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Juda Lajb Pfeffercranc (Leon Lewis)- Lodz and Warsaw

Feferkranc Feferkrant Fefercranc Fefercrant Faferkranc Feferkraut

Fefferkraut Faferkraut Feferkrott Feferkrot Feferkrott Pfeferkranc

Pfeferkrant Pfefercranc Pfefercrant Pfefferkrant Pfeffercranc Pfeffercrant

Pfefferkraut Pfefferkantz




Leon Lewis was born Juda Lejb Feferkranc in Lodz on 18th June 1880. His parents were Wolf Feferkranc and Bejli. There is considerable confusion as to Leon’s mother’s maiden name but I would favour Cherszaryc/Gerszaryc. Leon came to England between 1884 and 1893. It maybe that he also visited America as a small child. On the English 1901 census he is shown as a Polish born American subject. In 1909 Leon founded the timber company where he and my father were to spend their entire working lives. Leon died in 1963.


The reporting of the Pfeffercranc name comes with innumerable different spellings. And given the difficulty of reading old Polish records it is very difficult to know what the name should be. While the first part of the name definitely means pepper it is debatable what the name actually means but it could be pepper weed which is a plant (Lepidium latifolium).


Before I started researching my family the person who most interested me was Leon’s father Wolf. I was told that he had divorced Leon’s mother and emigrated to the States where he was involved in the rise of unionism. Wolf has however remained the most elusive of all the family. Oral history says that Leon went to find/visit his father in America and was in San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake in 1906. The announcement of Leon’s marriage in the Jewish Chronicle in 1908 refers to his father as Mr W Lewis of Los Angeles California. Leon’s marriage certificate names his father as Woolf Lewis. On Leon’s British naturalisation papers he names his father as William Lewis. Despite extensive records of transatlantic crossings during this period it has not proved possible to find either Wolf or Leon travelling to or fro America. Part of the problem is knowing what names they may have used but whatever variant I have tried possible records have, on further examination proved not to be relevant. My mother told me that Wolf wrote her very interesting letters, (which of course she failed to keep) whether when she first knew Wilfred or when she was first married to him I don’t know. But this means Wolf must still have been alive in the mid 1930’s and possibly into the 1940’s. He was born around 1858.


Leon’s mother Beila remarried Louis (Lewis) Shavelson in Mile End in 1893. The information on the Jewish marriage record refers to Beila as the divorced wife of Wolf Pfefferkantz. She had a child Sarah (Teddy) in 1895. The information on Beila’s dates is very contradictory but she was probably born 1857/8. She died in 1937.


Please note many of the pictures of Leon’s children are the same as in the Appleberg section.