The Legend of Shael "Samuel Lowenstein" Efron of Amdur and Frankfurt

I've spent quite a bit of energy trying to determine the genealogy of the family of Shael (Saul) Efron. He's quite interesting for a few reasons, but mostly because of the legend that is told about his business dealings in the mid-1800s in Russia, his jailing and escape from jail, and his exile for more than 40 years in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His interest to me is because his father, Chaim Efron son of Leib and Tsine of Amdur, is my ancestor. That is, Shael's brother, Avraham Efron, was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. I am especially hopeful that there is more information to find out about Shael's mother, who is also my ancestor, because she is supposed to be a member of the famous Katzenellenbogen family: possibly, Chaim is mentioned as a son-in-law in some early 19th century text.

I first learned of him from Sam Effron of Poughkeepsie's 1954 genealogy of the Effron family. In it he wrote:

There was in the city of Grodno, a man by the name of Bregman who, with Shael Effron, was in the fur business. They would go all over Russia buying furs, even as far north as Siberia. The Russian government had gold mines in that section. They still have them in operation today. In Russia, vodka and the rub1e always worked wonders. Shael Effron got acquainted with some officials in charge of the gold mine operations, and a smuggling of gold developed.

The government found out what was going on and the whole gang, including Shael Effron, was put behind bars in prison, awaiting trial. But Bregman was working to get Shael out; Bregman was a wealthy man, so he used vodka and money. Shael escaped from prison. The government placed a reward on his head, if he should get caught, but he went over the border to Germany. Two men came into Germany and started a fur business. They knew where Shael was and got in touch with him, and he engaged in business with them. After a time they had him over the border in a deal, and then revealed themselves as detectives. And he was in prison again! Then the sensational news appeared in the Russian newspapers that "Effron was caught again." But Bregman and all his friends started to work hard again with vodka and money, and he walked out of the prison disguised as one of the officers of the guard. Again he was over the border into Frankfort an Main, where he remained until his death. His wife and one daughter were living in the city of Vilna.

The story of Shael is also told in Yedidia Effron's book about Amdur (pages 68-69), where he wrote:

[T]he wealthy Shael Efron... Reb Shael used to deal with gold in the time of Alexander II, a business forbidden to Jews. He was arrested and spent a long time in solitary confinement, in the Grodno Citadel. A guard was bribed, and Reb Shael’s body was exchanged with that of an executed prisoner’s. He was carted out of the fortress like a corpse. Then he escaped to the other side of the border. The story shook up the entire government, but without results. Reb Shael lived in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, for more than forty years. He was always rich, but rigidly fanatic. He would not touch meat in Germany because he did not trust the ritual slaughterers in Frankfurt, even thought they were devout and strictly orthodox. He died in 1897, leaving a rich inheritance to his sons Moshe, a county judge, and to Leizer.

Leizer Efron, son of Shael, also wrote about his father. Leizer's book, HaMishan Alphin (http://www.efronfamilyhistory.com/BIO011.pdf ) has been partially translated. The story of Shael's jailing is supposed to have been repeated there.

 Many years ago I received revision list information for Efron families living in Amdur, including this family:

In 1858, Shoul Efron, the son of Chaim, is age 36 (1850 he was 28)
his son Leyzer-Arel, 14 (6 in 1850)
son Chaim, absent (not born in 1850)
wife Sora, 33
daughter Taiba, 5
daughter Chaia-Pesia, 1 ½
mother, Lea, 68

The St. Paul Efrons to the Amdur Branch

How is the extensive Efron family of St. Paul, Minnesota related to the descendents of Leib and Tsinne Efron, who lived in the town of Amdur? We know they are related, through DNA testing, but how?

Chapter 8 of the online family tree of the Efrons of Amdur (http://www.efronfamilyhistory.com/Vol1Chap8.htm ) explains.

The earliest known ancestor is Chaim Efron. He was born around 1825. He lived in Volkovysk -- either the town or the district which is named after the town. Volkovysk district, and the town of Volkovysk, are located in today's Belarus, although in the 19th and early 20th century it would have been considered Russian Poland. Some of Chaim's children also came from a town called Izabelin, which is located in the Volkovysk district, and not too far fromt he town of Volkovysk.

