The Schwartz Family

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Amy

As I wrote yesterday, in trying to fill the holes in David Goldschlager’s story, I ended up researching his wife Rebecca’s family and their story. Although her family is not technically related to mine except through marriage, now that I am in touch with her grandson Richard (and now, her nephew Jon), I feel connected to this story and touched by it as well.

As I wrote in the last post, I was curious as to why David and Rebecca left New York City sometime after 1920, when David’s mother and sister were living with them, and moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Their son, Murray, was born there,[1] and they were living in Scranton as late as 1928 because that is where David was living when he filed his naturalization application. By 1930, however, they had returned to New York and were living in the Bronx, where they lived until they retired and moved to Arizona to live near Murray and his wife Edna and their grandson Richard.

I hypothesized that Rebecca’s family lived in Scranton because I could not figure out what else would have drawn David away from his family and place of employment. As I wrote last, I started digging around for Rebecca’s family, and after learning her maiden name was Schwar(t)z from her naturalization form, I was able to locate the ship manifest for Rebecca and her family on the SS Astoria, sailing from Glasgow, Scotland in March, 1903.

Schwarz Family on the SS Astoria 1903

The family was from Romania, and Rebecca was one of seven children on the manifest, traveling with her mother Louise. Rebecca was the oldest child, thirteen years old, followed by Etta (11), Annette (9), Rosa (7), Sophie (4), Abram (2), and Henrie (9 months old). Henrie’s name had a line drawn through it, and in the left margin next to Henrie’s name, it looks like the word “died” followed by some other illegible words were written. It looked like Henrie, the baby, had died on board. Imagine being the mother of seven young children, caring for them on this long, uncomfortable voyage, and losing one of your children while at sea.[2]

The manifest also identified who was meeting the family in the United States: their husband and father S. Schwarz of Newark, New Jersey. By searching the 1910 US census, I was able to locate the Schwartz family in Newark. Rebecca’s father’s name was Solomon, and he was employed as a hat finisher in a hat factory. He and Louise (Lizzie, on this census) were living with their six children who had survived the trip from Romania plus two more born in New Jersey, Meyer and Jennie. Rebecca was now 20 and, like her father, working as a hat finisher in a hat factory.

The Schwartz Family in Newark (Rebecca standing in the rear middle)

Is this how she met David? As a hat maker? Did the factory where she and her father worked have a connection to the factory where David was working? David had been working as a hatter since at least 1915, as indicated on the 1915 NYS census. On his World War I draft registration dated June 5, 1917 (after he and Rebecca were married), David listed his employment as a hatter for Sam Burk at 419 Lafayette Street, New York. Who knows? Maybe there was a hatmakers union meeting where Rebecca and/or her father met David. At any rate, they were married in Newark in 1916, but lived in New York City as of the 1920 census.

Rebecca and Sidney Goldschlager

Meanwhile, the Schwartz family had suffered another tragedy. On the 1920 census, I noticed that although Etta, Annette, Rosie, Sophie, Abram (now Abie), and Jennie were still listed as living at home, there was no entry for Meyer, who had been only six years old in 1910. I had to assume that something had happened to Meyer, and I learned from Jon Schwartz, one of Solomon’s grandsons, that Meyer had died from a ruptured appendix in 1913 when he was not yet nine years old. As Jon said, his father Abram (who became Arnold) was the only son of Solomon and Louise to survive to adulthood.

In 1930, most of the Schwartz family was still living under one roof: Solomon, Louise, Annette, Sophie, Arnold (formerly Abram), and Jeanette (formerly Jennie). I don’t know where Etta and Rosie were, perhaps they were married. Sadly, Solomon Schwartz died three years later at age 71. Louise died in 1948. I have not yet traced what happened to the Schwartz children after their father died, although by 1933, even the youngest child would have been in her twenties. I am hoping to learn more from Jon, who is Arnold’s son and who I was able to contact by finding his family tree on ancestry.

