Like Manna from Heaven

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Amy

Last Monday I posted about my third cousin, Betty Oestreicher Jacob, who passed away on July 19, 2016. Betty and I were related through our mutual great-great-grandparents, Levi Schoenthal and Henriette Hamberg. Her great-grandmother Hannah Schoenthal and my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal were sister and brother. Betty’s grandparents were Sarah Stern, Hannah’s daughter, and Gustav Oestreicher. Her parents were Sidney (Oestreicher) Striker and Esther Siff

At the time I posted about Betty’s passing, I had only one photograph of Betty and none of her grandparents, parents, or siblings. But within hours of publishing my post, I received a comment on the blog and then emails from Betty’s nephew, Steve, the son of her brother Gerald. And Steve generously shared with me numerous photos of all those people and then some. Now I can place faces to the names of the people I have researched and written about. And what gorgeous photos these are.

In this post, I will share some photographs of Sarah Stern and Gustav Oestreicher and their three children, Sidney, Frank, and Helen. In a later post, I will share the photos of Sidney’s children, Gerald, Betty, and Elaine. All are courtesy of Steve Striker, who so generously spent his time scanning and emailing these to me and answering my many questions.

First, here are some photographs of Sarah Stern Oestreicher, my grandmother Eva Schoenthal’s first cousin. I’ve written about Sarah’s life here.

Sarah Stern as a young child in Germany, probably before her mother married Solomon Stern in 1874. Sarah was born in 1865, so this picture was probably taken between 1870 and 1872.

The photograph below of Sarah was taken in Pittsburgh. She emigrated to the US by herself around 1884 when she was nineteen years old.

Sarah Stern

I assume the photograph below was taken sometime later than the one above, but I am not sure. Does Sarah look older or younger in this photograph? The hairstyle in the one above seems more “contemporary,” but Sarah’s face seems softer and somewhat younger than in the one immediately below.

Sarah Stern Oestreicher

A while back I had posted the next photograph, which I’d received from my cousin Maxine Stein, and she and I had wondered whether the woman on the left was Sarah Stern, her grandmother’s sister. Now I am quite certain that it is in fact Sarah. What do you think? Is the woman on the far left of the photograph the same woman as the one in the photo directly above?

Jennie Stern Arnold, center, and perhaps Sarah Stern Ostreicher on the right and Edith Stern Good on the right

Jennie Stern Arnold, center, and perhaps Sarah Stern Ostreicher on the left and Edith Stern Good on the right

Sarah married Gustav Oestreicher, the man she met while he was staying at her mother’s boarding house in Pittsburgh in about 1890. Gustav, an immigrant from Austria, was working as an artist and photographer in 1900.

Gustav Oestreicher

What a dashing man he was!

Here are Sarah and Gustav’s three children, Sidney (1891), Francis (Frank) (1893), and Helen (1895). You can see that the children inherited their father’s piercing light-colored eyes. I would guess that these were taken in the late 1890s, perhaps 1898 or 1899, from the ages of the children. They were also probably taken at the same time as the photos above of Gustav and Sarah, as all five photos were mounted together in a frame. Perhaps Gustav himself took these photos.

Sidney Oestreicher

This photo of Gustav and Sarah was taken in 1915, when their children were already grown. By this time Gustav was no longer working as an artist, but was a merchant in Pittsburgh.

Here is a photograph of the Oestreicher store in Pittsburgh:

Here’s a photo of Gustav and Sarah and their three children in about 1910, I’d guess, given the ages of the children. Unfortunately, Sidney’s head was cut off either in the photo itself or in the scan.

Rear: Frank, Helen, Gerald (with head cut off) Front: Gustav and Sarah Oestreicher

Rear: Frank, Helen, Sidney (with head cut off)
Front: Gustav and Sarah Oestreicher

Sidney Oestreicher (later Striker) married Esther Siff on November 16, 1915, in Chicago. Sidney was working as a traveling salesman, and as his daughter Betty told me, he met Esther at a dance in Chicago while there on business. Esther’s father was also a traveling salesman. (I have more pictures of Sidney and Esther, but will share them in my next post.)

The second son, Francis, better known as Frank, served his country in World War I. (Sidney was exempt as he had a wife and young child.) The postcard below shows Frank’s dates of service:

He was gone for just over a year—from June 25, 1918, when he left for camp, until July 17, 1919, when he arrived home. He had gone overseas on September 24, 1918. As I wrote about here, Frank served in the Meuse Argonne Offensive, one of the most important if not the most important battle in World War I. He was a member of Company C of the 301 Water Tank Train in the American Expeditionary Forces.

According to Richard Rubin’s book, The Last of the Doughboys:The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), p.220, a water tank train was actually a caravan of white trucks used to carry water to the front. According to his honorable discharge papers, Frank served as a private, which Rubin’s book suggests meant he was likely an assistant driver of one of the trucks.

I found this photograph online depicting Company C of the 301 Water Tank Train. I wonder if Frank is in the photograph:

Company C, 301 Water Tank Train,
H. E. Edwards, Capt. M. J. C. U. S. A., Arthur
Armstrong Paler papers, Box 1, World War I
Photographs
http://bentley.umich.edu/legacy-support/ww1/military-life.php

Francis Oestreicher (Frank Striker) discharge papers

As you can see below, he was awarded a Victory medal for his service. (Steve has also sent me some of the letters Frank wrote home during World War I; I will post those separately once I have a chance to review and transcribe them.)

Francis Oestreicher, later known as Frank Striker

Frank Striker’s Victory Medal for service in World War I

Gustav and Sarah’s third child was their daughter Helen. Here she is in 1917 when she was 22 years old.

Helen Oestreicher 1917

As I wrote earlier, Helen married Robert Steel Kann in 1920, but he died a year later at age 26. Sometime before 1929, she married Aaron Mitchell Siegel, known as Mickie, and they had a daughter Betty.

Helen Oestreicher Kann Siegel and her family

I was tickled to see this item in Steve’s collection:

As you can see, it is an invitation to the 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1922 for Henry Schoenthal and Helen Lilienfeld, about whom I’ve written extensively. Henry Schoenthal, my great-great-uncle, was Sarah Stern Oestreicher’s uncle, brother of her mother Hannah Schoenthal Stern.

Steve sent me this photo labeled Aunt Helen by his uncle Frank, and I wonder whether this is Helen Lilienfeld Schoenthal, who would have been Frank’s great-aunt. Frank received a long letter from his great-aunt Helen and great-uncle Henry while he was serving in Europe; the tone and content of that letter suggest that Helen and Henry Schoenthal had a very close relationship with the Oestreicher family. (I will post the letter in a separate post.)

Frank returned to Pittsburgh after the war and worked as a salesman in the family dry goods store. After the family store went bankrupt in 1933, the Oestreicher family began its migration west to California. Although neither Steve nor his cousin Ron was sure of who first went to California or why, the 1940 census indicates that by 1935 at least Helen and her family and Gustav and Sarah had settled there. I was not able to locate Frank on the 1930 or the 1940 census,nor do I have any address for him between 1920 and 1942, but his World War II draft registration indicates that by then he was definitely living in California along with his parents and his sister Helen. Sidney and his family did not move west until the 1940s.

Here is a photograph of the Oestreicher family in Los Angeles in 1936.

I found this letter written by Sarah Stern Oestreicher to her son Frank in 1933 to be very touching in its religious tone and its affection for her son. Perhaps it was written around the time that family members were planning to move to California. From the text of the letter, it appears that Frank had just visited, perhaps before he was leaving to move out west or his parents were.

Letter from Sarah Stern Oestreicher to her son Frank, dated January 11, 1933

My dear Francis!

Always remember that The present is under God’s guidance, the future in His keeping. God is guiding, directing, controlling and suplying His children with all good. His Love and [?] is with you always. Thanking you for all your kindness and the pleasure of having you with us will be the the most pleasant memmories to us.

With my love I remain your devoted Mother. January 11—1933

Here is a photo of Frank in 1940.

One of Steve’s favorite stories about Frank is that he offered to take photographs at Steve’s bar mitzvah, only to discover there was no film left in the camera. There is only this one photo taken by Frank that day.

Although Steve has many photographs with Frank with women throughout the years, Frank never married. He died in Los Angeles on April 23, 1990, at the age of 96. His sister Helen died in 1989 when she was 94.

I am so grateful to my cousin Steve for sharing these amazing photographs with me and allowing me to post them on my blog. There is just nothing better than a photograph to help bring to life the people whose lives I’ve researched.

More photos and stories about the Oestreicher family in my next post.

Don’t Wait to Make Those Calls: My Cousin Betty

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Amy

This is a post I started back in May before my trip to Colorado and Santa Fe. I had planned to finish it when I got back, but was distracted and put it aside. Now I must finish it. Unfortunately, it no longer has the happy ending it originally had.

As I wrote a few months ago, my newly found third cousin Maxine Schulherr Stein, the great-granddaughter of Hannah Schoenthal Stern (my great-grandfather Isidor Schoenthal’s sister), had lost touch with her second cousins Betty and Elaine, also great-granddaughters of Hannah Schoenthal Stern.

Betty and Elaine’s grandmother Sarah Stern and her husband Gustav Oestreicher had had three children: Sidney, born in 1891; Francis (known as Frank), born in 1893; and Helen, born in 1895. They’d all lived in the Pittsburgh area at first, but as Sarah and Gustav’s children became adults, they’d eventually left the Pittsburgh area.

Helen had moved to California by 1935 where she and her husband Aaron Siegel and their daughter Betty lived in Los Angeles. Frank also was living in Los Angeles by 1942. It was Sidney Oestreicher and his family whom Maxine knew best. She knew that Sidney was married to Esther Siff, and they had had three children: Gerald, Florence Betty (known as Betty), and Elaine.

