The three youngest children of my 3x-great-uncle Levi Goldsmith and his wife Henrietta—Helen, Blanche, and Sylvester— had all experienced plenty of tragedy in their lives—loss of siblings and children and/or a spouse and in Sylvester’s case, his own early death. By 1933 when their oldest sister Eva died, Helen and Blanche were the only siblings left from the nine babies born to Levi and Henrietta.

Helen Goldsmith Loeb had lost her husband Harry in 1925, but her three children Armand, Henriete, and Leonard were all still living. As we saw, as of 1930 her daughter Henriete was divorced from Leo Dessauer and was living with her mother and brother Leonard in Philadelphia along with her seven year old son. Armand was married to Rose Kahn and had two children by 1930 and was working as merchant, presumably in the Loeb Warehouse with his brother Leonard. Later in 1930 Leonard had married Florence Mayer.

Helen and her children were all still living in Philadelphia in 1940. Helen was living with her son Leonard and his family (he and Florence had two children by then) in Philadelphia, and Leonard was working as a brewery machinery salesman.¹ According to his World War II draft registration, he was self-employed.

His older brother Armand was also living in Philadelphia with his wife and two children in 1940, and he listed his occupation as the owner of a machinery company.² His World War II draft registration also states that he was self-employed and at the same address as his brother Leonard, presumably the Loeb Warehouse Company.

Henriete had remarried by 1935 and moved to Florida with her second husband, Ralph Palmer Brown. Ralph was born in Pennsylvania on November 3, 1892, to Alonzo and Ada Kate Brown; his father was a druggist.³ In 1930 Ralph had been living in Philadelphia with his sister and brother-in-law and working as a sewer inspector.⁴ By 1935 he and Henriete were married and living in Daytona Beach, Florida. In 1940 Ralph, Henriete, and Henriete’s son Leo Dessauer were living in Daytona Beach, and Ralph was a gas station operator (his own business).

Blanche Goldsmith Greenbaum, the youngest surviving sibling, had been living in 1930 with her husband Max and their only surviving child of four children, their daughter Helen. Then she suffered another loss—Max died in September 1937.  Unfortunately I have no official source for Max’s death, just a burial record at Mt Sinai cemetery, a FindAGrave entry, and biography at prabook.com. And although Max appears to have been a successful dentist, I could not find an obituary for him either. He was 69 years old when he died. He must not have died in Pennsylvania, or I assume I would have been able to find a death certificate for him.⁵

As for Blanche’s daughter Helen, she also proved to be an elusive person to track down. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Marriage Index on Ancestry listed a marriage to Jay J Feinstein in 1942.⁶ According to his US Army enlistment records, Jay was born in Russia in 1900, was an insurance salesman, and had enlisted in the army in August 1942, so either soon after or soon before he married Helen.⁷ I could find no other record showing Helen and Jay together, nor could I find for a long time any record of what had happened to either of them.

Then I found Jay’s veteran’s compensation application dated February 10, 1950, with Jay listed with a different surname—Jay J Mandell—but mentioning that he had served as Jay J Feinstein.  That record also reported that Jay had been married to Helen G. Mandell, whom he had divorced in January 1945, so obviously Helen and Jay’s marriage had not lasted. But I could find nothing more about Helen as either Helen Greenbaum, Helen Feinstein, or Helen Mandell. But I did find one more clue.

My next clue as to Helen’s whereabouts came when her mother Blanche died on June 19, 1950, from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 82:

Her death notice named her as the “wife of the late Dr. Max Greenbaum and the devoted mother of Helen Bank.”[^8] And Helen Bank was the informant on the death certificate. So I knew that Helen must have married again after divorcing Jay in 1945. Although I could not find one record or newspaper article revealing the first name of her second husband, I was able to find an entry in the Social Security Death Index for a Helen Bank with the same birth date and from Pennsylvania.⁸ Assuming it is Helen Estella Greenbaum with that Social Security number, she died in December 1984 at age 77. As far as I can tell, Helen had not had children with either of her two husbands.

After Blanche died on June 19, 1950, Helen Goldsmith Loeb was the only child of Levi and Henrietta Goldsmith still living. But she did not outlive her younger sister for very long. Helen died less then seven months later on January 3, 1951; she was 85 years old, which made her the sibling with the greatest longevity. She was survived by her three children: Armand, who died in October 1967,⁹ Henriete, who died in 1978,¹⁰ and Leonard, who died in 1964.¹¹ She also was survived by three grandchildren.

Interestingly, Sylvester Goldsmith, who had died so young back in 1914, had five children who were blessed with a longevity that he was denied and that was denied to so many of the descendants of Levi and Henrietta Goldsmith. In my last post about the family of Levi and Henrietta, I will write about his descendants.