As publisher of AVOTAYNU, I receive many inquiries from people asking how they should begin tracing their Jewish family history. The process is almost stereotypical if your immigrant ancestor came from Eastern Europe. Recently, as an intellectual exercise, I tried to determine the paternal family history of Bernard Madoff, including the probability that his ancestor’s surname in Europe was not Madoff. Using the Internet and readily available resources, I traced his Madoff family history back five generations and confirmed that Madoff was not the family name when his ancestors arrived at Ellis Island. It is a classical example of a successful strategy to trace one’s Eastern-European Jewish ancestry.
Getting Started
Normally a beginner in family history research knows the names of his parents and grandparents, and possibly even great-grandparents. To determine the name of great-grandparents, if not known, one asks living parents, aunts, or uncles for the names of their grandparents. In the case of Bernard Madoff, I learned his parents’ names by Googling “Bernard Madoff parents.” This yielded the information that “Bernard Madoff was born April 29, 1938, in New York City to parents Ralph and Sylvia Madoff.” Knowing that his father’s name was Ralph, I next consulted the 1930 United States census, found at Ancestry.com. This invariably is my starting point in tracing a Jewish family history, because it includes a wealth of information that permits tracing the family back further generations.
Census Data
The 1930 census shows two Ralph Madoffs, one living in Akron, Ohio, born about 1919, and a second living in the Bronx, New York, born about 1911. Clearly, the Ralph in the Bronx is Madoff’s father. The 1911 birth date also fits the profile of Madoff’s father. It would mean he was 27 years old when Bernard was born. The other Ralph would have been only 19. A cautionary note: It is possible that neither is Madoff’s father, because not every person was enumerated in a census and his father might be a third Ralph Madoff.
The 1930 census revealed that Ralph was the son of David and Rose Madoff, both born in “Russia-Warsaw,” and all of their children were born in Pennsylvania. David and Rose were both 48 years old and both were 23 years old when they married. Both became naturalized citizens. Why did the census state that they were born in Russia when Warsaw is the capital of Poland? Poland did not appear on any map between 1795 and 1918. In 1795, in what was called the Third Partition of Poland, the superpowers of the day—Russia, Prussia, and Austro-Hungary—divided Poland among themselves, and Poland ceased to exist as an independent country. Only after World War I did Poland regain its autonomy. One of the challenges and benefits of doing family history research is that you must learn about general history.
Census data often is highly unreliable, even though the sources of the information are the persons themselves. It is always wise to compare the information provided in other censuses, so my next step was to consult the 1920 and 1910 censuses on Ancestry.com.
The 1920 census shows David and Rose Madoff, both age 38, living in Scranton, Pennsylvania. David had arrived in the U.S. in 1908, and Rose’s arrival year in shown as “unk[nown].” It indicated that David was naturalized in 1918. Searching the 1910 census for persons named Madoff living in Pennsylvania uncovers two families: one in Scranton, the other in Philadelphia. The 1910 census record for the Scranton Madoffs shows that David was not yet married and lived with his parents, Barnett and Annie, and six siblings. All arrived in the United States in 1908. David is listed as 25 years old (rather than the 28 years one would have expected if his age on the 1920 census were correct).
Finding the Passenger Arrival Record
Having gone back as far as possible in Madoff’s family history within the United States, the problem was to find records of the family’s presence in Europe. I was almost certain that the original name was not Madoff, but instead likely a name beginning with M that was phonetically similar to Madoff. This was a common way Jewish immigrants Americanized their names. It was likely that David Madoff came through Ellis Island, but it also was possible that he entered the country through Philadelphia, since the final destination was Scranton, Pennsylvania. Using the <Stevemorse.org> site to search the Ellis Island database for any person whose given name started with “Da,” whose last name started with M, who arrived in the U.S. between 1905 and 1909, who was born during the period 1883–88, and was a Jewish male produced no fruitful results.
Normally it is unwise to include any part of a given name, because the Eastern European Jewish immigrant typically arrived bearing his Yiddish name. A name as simple as Jacob may have been registered as Yankel, a Yiddish variant of Jacob. There are few variants of David other than David and Dawid; therefore, it seemed safe to include a portion of the given name. Despite trying many variants of the search, I failed to find the passenger manifest.
Another source likely to lead to the discovery of immigrant origins is naturalization documents. Searching Ancestry.com for David Madoff uncovered his naturalization documents from the U.S. Circuit and District Courts for the Middle District of Pennsylvania—with a treasure trove of information. David Solomon Madoff, born on December 13, 1883, in Pshedborsh, Poland, came to the U.S. on May 11, 1907, on the Graf Waldersee and declared his intention to become a citizen in Scranton on December 7, 1909.
Personal experience has demonstrated that naturalization records are notoriously inaccurate sources of arrival date, ship’s name, and town of birth. If a citizen applied for naturalization many years after arrival, he often could not remember the name of the ship and certainly not the exact date of arrival. Place of birth often was written phonetically by the clerk taking the information verbally. It is useful to confirm that the named ship did arrive on the named date. The Stephen P. Morse One-Step site has two ways of confirming arrival date. One uses an online version of the Morton Allan Directory. Experience with this link is that it often does not work, so I used the alternative Morse source: Ships and Fleets. It demonstrated that, indeed, the Graf Waldersee arrived on May 11, 1907, in New York from Hamburg.
