Because I have no records other than those already mentioned for the two other sons of Seligmann Rothschild (Leopold and Hugo), I am moving on to the next child of Gelle Blumenfeld and Simon Rothschild, their son Levi.
Levi was born on August 23, 1846, in Walterbrueck, Germany.
Although I cannot find a marriage record, I can infer from various records related to his children and his wife that he married Clara (sometimes spelled Klara) Jacob. Clara was born on December 1, 1850, in Breitbarten, Germany, to Meir Jacob and Frommet Handel.
Levi and Clara must have married by early 1874 because their first child Sigmund Rothschild was born on December 19, 1874, in Borken, Germany. Although I do not have a birth record for Sigmund, his birthdate appears on his marriage record.1
For Levi and Clara’s second child, Betti, I was able to locate a birth record. She was born in Borken on September 14, 1876.
Their third child Moses (or Moritz) was born on February 12, 1879, in Borken.
Hirsch, their fourth child, was born on April 9, 1881, in Borken.
Their fifth child and second daughter Thekla was born on January 29, 1886, in Borken.
She was followed by another daughter, Genni, born May 11, 1888, in Borken. Unfortunately, Genni died before her first birthday on January 28, 1889, in Borken.
A seventh child was born on December 12, 1889, in Borken. Thank you to Cathy Meder-Dempsey for translating the side note for me; it states that “on the 12th of December of this year, a female child was born at 1 o’clock in the afternoon and that this child was lost at birth.” I am not sure whether this means the baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth.
Julius, their eighth child, was born in Borken on October 29, 1890, but did not make it to his second birthday. He died March 5, 1892, in Borken.
And finally, Levi and Klara’s last child Frieda was born on May 31, 1893, in Borken.
Thus, of the nine children to whom Clara gave birth, only six survived past childhood. And given the five-year gap between Hirsch and Thekla, I wonder whether there were other pregnancies that did not result in a live birth.
The stories of the six who survived will continue in my next post.
- See marriage record for Sigmund Rothschild at Arcinsys Archives of Hessen, HHStAW Fonds 365 No 766, p. 101. ↩
As far as I can tell, the seventh child died during childbirth, Amy.
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Thanks so much, Peter.
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It was a sad time. And also a time when many women did not survive childbirth.
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Yes, we are all so lucky to live when we do.
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So many things could go wrong then that we can do something about now. Part of the changing dynamic of the human world.
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Yes, fortunately.
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The heartbreak of infant mortality gets me every time, no matter how often I see this pattern – both in my own family and in others.
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Me, too. I just cannot imagine how they coped.
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