Annie (Chaia) Winer

The search for Annie Winer's maiden name took several years, and is an interesting genealogical story.

My father remembered her original name as being "something like Buchinsky".

When I first started searching through records, I added three other data points (a fourth was found recently which supports the other evidence strongly):

• Her death certificate [https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3QH-CLG?i=1761&wc=318...], which lists her maiden name as BUSKANY (possibly BUSKANZ).
• Her husband's probate record, where it is listed as being BUSKANIW (or possibly BUSKANIEC; the writing isn't clear).
• The birth certificate of her son Isaac (i.e. Isadore Winer), ordered from the GRO in England, gives the name as BUSKAN.
• Bertie Winer's death notice spells her name (typed, not handwritten) as Buskanitz [https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BT-Y9GZ-F?i=369&...]

Clearly all of the above are similar, but not terribly definitive. In any case, Lithuanian surnames tended to be phonetic, and to vary quite a bit. However, I wasn't able to come up with anything that looked like a match within the LitvakSIG records (we knew her father's name, Yehuda, from the patronymic on her tombstone).

The GRO recently added mother's maiden name to their free index; a check of Annie's other children's birth certificates provides more data points (BOOSEKINENETZ from Bessy Gordon's birth certificate, and BUSKANAE from Samuel Winer's one).

Her actual birth surname was likely BUSHKANETZ / BUSKANETZ; a family of that name appears in the Vilnius records (also sometimes written as BUSKANIEC).

Bieder ("A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire") indicates that the surname BUSHKANETZ is the same as Pushkants, Bushkantz, Bushkyanets, Pushkantser, Pushkantsor, Pushkantsev, Pushkanskij etc. The name originates from a village called Pushkantsy (Novo-Aleks.); the location of the village isn't known today (there are several possibilities). However, the surname was rather common in the town of Swentsyany, and LitvakSIG has a detailed set of records of the family.

In an email conversation I had with Bieder, he indicated that the surname is "genetic" - i.e. that everybody with that surname is related. My search of the records for the family appears to support that assertion. I've found only 2 or 3 branches that I can't connect to the main "tree", but from their names they're clearly related.