Schuminsky

Chapter I

The Unbroken Chain

Tap any generation. Confidence ratings reflect the actual documents in the family research corpus — not wishful linking. The chain is anchored at primary-source level from Manel (1811) forward.

c. 1760 · WŁODAWA

Herszko Szumiński DOCUMENTED

Named in the 1833 act

No longer just a name on a tree. The 1833 Włodawa death act records his son as "Ejzyk Herszkowicz" — Aizyk, son of Herszko — the first primary-source proof of his existence and his fatherhood of Aizyk. Birth ~1760 is still an estimate. The new open question is one generation deeper: who was Herszko's father? (→ the 1781 Chełm-Land poll-tax roll.)

1789 · WŁODAWA

Aizyk Szumiński HIGH

Trader (handlarz)

Newly proven (June 2026): the 1833 death act of his infant granddaughter records him by name — "second declarant, trader, age 44, grandfather of the deceased" — the first primary document stating Aizyk is Manel's father. Alive and trading in 1833; his own death record falls in the lost 1837–83 registers.

1811 · WŁODAWA

Manel Szumiński HIGH

Day-laborer (wyrobnik)

Twice married: first wife Ryfka(?) lost an 18-month-old daughter Rayzla in 1833 (the act that proves three generations at once); he remarried Edla Dweyra Weisbrode in 1848, a widower. Named, age 45, in Birth Act #109 of 1857. A working man — the "timber merchant" legend is disproven (see Evidence).

1857 · WŁODAWA

Moszko Aizyk Szumiński HIGH

Birth Act #109 — the anchor

Born 8 Oct 1857 (Julian 27 Sep), Włodawa Civil Registry act #109 — scan read and verified in the Lublin State Archive. Mother: Edla Dweyra (Wajsbrant), age 30. Witnesses: Moszka Szyfman, 29, and Mozes Glanski, 52. His Hebrew name surfaces on his son Max's Milwaukee headstone: "Yitzkok Isaac."

1885 · WŁODAWA → MILWAUKEE

Max "Manis" Schuminsky HIGH

The bridge generation

Born 15 Feb 1885 — dual-primary-sourced (self-signed 1942 draft card + 1913 manifest age; the headstone's "1883" was engraved post-mortem by others). Sailed alone from Libau on the S.S. Kursk, landed Ellis Island 9 Jan 1913, sent for the family a year later. Naturalized Milwaukee by 1920. Died Los Angeles, 17 Jan 1965.

1909 · POLAND → MILWAUKEE → FL

Phillip Schuminsky HIGH

Shoes, then real estate

Born 28 Sep 1909 in Poland (1950 census settles it). WWII Army private. Ran the family shoe store in Milwaukee — wig store next door. His 1995 obituary reveals the scale: "a real estate investor who owned numerous shopping centers, motels, apartments and office buildings throughout the country." Brother: Howard, of Orange County. The family real-estate lineage predates Mike.

1943 · MILWAUKEE → OKC → LA

Mike Schuminsky HIGH

Hi Fashion Wigs — 65 stores

Born 18 May 1943, Milwaukee. Took the wig trade he inherited from his grandmother's father — Sam Gedanke, a Pułtusk sheitel-maker — imported directly, cut out the middlemen, and franchised 65 Hi Fashion Wigs stores from Oklahoma City (1967). Then Texas shopping centers, Oklahoma apartments. Died Bel Air, 10 Mar 2011.

1980 · LOS ANGELES

Jay Matthew Schuminsky HIGH

Cedars-Sinai, gen. 1 of 4

Born 25 Nov 1980 at Cedars-Sinai. Married Jayme Tolan, 1 Sep 2016, Santa Barbara. Commissioned this research — and pushed the documented line back five generations beyond what the family knew.

2017 · 2019 · 2021 · LOS ANGELES

Jaxon · Olive · Finn

All born at Cedars-Sinai

Jaxon Mike (Aug 2017), Olive James (Mar 2019), Finn Jagger (May 2021). The ninth documented generation — four-generation Cedars-Sinai continuity with their father. ~260 years and ~6,000 miles from Herszko of Włodawa.

