I am working on a blog post about the descendants of the last child of Marx and Sarah Seligmann, Mary Seligman Kornfeld, but am awaiting some documents before I can post it.  So I am going to digress in this post from that line and return to my three-times great-grandfather, Moritz Seligmann (who was, of course, an older brother to Marx Seligmann).  When my cousin Wolfgang sent me the handwritten family tree he and his mother found in their magic suitcase, he had originally not included the pages about Moritz, thinking I had all the information I needed about Moritz and his children.  I asked him to send them to me anyway so that I would have the full document, even if there was no new information.

But in fact there was some new information or at least information that corroborated or clarified assumptions I had made based on inference, anecdotes, and other documents.

The first page names Moritz and his first wife, Eva Schoenfeld.

The next page lists the children of Moritz and Eva Schoenfeld.  I had wondered what had caused Eva’s death and also what had happened to their son Benjamin.  This page answered both questions.  Benjamin died shortly after his birth as did his mother, so I assume it was related to childbirth.

This page also provided confirmation and new information about when the other children died.

On the third page, the writer identified Babetta Schoenfeld as the second wife of Moritz Seligmann and lists their children.  There were several bits of important new information here. One is the date of Babetta’s death: January 15, 1899.  It also states that she was 89 years old.  This information helps to confirm that the photograph of the family group with the elderly woman was in fact a photograph of my three-times great-grandmother Babetta.

The other bit of interesting information on this page is in the list of children.  The last child listed is Jacob, and it indicates that he was in England.  This is further corroboration of the fact that Moritz’s brother James Seligman who immigrated to England was in fact named Jacob at birth and is most likely the Onkel Jakob in the family photograph with Babetta, below.

In addition, from this page I was able to learn when several of the other children of Moritz and Babetta had died.

The remaining pages cover some of the children of Moritz: Pauline, Hieronymous, August, and Mathilde.  Although I did not find any really new information on these pages, they do provide additional confirmation of the information I already had as well as some dates I did not have.  Unfortunately, some of the writing is not legible, and so I cannot determine what those additional words say.  If anyone can read them, let me know.  I’ve circled the words I cannot read.

UPDATE:  My friend Dorothee in Germany tells me that the words after Joseph and Moritz indicate that they were both married and also both divorced.  Thank you, Dorothee!  My friend Ralph added to this, saying the words to the far right of Joseph say, “Son and daughter.” Unfortunately, I have no records for Joseph’s children.  Ralph also said that to the right of Martha, it says in part “Floersheimer,” which was her married name.  Thank you, Ralph!

UPDATE:  Dorothee says that the symbol before Artur means “doctor” and the words after Artur say “in Baden-Baden, married.”  Thank you again, Dorothee!  Ralph added that the word next to Emil Ochs could be Mailand (Milan), which would make sense since Bettina entered Switzerland from Italy, as I wrote here.  Thank you again, Ralph!