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From Russia to South Africa

From Russia to South Africa

Fran Cohen (View posts)
Posted: 2 Feb 2006 8:30PM GMT
Classification: Query
All I know is that our family comes from Russia. They immigrated to South Africa and even served in the Anglo-Boer War on the side of the Boers. Does anyone know about the Russian/South Africa connection? I would really like to find out the rest of the family tree.

Re: From Russia to South Africa

Posted: 20 Sep 2013 9:05AM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Cohen-Miller and Miller-Ephraim
interesting to find this post. I too have a very distant relative who was from russia/lithuania who ended up in south africa. She was a Miller who married an Ephraim. I found an old newspaper article detailing the hanging death of a relative. It listed his siblings and for his sister, it only says "mrs ephraim from south africa". My gggrandad married esther cohen from germany. I'm wondering if some of the fleeing jewish ancestors immigrated TO south africa and chose to stay, before coming to the states. Or maybe the came to the states first, then to s.africa?
unfortunately, I have discovered that on my mom's side (russian-lihtuanian-german Jew) it is much harder to find records, due to their persecution they kept very poor records to prevent detection. Or changed their records to appear non-jewish. So sad. So my Cohen side has hit a brick wall.

Re: From Russia to South Africa

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 9:02PM GMT
Classification: Query
My g-grandfather was Will Cohen, b. 1875 in Russia,came to America in 1889/90, settled in Memphis, Tennessee, died 1940. Brothers Joe, Dave, and Simon came to America also (I have nothing but their names so far). Father's first name was Marion & Mother's first name was Francis (as spelled by the census taker, anyway). Family lore says that Will also had a brother with a diamond mine in Africa, but I don't know his name, even if it's true. Doubt if this could be any help at all, but since your name is Fran, who knows, maybe they were trying to honor you with your gg-grandmother's name.
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