I've been working with Jose Gutstein who maintains the excellent Radzilow.com site in the past few weeks to try to find some of my ancestors in the region. I really have very little information to go on as far as my father's paternal side is concerned. Almost no documentation and very few photographs.
One of the things I have uncovered so far is a name of my grandfather's aunt, Leah Kielczewski, born about 1877 as well as the full name of my 2nd-great-grandmother, Zywa Golda Kielczewski (nee Krug). All I knew about her previously was that her name was Golda.
Another interesting thing to notice is the spelling change from Kielczewski to Kilchevsky. According to "Jewish Family Names and Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary" (By Heinrich Walter Guggenheimer, Eva H. Guggenheimer, Published by KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1992, ISBN 0881252972, 9780881252972, 882 pages) the name comes from one of the villages Kielczew (Siedlce, Kalisz):
By the way, I highly kind of (see UPDATE below) recommend this book for anyone doing Jewish Genealogy. You can view it on Google Books here.
UPDATE: One of the comments I got about my recommendation lead me to use Alexander Beider's books rather than Guggenheimer's. The only problem is that when I go to Google Books, only 2 of 9 books have a snippet view available and all others are not available. The nearest library holding these books is at UGA which is 65 miles away. So for now I'll just have to make do with what I can.
Jose added a beautiful page to his site with some information about my grandfather. Please go check it out here.
Thanks Jose!