Chapter II

Włodawa — the shtetl on the Bug

A border town in the Lublin region where the Bug River bends — Crown Poland, then Austria (1795–1809), then Russia. The family name comes from Szuminka, a timber-staging village 5 km north (51°35′N 23°33′E); "szum" is Polish for the rush of water. The surname was adopted under the Congress-Kingdom surname mandate, and the Jewish registries of Włodawa carry it from the first surviving book.

★ DOCUMENTED · JUNE 2026

Herszko found — the patronymic in the 1833 act

For the entire project, Herszko (c. 1760) sat at the edge of the record — a name on a family tree with no document behind it. In June 2026 that changed. The 1833 Włodawa death act of baby Rejzla is signed by two men: her father Manel, and the second declarant recorded as "Ejzyk Herszkowicz Szuminski" — Aizyk, son of Herszko. A single patronymic, written in a civil register, is the first hard proof that Herszko existed and was Aizyk's father. The chain is now documented across six generations of Włodawa, from Herszko to Max. (Tap the act to read it full-size.)

"Never fear — the Szuminski name is still a pretty rare one… probably you are related to most or all of the Jewish-descended people who bear it today. The name comes from the village of Szuminka near Włodawa… I especially like the records where one can actually see the ancestors' personal signatures." — Adam Goodheart, who first traced the line, to Jay (2026)

The frontier now moves one generation deeper: who was Herszko's father? The next document in line is the 1781 Jewish poll-tax roll of Chełm Land, where a young Herszko — about twenty-one that year — may be listed under his own father's name.

שׁ

The registry books

The surviving Włodawa Jewish civil registers sit in the State Archive in Lublin (fond 35/1785). The family appears across every decade that survives: deaths 1827–33, births 1844–1908, marriages 1848–93. Sixteen indexed Szumiński records — every one now mapped.

Death registers for 1837–1883 did not survive — a hard gap that probably swallowed Aizyk's own death act.

The 1833 act that proves three generations NEW · JUNE 2026

Death act #16 of 1833: Rayzla Szumińska, eighteen months old. Her father Manel, day-laborer, age 22, declared the death; the second declarant was a 44-year-old trader recorded as her grandfather — Aizyk, born 1789. One paragraph of Polish cursive, read in the original scan, locks Aizyk → Manel → Rayzla in a single primary source.

The wider family in the books

The 1827–28 child-death acts surface three more young Szumiński couples in Włodawa — Jankiel & Resla, Ezryl & Frejda, Hercyk(?) & Sorka — Aizyk's generation, all candidate brothers, all candidate sons of Herszko. Ashkenazi families named children for the dead, and the Hersz-names that bloom in the grandchildren's generation point back at a Herszko already gone.

What the legend got wrong

Family legend made the Szumińskis timber merchants on the Bug. The documents say otherwise: Manel was a wyrobnik — a day-laborer — and the Włodawa Yizkor book's wood-trade chapter names not a single Szumiński. The village link to Szuminka is real; the timber fortune is not. This history keeps the corrections as visibly as the discoveries.

Chapter II½ · A Geography

The Places

Six places hold this family's story — a shtetl on the Bug, a timber village that gave the name, a Baltic port of departure, a Polish wig-making town, a Milwaukee storefront, and the cities of the new world. None of these photographs survive in the family's hands, so each is drawn here from what the records describe.

Włodawa

Poland · 1760–1913 · the shtetl on the Bug

The border town where the Bug bends — Crown Poland, then Austria, then Russia. Home of the Great Synagogue and of every surviving Szumiński register. Two-thirds Jewish before the war.

Szuminka

5 km north of Włodawa · the name's origin

A timber-staging hamlet on the river where logs were floated and rafted. The surname taken under the Congress-Kingdom mandate comes from here — though the documents show the family were laborers, not timber lords.

Libau / Liepāja

Latvia · 1913 & 1914 · the port of departure

The Russian Empire's sanctioned emigration port. Both family crossings began here — Max alone on the Kursk in 1913, then Gitte and the boys on the Russia in 1914, weeks before the war closed the route.

Pułtusk & Różan

Poland · the Gedanke wig line

North of Warsaw on the Narew, where Sam Gedanke made sheitels — the wig craft that would cross the ocean, settle in Milwaukee, and franchise into 65 Hi Fashion Wigs stores two generations later.

