This is a guide to reading Cyrillic and Yiddish/Hebrew cursive records that were written in the 19th century. It demonstrates general principles for deciphering messy cursive by focusing on the Jewish vital records for Jewish communities of interest to the author. The first records to go into the scanner come from Kremenets, a town that is now in Ukraine but was once in the Volhynia Gubernya in the Russian Empire.
CLICK HERE to go to
the main site.
CLICK HERE for the
no-frames version.
The main part of this site uses a Web design feature called "frames." If you got to this site with WebTV or a text-based browser, you should CLICK HERE to see a special no frames version.
If you have Netscape or Internet Explorer but are very new to the Web, you may be mystified by the pale gray "arrow ribbons" that appear at the bottom of most Web pages, on the right hand side of most pages, and in the middle of some of my pages.
The arrow ribbons are called "scrollbars." You can use the little arrows at the ends of a scrollbar, and the little square bead attached to the scrollbar, to move quickly through a Web page. You can also use the scrollbar at the bottom of the screen to move a page that's too big for your monitor to the left and the right, so that you can see the whole image.
Example: There is a map of the Kremenets area on my site. If the map is a little too big to fit on your screen, you can use the scrollbar to see the part that goes off the screen
For more information on using scrollbars, CLICK HERE to see the vasia.com guide to using scrollbars.
Another hint: the scrollbars at the bottom of the page and on the right-hand side of the browser window are built into your browser. But the horizontal and vertical scrollbars in the middle of the windows on my site are mine. If you want, you
To move one of my scrollbars, put your mouse cursor pointer over it, click your mouse button, and hold down the mouse button. While you hold down the mouse button, you should be able to move the scrollbar to a new position.
Site established 29 November 2000 in memory of Sam White and Ruth White Freedman, the children of two Batts from Shumsk.