One other interesting fact that I did learn from Jon is that Solomon Schwartz had lived in Iasi before marrying Louise, who was from Berlad. He then moved to Berlad where their first seven children were born before they emigrated to the United States. Maybe that led to the connection between Rebecca and David? Maybe the Schwartz family in Iasi knew the Goldschlager family, and perhaps when Solomon was looking for a match for his oldest daughter Rebecca, he reached out to people from the American Iasi community and found David, a fellow hatter, newly arrived from America and the same age as his daughter. There is likely no one alive who knows how David and Rebecca met, so all we can do is speculate, creating stories to fill the gaps between the data we can find through these documents.

Meanwhile, despite all these discoveries, I still don’t know why David and Rebecca ended up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. So far all I know is that there were two hat companies in Scranton at the time, the Lackawanna Hat Company and the Keystone Hat Company. There were also two families named Goldschlager living in Scranton at that time. So maybe these Scranton Goldschlagers were also our relatives?

Washington Avenue, Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The research continues….

[1] It appears that Sidney was born in Newark, NJ, in 1925, according to his mother’s naturalization form and the 1940 US census. However, on David’s naturalization, it says both sons were born in Pennsylvania. The 1930 census says both were born in New York, which must be wrong. So perhaps they were living in Newark when Sidney was born and then returned to Scranton, assuming that Rebecca and the 1930 census are correct as to where Sidney was born.

[2] According to Jonathan Schwartz, one of the grandchildren of Solomon and Louise Schwartz, Henrie never left Europe, but this seems inconsistent with this manifest as well as a separate document listing passengers on the SS Astoria for this voyage. Henrie’s name appears on both. Maybe the family could not bear the truth and created a story that Henrie continued to live in Romania.

Isadore and David Goldschlager: More than Brothers?

My Grandfather and Alma Gluck

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Amy

In a recent conversation with my mother about her father, my grandfather Isadore Goldschlager, she said that one of the things that my grandfather remembered fondly about Iasi was the music. From the photograph of the house where he was born, you can see a cathedral towering in the background. My mother wondered whether that was where her father heard the music he loved.

One of the other stories my mother recalled was that my grandfather used to say that he babysat for Alma Gluck. I knew nothing in detail about Alma Gluck, except that she was a famous opera singer and recording star, so I decided to do some research and see if I could figure out a link between my grandfather and Alma Gluck.

Cover of Alma Gluck

In reading a number of biographies online, I first learned that Alma Gluck was born Reba Fiersohn, daughter of Leon and Zara Fiersohn in 1884 in Romania; some sources say she was born in Bucharest, but others say she was born in Iasi. Perhaps her family and the Goldschlager family were friends or at least acquaintances. Since my grandfather was born in 1888 in Iasi, he obviously did not literally babysit for Alma Gluck herself since she was four years older; he must have babysat for her child.

Reba Fiersohn arrived in the United States in 1890, brought to the United States by her older sister Cecile, according to a biography from the Jewish Women’s Archive. They lived in the Lower East Side, where Reba went to school and then worked as an office clerk. On May 25, 1902, she married Bernard Glick, with whom she had a daughter, Abigail Marcia, who was born on June 9, 1903. In 1906, Reba was discovered by an associate of her husband and began training to become an opera singer. She debuted with the Metropolitan Opera in 1909 and became a very successful concert performer and recording star under the name Alma Gluck. She traveled throughout the United States and was considered the most successful recording star of the time.

Here is one of her best known recordings, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny. You can find several others online.

She divorced Bernard Glick in 1912 and subsequently in 1914 married Efrem Zimbalist, the violinist, with whom she traveled, performed and recorded. She and Zimbalist had two children, Maria, born in 1915, and Efrem, Jr., the actor, director and writer. Although she continued to tour and record for a few more years, her voice had become strained, and she retired in 1924. Alma Gluck died in 1938 from cirrhosis of the liver.

