Joseph Eisenberg: Where Art Thou From?

Joseph Eisenberg
Born: 1875, Mizheric, near Vilna, Eastern Europe (Lithuania or Ukraine?)
Died: January 23, 1941, Brooklyn, NY
Relation to Author: Great Grandfather-in-Law

Family lore has it that Joseph Eisenberg is from Ukraine. But when I started looking for info about where exactly he is from, I've found that it is actually a bit of a mystery. Here is what we (I) know.

The 1930 and 1940 censuses list Russia as his place of birth and Russian as his native language.

A family history written by Meyer Eisenberg, son of Joseph Eisenberg, which mostly recounts oral history, only says that Joseph was born in "Mizheric, near Vilna, which had been part of Russia, then Poland." In my internet searches so far, I cannot find Mizheric on any maps, but there is a Vilna in present day Lithuania.

Also, the same family history says that Joseph Eisenberg spoke Lettish, which is a Latvian language (in addition to many other languages). If you look at a map of Europe and Asia, you see that between Poland and Russia, there are the following current countries (north to south): Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. So if Joseph spoke a Latvian language, it would make more sense for him to be from Lithuania, which borders Latvia, than Ukraine which has 350 or so miles of Belarus between itself and Latvia.

But let's go back to the part about Mizheric having been part of Russia, then Poland. Does this describe Lithuania or Ukraine? My knowledge of eastern European history is shallow, so let's consult wikipedia.

Ukraine

By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Ukraine was divided between a number of regional powers and, by the 19th century, the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire with the rest under Austro-Hungarian control. A chaotic period of incessant warfare ensued, with several internationally recognized attempts at independence from 1917 to 1921, following World War I and the Russian Civil War. Ukraine emerged from its own civil war, and on December 30, 1922 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union.

If anything, that sounds like it was a part of Poland then Russia, not the other way around.

Lithuania

During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory... 

Starting in 1940, Lithuania was occupied first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end in 1944 and the Germans retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. 

This, too sounds like Poland then Russia, not the other way around. And both histories seem pretty similar. Depending on where exactly in Ukraine or Lithuania, it might have been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Poland but then coming under the control of Russia.

If we look specifically at Vilnus in Lituania however, we can see a path where control went from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Russia, and back to Poland after World War I (and then the Soviet Union, then Nazi occupation, then as a Soviet republic, then independence in 1990). So you could call that Russia then Poland.

So two pieces of evidence point more to Lithuania, but neither piece is very solid (in fact both come from an oral history). We can't fully trust that the oral history has the languages right nor can we say for sure that someone from Ukraine wouldn't know Lettish.

And the one line about the history of Joseph Eisenberg's home region is way too simple to draw any conclusions about an area of the world that had so many different power changes.

So we definitely need more information / better evidence. I have a post on a Ukrainian genealogy listserv asking if there is a "Mizheric near Vilna" in Ukraine. I haven't heard anything helpful yet, but I'll update you if I do. More importantly, I will try to find immigration papers.

In the meantime, let me know if anyone has additional information. Until then, the question in the title of this post remains unanswered.