One source of interesting family detail can be found in old prayer books. Steve Noble recently came across a number of interesting lists in old siddurim.
Here, below Min's name (apparently written when she was at the Boulevade School in Hull though the handwriting was the same as some eighty years later) is the list of all the Davidovitz birthdays..
Here are listed various names and addresses with dates between 1910 and 1933. Of note is Cyril's work address at the News Chronicle Accounts Department in 1932 (it looks like 1922 but Cyril was only 7 years old then).
This list was written after the family changed their name from Davidovitz to Davidson (later Lammie's son, Colin, reverted to Davidovitz, preserving the original name amongst some of today's generations). For some reason Edie's name is missing, strangely replaced by G. B. Shaw (alias) Charles Peace.
The final list gives the Hebrew names of the children (but not of their parents) with the date of Hyman and Annie's wedding, and the year the name was changed from Davidovitz to Davidson. Some things to note:
1/ There doesn't seem to be a formal record of the name change, and Grandma Davidson was called Davidovitz on her death certificate.
2/ Letters from his family show that the village Hyman came from was Hordzieska (near Lublin in Poland)
3/ Records do not show where Grandma (Annie Salit) came from. Her sister, Sorretel, married and lived in Kovno (Kaunas); her brother, Tuvye, lived in Vilna (Vilnius). Grandma herself variously spoke of coming from Shirvint (Sirvintos) and Vilna. Records show that Tuvye originally came from Gedrovitch (Giedraiciai). Some possibilities: the main road of Giedraiciai is called Sirvintos Street. Sirvintos is in Vilnius county.
4/ According to various of her children, Grandma used to say she was born in Vilna. In yiddish that would have been 'ikh bin GEBOREN gevoren in Vilna' It is just possible that she was saying that she was born in Vilna GUBERNYA - Gubernya being the name of an administrative division when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. Whatever the facts, unlike her brothers and sisters, we have little documentary evidence about Grandma before she left Lithuania in 1895.