English: Russian-born American composer, conductor and violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1890-1985) with his wife American opera singer Alma Gluck (1884-1938) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So where in this story might my grandfather fit? My best guess is that he babysat for Abigail, Alma Gluck’s child with her first husband Bernard. As noted above, Abigail was born in 1903; my grandfather arrived some time in 1903 or early 1904. In 1905 he was living alone at 2213 Second Avenue in New York, working as a grocery store clerk. He was seventeen years old at the time. That same year, according to the 1905 New York State census, Bernard and Reba Glick were living with their two year old daughter Abigail at 2 St. Nicholas Terrace in New York. Bernard was an insurance agent, and Reba, the future star, was doing housework. Could Isadore have been babysitting for little Abigail? St. Nicholas Terrace is crosstown from where my grandfather was living, about a half hour walk according to Google Maps. It does not seem likely that the Glicks knew Isadore from the neighborhood, unless the store where he was working was located in their neighborhood north of Morningside Park. Unfortunately, that’s a fact I will not be able to determine.

In 1909, Isadore was living at 440 East (?) 147^th Street, according to the ship manifest for his father Moritz. Google Maps could not find such an address in Manhattan, only in the Bronx, so perhaps it was 440 West 147^th Street, about a mile north of where the Glicks had been living in 1905 and on the same side of Manhattan. In 1910, Isadore was living with his aunt Tillie Strolovitz and her children on East 109^th Street, back on the East Side. The Glick family was living at 325 West 93^rd Street, two and half miles away crosstown from where Isadore was living. Again, unless there was some other connection—from back in Iasi or some Romanian community connection, it is not obvious how Isadore would have ended up babysitting for Abigail.

By 1912, Reba Fiersohn Glick had become the famous Alma Gluck, divorced from Bernard and traveling around the country. One source reported that she fought Bernard for custody of Abigail and prevailed after a bitter court battle. I cannot find where Abigail or either of her parents were living in 1915, but since by that time her mother was famous, wealthy and remarried, Abigail herself was twelve, and Isadore was 27 and working full time as a milkman, I doubt very much that he was babysitting for Abigail in 1915 or thereafter.

So is there any truth to the story that my grandfather babysat for Alma Gluck? I, of course, am inclined to believe my grandpa—who wouldn’t? And it is entirely possible that he had a connection through ties in Iasi to the family of Reba Fiersohn. He was a new immigrant when Abigail was just a toddler and himself alone and just a teenager. Perhaps there was some outreach from former residents of his home city who arranged for him to earn some money as a babysitter for the future Alma Gluck, even if he was living crosstown. We will never know with any certainty, but I believe that my grandfather babysat for little Abigail.

If he did, I wonder whether he knew how famous Abigail herself became. Abigail Glick grew up to become a well-known writer under the name Marcia Davenport. Among other works, she wrote the novel East Side, West Side, which became the basis of the well-known movie by the same name. She was on the staff of The New Yorker for several years and wrote a very well-regarded biography of Mozart. She also wrote an autobiography entitled Too Strong for Fantasy. I have just ordered a copy—maybe she will talk about the young teenage boy who babysat for her when she was a young child? Unlikely, given all the other much more glamorous and interesting things that happened to her in her life, but I will be reading it with an eye open for any such reference.

We may never know a lot of things with absolute certainty. Sometimes we just have to accept the versions of the truth we have learned.

First Cousins: The Grandchildren of David and Esther Rosensweig

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Amy

Immigrants just arrived from Foreign Countries–Immigrant Building, Ellis Island, New York Harbor. (Half of a stereo card) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Genealogy research can be both very frustrating and very exhilarating. Sometimes you feel like you have hit a wall and can get no further. Every stone you turn leads nowhere. People don’t respond to requests for information, documents have been lost or destroyed, and you feel like you will never find anything new. Then there are the times that are exhilarating. You find a document that tells a story and reveals a relative you never knew about. You contact a long lost cousin and make a new friend. You put together pieces of a puzzle and see a picture of your family that touches you in ways you never anticipated.

Yesterday was one of those exhilarating days. I had found an email address for someone I thought could be one of Leah Adler’s grandsons and had taken a chance that it was the right person and that he would respond. It was a long shot—we are fairly distant cousins—third cousins—and it was very unlikely that my name and background would mean much to him. Well, I hit the jackpot! He forwarded my email to his sister Jean, who is herself someone with 30 years of experience in genealogy. Jean wrote to me right away, and we have since exchanged several emails and lots of information. Through this contact, I have been able to learn a lot more about my great-grandmother’s sister Tillie and her family.

