The GORDONS FROM DAUGELISKIS, LITHUANIA

No, you have not been invited to the wrong Gordon Family website; if you are a Gordon descendant and your family settled in Providence, RI, then this is your family. Those of us who grew up knowing anything about the Gordon family knew that our family came from Russia. Sometimes I heard Kherson, sometimes I heard Odessa and sometimes I heard Elizavetgrad. Yes, they did live in Russia prior to immigrating to America, but prior to that they were from the village of Daugeliskis, in the uyezd of Svencionys, in the gubernia of Vilna, in Lithuania. That makes us Litvaks! Please see the explanation of words below. This is one of those amazing discoveries that can only be made by being fortunate enough to have old family documents and having them accurately translated. It took me several attempts to get the documents properly translated to discover where our family originated from. Those documents are the military conscription papers for my great grandfather Michal Lazar (Max Louis) Gordon, as well as the passport for Max and the family when they immigrated in 1903. I have included these documents in the site along with their translations. THE GORDON NAME AND HOW THE FAMILY ENDED UP IN RUSSIA: Gordon is a very common Jewish surname found in the Vilna area. According to Dr. Alexander Beider, an expert in Jewish surnames, Gordon was a common name in both the Vilna and Kovno gubernia. It is an anagram of the place name Grodno, which means center of gubernia. It is a surname that has existed among Jews since before the 19th century. So, while there were some Gordon families in Kherson, most of them seem to have emigrated from either Vilna or Kovno. How did these Gordons end up in Kherson? There was a fascinating and unusual period in Jewish history which began in the early 19th century. Jews were encouraged to leave the densely populated urban communities in Lithuania and Belarus (Byelorussia) and encouraged to establish agricultural communities in the south of Russia, mainly in the gubernia of Kherson and Yekaterinoslav. There were other colonies in the region but the numbers weren't as great as in the two mentioned above. The land was fertile and the government was looking for people to settle and work the land. In exchange they gave the Jews some incentives; for example some exemption from military service and government aid to set up the new communities. It's difficult to say when exactly our family left Lithuania for Kherson. I know that Hanna Zlata (Annie) Gordon married David Torgavitsky which became Torgan in America, sometime around 1873 and David was born in Elizavetgrad. From that we can assume that they were married there, thus Annie had to have been there by the early 1870s. The family would not have become Russian citizens just because they moved to Kherson (as Jew's rights to citizenship were limited in Russia); they would have remained citizens of the place where they were born. That is why Max's documents refer to him as a commoner of 'Vilna district'. What we do know is that Eliahu Gordon, the father of Hanna Zlata, Michal Lazar and Jacob was a hay and grain merchant and he died quite young of a hernia. I believe he lived from about 1830 to sometime before 1877. Their mother Leah died sometime between 1905 and 1909. She did not join the three siblings in America and it is unknown whether she had other children who remained behind with her. IMMIGRATION: The family of Hanna Zlata (Annie) and David Torgan were the first to emigrate. According to records, they arrived in Bristol, RI on March 6th 1893. They followed David's brother Samuel who had arrived in 1891 and settled in Providence. David and Annie had a total of six children, but only two survived and made the trip with them to America. Next to follow was the family of Max and Sarah. They sailed from Liverpool to Boston on the SS Saxonia on November 10th 1903. They listed the person that they were going to join as Max's sister, Mrs. David Torghen at 26 North Davis St. in Providence. Max and Sarah traveled with their three oldest children; Eliahu (who was named after his grandfather), Sholom and Sheindle. Jacob arrived into New York on the SS Oceanic on October 5th 1905. He also listed his destination as his sister Mrs. David Torghen at the same address, but he was detained as he didn't have the necessary railroad ticket to make the trip from New York to Providence. His wife Sarah and their three older daughters, Bertha, Ida and Lillian followed sometime around 1907. I haven't been able to locate their manifest. Jacob left without his family because he had been conscripted into the Russian army for the third time just after Lillian was born and he was to be sent to the Russian front to fight in the Russo-Japanese War (February 1904 - September 1905). At the end of the war a list was compiled of nearly three thousand Jewish soldiers who were either killed or missing in action. To avoid that fate, Jacob came home on leave, dressed as a woman and fled across the Romanian border, not to see his family again for at least another couple of years. EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND PLACES: GUBERNIA - province UYZED - district Elizavetgrad was a city in the Kherson province of Russia. It is now known as Kirovohrad or Kirovograd (there is no equivalent in Cyrillic for the letter G; the letter H is used instead) in Ukraine. Daugeliskis is now known as Naujasis Daugeliskis Svencionys means rural district; the district borders Belarus UPDATE 22 October 2017: I have just combined the GORDON and HOROWITZ families into one site. Go to the bar at the top of the site, click on FAMILY TREE and then click on MANAGE TREES. From there you can switch between the two families. All of the pictures that were in the original Horowitz site are now here. If you have any questions, please be sure to let me know!