Milwaukee

Wisconsin · 1913–1960s · first ground

The 8th Avenue storefront — shoe store on one side, wig store on the other, Helen working both so fast that customers swore she had a twin. Naturalization by 1920; three sons raised over the shop.

The New World Cities

Oklahoma City → Los Angeles · 1967–today

Hi Fashion Wigs out of Oklahoma City; then Texas shopping centers, Oklahoma apartments, and Los Angeles — where four straight generations have been born at Cedars-Sinai.

Chapter III

The Crossings — two ships out of Libau

The family story said "Ellis Island." The records say something better: two separate voyages, thirteen months apart, from the Baltic emigration port of Libau (Liepāja, Latvia) — and only one of them ended at Ellis Island.

LIBAU → ELLIS ISLAND · ARRIVED 9 JANUARY 1913

S.S. Kursk — Max goes first MANIFEST VERIFIED

"Manis Schuminsky, age 28, married, Hebrew, last residence Wlodawo, Russia." A Russian-American Line steamer out of Libau in the dead of winter. He traveled alone — the classic pattern: the father goes first, earns the passage money, sends for the family. Manifest T715-2001-703, line 7.

LIBAU → CANADA → ST. ALBANS, VERMONT · FEBRUARY–MARCH 1914

S.S. Russia — Gitte and the boys FOUND JUNE 2026

The "missing" family manifest was never missing — it was never at Ellis Island. Gitte (Gertrude), 31, with Ysrail (Sam), 8, Schlioma, 6, and Fairvel, 3, sailed from Libau on the S.S. Russia on 20 Feb 1914, landed in Canada, and crossed into the United States by rail at St. Albans, Vermont (border manifest M1464-247-104 — all four on one sheet, sequential lines).

The manifest's small print carries two facts no one in the family knew: their last permanent residence was Ruda, Chełm gubernia — not Włodawa town — and the relative they left behind was "an uncle… Nankin": Gertrude's own family, still in the old country. Months later the Great War closed the route behind them.

And one puzzle the manifest opened rather than closed: the boys' names and ages don't map cleanly onto Jacob (b. 1904), Sam (b. 1906) and Phillip (b. 1909). Jacob — who should have been ten — isn't on the sheet at all. See Open Mysteries.

Why Libau

Libau was the Russian Empire's sanctioned emigration port — direct Russian-American Line service to New York, no border-smuggling required, police emigration permits issued on the spot. Both family voyages used it. The Latvian State Historical Archives hold the 1913–14 police emigration permit files, undigitized; a request is in flight.

**S.S. Ausonia**Brought the Gedanke line over, 1925.

Rochel Blum Gedanke departure — **Departure for America**The Gedanke family, leaving Poland.

Chapter IV

America — shoes, wigs, and real estate

Milwaukee first: the 8th Avenue storefront, naturalization by 1920, a family of working retailers. Then the leap.

Max's three sons — Jake, Sam & Phillip

Max and Gertrude raised three boys in Milwaukee. Jacob "Jake" (b. 1904) came over first, as a ten-year-old in the 1914 crossing, and grew up to run a household on 16th Street. Sam (b. 1906) was the "Ysrail" of the St. Albans manifest. And Phillip (b. 1909) — the youngest — became the family's bridge to everything after: the shoe store, then the real estate. The 1914 manifest also hints at a fourth little boy, "Fairvel," who does not appear again — most likely a son lost young in Milwaukee, before the cemetery records begin.

A generation on, Phillip had two sons of his own: Mike, who took the wig trade to Oklahoma, and Howard, of Orange County. The brothers split the country — Las Vegas, Florida, California — but the business instinct that started at a Milwaukee storefront ran through all of them.

1913–1914

Milwaukee

Max lands January 1913; Gitte and the boys follow via Vermont in March 1914. First storefront at 1369 8th Avenue.

BY NOV 1920

Citizens

Max naturalized in Milwaukee (inferred from son Jacob's derivative certificate #1836317, issued 9 Nov 1920).

1940s–50s

The shoe store and the "twin"

Phillip runs the family shoe store; the wig store sits next door. Helen ran both at once, shuttling all day — customers swore two sisters worked the block. "Your twin just helped me in the shoe store."