Some might wonder why I care so much about these individuals and their lives. Well, these were my grandfather’s first cousins. He and his brother David were close in age to Isidor, Bertha, Bella, David, Pincus and Becky, and his sister Betty would have been close in age to Leah. These could have been their playmates as children in Iasi. They all had the same grandparents, David and Esther Rosensweig. Tillie and Ghitla both named sons for their father David.

Moreover, Tillie took in my grandfather and his sister in 1910 when she herself was a single mother already caring for her seven children. My grandfather and his sister must have been mourning their father, who had died in April, 1910, and awaiting their mother, who arrived in November. (One mystery: I cannot find David Goldschlager on any 1910 census, though he shows up living with his mother and siblings in 1915.)

So what have I learned from Jean about my grandfather’s aunt and her children? For one thing, it now seems quite clear that Itic Yankel Srulivici and Jacob Adler were one and the same person. Jean said that family lore in her family is that Jacob never left Ellis Island. The ship manifest does indicate that he was admitted in 1907, but perhaps something happened after that to block his ability to leave Ellis Island. The ship manifest does indicate that he was examined by a doctor and had scars on his corneas and coloboma of both irises. Could that have been enough to block his entry and have him deported? I have ordered a death certificate for a Jacob Adler who died in 1910, and I have asked my Romanian researcher to look for a record for Itic in Romania.

Jean was also able to confirm much of the information that I had found in public documents: that Bertha had been briefly married, that David died in the 1930s, and that her mother Teddy had married Abner Cohen. She also told me that Bertha had been killed in an accident in the 1960s, that Bella had married Baer Rothschild and had had no children, and that Beckie, who became Ray as an adult, had married Ben Seamon and had four children, including a daughter Thelma with whom Jean had corresponded in the late 1970s and who had filled Jean in on many of these details. Sadly, Thelma was also killed in a freak accident in 2000.

It seems no one knows what happened to Isidor, and I have sent for one death certificate that might be his from 1915. If it is in fact his death certificate, it would mean he died very young, as did his brother Pincus. The Adler family had more than their fair share of tragedies—losing Jacob, Isidor, Pincus and David at such young ages and losing Bertha and Thelma to freak accidents. As with my grandfather as well as his brother David Goldschlager, it seems that Leah and her siblings also did not like discussing their past or their childhood family. Perhaps the hardships of leaving Iasi where they had lived as children, coming to America as immigrants, and fighting to survive the poverty and the language and cultural differences left them all with scars that made it too painful to recall the past.

I don’t know anything about what their childhoods were like in Iasi. I’ve read enough to know that there was terrible anti-Semitism in Romania during those years and also terrible poverty. But children often are immune to those external factors in many ways because they know nothing else. I’d like to think that the Goldschlager-Rosensweig-Srulivici children as young children had some joyfulness in their lives. I’d like to imagine that Isadore, David and Betty Goldschlager and Isidor, Bertha, Bella, David, Beckie, Pincus and Leah Srulivic/Adler were all young cousins who played together and grew up together in Iasi, just as I was fortunate enough to grow up with my first cousins Jeff and Jody, who lived less than 20 minutes away from us during my childhood. All my first cousins—Jeff, Jody, Beth, Suzie, Robin and Jamie (Jim)– added so much laughter and joy to my life as a child, and I would hope that the same was true for my grandfather, his siblings and his first cousins.

Isadore and Gussie’s nine grandchildren

Jeff and Jim 1971

jody julie and ira 1963

Beth 1954

Julie, Robin, Amy, Suzie, and Ira 1962

Amy and Jeff (with Elaine) 1953

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The Goldschlagers

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Amy

Having reached (for now) a dead end on my research of the Brotman family, I have decided to turn to, or rather return to, my research of my grandfather’s family, my Goldschlager relatives. I had previously done a fair amount of research on the Goldschlager line, but had put it aside when I found my Brotman cousins. For some of you, the Goldschlager story will be perhaps of less interest, although it is itself a wonderful story of American Jewish immigration. For others, in particular my first cousins and siblings and my mother, the Goldschlager story will be of great interest. And for those who are interested in genealogy generally and/or the history of Jews in Europe and America, this story should also be a great interest.

