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Vilna is an old Russian name for Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. It was also the name of Vilna Governate, a Russian territory that from 1795 to 1915 covered the south-east of modern Lithuania (and beyond into Belarus). So maybe we can start by assuming that Eiszuk was in the part of Russia that now Lithuania (this is just an assumption, it would be nice ...
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There are a lot of things going on in this question. I'll try to untangle a few of them.
First, the word "ben" is Hebrew for "son of" (see eg https://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/tombstones.html), not "of" or "from" as you say. For example, Joseph ben Jochanon Treves is a person named Joseph Treves whose father was ...
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I checked my favorite town database for any appropriate towns in Eastern Europe starting with "Yob…" or "Job…" and came up blank. I also searched for any towns that ended in "…neks" or "…necks" and also had no hits. I think you should assume that the town was being written down phonetically on the draft card by an American who was dealing with an immigrant ...
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There are a couple of possibilities very near by Pumpyan. Could "Porshwel" be either "Pushlot" (#1) or "Poshwol" (#2)?
There is a town named Pušalotas about 7 km west of Pumpėnai (Pumpyan). Pušalotas has also been called Pushelat (Yiddish), Pushelaty (Russian), Puszolaty (Polish), Puscheloten (German), Pishelot, Pushlat, Puselat, and Pusholaty. The ...
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Vilna used to belong to Russia but is now in the country of Lithuania. That is where all your documents will be. (It's possible there will be exceptions but generally documents go with the current government.) Note that some documents may be in Russian instead of Lithuanian. This means they'll be in a non-Roman script, so determining "spelling" is not ...
answered Feb 3 '19 at 17:37
Cyn says make Monica whole
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The most likely places to see a location (town) for an immigrant to US would include records such as:
Immigration records (more so at later dates)
Naturalization records (after 1906)
Newspaper records (patchy, but sometimes origins are mentioned in obituaries)
Military records (WWI and WWII records for men sometimes list birth town)
Local history books (...
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The Geographical dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries lists three different locations for Ryski. The first is a village in the powiat lidzki; the second is a small town in the powiat grodzienski; and the third is a nature reserve also in the powiat grodzienski.
If you search for Ryski at this site, it will show you all three ...
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Also there is such town as "Ейск". It is port town, so your grandfather really can arrive from there despite great distance between Ейск and Lithuania. It can be misspelled as "Eiszuk", but answer of Rob Hoare is more interesting.
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Gyve namoji vieta means residency. Sen pat apparently means long ago. Probably means residency unknown. According to Google Translate which is sketchy at best of times. I am not Lithuanian so I am seriously guessing.
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I'll make a guess that this might be what was known as Шавли in 1890, just south of the 56th parallel:
(Lithuanianmaps.com)
Russian maps of the time put the zero meridian on the Pulkovo Observatory near St Petersburg: the vertical line is labelled "−7".
Шавли would be pronounced Shavli which could sound like "Tavlik" in a poor recording of an ...
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A good place to start when looking for people from Russia and adjacent countries is Jewish Gen. This link will take you directly to pages on Lithuania.
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/#Lithuania
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