OCT 11, 1942

Phillip marries Helen Chaja Gedanke

Milwaukee. The Włodawa line and the Pułtusk line join — and with Helen comes the wig trade itself, inherited from her father Sam Gedanke, a sheitel-maker from Różan parish.

1967

Hi Fashion Wigs, Oklahoma City

Mike, 24, takes the family trade national: imports wigs directly, franchises the model — 65 stores at peak. The wig capital moves from a Pułtusk workshop to an Oklahoma City warehouse in two generations.

1970s–90s

Real estate, both generations

Phillip's 1995 obituary: "shopping centers, motels, apartments and office buildings throughout the country." Mike: Texas shopping centers, Oklahoma apartments, then Los Angeles.

DEC 15, 1971

1520 Cloverfield Blvd

Sam Gedanke — Helen's father, the Pułtusk wig-maker — buys a Santa Monica warehouse for $98,500. It later gets a Frank Gehry renovation and never leaves the family. Four generations of ownership and counting.

1980 → 2021

Cedars-Sinai, four generations

Jay (1980), then Jaxon (2017), Olive (2019), Finn (2021) — all born at Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles.

Chapter IV½ · A Life

Mike Schuminsky — the man who upgraded the product

Born in Milwaukee on 18 May 1943 and raised over the family shoe-and-wig store, Michael "Mike" Schuminsky carried the wig trade to Oklahoma, then spent a lifetime doing the same thing in three different industries: taking a tired product and making it better than anyone thought it needed to be. He died in Bel Air on 10 March 2011, and his son took the company over at thirty-one.

★ HIS NAME IS IN THE LAW

Hi Fashion Wigs v. Peter Hammond Advertising (1973)

While still in law school in Oklahoma City, Mike started his own wig business — and built Hi Fashion Wigs, Inc. into a multi-state retail chain with its own manufacturing operation in China, importing wigs and accessories into the United States and riding a wave that by the late 1960s had more than 40% of American women owning a wig. He ran it until he sold the whole going concern and moved his money into real estate. As its president he personally guaranteed an advertising contract with a New York firm and hand-delivered the signed guarantee in Manhattan. When the deal soured, that single act put him before the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled in Hi Fashion Wigs, Inc. v. Peter Hammond Advertising, Inc., 32 N.Y.2d 583 (1973), that delivering the guarantee in New York was enough to establish jurisdiction over him. It became a long-arm jurisdiction precedent still taught in law schools — the wig business made case law that outlived the wigs.

He wrote the book — literally

In January 1969, around twenty-five years old and running stores while sitting in law class, Mike self-published The Wig Story — his own account of the industry he was building in real time. It never reached WorldCat, the Library of Congress, or Google Books; surviving copies are almost unheard of. The family now holds one.

A pioneer of creative office

Mike was one of the originators of creative office real estate — the idea, now everywhere, of turning plain industrial and warehouse buildings into design-forward workspace. The family's 1520 Cloverfield building in Santa Monica — a 1966 warehouse later given a Frank Gehry renovation and still owned today — is the archetype of exactly that instinct.

All Storage — the better box

In 1994, out of a single lot in Mustang, Oklahoma, Mike founded All Storage — and refused to build first-generation self-storage. He pioneered larger, amenity-rich facilities: security cameras, plasma screens, big comfortable offices, climate control, drive-thru units. People told him no one needed a storage place that nice. He built them anyway, across Texas and Oklahoma.

The $1.5 billion exit

The platform Mike started in a Mustang parking lot grew into one of the country's premier private self-storage operators. In 2021 it sold to Public Storage for roughly $1.5 billion — a number documented in Public Storage's own SEC filings. Mike did not live to see the sale; he had died a decade earlier, and his son Jay carried it across the line.

"Mike Schuminsky, my dad, mentor, and best friend, was a visionary in the self-storage field… He realized that people wanted a better product, not those first-generation storages where you're more likely to leave with cobwebs and horror stories than a smile. Everyone told him that nobody needs this nice of a facility. He built it anyway." — Jay Schuminsky, on his father

Some threads on Mike are still being pulled — his 2011 obituary and resting place aren't yet in the online record, and the full roster of his companies sits in Oklahoma and California state filings. This chapter will grow.

