nine children of whom only four survive, one of them being this new Frank. This adds up with the three we started with, while the Lithuanian records name four of the five dead children, so the data continues to correspond. At the same address in 1920, a census record for "John Hindeson", a shoemaker from Russia, by now a naturalized citizen and living on his own, can be found. This all was more evidence for the "Gindes" theory, so the next step was to find his wife Hene, who must have come to America between 1900 and 1910.

With the advantage of now knowing her name, timeframe and possible spellings, a ship manifest for "Hene Hindeson" could be located. The SS Willehad, sailing from Bremen, Germany, to Philadelphia landed on Sept 3, 1903, bringing Hene Hindeson to the US. She was 58 years old (born 1845) and her voyage has been pre-paid by her husband, Gerson Hindeson, living in Baltimore, MD. She is listed as being a Hebrew from Pumpyany, Russia. This matches the town Pumpenai from the Litvak database, so with this manifest data, it could be confirmed that at least these last two census records referred to the same "Gershon Gindes" family that Chaim Freedman had located. The next step was to decisively link these to the Isaac and Louis Henderson that my great-uncle and grandmother had visited in Baltimore, and to ensure that these were the only Jewish Hendersons available.

[6e - the Baltimore cemetery records]

Both JewishGen.org and the Jewish Museum of Maryland have burial data available online, so I searched for Hendersons in Baltimore. The only names that came up, bar two, were known members of the Isaac or Louis Henderson families. Nearly all were buried in Rosedale, the largest and oldest Jewish cemetery in Baltimore. The death dates helped to flesh out the story: for example, Louis's daughter Bessie had died young in 1936 of tuberculosis - this is why Nat Gordon had only seen two daughters rather than three. His visit must have been after 1936. Likewise, a number of Isaac's children had died young: Henry in 1927, Philip in 1930 and Joseph Hyman in 1936. The remaining sons (Samuel, Albert, Nathan) would have been in their 30's and 40's and had likely moved away; none of them seemed to have been buried in Baltimore (at least, not in the Jewish cemeteries, as they had left their faith. It turns out that Nathan, later known as "John", was indeed buried in Baltimore. His two brothers ended up in Pennsylvania). It would have been easy, upon meeting his Uncle Isaac only briefly, for Nat Gordon to assume he only had three daughters, and to be unaware of the six sons that preceded them.

One of the two unknown Henderson graves was for "Annie", who died in 1916, buried in "Kovna Congregation". A check of the Baltimore death records index showed a "Hennie Henderson" who died in that year. The death certificate confirmed the identity of the person who died in 1916 as Hene Henderson, with Gershon Henderson listed as her husband, and an address at 1532 E. Fayette Street, confirming the 1910 and 1920 census entries. It also named her father as Abram Sandler. The Sandlers were another Pumpenai family who could be seen in the Litvak archives. With that data, the marriage record for Gershon and Hene from 1865 could be located. Gershon's surname was not listed (a common occurrence in the Litvak records), so that record could only be found and confirmed by knowing her maiden name was Sandler.

At this point, the genealogical proof was nearly there: we had found Gershon and Hene Gindes from Pumpenai, they were living in Baltimore as Gershon and Hennie Hindeson/Henderson, and Isaac Henderson looked a lot like Eliash Itsik Gindes, their son. But nevertheless, there were no written US records that definitively linked Gershon and Hene with Louis and Isaac Henderson, who are known from Nat Gordon's family history to be Bessie Henderson's brothers. While our Hendersons seemed to be the only Jewish Hendersons in Baltimore based on the cemetery records, there was still no concrete link between Hene and Gershon and their putative sons. They even lived in different parts of town, while the two brothers lived on the same street for many years. So at this point I engaged the Jewish Museum of Maryland to photograph the graves, and to search their archives for all info on the Hendersons.

The result of this research only provided further confirmation. The last unknown Henderson grave, that of Tessie, turned out to be of Samuel Henderson's young wife, who had died in 1927. Every Jewish Henderson in the Baltimore cemeteries was indeed from one of these two families, Louis or Isaac. This eliminated the possibility that there was some other undiscovered Jewish Henderson family. The gravestone for Louis showed that he was "Leyzer ben Gershon"; Isaac's wife Bessie was "Basya Malka bat Haim Joseph"; Joseph Hyman Henderson was "Haim Joseph ben Eliahu Yitzchak"; all of Isaac's sons likewise were "ben Eliahu Yitzchak", and Lewis's daughter Bessie was "Basha bat Leyzer". Isaac Henderson's grave was not located (it may have fallen over; it was on the spreadsheet), but his funeral record listed him as the son of Gershon Henderson. Hene Henderson was "Hene bat Avraam", and Gershon's grave was discovered near hers, although he was missing from the online database. He was "Gershon ben Eliahu". In other words, everyone had the expected names matching the Lithuanian records for the Gindes family.

[6f - the genealogical proof]

At this point, the genealogical proof was nearly complete. The only nagging disconnect was the lack of any Baltimore record linking Hene and Gershon to their supposed sons, despite them living in the same city. Louis and Isaac has at least lived on the same street for a number of years. The connection between Louis and my family was the best documented, and Louis's recorded family matched the description from Nat Gordon's family history most closely.

The discovery of Gershon's grave provided the final link in the proof. Having the death date, his death certificate could be ordered, and sure enough, Louis Henderson is listed as the informant on Gershon's death certificate, with a known address, 1205 Hollins Street. Unfortunately, Louis did not know or care to provide the names of Gershon's parents, which Isaac would surely have known, since he was named after Gershon's father Eliash. Louis was certainly not thinking of the poor genealogists. While the document did not say what Louis' relationship to Gershon was, presumably he was the informant because he was his son.

This proves that the Baltimore Hendersons are identical to the Gindes family of Pumpenai, Lithuania. So this also means that Bessie Henderson got away with claiming that she was 5 years younger than she actually was. If her husband's dates were correct, she was four years older than him rather than one year younger as she claimed. And this latter fact explains the discrepancy. Many Litvak Jews did not know their birth dates, as these were not relevant to their lives. They would have more likely known their birth years, and Bessie's was definitely recorded. But looking at her ages in the censuses, she made herself younger over the years. At one point, she claimed to be 10 years younger than she actually was. But what was crucial, according to experts in Litvak genealogy, is that she appear to be younger than her husband. Since he seemed to actually have been born in 1880, she had to claim her birth year was 1881, although she was actually born in 1876. And 1881 is the date that appears on her tombstone, the same tombstone that led directly to the genealogical proof outlined above, and which disproved her claims about her age.