M Liachowcy

I have some question that Iwan Mamiszew, arriving on the Campanello in 1910 from Lechowiec, Russia is our Grandfather Mamyshoff.  There are two differing factors:  his age on the manifest is 32, and his naturalization papers say he would have been 21 and arrived on the Olympic from Liverpool.

The manifest for the Olympic doesn't show his name, so the key difference is his age. I think there is just one way to ascertain his age, and that would be to determine his town of origin and see if any birth or other records still exist. The women on the Ukrainian chat board have been very helpful, and they have narrowed it down to Lyakhovichi, a small village southwest of Pinsk, province of Brest, in today's Belarus.

The Jewish genealogy site has research on shtetls in eastern Europe, and have some resources on this area.  The first is Lyakhovichi.  The second is an interesting page on the various spellings of the village and the people originating from there.  The names listed are Jewish, and I did see the Silberman family listed, who is the family that was listed on the Oceania manifest right before Anafansi Mamiszew. I am making the assumption that he knew them, since they were in line together, and listed the same origin village. This gives me a little confidence I am on the right track.

The village would have been in the Volhyn province in 1910 and part of the Russian Empire. The Moscow and St. Petersburg areas and East were called Great Russia, the Ukraine was called Little Russia, and the Belarus area was called White Russia.  Grandpa's village would have been in the far northwest Ukraine, right on the border then with White Russia. But all of these were part of the Russian Empire, not individual countries.

My next step is to determine what resources I can find to explore for things like his birth certificate and baptism in the Church. This will be a little more difficult. I will start by contacting the Lyakhovichi research group and use the information on the JewishGen website that talks about church records.

I am reading the history of Ukraine, but am still in the 1600's, so have a ways to go until Grandpa was born.