Twiasschor marriage certificates contain some surprises
After five weeks, I received the two Twiasschor marriage certificates I ordered from the England and Wales General Register Office. The 1911 record for the marriage of Pinkas Twiasschor and Pessel Ringel provides lots of new information, which I will summarize below.
However, the 1897 record for the marriage of Lewis Weisberg and Augusta Twiasschor, does not seem to be connected to the later marriage, as I had thought it might. Augusta may still turn out to be a relation to Pinkas and his sister Dina, but she does not seem to have been involved in arranging for the double wedding in 1911.
Not all hunches pan out. But then other information can fall into your lap.
In this case, we learn important information about Schija Ringel, our great grandfather who was the father of the bride. For one, he was already deceased at the time of the marriage. His death record is one of the few Ringel vital records that we do not have. I have been looking for his death a few years later, around 1917, so this resets the date parameters.
Another surprise is Schija's listed occupation as "fishmonger." This is the first indication we have had that he worked in Berlin's food markets. Our surmise till now was that he worked in the garment trade.
By the way, I am using the German spelling of our ancestor's first name. The London registrar renders it as "Schier", which might be explained because it is an unfamiliar name in English.
We have an exact date for the marriage: February 25, 1911. We know that both marriage parties were residing at an address of 125 Langdale Street at the time of the marriage. There is no mention that they are German citizens.
I've already learned a bit about the Langdale Street lodgings, which I will go into in a further post.
The two marriage witnesses include Israel Ehrlich Goldstein, who was the groom in the same-day marriage of Dina Twiasschor, Pinkas's sister. I did not order the Goldstein marriage certificate but I suspect that it would show Pinkas listed as a witness on that one.
I do not recognize the name of the second witness, Harris Goldman. If our group of matrimonial Germans had had a local host while staying in London, you might expect that name to appear as a witness.
The biggest surprise is the definitive listing of Meyer Twiasschor as the father of Pinkas (and Dina). It should not have been a surprise, since I have seen plenty of listings for Meyer Twiasschor and his furniture business in the Berlin phone books. But I thought Meyer and his wife Lea were an uncle and aunt of the Twiasschor siblings, not their parents.
Now I see that I had misinterpreted that several addresses that I had for the family. The main location of the furniture store and associated credit company, as well as the family residence, was at Schwedter Straße 5 in Prenzlauer Berg, about six blocks from the Ringel apartments on Lothringer Str. The location at Zehdenicker Str. 25, where memorial Stolpersteine are placed for the Goldstein family, marks where Israel and Dina lived after they were married.
I'll write more about the Meyer and Lea Twiasschor family and their furniture business in another post, including anything it might tell us about what happened to Pinkas after he split from his wife. For now, the main news is that Pinkas and Dina were the children of the furniture family, not some more distant relation.