Chapter V

The lines that married in

Four branches feed the family besides the Szumiński patriline. Two come down Jay's paternal side (through his father Mike): Nankin, Max's wife's line, and Gedanke, his grandmother Helen's line. Two come down the maternal side (through his mother Leslie): Weisbrode, which joins deep in Włodawa, and Finkel & Loeb of Omaha — Harold Finkel being Jay's maternal grandfather.

Gedanke — Pułtusk & Różan PATERNAL

Sam Gedanke (Szmul, 1899–1978), sheitel-maker of the Pułtusk district; wife Anna (Chana Liba); daughter Helen Chaja (1919–2014). Sailed Southampton → Ellis Island on the S.S. Ausonia, landing 20 Dec 1925 — five days before Christmas, Helen age six. Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin by 1930; Minneapolis by 1940; Helen to Milwaukee and Phillip by 1942; Sam to Los Angeles and the Cloverfield building by 1971.

Nankin & Handelman — the priestly line PATERNAL

Gertrude "Gitl" Nankin (1879–1971) — Max's wife, née Nankin (not Finkel; her headstone settles a long-standing family confusion). Parents Aaron Urish Nankin (Aharon HaKohen, 1858–1933) and Jennie Gella Handelman (1869–1941). The HaKohen priestly designation runs through this line — a separate, Y-DNA-testable lineage marker. The 1914 manifest's "uncle Nankin" left behind near Chełm is her family.

Weisbrode — the deep root MATERNAL

Edla Dweyra Weisbrode (b. 1830) married Manel in 1848 and is Moszko Aizyk's mother. Her line runs back through Szmul Leib Weisbrode (1798–1841) and Ester Herszkowna (1761–1836) to Hersz & Ryfka, born around 1735 — Jay's 6th-great-grandparents and the oldest named ancestors in the entire tree (maternal side).

Finkel & Loeb — the Omaha line MATERNAL

Jay's mother Leslie Joan Finkel (b. 1949, Council Bluffs, Iowa) descends from Jacob Finkel (1853–1941), an Omaha grocer ("Finkel & Son," 834 N. 27th St.), son of Shneur; through Morris Finkel and Jennie Eisen; to Harold Finkel (1921–1993) and Lillian Loeb (1924–2006) of Las Vegas. The line's European hometown is still listed only as "Russia."

Helen Gedanke — **Helen Chaja Gedanke**Pułtusk, 1919 — Milwaukee, 1942.

Helen Gedanke 1937 yearbook — **Fort Atkinson HS, 1937**A Pułtusk girl, now a Wisconsin teenager.

**The Gedanke family**The Pułtusk wig-makers.

Helen and Phil Schuminsky — **Helen & Phil Schuminsky**The lines joined, Milwaukee.

The Other Half

Jayme's side — Tolan & Harner

Jaxon, Olive, and Finn carry two families. Their mother, Jayme Tolan (b. 14 March 1982 — Pi Day), grew up in Reisterstown, Maryland. Her side reaches back through Baltimore, not Włodawa — and it holds a turn of its own.

James Carroll Tolan ADOPTED

Jayme's father, Dr. James Carroll Tolan (1953–2010), was born in Washington, D.C., adopted as an infant, and raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He became a clinical psychologist working with the developmentally disabled, married Karyn Harner, and raised Jayme and her brother Rob in Reisterstown. Because James was adopted, the Tolan surname comes from his adoptive parents — the Wayne, Pennsylvania family who raised him — a name carried by family rather than by blood. His biological parentage is sealed, so the children's deeper ancestry on this side runs through their grandmother Karyn Harner's people.

Harner — the Maryland root BLOODLINE

Jayme's biological line on this side runs through her mother, Karyn Harner, daughter of Robert Harner of the Baltimore area — an old German-and-English Maryland surname. This is the bloodline the children inherit from their mother's father's people: not Polish, not Jewish, but Mid-Atlantic American, generations deep around Baltimore County. The Harner line back beyond Robert is the next chapter to write.

Two worlds in three children. Jaxon, Olive, and Finn are the meeting point of a Włodawa patriline that survived Sobibór by a single early crossing — and a Maryland family of Harners and a father chosen, not born, into the Tolan name. Both halves are theirs.

