First of a two-part post from last year’s trip, originally posted on Facebook on 14 Jul 2014. Lightly edited and with the addition of photographs.

One of the things I was hoping to achieve during this trip was to find the graves of two family members on my maternal grandmother’s side who I knew for certain were buried in Jerusalem.

The first one was my great-great-grandfather, George Schtakleff, who hailed from Tetovo, a town/village in what is modern-day Macedonia, and was, as far as we can tell, an ethnic Bulgarian albeit Greek-speaking. He came to Jerusalem as a pilgrim sometime in the mid- to late-1800s, felt there was a business opportunity to set up a flour mill and had his brother, Zachar(ias), join him. He married twice, ‘importing’ his wives from Tetovo, and built his life in Jerusalem. His first-born was my great-grandfather, John. (You still with me?)