We know about Chaim from the gravestones of his children and vital records. He had six known children. Four of them came to the US: Julia (Yehudit) Mintz; Sarah (Sara Rivka) Bulgatz; Morris (Moshe) Efron; and Anna Nachimoff.

Another child was Ephraim Simcha Efron, and he apparently died before his family came to this country. Although he did not come to this country, his wife and most of his children did, and they all settled in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Julia, Sarah and Morris also came ot the "Twin Cities" and Anna settled in New York City.

Chaim's son Yosef Shmuel Rosenshein did not come to America, but died in the town of Izabelin. Yosef Shmuel Efron was adopted into the Rosenshein family, likely as a way to avoid the Russian draft, and used their surname. We know about him from oral history.

Chaim was born around 1825-1830 because the youngest child of whom we know was born about 1847. He very likely had his first child at the age 20 or so, maybe even younger.

And this is where the research stood for several years, UNTIL, in 2010 when a record was found. The record was from the 1858 revision list (census) project for towns in Grodno and Volkovysk Uezds (counties) which I spearheaded and which is now available on http://www.jewishgen.org/ as a component of the All Belarus database.

 

There, registered as residents of the city of Grodno, entry 606 were

Khaim Efron, son of Ephraim, head of household, age 32 (that is, born about 1826). PERFECT!

his wife, Sheina Khaia, age 30

his son, Efroim Simkhel, age 9

his daughter, Judes, age 2

 

Also in the house are his brother and family:

Josel Efron (brother of Khaim), age 30

Josel's wife, Khaia, age 26

Josel's daughter, Bashe, age 6

 

The revision list's family of Khaim Efron is an extraordinarily good match to what was already known about him from the research of the "St. Paul" Efrons. About Josel, and his brother -- that is for another post. Suffice it to say that this enabled conclusions related to the family of the Chicago Efrons, including the Bashe Schneider family.

 

How then is Ephraim Efron related to Leib and Tsine, the earliest known ancestors of the Efron family? He is already known from the 1816 revision list, in Amdur, where he is listed as 26 years old (born around 1790), and married to Ghenya. AND, he is known from the introductory remarks on page two of Sam Effron's genealogy of the family (http://www.efronfamilyhistory.com/GEN029.pdf ), written as "Afroim."

 

 

Earlier Efron Genealogies

Long before I began my 20-year hobby of building family trees of Efron families there already existed written records of the family history. Here follows an acknowledgement and summary of those genealogies, and the people who wrote them. I may have left off a few, and to those folks I say sorry. But my main intent here is to show how much information was already compiled.

There were still lots and lots of family trees which I had to build myself, not the least of which was the entire Braverman and Heffron branches of Boston.

Here then, my tribute to those upon whose prior work I've built

Sam Effron. Born in Amdur as Shevach Effron, he came to Poughkeepsie, NY in 1899 by way of Argentina. His autobiography has been published on my FamilyTreeMaker website -- see the links near the bottom of the home page at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/y/a/r/Jim-Yarin/index.html . But he also wrote a genealogy of the family. In that genealogy, which is not yet available on the web, he mentions the brothers of Motte Tsinne's, but does not give further information about them. At the end of the genealogy, he recounts the story of Shael Efron, but does not indicate how Shael is related to Motte Tsinnes (Shael is a nephew of Motte).

I have relied to a great degree on Sam Effron's genealogy. I have verified in one way or another most of the information in the genealogy, although some of it is taken on face value -- specifically, the head of the family's name, the matriarch, Tsinne, and her sons' names.

My draft genealogy (unpublished) quotes from Sam's genealogy extensively. I have also managed, with the basic information supplied in this genealogy, to fill in many gaps and bring family trees down to current generations.

Yedidia Efron. He wrote the history of the town of Amdur, and included a substantial portion of it to his own family history. You can use the above link to access the book, including the project where portions of the book are now bing translated. In addition to a chapter where he specifically speaks about his family, there are many references throughout the book to his Efron relatives. In many cases it is the combination of information in this book with other sources that has allowed me to make connections. For example, Yedidia discusses Avraham Shlomo Tzines, who is the head of the Goldberg family genealogy done by Bill Lowenstein.

