Jewish immigrants who came to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often joined a landsmanshaft, a society of people from the same town or region in Europe. These societies offered help in hard times, a place to meet, and very often a burial plot in a society section of a Jewish cemetery.
Many societies kept minutes of their meetings, and many of those minutes were written in Yiddish.
What the minutes record
- Members and new members, sometimes with the town they came from
- Deaths and burials, often with exact dates
- Payments for burials, sick benefits and help to widows
- Dues, and members who fell behind on them
- Officers and the people who ran the meetings
An example from Brooklyn, 1936
Here is a page from a society minute book I transcribed and translated. It records a special meeting held on March 1, 1936. The cemetery report states that a member, Sister Reiza W., died on February 6, 1936, and was buried on Friday, February 7. The committee handled the arrangements and $96 was paid. The secretary then reports two members who had not paid their dues for about a year.
For a family historian, this one page confirms a date of death and burial, shows that the family belonged to the society, and names relatives who were active in it. These details can then be matched with cemetery records and death certificates.
Where to find society records
Some minute books stayed with families or with the society’s last officers. Others were given to archives. The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York holds a large collection of landsmanshaft records. Cemetery offices can tell you which society owns a plot, which can lead you to the society’s name.
Reading them
Society minutes are a special challenge. They were written quickly by volunteer secretaries, in American Yiddish full of English words and old spellings, and the handwriting can change from one secretary to the next. If you have copies of minute pages that mention your family, send them for a free quote.