But Sidney Oestreicher also had left the Pittsburgh area when he moved to New York in the 1940s. The family had left their youngest child Elaine behind with Maxine’s family so that she could finish the school year in Pittsburgh, according to Maxine.

By the 1950s, all of the members of Sidney Oestreicher’s family had moved to California to be closer to the other members of the family. Given the distance and the limited modes of communication back then, the family members back in Pittsburgh eventually lost touch with the California branch of the family. When I spoke with Maxine, she asked me to help her locate the cousins she’d known as a child.

Hattie Martin Maxine Alan Henrietta Stein Alan's mother

Hattie Arnold Schulherr, Martin Schulherr, Maxine Schulherr Stein, Alan Stein, Henrietta Stein

I knew from my own research that Gerald Oestreicher (who, like his father Sidney and his uncle Frank, changed his surname to Striker) had married Faye Krakower and had had two children. Gerald died in 2014 and Faye in 2015. But finding Gerald’s sisters Betty and Elaine had proven to be more difficult, as is generally the case with women.

Fortunately, I found one very important clue that helped me find both Betty and Elaine for Maxine (and for me).

I thus knew that Betty had married a man named Julius H. Jacob. And from various other records for Julius, I knew that they had lived in the NYC area for some time and that they, like the other Oestreichers/Strikers, had eventually moved to California. But I had not been able to find their current residence.

Newly motivated by Maxine’s request, I looked again at the engagement announcement and saw that Julius was described as the brother of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Spear. Who was that? I inferred that Julius was the brother of Mrs. Spear, not Mr. Spear, given the different surnames, and decided to see what I could find about the Spears. I found Jacob Spear and his wife Else (presumably born with the surname Jacob) on the 1940 census, but more importantly, I found them both on several family trees on Ancestry.

Although I am generally skeptical of Ancestry trees, one of those trees belonged to a genealogy researcher whose work I trust: Jennifer Spier-Stern. I contacted Jennifer, and after we exchanged more information and verified the connection between Julius Jacob and Elsie Jacob, Jennifer was able to put me in touch with the son of Jacob Spear and Else Jacob, John. John is the nephew therefore of Julius Jacob, husband of my cousin Betty Oestreicher. Not only did John know the whereabouts of his aunt Betty—he had contact information for her son Ron. And he pointed out that the upcoming weekend would be her 97^th birthday. Now that gave me the chills!

I emailed Ron, and we exchanged several emails. And Ron gave me the phone numbers for both his mother Betty and his aunt Elaine, who is also still living in California. In May I had the great pleasure of speaking to two more of my third cousins, Betty Oestreicher Jacob and Elaine Oestreicher Wallace. The following information came from a combination of my conversations with Betty and Elaine and the emails and conversations I had with my cousin Ron.

Betty was remarkably lucid for a 97 year old woman, and she was delighted to answer my questions and reminisce about her family and her life. Elaine also was warm and excited to share her stories with me. I had hoped that one of them would have stories about their grandmother, Sarah Stern, who was the first child of Hannah Schoenthal and who had come without her family to the US when she was nineteen years old. Unfortunately, as was so often the case, both Betty and Elaine said that their grandmother Sarah did not speak about her childhood or about the move to the United States.

I did learn, however, from Betty that Sarah met her future husband, Gustav Oestreicher, when he was staying at the boarding house in Pittsburgh run by her mother, Hannah Schoenthal, my great-grandfather’s oldest sibling.

Betty also told me that her grandmother Sarah suffered from migraines, and after they married, Gustav and she moved to Atlantic City because he thought it would be better for her health. Sarah also converted to Christian Science, and although Betty and her family remained Jewish, Betty would often accompany her grandmother Sarah to church when she visited her in Atlantic City.

Ron shared with me a particular memory his mother Betty shared with him:

“Once, Sarah and Gustav purchased 300 ice cream cones for children at an orphanage/home for crippled children, and my mother and uncle (Jerry) got to ride along in the truck to deliver them. Apparently, my mother was the apple of Gustav’s eye.”

I also asked Betty how her father Sidney met her mother Esther Siff, who lived in Chicago. Betty explained that her father was a traveling salesman, working for a ladies’ lingerie company called Adelson’s. While traveling to Chicago for work, he attended a dance where he met Esther Siff. Sidney and Esther lived in Chicago for the early years of their marriage, and their first two children, Gerald and Betty, were born there. By 1930, however, the family had moved back to Pittsburgh, where their youngest child Elaine was born.

Betty Oestreicher Jacob. 1940s Courtesy of Ron Jacob

Betty said that her immediate family moved to New York in the 1940s for her father’s job. She had married Julius Jacob by that time, and after spending some time in Massachusetts where Julius was stationed at Fort Devens during the war, they ended up moving to New York where Julius worked for Spear & Company. In 1954 or so, they returned to Pittsburgh, where Julius continued to work for Spear & Company, but the company was not doing well at that point.

In 1956, the family moved to Los Angeles where Julius took a job with Broadway Department Stores. Betty’s brother Gerald was already living there at that time as was her aunt Helen and uncle Frank. Sidney and Esther soon followed their children to Los Angeles. Elaine arrived a few years later after her divorce from her first husband, Jerry Kruger. Sadly, Esther Siff Oestreicher/Striker died on her 68th birthday, March 11, 1961.

Thus, by the 1960s, all the members of the Oestreicher family were living in the Los Angeles area: the three children of Sarah Stern and Gustav Oestreicher, Sidney, Frank, and Helen, and all of their children, including Sidney’s three children, Gerald, Betty, and Elaine.

Ron shared with me his memories of his great-uncle Frank and his grandfather Sidney:

“My Uncle Frank, who I adored, was a lifelong bachelor. He was also quite the world traveler and I was always fascinated to hear of the places he had been. Spending a fair amount of time traveling by ship, he became quite an accomplished dancer and tennis table player. (I believe he had trophies for both.) When we got a ping pong table, he had fun annihilating me. To be fair, my grandfather, Sidney, taught me how to play gin rummy (for points) and he also had the grandest smile every time he beat me. Both men were true gentlemen, and they were loving, caring men and enjoyed spending time with us kids. My grandfather died when he was 94 and my uncle died when he was 96.”

Ron also sent me this picture of Faye Krakower Striker, his uncle Gerald’s wife:

Faye had quite an interesting life as a singer before marrying Gerald in 1946. The following is an excerpt from the eulogy given at her funeral in 2015.

Even with all this information, I realized when I got off the phone with Betty that I still had more questions about her childhood and adolescence in Pittsburgh. Did she know the other Schoenthal cousins? What was life like? Were they active in the Jewish community? There were many more things I wanted to discuss with her.

I had planned to call Betty and Elaine again after those initial conversations. But then I left for our trip to Colorado and New Mexico, and when I returned, I was distracted by a number of other matters, and I failed to follow up.

I recently learned that Betty’s health deteriorated while I was away, and sadly she passed away on July 19, 2016. She had had a good long life with very few health issues, according to her son Ron. And although I know that anyone who lives 97 years has had a remarkable journey, I am kicking myself for not making that second call. Betty had been so excited to share her memories with me, and there were so many more questions to ask and stories to hear.

Life is unpredictable, and we can’t assume anything or take anything for granted.

May my cousin Betty rest in peace, and may her family find comfort in all their memories.

The Last Chapter of the Story of Amalia Hamberg

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Amy

Finally, I come to the two youngest children of Amalia Hamberg and Jacob Baer to survive to adulthood[1]: Elsie Baer Grant and Lawrence Baer. With this post, I close the chapter on Amalia Hamberg, first cousin of my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal, or my first cousin, three times removed. Her children were my second cousins, twice removed (or my grandmother Eva Schoenthal’s second cousins).

Elsie Baer was born in Pittsburgh in 1886 and married Jerome Grant in 1913. For almost their entire married lives they lived in New York City, where Jerome worked for Baer & Wilde, one of the family jewelry businesses based in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Elsie and Jerome had two daughters, Marjorie and Elinor. As of 1930, they were still living in New York City, and Jerome was still working for the family jewelry business. The same was true in 1940; both daughters were still at home.

In the next decade both daughters married. Marjorie married Richard E. Weinreich, whose family was also in the jewelry business. Richard’s father, Sol Weinreich, had founded Marvella Pearls, a jewelry wholesale business with his brother in Philadelphia, where Richard was born in 1915. By 1930, the family and the business had relocated to New York, and by 1940, both Richard and his father were working in the business.

I assume that Richard and Marjorie met as a result of the fact that both families were in the jewelry business in New York. Richard and Marjorie would have one child. Richard eventually became president of Marvella. According to this antiques website, “Marvella was purchased by Trifari in the early 1980s and eventually became part of the Liz Claiborne group. As of 2010, jewelry is still being distributed in department stores and other retail outlets on cards bearing the Marvella name.”

Marjorie’s sister Elinor served for over a year with the Red Cross in India in the early 1940s. On December 19, 1946, she married Alan Fredrick Kline of Chicago.

Alan was a graduate of Dartmouth College and had served in the US Naval Reserves during World War II. His father Jacob was one of the founders of Kline Brothers, a department store chain that started in Lorain, Ohio, and eventually had a large number of stores in the Midwest.

Elinor and Alan had two children before Alan died at only 37 years old on October 1, 1950, leaving Elinor with two very young sons. Elinor would eventually remarry.

Elsie Baer’s husband Jerome Grant died on July 29, 1964; he was 75. According to the death notices in The New York Times, he was a Mason, a member of The Golden Circle, and a member of the Maiden Lane Outing Club.

Like her sisters Josephine, Tilda, and Amanda, Elsie Baer Grant lived a long life, dying many years after her husband in May 1983 at age 96.

Unfortunately, the daughters of Elsie and Jerome were not blessed with their mother’s longevity. Marjorie predeceased her mother, dying in May, 1978; she was only 59. Her sister Elinor died at age 72 on November 2, 1993.