In Memory

Sobibór — those who stayed

Max left Włodawa in 1913 and brought his family over by 1914. The relatives who did not emigrate — Szumińskis, Nankins, Weisbrodes, and their neighbors — lived on in the town until the war. This is what happened to the Włodawa they left behind.

Before the war, about 5,650 Jews lived in Włodawa — two-thirds of the town. The Germans entered in September 1939. In the spring of 1942 they forced the Jewish council to send 150 men to build a camp by the rail station at Sobibór, eight kilometers away; most were killed when the work was done, but two escaped back to warn the others what they had built.

23 May 1942 The first deportation from Włodawa to Sobibór.

June 1942 Every Jewish child in the town under the age of ten was taken to Sobibór and murdered.

24 October 1942 The whole remaining community — some 5,000 from Włodawa and over 2,000 from Chełm marched in to join them — was murdered in the gas chambers of Sobibór.

30 April 1943 The last Jews, lured back from the forests into a ghetto on a promise of safety, were deported to Sobibór. The community was never reconstituted.

Hundreds fled to the forests of the Lublin province and fought on — the best-known partisan unit was led by Yehiel Grynszpan. But the world of the Włodawa registers, the synagogue, the marketplace where Aizyk traded and Manel laboured, ended at Sobibór.

Named lists of the murdered do survive — a roll of 379 Włodawa Jews deported to Sobibór, kept by the town's own civil-records office, and a 3,190-name necrology preserved in the Włodawa memorial book — and the search for the family's own among them goes on. The line itself survived only because Max had already crossed the ocean. זכר צדיק לברכה — may their memory be a blessing.

A thread that closes the circle: the oldest document still being sought in this research — the 1781 Jewish poll-tax tariff of Chełm Land, which records the family's communities in the years of Herszko's own youth — sits in the very same body of Chełm-district fiscal records (CAHJP HM-6716) that historians drew on to reconstruct these communities and their end at Sobibór. The record that might give us the family's beginning, and the record of its destruction, are one and the same reel.

Chapter VI

The Evidence

This history is built from primary documents read in the original — Polish civil-registry cursive, ship manifests, draft cards, censuses, headstones — with every claim graded. Corrections are kept on the record alongside discoveries.

Document	What it proves	Where	Grade
Death act #16, 1833, Włodawa	Aizyk (b.1789) is Manel's father — grandfather clause; first wife; daughter Rayzla	AP Lublin 35/1785, deaths 1826–36, scan 138	HIGH
Birth act #109, 1857, Włodawa	Moszko Aizyk b. 8 Oct 1857; father Manel, 45; mother Edla Dweyra, 30	AP Lublin 35/1785 — scan verified	HIGH
Marriage act, 1848, Włodawa	Manel (widower) m. Edla Dweyra Weisbrode; patronymic "Ajzykowicz"	AP Lublin 35/1785	HIGH
S.S. Kursk manifest, 9 Jan 1913	Max's arrival, age 28 → b. 1885; "Wlodawo, Russia"	Ellis Island T715-2001-703 line 7	HIGH
St. Albans border manifest, 1914	Gitte + three sons via Canada; S.S. Russia ex-Libau; "Ruda, Chełm gub."; uncle Nankin	NARA M1464-247-104	HIGH
WWII draft card, 1942	Max b. 15 Feb 1885 — self-signed; supersedes posthumous "1883"	FamilySearch S3HY-6Q7S-XL6	HIGH
1950 US Census, Milwaukee	Phillip born Poland (not Wisconsin)	Sheet 71, FS 3QHK-SQHW-2DN9	HIGH
Phillip's obituary, 1995	Real-estate career; brother Howard; Beth David burial	Baird-Case clipping	HIGH
S.S. Ausonia manifest, 20 Dec 1925	Gedanke arrival — Szmul, Chana Liba, Chaja (Helen, 6)	Ellis Island coll. 7488	HIGH
Headstones, four states	Hebrew patronymics: "Yitzkok Isaac," "Aharon HaKohen," "Shneur," "Avraham Abba HaKohen"	FindAGrave #50998501, #179334449, #94485478…	HIGH
"Timber merchant" legend	Disproven — Manel a day-laborer; no Szumiński in Yizkor wood-trade chapter	Yizkor pp. 357–396 vs. akt #109	RETRACTED
"S.S. Umbria 1904" claim	Disproven — misattribution; Max came 1913 on the Kursk	Manifest comparison	RETRACTED
Death act #16, 1833 — patronymic "Herszkowicz"	Herszko documented as Aizyk's father; Ryfka = Aizyk's wife / Manel's mother	AP Lublin 35/1785, deaths 1826–36, + 1848 marriage	NEW
Herszko's father, pre-1760	The new frontier — unnamed; sought in the 1781 Chełm poll-tax	AGAD / CAHJP HM-6716	OPEN

