Now that I have concluded that Moses Rothschild, the third child of Gelle Blumenfeld and Simon Rothschild, died on April 11, 1885, I can move on to discuss the lives of his surviving family. He was survived by his wife Mathilde and their six children, Samuel, Rudolph, Albert, Theresa, Gertrude, and Aaron, all born between 1873 and 1881. Aaron, the youngest, was only three when his father died, and Samuel, the oldest, was only eleven. Mathilde certainly had her hands full.

In 1900, Mathilde was living in New York City with her three younger children, Theresa (21), Gertrude (20), and Aaron (18). Theresa was working as a stenographer, Gertrude as a dressmaker, and Aaron as a clerk.

Matilda Rothschild 1900 US census, Year: 1900; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: 1154; Page: 9; Enumeration District: 0841, Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census

The three oldest children of Moses and Mathilde had all married by 1900, as we saw in this post. Samuel had married Sallye Livingston in 1898, and they were also living in New York in 1900, where Samuel was working as a clothing salesman.¹

Albert, the third son, was also in New York City in 1900, working in a hardware store and living with his wife Rose, whom he’d married in 1895, and their daughter Rachel, who was four years old.² But their son Milton, born on September 26,1898, was not listed on the 1900 census. I found a death record for him under the name Moses Rothschild, his grandfather’s name and his namesake; little Milton/Moses died on July 20, 1899, two months before his first birthday.³

And then I hit another brick wall with this family. The second son, Rudolph Rothschild, married Rebecca Schlossberg on April 17, 1898, in New York City, as we saw. There is an extracted marriage record on FamilySearch and on Ancestry for this couple, so although I have not seen the actual marriage certificate, I am very certain that this information is reliable.

But I was not able to locate Rudolph Rothschild on the 1900 census with or without Rebecca. I searched high and low, using different spellings, wild cards, different data bases. Nothing. I recruited the help of the experts on Tracing the Tribe, and they couldn’t find Rudolph anywhere on the 1900 census either.

However, I did find his wife Rebecca: she was living with her mother and sister in New York. The census record lists her under her birth surname Schlossberg (misspelled here) and her marital status as single. Since Rudolph was a traveling salesman according to later records, I wondered whether they were living with Rebecca’s mother and Rudolph was not home but on the road when the enumerator came. The enumerator may have assumed that Rebecca was single since no husband was there at that moment. But that’s all speculation.

Rebecca Schlossberg Rothschild 1900 US census, Year: 1900; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: 1119; Page: 16; Enumeration District: 0846, Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census

But what is even more perplexing is the fact that according to several records, Rudolph and Rebecca had a son named Mortimer Max Rothschild born on October 28, 1899, just a few months before the census enumerator took the family’s information for the 1900 census. Yet there is no listing for any infant living with Rebecca on that 1900 census. Where could that baby have disappeared? Was the census enumerator that incompetent that he not only listed Rebecca as single with the wrong last name but also entirely missed not only her husband but also her child?

Something just seemed off to me. And I became even more troubled when I decided to confirm that Mortimer Max Rothschild was in fact born on October 28, 1899, in New York, as reported on his two draft registrations⁴ and to Social Security.⁵ I could not find any birth record for him on that date in New York. I expanded the search to other states. No luck. I searched for any Rothschild baby born anywhere on that date. No luck. I searched on October 28 in other years—1898, 1900—no luck. I used wild cards. No luck. There were many babies born in the five boroughs of New York City on October 28, 1899, but only one of them was born to a woman named Rebecca, and that was a different Rebecca.

So I am at a loss.

My theories? One long shot guess: Rebecca and Rudolph adopted a baby sometime after the 1900 census was taken, and that baby was born on October 28, 1899, to unidentifiable birth parents and is thus not listed on the birth registry with the name Mortimer Max Rothschild.

Or, more likely, Rebecca and Rudolph never registered Mortimer’s birth. That certainly happened back in that era. Since I also cannot find a birth record for Rudolph and Rebecca’s second child Alvin, born September 2, 1903, according to several later records (draft registration,⁶ Social Security⁷), it seems quite likely that Rudolph and Rebecca just weren’t good at filing birth certificates. But that doesn’t explain why Mortimer is not listed with Rebecca on the 1900 census or where Rudolph was at that time.

What I do know is that according to the 1905 New York State census, Rudolph, Rebecca, Mortimer and their second child Alvin were then living together in New York City. Not that they were easy to find there either. I am grateful to Giannis of Tracing the Tribe for locating the family on the 1905 New York State census. As you can see from the image below, the last name and Alvin’s first name were misspelled and the indexer on Ancestry added some transcription errors, so that’s why I’d had no luck finding them. But Rudolph, Rebecca, Mortimer, and Alvin were all living together in 1905, and as we will see, they lived as an intact family for at least another twenty years.

Albert Rothschild 1905 NYS census, New York State Archives; Albany, New York; State Population Census Schedules, 1905; Election District: A.D. 23 E.D. 41 2; City: Manhattan; County: New York; Page: 13, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State Census, 1905

In the next series of posts I will tell the stories of the children of Moses Rothschild and Mathilde Seligmann from 1900 forward.