Welcome!

Welcome to all Shealtiel, שאלטיאל, Σαλτιέλ, Сальтьель, Saltiel and Sealtiël cousins, whichever of the dozens of different ways that your branch has spelled its name! Welcome also to members of the familes descended from our common ancestors, including the Charlaps, who separated from the Shealtiels in the 1000s; and the Gracians or Hens who separated from the Shealtiels in the 1300s.

The name Shealtiel is Hebrew and commonly translated as "asked of God". It is first recorded in the Bible as the name of a son of the last King of Judea. Much of the family remains Jewish, but we embrace people of all colours and creeds. Today, our family numbers approximately 2500 people, with over six hundred households in thirty nations—and we're still finding more. For more information, please visit our Shealtiel Family World Association web site at Shealtiel Website or our Facebook page at Saltiel Family Facebook Page.

You can also find a great deal of information on the family in the fascinating and pioneering book written by our cousin Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian, entitled Shaltiel: One Family's Journey Through History. For historians wishing to dig a little deeper into the record, Moshe has also published The Shaltiel Manuscripts: Catalunya. Lastly, a fictionalized account of Moshe's research, from the time of King David, can be found in his novel The Exilarch.

Our project here on Geni.com is meant to provide a platform for collaboration on a Geni family tree recording the Shaltiel, Shealtiel, Gracian and related families from Crete, Livorno, North Sea, Spain and other regions. Many members of the extended Saltiel family have entered their branches onto Geni aready; our objective is to enter additional branches of the tree and to connect all known Saltiel branches to the best of our knowledge. To accomplish this task, cooperation of all family members on Geni is needed!

The current family has three known main lines with various sub-branches: from the North Sea ports, the Levant, and the Danube valley, with links between them certain but as yet undocumented. All the descendants are part of a Sephardic— that is Spanish-Jewish— family from Barcelona and environs which left before the expulsions of1492-7. W e are variously known as Chaltiel, Chartiel, Saltiel, Sealtiël, Sealtiël, Shaltiel and Shealtiel, all derived from the Biblical Hebrew name spelled שאלתיאל.

Documentary, anecdotal and DNA evidence has confirmed that the Shealtiel family is a branch of a much larger family descending from the Bablonian Exliarchs, including the ibn Yahya and Charlap families. One of the objectives of our collaboration is to fully map the known connections between these far-flung branches.

NOTE: If you are a member with evident Jewish heritage, unless you indicate otherwise by contacting us, once you join this project we will  join your kit to the FTDNA Avotaynu project, a private* clearinghouse of Jewish genetic data that both assists administrators like myself in comparative analysis and also provides data for scientific research projects.   (*no data is visible to general public or members--only to connected project administrators and researchers).  You are welcome to leave the Avotaynu project at any time.  
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/avotaynu/about