As for Elsie’s younger brother Lawrence, the youngest of the children of Amalia Hamberg and Jacob Baer, he played, as I’ve written here, a critical part in the success of the family jewelry business in Attleboro. He not only invented the Kum-A-Part cufflinks that made the company highly successful in the 1920s; he also invented and received patents for several other jewelry products. For example, in 1922, Lawrence received a patent (No. US 1420232 A) for a jewelry contained, described as “a container which can be carried in the pocket or in a traveling bag or the like or placed in an article of furniture in the home, for holding buckles, brooches, buttons, and any article of jewelry.” He also received during the 1920s and 1930s patents for a number of other inventions: necktie holders, a belt fastener, a bill holder, a shirt holder, and a display device.

As noted in my earlier post, Lawrence had married Donna Degen in 1919, and they had one child, a son named John Degen Baer, born in 1921. As of 1942 when Lawrence registered for the draft, they were still living in Attleboro and Lawrence was still working for the family jewelry business, now known as Swank, Inc. But by 1946, Lawrence was listed with his second wife, Olivia Ganong, in the West Palm Beach, Florida, city directory. He and Olivia lived in Florida for the rest of his life. Lawrence died in May, 1969, in Lake Worth, Florida. He was 77 years old.

His son John remained in Attleboro even after Lawrence remarried and moved to Florida. According to his obituary, John attended Yale and Brown, graduating from Brown in 1943. During World War II, he served in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific theater and in the occupation of Japan. He married Minette Eleanor Brigham on July 22. 1944.¹ John and Minette had two children.

In 1946, the Attleboro city directory lists John as serving in the United States Marine Corps. In 1953, he was the executive vice-president of The Bishop Company in Attleboro. According to his obituary, John “was the owner and C.E.O. of the Bishop Company, an Ophthalmic Manufacturing Company, which he merged with the Univis Lens Company of Dayton, Ohio in 1960. The merged company, Univis, Inc., was headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, with branch manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico, Tennessee, New York and Massachusetts. Univis was sold to Itek, Inc. in 1970.”

In 1963, John was still listed in the Attleboro directory, but that is the last listing I can find for him there. His wife Minette died on February 9, 1966; she was only 44. John then married his second wife Linda Corinne Hill, with whom he had four more children.

After he sold Univis in 1970, John moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he was executive vice-president of Edwards Baking Company until 1978. His second wife Linda died on April 16, 1978.² Sometime thereafter John married his third wife, Jane Rollins.

In 1985, he relocated yet again, moving to Blairsville, Georgia, where he started and managed the Truck and Gas Market until 1992, when he retired. John Baer died on November 3, 2015. He was 94 years old. (Much of this information comes from his obituary, which also includes a number of photographs of John.)

Thus ends the recounting of the lives of all of the children (and the children of the children) of Amalia Hamberg and Jacob Baer: Maurice, Hattie, Josephine, Amanda, Flora, Tilda, Elsie, Alfred, and Lawrence. I am once again amazed by the fact that two immigrants who came to the United States in the 19^th century raised children who achieved such remarkable success both in business and in the arts.

Perhaps it is a lesson to us all about the contributions that immigrants have made and will continue to make this country. We should be very wary of anyone who seeks to exclude immigrants from this country. After all, most of us living in the US today are descended from immigrants.

[1] Alfred Baer, the second youngest child, had died years before.

Minette Eleanor Brigham, Gender Female, Age 22, Birth Date abt 1922
Marriage Date 22 Jul 1944, Marriage Place District of Columbia, USA, Spouse
John Degen Baer, FHL Roll 002319543, Ancestry.com. District of Columbia, U.S., Marriage Records, 1810-1953 ↩
Linda Baer, Gender Female, Race White, Age 36, Birth Date abt 1942, Residence Place Fulton, Georgia, USA, Death Date 16 Apr 1978, Death Place Fulton, Georgia, USA, Certificate Number 017489, Georgia Health Department, Office of Vital Records; Georgia, USA; Indexes of Vital Records for Georgia: Deaths, 1919-1998; Certificate Number: 017489, Ancestry.com. Georgia, U.S., Death Index, 1919-1998 ↩

The Legacy of Flora Baer Adler

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Amy

I am back after two weeks with family members—first, a wonderful week with our grandson Nate and then a week with the extended family. We had gorgeous weather, lots of laughs, and too much good food. But now things are quiet, and I am returning to finish the story of the children of Amalia Hamberg.

It’s been a long break since I last posted, so I thought it would be helpful to clarify where I was when I left off. I had been discussing the many children of Amalia/Mlalchen Hamberg, who was a first cousin of my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal through his mother Henriette Hamberg.

I have already discussed six of Amalia’s nine children, including Maurice, Hattie, Josephine, Amanda, Alfred and Tilda. That leaves three more: Elsie, Lawrence, and the subject of this post, Flora.

Although Hattie Baer died at a young age as did her brother Alfred, most of the other siblings lived long lives. As we saw in the earlier posts, Amanda lived late into her 90th year, and Josephine lived to 97. Their sister Elsie also lived to 97, and Tilda was within a few months of her 90th birthday.

Unfortunately, their sister Flora did not live as long a life. As I wrote here, Flora married Julius Adler, an engineer who had worked for the Philadelphia highway department, supervising the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. They had three children between 1917 and 1920, Stanley, Jerrold, and Amy. Thanks to one of the grandchildren of Flora and Julius, I now have some photographs of the family.

Wedding photograph of Flora Baer and Julius Adler, March 15, 1915
Courtesy of the Adler family

Flora Baer Adler and one of her children

In 1940, all three children were still living at home with their parents in Philadelphia. Julius listed his occupation as an independent civil engineer. Their son Stanley was working as a chemical engineer for a chemical company, and their daughter Amy was a social services worker at a hospital. Jerrold had no occupation listed; perhaps he was still in school.

Flora Baer Adler 1943, courtesy of the Adler family

Jerrold Adler, Flora Baer Adler, and Julius Adler
1943
Courtesy of the Adler family

Then tragedy struck. On August 27, 1945, my cousin Flora died from fluoride poisoning; her death was ruled a suicide by the coroner.

FLora Baer death certificate with coroner result

Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Julius and the three children somehow recovered from this tragedy. Julius married his second wife Katinka Dannenburg Olsho in 1971 when he was 84 years old.

Julius Adler, 1977
Courtesy of the Adler family

When he died in 1993 at the age of 106, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a wonderful tribute to him:

… [Julius Adler] was an erudite man who could quote long passages from Kipling, recite Latin and Greek verse, and speak authoritatively on any of his varied interests, which included growing roses and playing bridge, according to his family.

“This man was unique, just an extraordinary human being,” said Mr. Adler’s son-in-law, Leonard Malamut. “In everything he did, he was top-notch. And he was a man of great dignity. He grew up at a time when decency and ethics and morality were the guiding principles of how one lived.”

Mr. Adler was born in Memphis, Tenn., and moved to Philadelphia as a child. He was a graduate of Central High School’s 109th class in 1904 and a 1908 graduate of the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, which he attended on an academic scholarship. His family believes he was the oldest living graduate from Central and Penn.

Mr. Adler’s supervision of the Ben Franklin Bridge paving took place when he was deputy chief of the city’s highway department, his son-in-law said. The bridge, when it was built, was called the Delaware River Bridge. He also supervised the repaving of Broad Street after the construction of the Broad Street Subway.

Mr. Adler taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington. He was a member of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia, the American Society of Civil Engineering and the American Society for Testing Materials.

For 70 years, he was a member of Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

Mr. Adler was, as well, a devoted fan of the Phillies. “He could tell you players’ ERAs and batting averages with great accuracy until he was 100,” Malamut said. “I regret that he died in the season the Phillies are having such a great season – that he had to die before the season was over.”

Stanley, Amy, Julius, and Jerrold Adler 1960
Courtesy of the Adler family

Julius and Flora’s three children also all lived productive lives. Their daughter Amy died in 2003 of a heart attack; she was 83. According to her obituary:

She served as a hospital volunteer when she was a teenager and later studied X-ray technology and electrocardiography. In 1942, she met Dr. Leonard Malamut when she was working at Jewish Hospital, now Albert Einstein Medical Center. The couple married in 1944.

Dr. Malamut opened a practice near Albert Einstein Medical Center in Olney after serving several years in the Army during World War II. Mrs. Malamut joined him in the office. She managed the practice, keeping the books and helping with electrocardiograms, blood work and other tests. She enjoyed attending concerts and the theater with Dr. Malamut.

Amy’s older brother Stanley died on April 21, 2006; he was 89 years old. According to his obituary, like his father, he was an engineer who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. The obituary reported:

During World War II, Stan was an aircraft inspector for the United States Navy. …. He was active in Reform Judaism, scouting, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He wrote many technical papers. His interests included amateur radio, bridge, calculus, gardening, classical music, and a more cooperative world.

Stanley Baer Adler
Fold3_Page_1_Selective_Service_Registration_Cards_World_War_II_Multiple_Registrations

The last surviving child of Flora Baer and Julius Adler was Jerrold, who died on March 5, 2008, when he was, like his brother Stanley, 89 years old. He had attended the University of Pennsylvania and had served in the army during World War II.

Jerrold Adler draft registration
Fold3_Page_1_Selective_Service_Registration_Cards_World_War_II_Multiple_Registrations

Jerrold Adler, courtesy of the Adler family

He had married Doris Elaine Getz on October 6, 1946.

Wedding of Jerrold Adler and Doris Getz, October 6, 1946

Although Flora’s life ended tragically, she left behind the legacy of three successful children. Their lives enriched the country that Flora’s mother Amalia had moved to as a young woman back in the 19th century. They served in our armed forces during World War II and contributed to society through their chosen careers. Like so many of us, the grandchildren of immigrants, they justified the risks their grandparents took when immigrating to the United States.

