"Recent" immigrants with bungled names

[daliowa]

Here are some documents that may list town of birth:

U.S. marriage record.

U.S. naturaization papers (If she married after 1922 or married pre-1922 to a man who was not a citizen than she may have filed her own nat papers. Prior to 1922 the citizenship status of the husband was automatically bestowed upon the wife.)

U.S. birth certs of her children.

If she was born 1870 or later & was alive in the mid-1930's she may have filed an SS5 (original Social Security application.)

Death cert.

Check with the cemetery office, she may have belonged to a burial society & these were often for people of a certain town, although some people joined societies from other towns for various reasons.

Did she have siblings? You can search for their arrivals and documents also.

[daliowa]

Originally Posted by elan

I bet it's Kraków Poland, which was Kraków Russia at that time. Kraków is spelled a bunch of different ways too. (I haven't had the nerve to do my husband's Polish line. The grandmother swore up and down that they descended from Casimir Pulaski, which is a hoot. He never married nor did he ever have children, that much I found out).

I agree, Krakow was my first thought also.

Try the JRI Poland database. jewish records indexing Poland You can limit the search to Krakow region if you wish. See if the surname you are searching pops up in records from that region.

I've never searched Krakow, so I don't know what records are extant for it.

[bjh]

Political lines come and go. A place called Russia then might be Belarus, Ukraine, etc. Wherever they had their fingers in others' pies.

[daliowa]

Originally Posted by bjh

Political lines come and go. A place called Russia then might be Belarus, Ukraine, etc. Wherever they had their fingers in others' pies.

Exactly. The Russian Empire in the 1800's until WW1 also contained the countries we know as Lithuania, Latvia, etc.

[bjh]

^
I wasn't sure about the Baltic states. Thanks for the confirmation. Estonia must be the other on.e