Prepared by Stewart Cherlin. Lines connected with the Vilna Cherlin line.
This is in a large format, occupying 25 printed pages which can be printed and assembled into a chart. For a quick on-line overview, you can set "facing pages" with reduction to 50%. In this form it won't be very readable but you can see what it looks like before printing it. The best way to see it is to print it out and lay out the pages, taping them together for the best effect.
Stewart Cherlin has assembled a complete set of web pages for the Stolar/Cramer line. What follows is taken from his notes, more or less verbatim.
Stewart's sources are the following:
There is a story that Joe Cramer on arriving at Ellis Island changed the name either because of a spelling issue or because the immigration officer changed it. Cramer means "grocer" or "small tradesman" in German, and Stoler means "carpenter" in Yiddish.
The spellings Stolar and Stoler are both in use. (The former is closer to the Russian equivalent, the latter is the normal Yiddish form.) The earliest record known is the Ellis Island Manifest of Bendza and Leja Chodas, that is: Benjie and Lena (Yiddish: Leaky) Hodos. The date is September 3, 1912, and the relative being joined in the U.S. is given as Israel Stolar, 5 Broadway, Utica NY. Israel Stolar is Isaac Cramer, a man of many aliases, and three wives, over his long life.
All of these names vary in spelling, either through indifference or error.
Variations include:
Both the Chodas and Kopolowitz families gave Smorgon as their city of origin on the EI Manifest. Information on this shtetl can be found at JewishGen Shtetlinks. Namely:
Smorgone, Smorgonie, and Smarhon', located at 54029°N, 26024° E, in what was the Oshmiany District (Uyezd) of Vilna Gubernia, and now is part of Belarus.
There were 6,743 Jews living in Smorgon (76% of the population) in 1897. Zionist and Jewish socialist groups were active in the town. On the eve of World War I, there were two battei midrash (houses of study of religious commentary), seven synagogues, three elementary yeshivot (religious schools), and a Jewish hospital there. A section of the town's Jewish population were Habad Hasidim.
In 1915, during World War I, many of the Jews in Smorgon' were sent to the Russian interior. Jewish refugee tanners from Smorgon' founded the tanning industries in Kharkov, Rostov, and Bogorodsk. When Smorgon' reverted to independent Poland after World War I, the Jewish refugees began to return to their destroyed houses. Between the two world wars, a Hebrew Tarbut (Jewish nationalistic) school, a drama circle, sports clubs, Zionist youth circles, and branches of Po'alei Zion (a socialistic and Zionist organization), He-Halutz (promoting pioneering in the Holy Land) and Betar (a more radical Zionist group) were active in the town"
Interestingly, Benjie Hodos was employed as a leather worker in Utica per Ruth Oretskin. This may be a connection to the tanner industry in Smorgon.
In summary, to borrow from our traditional biblical text, the family has prospered and multiplied. As of April 2003, we have 193 individuals included in the chart.