I never knew my grandfather. He died about nine years before I was born. He was born in the early 1890's near Iasi, Romania, which is where this 2003 photgraph was taken. My father had his father's hand-written "birth certificate" which was really just a hand-written copy of what the town recorder wrote in his book to record births and deaths. Of course, it was written in Romanian.
When I worked at University of California at Santa Barbara, I ran across a student whose family had emmigrated to California from Romania. I asked her if she would be able to translate the document for me, but it was in such an old dialect, she was unable to do so. She graciously said she would be happy to ask her mother and grandmother to look at it.
As it turned out, this document became a family project for them. Eventually she was able to provide me with this translation.
From the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety one, the month of March, the seventeenth day, at the tenth hour of the morning. This is the birth certificated of Haim of Israilite religion, of the male sex, born the day before yesterday in the Comune Valea Seaca, in the house of his mother, son of Haim Heler, now deceased and of Ruhlei Heler twenty four years of age, homemaker, living in the comune Valea Seaca, from the comune Valea Seaca. Acording to the midwife, Ana Strul Vaisler, who showed us the baby. The witnesses were Nicolae a Dascalitei, thirty four years of age, and Samson Munteanu, fifty years of age, both profesors of agriculture and residing in the comune Valea Seaca, who together with the midwife, signed this birth certificate, after having read it. This document is found to be legal, by us, Gheorghe Serghiuta, mayor of Valea Seaca and justor of the peace.
Now a document like this just says so much, but even more revealing is the document of his father's, that is, my great-grandfather's death which occurred only 5 months before!
|