Ray, Arizona: Home of Gertrude and Hettie Schoenthal

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Amy

Some of you may remember that about six months ago I wrote about Gertrude and Hettie Schoenthal, two of the daughters of Simon Schoenthal, brother of my great-grandfather Isidore. Gertrude had married Jacob Miller in 1898 and moved to Arizona. Jacob and his brothers were merchants in the Tucson area. Gertrude’s younger sister Hettie followed her out there around 1906, where she met her husband Henry Stein and eventually settled as well.

Eventually both the Millers and the Steins moved to the small mining town of Ray, Arizona, where they lived for several years before returning to Atlantic City, where most of the members Schoenthal family were still living. Hettie and her son Walter Stein wrote wonderfully descriptive memoirs of their rough and tumble pioneer life in Ray, Arizona. I quoted extensively from their writings in this blog post.

A week ago I was Skyping with Sharon Lippincott, who is married to Ezra Lippincott, grandson of Hettie Schoenthal, and Sharon and Ezra were excited to share with me a photograph that their daughter-in-law had found somewhere on the internet. It is a panoramic view of Ray, Arizona, taken in the time that Hettie and her sister Gertrude were living there. In fact, you can see the Miller Brothers store in the photo if you zoom in to the right side of the picture. Just click, and then click again to zoom in to the photograph to see it more clearly.

Here’s a closeup of the section showing the Miller store:

Both Hettie and Walter described their first house in Ray. Walter wrote:

Our first house was placed on the side of a hill with one door. The back of the house was against the hill. To reach the house you walked up steps that also took care of other householders on the hill. I cannot remember the location of the outhouse. I do remember to bathe, water was heated on the stove and then poured into a galvanized tub that had been placed on the floor.

Hettie’s description is similar:

I will tell you a little about the house. It was up on a hill, just four rooms no bath or toilet. It was terrible. I did not think I could live there, but we did. Your grandfather and a helper built a room and we bought a tub. The pipes had to be on top of the ground. Well, the sun was so hot we had to draw the water and let it stand for hours before bathing.

Can you locate the house in the photograph above? The houses are all to the far right in the panoramic photograph, and I have a guess as to which one was the home of Hettie Schoenthal and Henry Stein and their children. Which one do you think it was? (Look first before looking at my guess at the bottom of this post.)

In my head I am humming the Final Jeopardy theme song.

Here’s my guess:

See the house in the left foreground with the huge cactus in front? I think that’s it. It’s built into the hill, and there is a staircase behind that leads to the other houses. It looks like the outhouse was right in front of the house.

What do you think?

My thanks to Ezra and Sharon Lippincott and their daughter-in-law Carrie for sharing the photograph with me.

Tilda Baer Stone and Her Children: Massachusetts Cousins

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Amy

Like Amanda and Josephine, her two older sisters, Tilda Baer lived a long life (a few months shy of ninety) and outlived her husband by close to twenty years. But she didn’t live in a big city like Philadelphia or New York; she spent her entire adult life in Attleboro, Massachusetts, where she raised her four children.

As written about here, Tilda married Samuel Einstein in about 1907, according to the 1910 census, and their first child, Stephanie, was born in June 1908 in Attleboro. They had three additional children, Samuel, Jr. (1910), Harriet (1913), and Babette (known as Betty, 1919). By 1927, the family name had been changed to Stone, which was the name used by all family members thereafter (until the daughters married and adopted their husbands’ surnames, that is). Samuel was by 1930 the President of Attleboro Manufacturing, and he and Tilda remained in Attleboro for the rest of the lives, living almost all those years at 224 County Street in that town.

Samuel and TIlda Baer Einstein/Stone and children from 1923 passport application
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925; Roll #: 2295; Volume #: Roll 2295 – Certificates: 304850-305349, 08 Jun 1923-08 Jun 1923

Their daughter Stephanie graduated from the National Park Seminary in Washington and the Garland School of Homemaking. She married “the boy next door” on November 14, 1936—or at least the boy down the street. Her husband was Royal Packer Baker, who was a native of Attleboro like Stephanie and whose family also had lived on County Street (#148) as of 1920. Royal was four years older than Stephanie, and he came from a family with a long history in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Boston Herald, November 15, 1936. p. 61

Royal’s father, Harold Baker, was the owner and co-founder of Attleboro Refining Company, a gold, silver, and copper refining business. According to the website for the Attleboro Area Industrial Museum, which is housed in what was once the Attleboro Refinery Company building:

In 1899, Harold D. Baker and his brother George W. Baker, both of Providence, Rhode Island, formed a partnership to establish the Attleboro Refining Company in Attleboro, Massachusetts. It specialized in the refining of gold, silver and copper byproducts. The refinery followed established refining methods used at that time known as a stripping process. The process dated back to the late 18th Century. Base metals such as copper and zinc were eaten by a compound-acid solution. The precious metals underwent succeeding operations where they were reduced to a certain degree of fineness.

By 1907, however, the Bakers were convinced that better methods were available that would involve lower costs. They experimented with the then-existent electrochemical equipment available and finally succeeded in adapting the ELECTROLYTIC process to jewelers’ scrap. Theirs was the first refinery in New England to do so. The process underwent continuous improvement and development where gold was finally purified to .9991/2 fine and every trace of silver or other precious metal was re-claimed in the chlorination and succeeding copperas processes.[1]

Although his older brother Harold Jr. worked at the family business from the start of his career, Royal started his career taking a different path. He was a graduate of Dartmouth as well as the University of Virginia, according to the wedding announcement. By 1935 he was a lawyer practicing in Attleboro.

According to the 1940 census and their wedding announcement above, like their parents Stephanie and Royal also lived on County Street in Attleboro (#170), and Royal was working as an attorney in private practice. In 1941, their son was born. In 1946, Royal was listed along with his father and older brother Harold Jr. as an owner of Attleboro Refining, but was still practicing law. By 1949, however, he was the treasurer of Attleboro Refining and no longer listed himself as a lawyer in the Attleboro directory. (His brother was now the president of the company; their father had died in 1947.)

Former building of Attleboro Refining Company https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3500/4561405595_a2f6c67d9f_b.jpg

Stephanie’s younger brother Samuel Stone, Jr., graduated from Michigan State University and Babson Institute. In the 1935 Attleboro directory, he is listed as married to “Ruth M” and working as the treasurer of Quaker Silver Company, a company in North Attleboro that manufactured silver products such as flatware, bowls, and salt and pepper shakers.

Ruth M was Ruth Mills, born in Massachusetts on February 5, 1913. Samuel, Jr. and Ruth had two daughters born in the 1930s, according to the 1940 census, which lists Samuel’s occupation as a jewelry manufacturer. On the 1939 Attleboro directory, he is listed as the president of C H Eden Co., another jewelry company originally created by his father in 1901 that was acquired in substantial part by Charles Eden in 1903. (Apparently, Samuel Stone, Sr. and Maurice Baer established a number of separate companies in Attleboro, all engaged in some aspect of jewelry manufacturing.)

By 1946, however, Samuel Jr’s marriage to Ruth had ended as he married his second wife, Marie Eames, on May 1, 1946. Unfortunately, that marriage did not last either as they were divorced in 1952.

By 1956, Samuel, Jr was listed in the Attleboro directory as the president of Swank, Inc., the successor to Attleboro Manufacturing Company, the company his father first founded with his uncle Maurice Jay Baer back in the late 1890s.

As for the two younger daughters of Tilda Baer and Samuel Stone, Sr., Harriet attended the Northampton School for Girls, then Wheaton College, and received a degree from Simmons College. (Cape Cod Times, September 6, 2002, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com/doc/obituaries/obit/100B3AE9F09E0868-100B3AE9F09E0868 : accessed 13 July 2016))

In 1941 she married Lionel O’Keeffe. He was the youngest son of Irish immigrants and was born and raised in Boston. His father had worked in the grocery business, and in 1930 two of his brothers had been working as purchasing agents for First National Stores, a supermarket chain (later known as Finast). Lionel was a graduate of Boston Latin High School and Dartmouth College. (Boston Herald, December 22, 1987, p. 53.)

On the 1940 census, he was living as the head of household in the house at 61 Pond Street in Jamaica Plain, the same house where he and his family had lived when he was a child. But in 1940 he was living there without any other family members, but with a maid. He listed his occupation as an executive of a chain store, which according to his obituary, was First National Stores. The following year he married Harriet.

Lionel enlisted in the military on May 8, 1942, and he and Harriet had their first child five months later in September, 1942. Lionel was discharged from the military on January 3, 1946, having served for the duration of World War II. He and Harriet would have two more children during the 1940s. In 1948 they were still living at 61 Pond Road in the Jamaica Pond section of Boston, the same house where Lionel’s family had lived, and Lionel was working as a buyer, according to the Boston directory for that year. He continued to work for First National Stores for the rest of his career.

The youngest child of Tilda Baer and Samuel Stone was their daughter Babette, also known as Betty. She graduated from the Northampton School for Girls in 1937 and then graduated from Smith College, later getting a Masters in Social Work from Simmons College. In 1944, she married John Saunders Parker, known as Jack. He became a doctor. They would have two children. (Boston Globe, February 21, 2013.)

Samuel Stone, Sr., the father of Stephanie, Samuel, Harriet, and Babette, died on February 4, 1957, when he was 84 years old.

Samuel Stone Sr obit February 5, 1957 Boston Traveler p 58-page-001

Boston Traveler, February 5, 1957, p. 58

His wife, my cousin Tilda Baer Stone, daughter of Amalia Hamberg and Jacob Baer, died on August 2, 1974. She and her husband Samuel are both buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the place they called home for their entire married life and where they raised their four children, two of whom also spent almost all of their lives in Attleboro.