At worst, every page of the ship’s manifest could be searched looking for a male Jew (Race: Hebrew on the document) about 22 years old who met the profile of David Madoff. Rather than search every page of the manifest, I took a shortcut and used Ancestry.com’s Ellis Island database where I found the correct entry after about an hour by searching the database for any person named either David or Dawid. Starting with the naturalization record, I recalled that most Jewish men born in the 19th century had two given names—in this case, David Solomon. The first given name was his religious name, known as his shem kodesh. The second name was his everyday name, known as his kinnui. Perhaps Madoff came to the U.S. as Solomon. The problem is that the Americanized name Solomon has many Yiddish variants, including Shlomo, Shloime, and Shlome. And, he could have arrived with the Polish spelling Szlama. Most likely, since he had left via Hamburg, his name would have been recorded with the German spelling of Schlame or Schloime. But a search of New York arrivals on Ancestry.com for Sch* arriving on the Graf Waldersee in 1907 yielded nothing.
Because David Solomon Madoff had left Europe via the port of Hamburg, I tried the Hamburg emigration lists on Ancestry.com and found his name—Schloma Miadownik. Why couldn’t he be found in the Ellis Island list on Ancestry.com? In that database, he was indexed as Saloma Miodowink [sic]. On the Ellis Island record, he is listed as Schlame Miadownik. The person extracting the record for Ancestry.com did not read the record properly. So, it appeared, the Miadownik family Americanized their name to Madoff.
Veteran genealogists will tell you that once you solve a difficult problem and know the answer, you realize that there could have been a shorter way to solve the problem. In this case, the record could have been solved on <Stevemorse.org> in less than two minutes by searching for any Jewish male whose last name started with M and who arrived on the Graf Walderesee on May 11, 1907. The entry in the Ellis Island database is for Haloma [sic] Miodownik.
What proof do we have that the person found actually was David Solomon Madoff? The passenger record states that he was going to Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was with his wife, Reisel, and eldest daughter, Schewe, aged 10 months. Schewe’s fate is unknown; she does not appear in the 1920 census.
Crossing the Pond
Armed with the original surname and the information that David was born in Pshedborsh, it was now possible to use other Internet resources to trace the Madoff/Miodownik family history. Curious about the origin of the name Miodownik, I consulted Alexander Beider’s A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland. Beider states that the origin of the name is either the Polish word for “honey cake” or from the root surname Miod, which is the Polish word for “honey.” Since Jews in that area did not acquire hereditary surnames until the beginning of the 19th century, Beider suggests that the progenitor of the Madoff name may have been in the honey business.
As coauthor of Where Once We Walked (WOWW), a gazetteer of some 23,500 towns in Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust, I instantly realized that Pshedborsh actually is Przedborz, Poland. Other researchers could have used the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex Index in the book to confirm the locality. Pshedborsh soundexes to 743794; the only entry in the index under that code number is for Przedborz.
Focus now turned to the Jewish Records Indexing-Poland project on the Internet at <www.jri-poland.org>. The database is housed on <JewishGen.org> and can be accessed from its home page as well. Doing a soundex search for Miodownik produced nearly 1,000 hits throughout Poland—understandable, given that the etymology of the name related to someone in the honey business. JewishGen separates the list by the old czarist provinces (guberniyas); Przedborz was in Radom guberniya, which yielded only 17 hits for Miodownik. The JRI-Poland index for Przedborz shows the birth of Szljana [sic] Dawid Modownik in 1882, undoubtedly David Solomon Madoff. In the neighboring town of Radoszyce, the index shows the marriage of Berek Miodowniki to Chaia Rivka Fridelewska, undoubtedly David’s parents, Barnett and Annie, took place in 1879.
Microfilm copies of both the birth and the marriage records are held in the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library in Salt Lake City. When I make my annual research trip there in October 2009, I plan to make copies of these records. The marriage record of Barnett Madoff will give me the names of his parents. If he did not come from Radoszyce, which is likely, the record may show the town of his birth; that in turn will permit tracing the Madoff family back additional generations. I already know that Barnett’s mother’s name was Golda, because his Ellis Island record was found. He came as Berl (a variant of Berek) and indicated that the closest person in the country from which he had come was his mother, Golda.
Accuracy of Research
Is this compiled ancestry of Bernard Madoff’s accurate? There is an element of doubt. The weakest link is the fact that two David Madoffs are recorded. The one I believe to be the correct David Madoff came to the United States with a wife and child, yet the only David Madoff that fits Bernard’s David Madoff is the one listed in the census as single and living with his parents. I found other records on Ancestry.com for David Solomon Madoff. His World War I draft registration showed his residence in Scranton and his birth date of March 15, 1882. His World War II (Old Men’s) draft registration shows him living in Brooklyn, New York, with a stated birth date of March 18, 1890. In his naturalization records, he stated that he was born on December 12, 1893. Only by reading his birth record from the 1882 birth register of the Jews of Przedborz will the correct date be found.
In spite of these discrepancies, the thread of evidence is clear. Ralph Madoff is found in the 1920 census with brother and sister, Abraham and Bertha. David Solomon Madoff’s naturalization record lists his children as Abraham Zooken (Ralph) and Brucha (Bertha). David registered for the World War I draft as David Solomon Madoff in Scranton. The absolute proof would be the birth record of Szlama Miodownik at the Family History Library showing that his parents were Berek and Chaia Rivka.
Conclusion
The Madoff family research relied on the tools typically used to begin to trace a Jewish American family history whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe—all of which are available on the Internet. Start with the 1930 census to gather basic facts. If the family arrived before 1920, include the 1920 census. Look at all census records as far back as possible. Then look for the family’s arrival at the Port of New York using the <Stevemorse.org> website. Depending on the year of arrival, the arrival record may supply the name of the last place of residence and/or place of birth. Next, go to JewishGen and use its vast resources, organized by contemporary country, to locate records of earlier ancestors.
