The following details are the paths I took to discover where our family came from.  I wish I had more information, but what I do have is light years more than what we knew five years ago.  The research is now in my blood and will continue to be my calling and hopefully more will fall into place.  Please read my journey to this point and enjoy the following journal.

The story of the Dinovitz Family in Pittsburgh has never been known or researched until recently. Our family history was never known past our grandfather, Charles Dinovitz who passed away back in 1954. He was always known to have been orphaned and raised by an Aunt and Uncle since he was a little kid.

Back in 2003, I decided to view the Ellis Island website for information on my Grandmother, Rose Dobkin who I knew came into Ellis Island around 1906. All the information was on their database and I also came across the entire Dobkin Family Tree posted on Genealogy.com by a cousin, Craig Dobkin.

Now that I had all the information on the Dobkins I decided to start researching the part of our history nobody really knew. The Dinovitz family was not listed on Ellis Island, which either meant they did not come through the port or the last name was not documented the same way it's spelled today. Back then the transcribers at Ellis Island gave people last names based on sound and translated them to the English spellings. So, I went to Genealogy.com and tried to search all kinds of databases and was having no luck at all. I then found Ancestry.com and when I searched all the US Census records (1930, 1920, 1910, 1900) 15 records came up for Dinovitz in PA. Unbelievable, finally some information! Great now put in your credit card for the $99.95 membership fee. What a crock of crap, tease me and then crush me in 10 seconds! Well I gave in and put in the cc#. It was well worth it.

The results came through and in the 1920 and 1930 records all the Dinovitz records were listed. This was great news, but most I already knew.  What about earlier information, 1910, 1900? These years would be awesome, because Charlie and his brothers were kids, where did they live and who raisied them? This information was right there, but nothing was coming up. I realized through more searching, in 1910 Pennsylvania indexed the Census separate from the US database in what they called the 1910 PA Miracode Census. Here we go....I typed in DINOVITZ and bang.....1 record found in Allegheny County......1506 Colwell Street, LEA DINOVITZ, 4 sons (Israel, Sam, Ben Charles) and a boarder (Joe Finkelstein)!!!! We always thought our Great-Grandmother was Lea, but never 100% sure. I viewed the document and couldn't believe my eyes. My Grandfather Charlie was 10 years old and his brothers Israel 22, Sam 20 and Ben 18 were not orphaned at such a young age as we all believed. None of them ever discussed their childhoods much, why? We will never know, but at least we might know more about who and where they came from.

The beginning of the research was starting to take place. 1910 was now the starting point and I had to find ways to go back year to year in the Pittsburgh area and find out about the Lea Dinovitz family. Was she married, to who, what happed to her and how did she get here? The 1900 database was coming up with no results. Through ancestry.coms links I was led to the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh's Archive and Genealogy Department on the third floor. So, on a Saturday morning I went down to the library and started to research the Pittsburgh Directories. Unfortunately, these were on microfilm and not indexed. I had to start with the a's and scroll all the way to the d's. Well I started with 1909, 1908, 1907 and no new information. Lea Rose Dinovitz was listed at 1506 Colwell Street and 151 Elm Street. The 1906 listing was a shocker, Dinovitz L R (wid Max) 151 Elm Street. What's Wid Max, I think Widow Max, but I had to scroll all the back to the beginning to be sure. Yes it was widowed Max. This is our Great-Grandfather, MAX DINOVITZ!!! Now I had to find out when did he die, what did he do, etc? In the next edition 1905, now listed as Dinovitz L R wid Maximilian 151 Elm we now know his full first name. But over the next couple years the listings changed a bit; 1904- Dinowich Max peddler 1527 Center Avenue (remember this address for later), 1903- same as 1904, 1901- Dinowitz Max peddler same address, 1899-1900 Dinewich Marks peddler same address. Wow, I am the great grandson of a peddler, I never thought I would be so happy to ever say that. The records stopped there, nothing past 1899.

The library also has the WWI Draft Registration Cards on microfilm files. These would give me the places of birth information I now wanted to find. The entire county was available and on the index was listed all the Dinovitz men (Izzy, Sam, Ben and Charlie). We always knew Charlie was born here in PA, but the three older brothers were born in Russia. The cards all listed Raigrad, Russia as place of birth. The town would now be in Poland, but was in Prussia also known as Polish Russia at that time.

As I left the library after 6-7 hours of scrolling through documents, the first two things I did was call my Father, Chick Dinovitz son of Charlie and my Aunt Cookie daughter of Charlie to let them know they actually had grandparents they could put names to. They were both shocked and had a hard time holding back the tears! During the conversations with my Dad and Aunt I asked them what Jewish Cemeteries would of been prominent back then and they both remembered an old time cemetery in McKees Rocks but couldn't think of the name. I printed out the listings of all the Jewish Cemeteries in the Pittsburgh area and 3 were near McKees Rocks. The first one on the list was the Beth Hamadrash Hagodol/ Beth Jacob so I started there. I called the office and asked a very nice lady, "Do you have any Dinovitz family members buried in your cemetery?". She asked me to hold and after hearing a bunch of pages flip, she came back and said "I have three here on the old side, a father, mother and son, Max, Lea and Sam." I told her who I was and what I was doing and she sent me a map with all three sites marked. Who knew all these years and they were right here in our backyard.

Because I knew the year of death, I wrote a letter to the PA Department of Health and sent in a small fee for a copy of the actual death certificate of Lea Dinovitz. A couple weeks later I was sent a copy of the actual notice of death from April 26, 1912. On that day Lea passed away from Chronic Vascular Disease of the Heart. The death certificate was witnessed by son Sam and signed by Dr. M A Goldstone. The date of burial was April 28, 1912. My grandfather was an orphan since he was 12 years old, not as young as we always believed. The death certificate also had the name of Israel Goldstock as father of the deceased. This will be the next chapter of the research, but will come sometime in the future.

All of the previous research came back in 2003, but as our lives go on our priorities change and the family research has not been researched for the past couple of years. Well, sometimes things happen in life to make priorities swing back.  Last month (3/7/2007) this is what happened in my life. On 3/7/07, my father, who had always been intrigued by his family history and proud of the progress I had made, passed away sooner than anyone could of imagined. This lead me back to Ancestry.com too try and figure out more of the pre-1900 Dinovitz history.

My dad was always proud of the progress I made and would be proud of any more progress I will make in the future. With the internet, things can happen much faster then before the internet. This past week I came back to post my family tree on the worldtree at ancestry.com and started to do some more research or just see if there was anything new to search. The newest search tool that was not available back in 2003 was the soundex surname tool. The soundex allows you to search a last name on sound and not spelling. In the 1900 Census I used this tool to search Dinovitz and a ton of last names and similar spellings came up in the results. I started to search, but there were around 1,000 listings. I changed my search to m dinovitz with the soundex and PA as the area. Now only around 100 listings came up. On the second page Max Denovick in Pittsburgh, PA was listed. I clicked on the view record link and the actual document from the census popped up. Head of Household was Max Denovick, spouse was Lea, sons Israel, Sam, Ben and Charles and a border named Nathan Goldstein. The address was 1527 Center Avenue, remember the address from the 1899-1900 directory was the same. They arrived here in 1894 and came from Russia. Now we know that our family was together for 9 years in the USA and arrived together.

The research will continue!