Max Schuminsky headstone — **Max Schuminsky**1885–1965 · names father Yitzkok Isaac.

Gertrude Nankin headstone — **Gertrude Nankin**née Nankin — HaKohen line.

Jacob Finkel headstone — **Jacob Finkel**1853–1941 · son of Shneur.

Tsharne Finkel headstone — **Tsharne Silechnik**daughter of Avraham Abba HaKohen.

Morris Finkel headstone — **Morris Finkel**1893–1966 · Council Bluffs.

Harold Finkel grave — **Harold Finkel**1921–1993 · Jay's maternal grandfather.

Brondell Bernstein Schuminsky headstone — **Brondell Bernstein**Jake's wife — from Odessa.

Beulah Finkel headstone — **Beulah Finkel**Jacob's daughter — the Omaha line.

FULL RESEARCH CORPUS: 220+ SESSIONS · 90+ FACT FILES · A SOURCE LOG OF EVERY ARCHIVE TOUCHED — MAINTAINED PRIVATELY.

Chapter VII

Open Mysteries

A living history. These are the questions still being worked, each with the next document identified.

1 · Who was Herszko's father?

The line's deepest documented man is still Herszko, c. 1760. The death registers that would have named his father (1837–83) are lost. But three 18th-century fiscal records of Chełm Land survive, and they form a ladder back into Herszko's own lifetime:

· The 1764/65 Crown poll-tax census — the prize. The Sejm ordered every Jew listed, by district then community. A four-year-old Herszko would appear inside his father's household — so this is the one document that could name the generation above Herszko. Whether the Włodawa sheets survive at AGAD's Crown Treasury archive is the open question.

· The 1781 Chełm-Land tariff (CAHJP reel HM-6716, 23 frames) — a tax tariff, not a name-by-name census: it should name Włodawa and its tax assessment in the year Herszko turned twenty-one, confirming the community even if it doesn't list him by name. A reel order is drafted.

· The 1790 household census — from 1 January 1790 the Civil-Military Commission of Chełm Land had each community's leaders, the Jewish kahał included, register every household by name, age and relationship. Those registers sit in the State Archive in Lublin — the same archive that holds the family's own civil acts. Herszko would be about thirty, old enough to head a household and be named; whether Włodawa's sheets survive is the question to put to Lublin.

Plus the 1805 Austrian surname-adoption register, the surviving 1846–68 marriage books, and a Y-DNA program — no Szumiński has tested anywhere yet.

2 · The fourth son NARROWED

Now mostly solved. Jacob "Jake" (b. 1904) did immigrate in 1914 — his census record confirms it — but he crossed on a separate line, which is why he's absent from the St. Albans sheet. That leaves the sheet's boys as Sam (Ysrail), Phillip (likely "Schlioma," age garbled), and "Fairvel," born about 1911 — a genuine fourth son not otherwise recorded, who most likely died young. Because Agudas Achim cemetery didn't open until 1923, he'd lie in an older Milwaukee Jewish cemetery. Next: the 1914–22 Milwaukee Jewish burials, and the family's WikiTree manager.

3 · Where in Russia were the Finkels from?

Jacob Finkel's hometown is recorded everywhere as just "Russia." Two documents can break it: his 1902 Ellis Island manifest, and his Omaha World-Herald obituary of 28 June 1941, page 14.

4 · Ruda SOLVED

The family's last address in the old country wasn't Włodawa town — the 1914 manifest reads Ruda, Chełm gubernia, now identified as gmina Ruda-Huta in Chełm County, about 30 km south of Włodawa on the Uherka river. A small rural settlement (just seventeen Jews in nearby Rudka by 1921). The Szumińskis had moved down from the town to the countryside before they emigrated.