The Ganz Family

The Ganz family was one of the largest Jewish families in the Maramaros region. As part of the “Ganz DNA Project” Brooke Schreier Ganz¹ has Y-DNA tested multiple Ganz lines from Maramaros and all of them match each other² as follows:

Y-DNA Lines Tested:

1. Sacel: Chaim Eliezer Ganz born c1830 / Haplogroup E-M35
2. Barsana³ #1: Saul Ganz c1827-1879 / Haplogroup E-M35
3. Barsana #2: Gershon Ganz c1833-1890 / Haplogroup E-M35
4. Salistea de Sus / Szelistye: Shmuel Ganz c1812-1867 / Haplogroup E-M35
5. Dragomerfalva: Mordechai Ganz c1809-1873 / Haplogroup E-M35

This all points to a single patriarch living in the 1700’s so the question is, who was that patriarch?

I first looked into the 1793 census to see which town had the largest the largest concentration of Ganz’s. This is often a good method of trying to trace the origins of a Jewish Maramaros family. This is what I found:

Ganz in the 1793 census:

• Jood – Majer Ganz (0)
• Borsa – Herst Ganz (3)
• Sacel – Iszak Ganz (3), Jakob Ganz (8)
• Dragomerfalva – Mendel Ganz (3)
• Barsana – Herst Ganz (0), Izrael Ganz (0), Mihaly Ganz (1) Mojzes Ganz (1)
• Remete – Majer Ganz (3)

Since Barsana had 4 Ganz households while the other towns had only one or two, I decided to take a deep dive into Barsana. I looked at tax lists for 1788 & 1789 and found the following three Ganz taxpayers: Lazer Ganz, Izrael Ganz & Hersh Ganz. It’s worth noting that the Austro-Hungarian surname decree was effected in 1787, so these tax lists are the first lists that contain proper surnames.

My next stop was 1785 where I found in Barsana as follows: Lazar Herszkovits (Eliezer ben Tzvi), “his son” Hersh/Tzvi & “his son-in-law” Leib⁴. Since there is only one Lazer and one Hersh (respectively) in the 1785 & 1788 tax lists it’s quite clear that “Lazer Herszkovitz” is the one who would eventually assume the Ganz surname and that he is the patriarch of the Ganz family in Barsana.

Barsana 1785 (partial)

I then went through many tax lists and censuses for Barsana from 1768⁵ through 1789 and Lazer Ganz is in every single one of them. The 1771 census is very important since it includes more personal information than most other censuses. In this census Lazer is recorded as being in Hungary since 1720 and that he had (at that time) 6 unmarried sons ages 2 through 21 and 3 daughters ages 6 through 14. He also had 3 servants. Its interesting to note that in that 1771 census there was only 5 Jewish families in Barsana and Lazer’s was the largest of them and the most well-to-do. In fact, Lazer was so wealthy that in 1785 he was the 3’rd largest contributor of the Jewish Tollerance tax in all of Maramaros, paying 40 gulden. The average amount paid by Jews that year was 7.5 gulden.

Barsana Jewish census 1771

From certain 1774 & 1775 tax lists we learn that Lazer’s wife was Szifra the daughter of Saul or Zavel.

The last we hear from Lazer is the 1789 tax list. By 1793 he isn’t listed anymore. This indicates that Lazer must have died between 1789 and 1793. It’s interesting to observe that looking through 19’th century records we can see that in quite a few towns there were Lazer Ganz’s who were born in the last decade of the 18’th century. They were all surely named after the Ganz patriarch from Barsana. In Sacel alone there were 3 Lazer Ganz’s all born in the early 1790s! The fact that Ganz men from many different towns were naming their children Lazer coupled with the DNA results leads me to believe that Lazer ben Hersh from Barsana (c1720-c1790) is not only the Patriarch of the Barsana-Ganz family, but that he is the patriarch of all the Ganz families in Maramaros.

In a 1782 document I found Lazer’s Hebrew signature.

It’s difficult to put given names on all of Lazer’s sons but I was able to positively identify four of them.

1. Hersh Ganz from Barsana-Borsa. He is clearly Lazer’s son as shown by the 1785 tax list mentioned above. The first time Hersh shows up in a tax list is 1774, so he most likely was born c1750. He was living in Borsa from at least 1793 and the last we hear from him is in 1814. By 1818 he was dead as evidenced by his widow recorded in the Borsa census for that year. One of his children was Jacob Ganz from Sacel⁶. Another son was Marku (Mordechai, born c1780) who lived in for a time in Szelistye and then in Borsa⁷. Marku’s daughter Rachel married Meshulem Shmuel Kofler (c1797-1872) from Nadoworna-Borsa⁸. Here is Marku Ganz’s Hebrew signature:

2. Izrael Ganz from Barsana. He died in 1830 and is buried in Barsana. Ari Tesler has identified his gravestone and posted it to Geni here. Here is Izrael’s signature:

3. Iszak Ganz from Sacel. In 1782 & 1784 tax list he is listed as “Iszak Lazar”. He was born c1757⁹. Here is Iszak’s Hebrew signature from 1788:

4. Mendel Ganz from Borsa/Dragomerfalva. In an 1815 archival document, Mendel Ganz who was then living in Dragomerfalva testified that he was 56 years old and that 32/33 years prior (=1782/1783) he was living in Borsa. The 1782 tax list for Borsa lists just one Mendel, and unsurprisingly, his patronym is “Lazarovics”! By 1788, Mendel was already living in Dragomerfalva and he was still living there in 1830.

By 1818 the Ganz’s were really spreading out in the region and we see them in 8 towns, as follows:

Ganz in the 1818 census:

• Borsa – widow of Hersh Ganz (2) Markul Ganz (2)
• Sacel – Lazor son of Jakob Ganz (3), Jakob Ganz (0), Zelich Ganz (1), Lazer son of Iszak Ganz (2), Simon Ganz (3)
• Szelistye – Mojsza Ganz (0) – census seems to indicate that he was a son-in-law of Mahele Stern.
• Dragomerfalva – Mendel Ganz (1), Simsi Ganz (2)
• Alsovisso – Simon Ganz (0), Simon Ganz (5)
• Barsana – Avaram Ganz (3), Izrael Ganz (2), Kalman Ganz (4), Zelik Ganz (1)
• Remete – Bintze widow of Mayer Ganz (3)
• Karacsónfalva – Sztrul Ganz (2)

1. Much appreciation to Brooke for graciously adding her Maramaros-Ganz profiles to our project! Brooke’s project has tested many other Ganz families from around the world but non of them match the Ganz’s from Maramaros. ↩︎
2. By “match” I mean that they all match on least 33 out of 37 markers. ↩︎
3. Hungarian: Barczánfalva. Yiddish: Birsanif. In this essay I will use the modern Romanian name, Bârsana. ↩︎
4. From other records I was able to establish that Leib was born c1755 and his father’s name was Chaim. Leib seems to have assumed the Bak surname. ↩︎
5. A 1754 tax list records only 2 Jewish taxpayers in Barsana – both named Lazer, but since they don’t list any patronyms it’s impossible to know if this is “our” Lazer. ↩︎
6. Per an 1827 archival document. Witness statement of his friend Sofrág Dumitru aluj Togyer. ↩︎
7. His year of birth is extrapolated from a 1842 tax document where he is listed as being 63 years old. ↩︎
8. Shmuel’s older brother was Hersh Kofler who lived in Felsovisso. ↩︎
9. Per an 1815 testimony. ↩︎