As for the children of Tilda and Samuel, Stephanie’s husband Royal Baker continued to work as the treasurer of Attleboro Refining for the rest of his career. Then on April 3, 1967, Royal died suddenly at age 62. A year later Attleboro Refining was sold to another company. According to the Attleboro Area Industrial Museum website, “on June 26, 1968, Handy & Harman Refining Group, Inc. purchased the Attleboro Refining Company. In November 1973, Handy & Harman left 42 Union Street for a new facility located on Townsend Road in the “new” Attleboro Industrial Park.” Handy & Harman is still in business today engaged in the recycling of metals.

Stephanie Stone Baker died on March 1, 1993; she was 84.

Her brother Samuel Stone, Jr., died at age 70 on December 28, 1980.

The third child, Harriet Stone O’Keeffe, lost her husband Lionel on December 20, 1987. He was 76 years old. She lived another fifteen years, dying on September 5, 2002, when she was 88. According to her obituary, “Mrs. O’Keeffe lived in Brookline for many years and was active in volunteer work. She spent summers in Hyannisport and moved there year-round in 1973. She enjoyed gardening and bridge. She was a member of the Hyannisport Club, the Oyster Harbors Club and the Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda.” (Cape Cod Times, September 6, 2002, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com/doc/obituaries/obit/100B3AE9F09E0868-100B3AE9F09E0868 : accessed 13 July 2016))

The youngest sibling, Babette, died just three years ago on February 19, 2013, at age 93. Her obituary reported that:

She loved people and was a frequent volunteer in the activities of her children and an outgoing devoted friend to so many. She was an active volunteer in the Wellesley Community including the Service League of Wellesley, the Garden Club of Wellesley and was a past president of the Smith Club of Wellesley. She devoted many hours to the support of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and loved her Investment Club and Bridge Club, as well as her activities at the Wellesley Country Club, Wianno Club, The Country Club and The Moorings and Riomar Clubs of Vero Beach, Florida. She cherished all the interactions with the people that were brought into her life by these varied interests. (Boston Globe, February 21, 2013, located at http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?pid=163199572)

I’ve not yet connected with any of the descendants of Tilda Baer and Samuel Stone, but hope to be able to connect with these cousins whose roots are here in Massachusetts where I now live. They are descendants of two people who seemed to have achieved the American dream—Samuel, a German Jewish immigrant who came to the US as a young teenager and became a highly successful jewelry manufacturer, and my cousin Tilda, the daughter of two German Jewish [2] immigrants who grew up in Pennsylvania; she raised four children, all of whom received a higher education and lived their lives in Massachusetts.

[1] There was a bitter dispute between the Baker brothers in 1918, which apparently ended in with Harold as the sole owner of the company. See “Attleboro Receivership Granted for Attleboro Refining Co. Decree Handed down by Superior Court, Wednesday,” Pawtucket Times, April 11, 1918, p. 12.

[2] It seems that at some point Tilda and Samuel and their children became members of the Universalist Church and no longer identified as Jewish.

Another Writer in the Family: Alan Baer Green

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Amy

In many ways the life of my cousin Josephine Baer parallels that of her sister Amanda. As I wrote here, Josephine Baer married Morris Alon Green in January, 1906. Their son Alan Baer Green was born less than eleven months later. They were living in Pittsburgh. In 1918 Morris was an executive with the Crucible Steel Company in Pittsburgh. In 1925, they were living in New York City, and Morris was working as a manager. In 1930, they were still living in New York, and Morris listed his occupation as “financial.” Their son Alan was working in advertising.

In 1931, Alan married Gladys Bun, and they had three sons in the late 1930s. Although Alan continued to work in the advertising field, like his first cousin Justin Baer Herman, he also became a successful writer. As reported in his obituary, Alan wrote “Love on the Run,” which became a movie starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford in 1936. It is a screwball comedy about two competing newspaper reporters covering the wedding of a socialite.

He also wrote several other books during the 1930s, primarily mysteries, sometimes written under the pseudonym Roger Denbie (co-written with Julian Paul Brodie), sometimes as Glen Burne (co-written with his wife Gladys).

Alan’s parents are listed in the 1938 directory for Los Angeles, so I thought perhaps they had all moved out to Hollywood, but Alan himself is not listed in that directory. And by 1940, all three were listed as living in New York City in the census.

Josephine Baer and Morris Green 1940 US census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2655; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 31-1349

On the 1940 census, Morris and Josephine were living on East 77^th Street, and Morris was retired. Alan and Gladys and their three sons, ages 2, 1, and eleven months, were living on East 86^th Street. They had two nurses living with them. Alan listed his occupations as “author” and “advertising.”

Alan Baer Green and family 1940 US census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2658; Page: 61B; Enumeration District: 31-1454

During World War II, Alan served on the War Writers Board, a privately established organization that worked with the government to create propaganda to promote the war effort. The US Holocaust Museum had this information about the War Writers Board:

Two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., proposed organizing the nation’s writers as civilians “under arms” to promote the war effort. A month later, a group of prominent American authors formed the Writers’ War Board, a private association partially supported by government subsidy. The board coordinated more than 2,000 writers in diverse activities including slogans, poster contests, syndicated articles, poems, radio plays, dramatic skits, government publications, books, advertisements, and war propaganda. In May 1942 and 1943, the board sponsored anniversary observances of the Nazi book burnings to keep alive the connection between the destruction of books and the consequences of intolerance.

Alan and Gladys had moved to Westport, Connecticut, by 1943, where they would live for more than thirty years. After the war Alan was a founder of the Writers Board for World Government, an outgrowth of the War Writers Board formed to promote peace through a “world federation” of all nations.

In 1950, Alan won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his book, What A Body, which was selected as the best first mystery novel of that year. [1] It is a murder mystery involving a police officer who falls for the niece of the murder victim.

On December 9, 1954, Morris Green died at age 79 in Atlantic City, where he and Josephine were then living. A year later Josephine established a scholarship in his name at the University of Pittsburgh; as reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, although Morris himself did not have much formal education, he “was always devoted to the higher ideals of higher education.”

At some point after Morris’ death, Josephine moved closer to her son Alan in Connecticut. Alan continued to write. One of his best known books, Mother of Her Country, was published in 1973. It was subtitled, “A Comic Novel about Pornography and Censorship.” Kirkus Review wrote the following about it:

A clean joke about porn which doesn’t run to more than one line but tells you something about publishing in general (Mr. Green was around in it for quite some time) and censorship and those not too fine distinctions to be made between words whether they appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary or Macbeth. Laura Conroy, a vestal virgin from the Midwest comes to New York to get a job in the book business which she does — with a small press — to the consternation of her mother who is the Carry Amelia Nation of something called the Americans for Clean Entertainment. There’s a court case and a tacked on coda re a rediscovered journal as to where George Washington might really have slept but the story’s not really much more than a stretcher to fill the space between brou and haha — however cheerful and sensible its reprimand.

Two years later, Alan Baer Green died on March 10, 1975. He was 68 years old. He was survived not only by his wife and three sons, but also by his mother Josephine, who was almost 97 years old.

Josephine died in August, 1975, less than six months after the death of her son.

So how did Josephine’s life parallel that of her sister Amanda? No, she didn’t marry her sister’s widower and raise two nephews. But like Amanda, she raised a son who grew up to be a successful writer. Like Amanda, she survived her husband by many years, 28 for Amanda, 21 for Josephine. Like Amanda, she lived a long life. Amanda was 89 when she died, Josephine was 97.

[1] I am not sure how he qualified for this as it seems he had already written and published several mystery novels by that time, but perhaps those didn’t count for some reason.

The Screenwriter and the Real Estate Mogul

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Amy

This is the story of two boys who lost their mother before they were even four years old and who, despite that tragedy, grew up to be very successful.

As I wrote here, my cousin Hattie Baer died at age 33 in 1910. Hattie and her husband Meyer Herman had had two sons, Justin Baer Herman and Richard B. Herman; Justin was three when his mother died, and Richard was just a few months old. Five years later in 1915, Hattie’s sister Amanda married her brother-in-law Meyer when those boys were still only eight and five years old, respectively.

Meyer was in the clothing business. In fact, according to one cemetery record, he worked for the Snellenburg Clothing Company, a clothing manufacturing company and a department store in Philadelphia.

Meyer Herman and Hattie and Amanda burial

Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Collection Name: Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records

In one of those “small world moments,” I realized that Meyer Herman was working for a company that was owned by the family of another of my relatives: Carrie Snellenburg, who married my great-great-uncle Joseph Cohen, my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen’s older brother. The twisted family tree creaks one more time.

By 1930 both of the sons of Meyer Herman and Hattie Baer (nephews and stepsons of Amanda Baer) were working, Justin as a newspaper editor, Richard as a real estate salesman. Meyer, Amanda, Justin, and Richard were all still living together in Philadelphia. Justin was 23, Richard 19 at the time of the 1930 census.

Meyer and Amanda Herman and sons 1930 census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: 2104; Page: 23A; Enumeration District: 0627; Image: 902.0; FHL microfilm: 2341838

Ten years later Meyer and Amanda were still living in Philadelphia, and Meyer was still working as a clothing salesman. He was 69 years old, Amanda was 58. Justin and Richard were no longer living with them. Both had already established themselves in their chosen careers.

After graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Justin had become a successful writer, cartoonist, and screenwriter. He wrote for The Philadelphia Record as a reporter and also established a magazine, The Town Crier, during the early 1930s. He then moved to New York by 1935, where he was a contributor of poems, short stories, and cartoons to The New Yorker magazine. During that decade he also starting writing screenplays for short films. Between 1934 and 1940, he wrote nineteen screenplays for short films, working for Paramount Pictures. “Justin B. Herman Dead at 76; Writer and Producer of Films,” The New York Times, December 10, 1983. As of 1940, he was single and still living in New York City.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118-124 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102, built 1872-75, Frank Furness, architect, William A. Armstrong, builder, National Historic Landmark, 1975. Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy, the oldest art institution in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Meanwhile, his younger brother Richard was also doing quite well during the 1930s. According to his obituary, Richard “got an early start in the business. He convinced his family and teachers that he was bright, and in elementary school, he was permitted to skip two grades. He entered high school when he was 12, and at 17 was working in real estate for the Lionel Friedman Co. In 1933, at age 23, he founded his own real estate firm. Concentrating on major properties, he built Richard B. Herman & Co. into one of the largest real estate firms in Philadelphia. His forte was real estate investment and management.” “RICHARD B. HERMAN, 71, REAL ESTATE, CIVIC LEADER,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 27, 1982, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com/doc/obituaries/obit/0FBAE8CA0B3A0215-0FBAE8CA0B3A0215 : accessed 5 July 2016).

As of the 1940 census, Richard had married Marion Cohn, and they were living in Philadelphia. Their son was born later that year.

On August 25, 1941, Meyer Herman died from coronary thrombosis at age 70. He had survived the loss of his first wife, Hattie Baer, at a very young age and raised two very young sons in the aftermath of her death before marrying Hattie’s sister Amanda five years later. He must have been very proud of those two sons.

Meyer Herman death certificate
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

During the 1940s Justin Baer Herman married Alma Baer (as far as I can tell, the fact that her surname was Baer was coincidental; she does not appear to have been related to Jacob Baer’s family). They would have two daughters. Justin continued to be a successful screenwriter for Paramount. Two of the films he wrote were nominated for Academy Awards in the category of Best Short Subject. According to the Imdb database, he was credited as the writer on 61 films between 1934 and 1955 and as director on 49 of those films, producer on forty. His obituary claimed even higher numbers: “Mr. Herman produced 118 short subjects in 35 years of film making. Three of them were nominated for Academy Awards – ”Life Line to Hong Kong,” ”Roller Derby” and ”Three Kisses.” “Justin B. Herman Dead at 76; Writer and Producer of Films,” The New York Times, December 10, 1983.

Justin Herman
Photo located at http://alchetron.com/Justin-Herman-1349987-W#-

Richard also continued to have success in his career. His obituary reports that:

One of the original developers of Penn Center, he played a major role in the revitalization of Center City. He helped build, and his firm operated, many of the buildings added to the city’s skyline since 1950. … Working in Penn Center, he was responsible for much of its growth through such transactions as the sale for Penn Central of the 16th and Market Street sites on which stand such buildings as the Central Penn National Building. He was also responsible for the sale of the Suburban Station Building to the late Matthew H. McCloskey Jr., and the construction of the IBM Building. When major buildings were placed on the market, he usually was involved – he handled the sale of the Curtis Building, for example. [As of 1971, his company] was responsible for the operation and leasing of more than 30 major office buildings containing 4.5 million square feet of space.

In fact, Richard’s real estate development firm was responsible for building the huge apartment building, The Philadelphian, where my aunt Eva Cohen lived for many years.

“Philadelphia to Have Largest Apartment, Camden Courier Post, Saturday, May 6, 1961, p. 2

The Philadelphian

Unfortunately, Richard suffered a tragedy in his personal life. On February 28, 1953, his nine year old daughter Barbara died from acute cardiac dilatation.

Barbara Herman death certificate
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

UPDATE: Luanne, a fellow genealogy blogger, asked what I knew about Barbara’s cause of death, so I asked my brother/medical consultant. He said, “something like viral myocarditis that resulted in cardiogenic shock…would be the most likely diagnosis in a 9 year old. Acute cardiac dilatation isn’t really a diagnosis, it’s a finding or a descriptive term.[It means an acutely enlarged heart.] Rapid onset cardiogenic shock can also be caused by an MI, valve dysfunction, wall rupture and dysrhythmias, but these would be pretty unusual in a 9 year old. It is also possible she had septic shock which, in the end, caused her heart to dilate (enlarge) and fail.” For those (like me) who need a definition of cardiogenic shock, MedlinePlus says, “Cardiogenic shock is when the heart has been damaged so much that it is unable to supply enough blood to the organs of the body.”

Justin and Richard’s aunt and stepmother Amanda Baer died on July 28, 1969; she was 89 years old. She was buried in Mt Sinai cemetery in the same lot as her husband, Meyer Herman, and her sister, Hattie Baer, Meyer’s first wife. Meyer was buried between his two wives, the two Baer sisters.

Mt Sinai cemetery record of burials of Amanda Baer Herman, Meyer Herman, and Hattie Baer Herman

Like Meyer, Amanda must have been very proud of her two nephews, Justin and Richard, whom she had helped raise perhaps even before she had married their father in 1915.

Richard Herman died on June 25, 1982. He was only 72 years old. I have already quoted extensively from his Philadelphia Inquirer obituary, but want to add these additional insights into who he was beyond a highly successful real estate developer:

He was involved in a wide range of activities. … He was vice president and a member of the board of the Medical College of Pennsylvania, a member of the board of trustees of the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, a former chairman of the Easter Seal drive, and served on the board of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

Mr. Herman was a member of the prestigious Committee of 70, and a director of the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and the Franklin Institute. He was former chairman of the nonsectarian National Jewish Hospital in Denver and of divisions of United Fund and United Way drives. He was active in the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance.

Mr. Herman was the only man to head both the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians simultaneously.

He was a member of the Citizens Council on City Planning and the Germantown Historical Society.

He was a man with an endless curiosity and an I.Q. high enough to make him eligible for membership in Mensa, an organization for the very intelligent. He taught himself art, sculpture and music. He learned to play the organ on his own. He had his own observatory.

His art was displayed in his home and his office, accompanying his collections of such things as pipes. He also collected instruments related to astrology and medicine, children’s toys and signs.

His brother Justin died just one year later on December 3, 1983. He was 76 years old and died of emphysema. “Justin B. Herman Dead at 76; Writer and Producer of Films,” The New York Times, December 10, 1983.

These two men who lost their mother before either was four years old certainly left their mark in their respective fields, one an Oscar nominated screenwriter, the other a highly successful real estate developer and civic leader.

Attleboro Manufacturing Company: My Cousins, the Jewelers

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Amy

As I mentioned in my last post, the oldest child of Amalia (Hamberg) and Jacob Baer, Maurice Jay Baer, founded a jewelry company in Attleboro, Massachusetts, in the late 1890s when he was in his twenties. The company was originally called Attleboro Manufacturing. The stories of four of Amalia and Jacob Baer’s children are integrally related to the history of Attleboro Manufacturing: two of their sons, Maurice and Lawrence, and two of their sons-in-law Samuel Stone, married to their daughter Tilda, and Jerome Grant, married to their daughter Elsie, were all involved in leadership roles in the company.

At one time, Attleboro, Massachusetts was known as the Jewelry Capital of the World due to the numerous jewelry manufacturers doing business there. But like most of the manufacturing businesses in Massachusetts, jewelry businesses in Attleboro eventually moved elsewhere to save on labor and other costs.



http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/114525472

Attleboro Manufacturing was one of the businesses that eventually moved out of the region; later known as Swank and Company, the company was in business in Attleboro until the closing of its plant there in 2000. Though no longer in Atttleboro, Swank, Inc. is still in business today as a division of Randa Accessories, designing and manufacturing men’s jewelry, belts, personal leather accessories, and gifts. (“Jewelry legacy takes another hit with Swank closing, ” The Sun Chronicle, March 17, 2000.)

The company was founded by Maurice Baer and Samuel Stone. Samuel Stone was born Samuel Einstein in Laupheim, Germany, on February 25, 1872, the son of Moritz Einstein. He immigrated to the US in 1885, according to his 1920 passport application, and settled in Attleboro, Massachusetts. He was only thirteen years old at the time and seems to have come by himself. According to his 1920 and 1923 passport applications, his father was still residing in Germany at those times. Other sources indicate that his parents both died in Germany. This source also concluded that he came by himself to the US.

Samuel Einstein is listed as a jewelry manufacturer as early as 1890 and 1892 in the Attleboro city directories for those years, that is, several years before he and Maurice Baer founded Attleboro Manufacturing together. How did Maurice, who lived in western Pennsylvania, end up doing business with a young man living in Attleboro? Was there a family connection? Not that I have yet found. Perhaps they just met through business, Maurice traveling to New England or Samuel traveling to Pennsylvania.

According to this source:

By chance, Einstein had been doing business for a number of years (presumably wholesale jewellery) with a Pittsburg, PA salesman named Maurice Baer. It probably helped that Baer’s parents were German immigrants and both men were also of a similar age so an apparently close bond developed between the two.

That article and several other sources report that in 1897 Samuel and Maurice started Attleboro Manufacturing Company. Their first year brought an unexpected challenge.

The beginnings of Swank, Inc. can be traced to the year 1897, when Samuel M. Stone [originally Samuel Einstein] and Maurice J. Baer founded the Attleboro Manufacturing Company to produce and sell jewelry for women. The two men took over a building in Attleboro, Massachusetts, that had been constructed decades earlier as a forge to turn precious metals into jewelry.

Unfortunately, less than a year after Stone and Baer began production, one of the largest fires in the town’s history claimed an entire block of buildings, destroying their small enterprise. Many of the company’s employees helped fight the fire and were able to salvage a portion of the machinery and finished jewelry. Therefore, the Attleboro Manufacturing Company was able to resume its operations with the remaining equipment and material in another building nearby, which came to be the center of production for the next century.

The local Attleboro newspaper, the Sun Register, also reported on this history in its March 17, 2000, issue (“Jewelry legacy takes another hit with Swank closing, ” The Sun Chronicle, March 17, 2000) :

The company, starting with 10 employees, was located in a factory at Mill and Union streets. The fire of 1898 leveled a good portion of Attleboro’s jewelry plants, including the Attleboro Mfg. Co. However, volunteers managed to save the equipment of Attleboro Mfg. and within a day, the company was back in operation in the basement of a building adjacent to the present plant on Hazel Street.

