I often have expressed my wish that our family surname had been Hirschenfang, Pretzelfutser, or something equally exotic, because Cohen is so common a surname that it is a nightmare to research. Our family\u2019s first names make the research even more difficult. Abraham Cohen is the Jewish equivalent of John Smith. Looking up the next generation \u2014 Harris, Louis, Jacob, or Israel Cohen \u2014 can lead to dozens of listings. Finding documents for Abraham\u2019s son Alexander Cohen (my great-grandfather) is a bit easier, but not much. When confronted by so many entries with the same names, how is it possible to determine which ones pertain to our family?<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n Amidst a sea of Cohens in the indices to U.S. naturalizations that took place in mid-19th<\/sup>-century New York courts, I am certain that I have found the documents relating to my ancestor Abraham, his sons Alexander and Harris, and his son-in-law Jacob (his daughter Dora\u2019s husband). I found Alexander\u2019s and Abraham\u2019s documents in the late 1970s and Harris and Jacob\u2019s papers in 1998. How can I be so sure that these actually are my family\u2019s papers?\n<\/p>\n First: According to the documents, all four of these men lived on Baxter Street in Manhattan, which I know to be where our family resided and where many of the multitude of first cousins they produced were born. Second: My Cohens were from Prussia and all four of these men renounced their allegiance to the King of Prussia. Third: Harris and Jacob apparently went together to be naturalized on August 28, 1865, as their documents were filed on that date and stamped with consecutive filing numbers 14 (Harris) and 15 (Jacob).<\/p>\n The final piece of evidence was the most compelling. All four of these documents confirming U.S. citizenship were witnessed by Samuel Jacobs of Baxter Street. The surname Jacobs already had appeared in my research of the family of my great-grandmother Yetta Rotholz (Mrs. Alexander Cohen). I had reason to believe that her sister Ernestine (Aunt Steena) Rotholz had married a man named Jacobs. Older Cohen relatives in the Alexander branch had talked about a first cousin named Seven years after I found the last two of the four documents, my hunch was proven to be correct. Some years before, I had listed the Jacobs surname in the Family Finder on the Jewishgen website. In 2003, I was contacted by a man named Burt Heisman from Albany. He said that his mother was the daughter of Alexander Jacobs (Samuel\u2019s son, but Burt did not know that) and that his grandfather Alexander Jacobs had a brother named Charles Jacobs.\n<\/p>\n At my request, Burt took a photograph of Charlie\u2019s grave in Troy, New York, and sent it to me. Burt did not read Hebrew, so when I translated the text on the gravestone, he was delighted (as I was!) to hear that Charlie\u2019s Hebrew name was Tsadeek ben Shmuel (Samuel) Eliezer.<\/p>\n Burt had no idea what his great-grandmother\u2019s name was. I asked him to get a copy of Charlie\u2019s death certificate. When it arrived, we learned that Charlie\u2019s father\u2019s name was listed as \u201cUnknown Jacobs\u201d (but we already knew from Charlie\u2019s gravestone that his father\u2019s first name was Samuel) and that his mother\u2019s name was \u201cErnestine [maiden name] Unknown\u201d (I knew that it was Rotholz).<\/p>\n Equally thrilling was that I had a photograph of Burt\u2019s great-grandmother Ernestine (whose face Burt never had seen) and he had one of his great-grandfather Samuel Jacobs, a copy of which he sent to me. Now there is no doubt that the four sets of naturalization papers I have are those of our Cohen relatives.<\/p>\n May 2019 This story originally was published in A Gathering of Cohens: Descendants of Abraham Cohen of Gnesen, Prussia and 19th Century New York<\/em>, copyright (c) 2014 by Helene Schwartz Kenvin. Reprinted with permission of the author.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Helene faced the challenge of sorting through many records for people with the surname Cohen to establish that she had the correct naturalization papers for her family.<\/p>\n U.S. naturalization papers are informative documents that can be obtained from the National Archives<\/a> or through various online genealogy websites, such as Ancestry.com<\/a> and Family Search<\/a><\/p>\n
Naturalization Papers, 1868
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\nHarris, Jacob, & Alexander Cohen
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\nCharlie Jacobs, who had a clothing store in Albany and whom they thought was their Aunt Steena\u2019s son. As soon as I saw the name Samuel Jacobs on each set of the naturalization documents, I suspected that he might be Alexander Cohen\u2019s brother-in-law.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n
Jacobs
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\nDelray Beach, Florida, USA\n<\/p>\nEditor’s Research Notes and Hints<\/strong><\/h4>\n