Julio Mazo. Julio lives in Israel, and used to live in Argentina. Julio has done extensive work to create family trees of the Efron families that came to Argentina. Many of those families are very large. Julio's wife, Martha, works at the Hall of Names at the Daniel Goldmann Museum in Tel Aviv, and the genealogy that Julio did has been submitted into their database.

Max Effron. He is from the Motte Matsul branch and did a family tree of his family which adde to Sam Effrons information and allowed some branches to be linked together.

Joanne Goldberg. Joanne did a very thorough genealogy of the Morris Efron family of St. Louis/Aiken, SC

Colin Silver. He authorized a genealogy of the Australian branch, who are the descendents of Chatskil Efron. Most of the descendents of that family settled in Australia.

Joy Adams from Chatanooga put together the family history of the family that settled in Chatanooga, TN and environs.

Bill Lowenstein was a young man from Pittsburgh, PA who because interested in family history at a young age and compiled the branch of the family descended from Eliezer, son of Motte Tsinne's.

Tina Efron. Tina compiled a genealogy of the branch of Yael Chaim of Slutsk.

Eli Efron and his son, Nathan Efron, of Cincinatti. They left detailed genealogical notes about his immediate family,

Frank Effron did a family tree for his branch, which is that of Leon Effron the Phildelphia dentist.

Sidney "Tiff" Simon created a very helpful family tree of the descendents of Mina Affron of Kingston.

Rose Brownstein put together a nice family history, showing the descendents of Asher Efron of Krynki.

Norman Levitz sent me the family tree of the Schneider family of Krynki (Krinik). The matriarch of the family was Bashe (Efron) Schneider, and it also shows her relationship to the Avrohm Simche Efron family. (this paragraph added 11/11/08).

Hi and Welcome -- Now I'm a Blogger too.

I'm trying to set up a good web presence that will allow me to complete my 20-year genealgoy odyssey (gee, I hope this has spell check) of research of families named EFRON -- and spelling variations. My goal -- publish in book form, on disk, and on the web a family history of all families that have this surname.

First, a word to the fans of a certain 21 year-old movie star, a star who is the most popular idol of girls age 6-16 (61?) since Frankie Avalon (the 61 year-olds will understand that). I ask you PLEASE do not send me email. I have promised not to put any information about Z A C or his family into my online genealogy because I want to respect the privacy of his family. Period.

So, what have I done so far, and what else am I planning to do? I have done a lot of research and have acquired a lot of research done by others. I have put up some information on the web. If you found this, then you have found that (or will easily find it).

I have a file, unpublished, that is broken into chapters representing the different families. One of the families is huge, of which I am a part, but most of them are small, and may only go back to some Efron who was born around the mid-1800s. There are about 40 different branches. So that file I call my "draft genealogy," and it will eventually become the final, published genealogy. As part of that file, I have about 25 appendixes wherein each contains a certain type of reference. For example, Appendix C lists all of the census references I've located. To illustrate, within Appendix C I have listed 100s of 1920 and 1930 census references, and revision lists (Russian census) references, etc. Each entry has a unique nunber, or alphanumerica identifier. I will try and post these appendixes to Google docs, and reference these appendixes in this blog. For many of the references listed in the appendixes I also have source documents, including many pictures of gravestones, ship manifests, natrualization papers, etc.

In parallel to my "Draft Genealogy" with its appendixes, I have a Family Tree Maker file wherein I list the same names and family relationships as found in the Draft Genealogy. I have published my FTM file to the internet on my own FamilyTreeMaker web page, which you can find easily enough (and yes, I can and will reference the site in this blog) by Googling key words Efron, Effron, Ephron, Affron -- you get the picture.

My current work being done on the draft genealogy, to reach my goal of publishing the thing, is to make sure the info in my draft genealogy matches the info in the Family Tree Maker file. The FTM file only lists name, date and place of birth, marriage and death, and relationships. The draft genealogy currently has everything else, including unpublishable personal information that needs to be removed before it can be put up on the web. Note, the FTM file now on the web has not been updated for a while, but that is one reason why I am working on bringing it up to date -- so that I can republish it to the web. The other reason that I want it updated is because it will serve as an index and graphics for the final genealogy that I publish. Also, it is a good way to communicate with family members to show them what information I am still seeking.

I guess that's enough for my first posting. I can do this anytime I want? Cool.