Although both of these sources report the almost immediate re-opening of the business after the fire, Maurice Baer may not have yet relocated permanently to Attleboro, as he is listed as residing in Pittsburgh in the 1899 Pittsburgh city directory and on the 1900 census. But soon the company was doing quite well, and in 1908 Maurice and another man named Eben Wilde started a separate division to expand from women’s jewelry to men’s jewelry:

Within ten years, the Attleboro Manufacturing Company was enjoying a good deal of success in producing women’s jewelry and decided to begin expanding into new markets. In 1908, [Maurice] Baer formed a new division, called Baer and Wilde, to oversee the production of men’s jewelry, while Stone remained in charge of Attleboro Manufacturing.

Downtown Attleboro, about 1909 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At some point, Maurice must have introduced his younger sister Tilda to his partner Samuel Einstein because by 1908 they were married and living in Attleboro where their first child Stephanie was born in June, 1908. They would have three more children, Samuel, Jr. (1910), Harriet (1913), and Babette (or Betty, 1919). In 1910, Samuel was still using the surname Einstein, as he was in 1920, so all four children were originally given the surname Einstein.

Samuel and Tilda Baer Einstein (Stone)
1920 US census
Year: 1920; Census Place: Attleboro Ward 2, Bristol, Massachusetts; Roll: T625_681; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 9; Image: 794

The family was still using the name Einstein as late as 1923, as that is how Samuel is listed in the Attleboro directory for that year and also the name appearing on his 1923 passport application, but by 1927, they had switched to Stone, as can be seen in this ship manifest for a trip they all took to France that year.

Stone family on 1927 passenger manifest
Year: 1927; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4125; Line: 1; Page Number: 28

The third Baer child whose family was to become involved in the Attleboro Manufacturing Company was Elsie, the seventh child and youngest daughter. In 1910 she was still living with her parents in Pittsburgh, working as a kindergarten teacher. She was 24 years old. Three years later she married Jerome Louis Grant in Philadelphia. Jerome was born in Cortland, New York, in 1888, and in 1910 he had been living with his parents in Philadelphia where he and his father, Theodore Grant, were both working in the fur business.

Two years after marrying, Jerome and Elsie were living in New York City where Jerome was working as a salesman.

Jerome and Elsie Baer Grant and family
1915 NYS census
New York State Archives; Albany, New York; State Population Census Schedules, 1915; Election District: 49; Assembly District: 23; City: New York; County: New York; Page: 60

Jerome Grant’s draft registration for World War I revealed for whom he was working as a salesman: Baer & Wilde, the division of Attleboro Manufacturing Company started by his brother-in-law Maurice Baer. He was a salesman as well as the manager of their New York office. The registration revealed something else: Elsie was pregnant.

Jerome Grant World War I draft registration
Registration State: New York; Registration County: New York; Roll: 1786805; Draft Board: 147

Elsie and Jerome’s first child was born in 1919, a daughter named Marjorie. Their second daughter was born two years later and named Elinor.

Although the 1920 census reported that Jerome was a contractor in the building industry, the 1930 census reports that he was still in the jewelry manufacturing business. Moreover, both the 1920 and the 1925 New York City directories list Jerome as associated with Baer & Wilde, so I believe that the 1920 census is not correct in its reporting of Jerome’s occupation at that time.

Jerome and Elsie Baer Grant 1930 census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Long Beach, Nassau, New York; Roll: 1461; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 0137; Image: 104.0; FHL microfilm: 2341196

Finally, the other Baer sibling to get involved in the Attleboro business was the youngest child, Lawrence. Even in 1910 when he was only 18, Lawrence was already involved in jewelry sales. By 1917 when he registered for the draft for World War I, he was a part owner of Baer & Wilde and living in Attleboro, Massachusetts. There was a notation on his draft registration saying, “This man employs from 150 to 175 people in jewelry business.” Was this a basis for exempting him from the draft?

Lawrence Baer World War 1 draft registration
Registration State: Massachusetts; Registration County: Bristol; Roll: 1684755; Draft Board: 40

The company did in fact participate in its own way in the war effort:

By the time the United States became involved in World War I, the Attleboro Manufacturing Company was large enough to handle the production of thousands of metal identification tags, better known as “dog tags,” for the military. While this was the company’s most notable contribution to the war effort, it also profited from the production of numerous other emblems for the U.S. government during those years.

But was that enough to keep a man exempt from the draft? Although it would certainly seem that Lawrence was not essential to the operations of the business, given the involvement of his brother Maurice as well as two of his brothers-in-law, he certainly had a major impact on the success of Baer & Wilde:

[Baer & Wilde} operated with marginal success until 1918, when [Maurice] Baer’s brother, Lawrence Baer, came to them with his newly invented Kum-A-Part “cuff button”. It was an immediate success, to the tune of some four million pairs per year. In 1923, with some improvements made to it by Wilde, the design was patented. Kum-A-Part items remained in production until 1931.

Kum-A-Part cufflinks

The tremendous success of the Kum-A-Part cufflinks had a major impact on the future of the company:

[After World War I, the demand for this cuff button was so great that the company stopped making women’s jewelry. By this time Baer & Wilde had absorbed the Attleboro Mfg. Co. facilities.

By the 1920s, Baer & Wilde was selling more than 4 million pairs of cuff buttons a year. The company started to grow with acquisitions and adding other lines such as belt and buckle.

Lawrence Baer’s invention thus changed the fortunes of the company founded by his brother Maurice and brother-in-law Samuel.

Lawrence married Donna Degen on October 20, 1919. Donna was a Michigan native, and in 1910 she had been living with her parents and brother in Grand Rapids Michigan, where her father was a life insurance agent.

Engagement announcement of Lawrence Baer and Donna Degen, Pittsburgh Jewish Criterion, October 24, 1919

Marriage announcement of Lawrence Baer and Donna Degen,
Pittsburgh Jewish Criterion, October 24, 1919

After marrying, Lawrence and Donna were living in Attleboro in 1920; a year later their son John Degen Baer was born in Attleboro. The family was still living in Attleboro in 1930, and Lawrence was listed as the owner of a jewelry manufacturing factory.

The 1920s were years of rapid growth for the family’s jewelry business:

After production of the women’s jewelry line was halted, the company focused solely on the manufacture and marketing of its men’s items. Although its men’s products were already in high demand, the company pushed even harder to gain more market share through the implementation of a new marketing plan and increased advertising. The new marketing plan was originated by [Samuel Einstein] Stone in the late 1920s and dictated that the Attleboro Manufacturing Company employ seven wholesale dealers in different major cities throughout the United States to handle the sale and distribution of the men’s jewelry line. This action helped the company more easily distribute its products nationwide and also increased its advertising range.

Thus, by 1930, there were three Baer siblings living in Attleboro and involved in the leadership of the very successful family jewelry business: Maurice, Tilda, and Lawrence. Another sibling, Elsie, was living in New York, where her husband Jerome was also working for the family’s jewelry business.

As seen in the last post, their three other surviving siblings had no connection to the jewelry business. Josephine was living in New York with her husband Morris Green, who was in the financial industry at that time. Two of the Baer daughters were in Philadelphia: Amanda, whose husband Meyer Herman was in the clothing manufacturing business, and Flora, whose husband Julius Adler was a successful engineer. Two of the nine children had died young: Hattie in 1910 and Alfred in 1923.

By 1930, Jacob and Amalia had thirteen grandchildren: Hattie’s two children, Justin and Richard Herman (raised by her sister Amanda, who had married Hattie’s widowed husband Meyer Herman); Josephine’s son Alan Baer Green; Flora’s three children, Stanley, Jerrold, and Amy Adler; Tilda’s four children, Stephanie, Samuel, Harriet, and Babette Stone; Elsie’s two daughters Marjorie and Elinor Grant; and Lawrence’s son John Degen Baer.

In my next series of posts I will describe what happened after 1930 to the seven surviving children and thirteen grandchildren of Jacob and Amalia (Hamberg) Baer and to Attleboro Manufacturing Company.

The Family of Amalia Hamberg Baer, the Administratrix

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Amy

Back in May, I wrote about the sad saga of Charles Hamberg and his son Samuel Hamberg. Charles, my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal’s first cousin, had lost two wives—one was murdered, one died quite young. He had then committed suicide, leaving his nine year old son Samuel an orphan. Charles’ estate was administered by another cousin, Amalia Hamberg Baer, who at the time was living in western Pennsylvania where my great-grandfather and many other Hamberg relatives were then living.

In fact, Amalia (born Malchen) was a first cousin to Isidore Schoenthal, my great-grandfather:

She had come to the US from Breuna, Germany, in 1871, and had married Jacob Baer in 1873, according to the 1900 census. (For more on how I linked Amalia Hamberg to Jacob Baer, see my earlier post.) Jacob was born in the Rhein Pfalz[1] region of Germany in about 1851 and had immigrated to the US in 1867, according to several census records. From entries in the Pittsburgh city directories, he appears to have settled in the Pittsburgh area.

In 1880, Jacob and Amalia were living in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and Jacob was working as a clerk in a shoe store. They already had four children: Maurice Jay (1874), Hattie (1876), Josephine (1878), Amanda (1880).

Jacob and Amalia Hamberg Baer 1880 US census
Year: 1880; Census Place: Allegheny, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: 1086; Family History Film: 1255086; Page: 198D; Enumeration District: 008; Image: 0402

Between 1880 and 1891, they would have five more children: Flora (1882), Tilda (1884), Elsie Victoria (1886), Alfred (1889), and Lawrence (1891). (The birth years for the daughters as reported in various records are all over the place as they kept making themselves younger as the years went on, so I am relying on the 1880 and 1900 census records when they were still probably young enough not to lie about their ages.) During those years, Jacob was listed as a salesman in the Pittsburgh city directories.