So although this blog is called the Brotmanblog (and will continue to be so titled), I have created a new page for my Goldschlager ancestors and relatives. If you are interested, please check it out. I also will be writing some posts to describe the research I’ve done to uncover the story of my grandfather, his siblings and his parents and grandparents.

In this first Goldschlager post, I want to tell the story of my grandfather Isadore. Isadore was born in Iasi (or Jassy), Romania. He was the oldest child of Moritz (Moses, Moshe, or Morris)and Gitla (Gittel or Gussie) Goldschlager. He was born in August, 1888; his younger brother David was born the following year, and their younger sister Betty was born in 1896. Isadore was named for his grandfather, Ira Goldschlager. I was very fortunate to find a researcher in Iasi who located and translated several documents relating to these relatives, including birth records and marriage records for Moritz and Gitla, my great-grandparents.

Moritz and Gittel’s marriage certificate

He even took a photograph of the house were my grandfather and his parents and siblings lived in Iasi.

The Goldschlager House in Iasi

When my grandfather was 16 years old, he left Iasi and walked through Romania to escape the tzar’s army and persecution. Romania was one of the most anti-Semitic and oppressive countries in Europe at the time, and many Jewish residents decided to escape in the early years of the 20^th century. In a subsequent post, I will write more about the conditions in Romania and the history of the Fusgeyers—the “foot goers” who left Romania on foot. My mother said that she does not remember her father talking about Romania very much, except to talk about the horses and the music, two things that he loved very much.

My teenaged grandfather arrived in New York City in 1904 without any relatives and under his brother’s name. In 1905 he had a job as a storekeeper in a grocery store and lived in what is now East Harlem at 113^th Street, apparently alone or perhaps in a boarding house. His father Moritz arrived in 1909, and his mother Gittel, brother David, and sister Betty in 1910. Sadly, it appears that Gittel, David and Betty arrived shortly after Moritz had died.

By 1915, Isadore and his mother and siblings were living together in East Harlem. David was working at a hat maker, Betty as a dressmaker. Isadore’s occupation unfortunately is not legible on the 1915 census form. Edit: On closer examination, I believe it says “Driver Milk,” which is consistent with what he was doing for the rest of his working life.

1905 NY census

1915 NY Census for the Goldschlagers

By 1917, when Isadore registered for the draft, he was working as a driver for a dairy company and married to my grandmother Gussie and living in Brooklyn.

Isadore’s World War I draft registration

He continued working for dairy companies and eventually became a foreman. He and my grandmother had three children. As a milkman, my grandfather worked at night to deliver the milk by morning. When he delivered milk to people in the poor communities, they all loved him so much that they would bring him food.

My grandparents moved to Parkchester in the 1940s with my mother, who was only twelve at the time. When I was born ten years later, my parents also lived in Parkchester, just a few buildings away from my grandparents, so I spent my first four and half years living right near my grandparents.

My grandparents and me 1956

Although my grandfather died before I was five years old and thus my memories of him are vague, I do have a memory of him as a loving grandfather. Perhaps it is the stories I’ve heard all my life about him rather than my own memories—it’s hard to know. I know that my mother and her siblings loved him a great deal, that he was a big tease with a great sense of humor, and that although he left Romania at fifteen and never received a high school education, he spoke several languages and was a very smart and witty man. He must have been an incredibly strong person to have left his family at such a young age; most likely he helped the rest of his family come to the United States once he got here.

I wish I had known him longer, and I wish I knew more about his life both in Romania and in New York. Perhaps as I pursue this line of research I will learn more. I have just located one of David’s grandsons, Richard, and David’s son Murray is 92 and living in Arizona. I am hoping that Murray may know more about David’s life in Romania and the relationship between the two brothers, David and Isadore.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Category Archives: Romania

The Schwartz Family

My Grandfather and Alma Gluck

First Cousins: The Grandchildren of David and Esther Rosensweig

The Goldschlagers

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