Dear Listers Lottie Adelina Preston b1872 daughter of Anne De Lara ( parents Sarah Abigail Cohen Crawcour and David Laurent de Lara) and George Matthew Tilbury ( known as Preston) became very well known as a concert pianist under the name of Adelina de Lara. My Crawcour line was also linked to Simha Cohen de Lara c 1804- 79( father Abraham Cohen de Lara) and her marriage to David Laurent de Lara c1806-76. Adelina de Lara in her autobiography 'Finale' talks about David Laurent de Lara who 'married my maternal grandmother , a Polish Jewess of the name of Cracour, that of an important Polish military family who lived in Kracow, in the part of Poland then under Austrian rule.' This statement about such a Jewish military family appears at first face to be unlikely because Samuel Crawcour ( from Kracow) the progenitor of the line ( my 5x great grandfather) was an interant Jewish apothecary/dentist who arrived in England circa 1760s as a young man in his 20s ( b 1748-1816). However, we know from research that the Jews in Poland did form military units at least from the 1500s if not much earlier including having officers serving with Bonaparte such as Colonel Jozef Aronwicz and Berek and Josef Joselewicz. Can any listers shed further light on the extent to which Jews in Poland or the Austrian Empire held important military commissions. Dr Phillip Kirby Norfolk England