In 1900, Jacob and Amalia were still living in Allegheny with all nine of their children. Jacob continued to work as a salesman, as did their son Maurice (Morris here, now 26). Hattie (24) and Josephine (Josie here, now 21) were working as stenographers. The rest of the children were not employed.

Jacob and Amalia Hamberg Baer 1900 census
Year: 1900; Census Place: Allegheny Ward 5, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: 1356; Enumeration District: 0050; FHL microfilm: 1241356

In the next decade many of the children began to move on to their own lives. In fact, even before 1900, Maurice, the oldest child, had ventured quite far from Pittsburgh. As I will write about in a post to follow this one, Maurice moved to Attleboro, Massachusetts,[2] and established a very successful jewelry business in which four of the siblings’ families would be involved, that is, Maurice, Tilda, Elsie, and Lawrence. This post will focus on the other five siblings—Hattie, Josephine, Flora, Amanda, and Alfred—and their parents, Amalia and Jacob.

On July 17, 1905, Hattie Baer, the second child who was then 29, married Meyer Herman, a clothing salesman living in Philadelphia who was born in Manchester, England.

Marriage record of Hattie Baer and Meyer Herman
Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-21130-27078-9?cc=1589502 : accessed 12 May 2016), 004264779 > image 383 of 454; county courthouses, Pennsylvania.

They settled in Philadelphia, where they had two sons, Justin Baer Herman, born in April, 1907, and Richard B. Herman, born in July, 1910. Then tragically, Hattie died on October 15, 1910, of a perforated bowel and peritonitis. She was only 33 years old when she died, and she left behind a three year old toddler and a two and a half month old infant son.

Hattie Baer Herman death certificate
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Five years later in 1915, Hattie’s younger sister Amanda married her brother-in-law Meyer Herman in Philadelphia and took on the responsibility for raising her two nephews, Justin and Richard, then just eight and five years old. In 1920, Meyer was still a clothing salesman, and the family continued to live in Philadelphia.

Meyer and Amanda Baer Herman 1920 census
Year: 1920; Census Place: Philadelphia Ward 22, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: T625_1623; Page: 8A; Enumeration District: 591; Image: 961

Ten years later in 1930, Meyer had moved from being a salesman to being the owner of a clothing manufacturing business. The two sons were also working; Justin, now 23, was a newspaper editor, and Richard, now 19, was selling real estate. Both were still living at home with Meyer and Amanda in Philadelphia.

Herman and Amanda Baer Herman 1930 census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: 2104; Page: 23A; Enumeration District: 0627; Image: 902.0; FHL microfilm: 2341838

Meanwhile, the third child of Amalia and Jacob Baer, Josephine, had married Morris Alon Green on January 2, 1906. Morris was a Pittsburgh native, born there on February 17, 1875, the son of Abraham Green, an immigrant from Holland, and Jeanette Bloomberg, born in Germany. In 1900, Morris was living with his parents in Pittsburgh and working as a bookkeeper.

Marriage record of Morris Green and Josephine Baer
Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-20622-18713-16?cc=1589502 : accessed 10 June 2016), 004811570 > image 334 of 449; county courthouses, Pennsylvania.

Josephine and Morris settled in Pittsburgh where their son Alan Baer Green was born on October 30, 1906. In 1910, the Greens were living in Pittsburgh as boarders in the household of another family, and Morris was working as a claims agent.

Morris and Josephine Baer Green on 1910 census
Year: 1910; Census Place: Pittsburgh Ward 8, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: T624_1301; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 0379; FHL microfilm: 1375314

The next several years must have been successful ones for Morris because by 1918, he was the general agent and executive of the Crucible Steel Company and by 1920 he and Josephine and their son Alan were living in their own (rented) home with a nurse and servant residing with them.

Morris A Green, World War I draft registration
Registration State: Pennsylvania; Registration County: Allegheny; Roll: 1909239; Draft Board: 11

By 1925, Josephine and Morris had left western Pennsylvania for New York City, where they were living at the Hotel Alexander at 150 West 103^rd Street. Their son Alan is not listed as living with them; perhaps he was away at college as he would have been nineteen at that time. In 1930, Alan was living with his parents in Manhattan, working in advertising. His father Morris listed his occupation/industry as “financial.”

Morris and Josephine Baer Green and Alan Baer Green, 1930 census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: 1556; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0443; Image: 762.0; FHL microfilm: 2341291

The fifth child of Amalia and Jacob was Flora. In 1907, she is listed in the Pittsburgh city directory as a teacher, residing in Bellevue, a town near Pittsburgh. In 1910, when she was 28 (although listed as 24 on the 1910 census), she was still single and living with her parents and not employed outside the home.

Jacob and Amalia Schoenthal Baer and family 1910 census
Year: 1910; Census Place: Pittsburgh Ward 14, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: T624_1304; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 0468; FHL microfilm: 1375317

In 1915, she married Julius Adler. Julius was the son of Simon Adler, a German immigrant who in 1880 was living in Memphis, Tennessee, working in a shoe store. Julius’ mother Elizabeth was a native of Missouri; she married Simon in 1881, and they had four children born in Memphis between 1882 and 1887, when their youngest son Julius was born. By 1900, the family had relocated to Philadelphia.

According to his obituary, Julius graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in engineering in 1908. In 1910, he was teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle. But by 1915 he had returned to Philadelphia, where he married Flora Baer. In 1917, they were living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Julius was working as a civil engineer for the state highway department. They would have three children, Stanley, Jerrold, and Amy, born between 1917 and 1920.

Julius Adler, World War I draft registration
Registration State: Pennsylvania; Registration County: Dauphin; Roll: 1893237; Draft Board: 3

In 1920, the family had returned to Philadelphia, where Julius was now employed as a technical engineer for an oil company. According to his obituary, during the 1920s, Julius was working as the deputy chief of the Philadelphia highway department and was involved in supervising the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the bridge that spans the Delaware River connecting Philadelphia to Camden, New Jersey (originally called the Delaware River Bridge). In 1930, Julius and Flora and their two sons continued to live in Philadelphia, Julius working as a civil engineer.

Benjamin Franklin Bridge linking Camden, NJ with Philadelphia, PA – Taken from the 22nd floor of Waterfront Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alfred, the second youngest child of Amalia and Jacob, was the only other child not involved with the Attleboro jewelry business. In 1900, he was living with his family in Pittsburgh, but he is not listed with them in 1910, when he would have been 21 years old. There is an Alfred H. Baer listed in the 1907 Pittsburgh directory, working as a clerk, but I am not sure that that is the same person. According to his registration for the draft in World War I, Alfred was living in a sanitarium and “mentally incapacitated for work of any kind.”

Alfred Baer, World War I draft registration Registration State: Pennsylvania; Registration County: Philadelphia; Roll: 1907636; Draft Board: 17

Five years later, at age 34, Alfred died on December 13, 1923. He was buried where his sister Hattie was buried and where later his parents, his sister Flora, and his brother Maurice would be buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia. I was unable to locate a death certificate, so I do not know the cause of death. According to his burial record, he was residing in Stamford, Connecticut, at the time of his death.

Thus, by 1930, Amalia (Hamberg) and Jacob Baer had lost two of their children, Hattie and Alfred. Their other children were doing quite well. Amanda and Flora had moved to Philadelphia with their husbands and children, and Josephine was living in New York City with her husband and son. The other four children were also living away from Pittsburgh, as we will see in the next post.

Even Jacob and Amalia had left Pittsburgh by that time. In fact, sometime between 1918 and 1922, they had moved to Atlantic City. In 1922, they were listed in the Atlantic City directory, living at The Amsterdam in Atlantic City. The following year on March 27, 1923, their children honored their parents on the occasion of their 50^th wedding anniversary with a dinner at the Esplanade Hotel in New York City.

In 1930 Jacob and Amalia, now 83 and 79 (although the 1930 census says 77), were living at 250 West 103^rd Street in New York City, with Jacob listed as the head of household for what appears to be a small hotel; there are 28 guests listed as living with them. Their daughter Josephine was living not too far away at 666 West End Avenue.

Amalia Baer, born Malchen Hamberg in Breuna, Germany, died on April 23, 1931, in New York City. She was 80 years old. She was buried in Mt. Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia where the two children who predeceased her, Hattie and Alfred, were buried. A year later her husband Jacob died on September 1, 1932. He was 85 years old, and he was buried with his wife and children in Mt. Sinai cemetery. His death notice ran in the September 3, 1932 issue of The New York Times:

NY Times, September 3, 1932

In my next post, I will write about the four children of Amalia and Jacob who were involved in the jewelry business in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Then in a subsequent post I will report on what later happened to the children and the grandchildren of Jacob and Amalia (Hamberg) Baer.

[1] Thank you to Michael Palmer and Cathy Meder-Dempsey of the German Genealogy group on Facebook for helping me decipher Jacob’s birthplace.

[2] I am not sure why Maurice is listed as living in Pittsburgh on the 1900 census as several reports indicate he had established the business in Attleboro before then. Perhaps he was still traveling back and forth between Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at that time.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Category Archives: Places My Family Has Lived

Like Manna from Heaven

Don’t Wait to Make Those Calls: My Cousin Betty

The Last Chapter of the Story of Amalia Hamberg

The Legacy of Flora Baer Adler

Ray, Arizona: Home of Gertrude and Hettie Schoenthal

Tilda Baer Stone and Her Children: Massachusetts Cousins

Another Writer in the Family: Alan Baer Green

The Screenwriter and the Real Estate Mogul

Attleboro Manufacturing Company: My Cousins, the Jewelers

The Family of Amalia Hamberg Baer, the Administratrix

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