Most of us have heard of a husband and wife dying within weeks or months of each other—sometimes just days. There is apparently some real science behind the phenomenon of long-time spouses dying close in time. In the Jacob Goldsmith family, it happened twice within just a few years to two different couples.

By 1930, as seen in my earlier post, Emma Goldsmith Cohlman was the only surviving child of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith. On the 1930 census she was living in Philadelphia, claiming to be a 68 year old widow though she was in fact 79 and divorced. There were also ten grandchildren of Jacob and Fannie living in 1930. That would not be the case ten years later.

Caroline Goldsmith and Nathan Rice’s daughter Rena Rice and her husband Edwin Sternfels were still living in New York City in 1930 where Edwin was still in advertising. ¹ Rena’s brother Sidney and his wife Martha Sondheim were still living in Philadelphia, and Sidney was also in the advertising business.² The youngest child of Caroline Goldsmith and Nathan Rice, their daughter Jessica Rice, and her husband Philip Sondheim were still living in Brookline where Philip practiced law.³ Jessica and Philip’s daughter Ruth and her husband Adrian Kramer and daughter Natalie were living in Boston, and Adrian was an equipment salesman.⁴

Huldah’s children were also well-settled in 1930. Her two sons, Herbert and Arthur Raphael, were living in the same household in Philadelphia, along with Arthur’s wife Josephine and ten year old son Ross.  Arthur was now an insurance salesman and Herbert a commercial salesman. ⁵ Their younger sister Adelaide and her husband Harry W. Hahn and their two sons were living in Washington, DC, where Harry continued to work in the family shoe business.⁶

As I wrote earlier, Philip Goldsmith’s three sons were all living in Philadelphia in 1930; Byron and Jerome were married, and Herbert continued to live with his mother Nellie’s siblings. As for Harry Goldsmith’s biological son Stanton Loeb Dreifus, he was living in Queens, New York, with his wife and son and was an iron and steel broker, like his step or adoptive father Emanuel Dreifus.

Thus, as of 1930, all looked fairly calm for the grandchildren of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith. But within ten years, the family would suffer one heartache after another with just a few occasions for celebration.

Although Harry and Adelaide (Raphael) Hahn’s two sons were married in the 1930s, both weddings were overshadowed by deaths in the family. On January 22, 1934, their older son, Harry W. Hahn, Jr., married Elizabeth Hofheimer in Norfolk, Virginia. ⁷ Elizabeth was the daughter of J.Caesar Hofheimer and Bessie Hirschler of Norfolk.⁸ The bride and groom were both 24 years old.

The Washington Star provided this description of the wedding:

The youthful bride, who was given away by her brother, Mr. Edward Hofheimer, looked lovely in her wedding gown of aqua marine crepe, trimmed in Summer ermine. She carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley, a white bible that was used by the bridegroom’s mother and a duchess lace handkerchief that was carried by the bride’s mother. A family dinner followed the ceremony and at 7:30 o’clock in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Hahn left by boat for New York and sailed on Wednesday, January 24, for Bermuda to spent two weeks. On their return they will visit the bridegroom’s parents at their home…for a few days before going to their future home in Baltimore, where they have taken an apartment in Ingraham Hall.

The bridegroom had for his best man his brother, Mr. Arthur Hahn, who is a senior at Yale College. The bridegroom is a graduate of Yale, the class of ’31. ….

Imagine Jacob and Fannie’s pride if they’d lived to see two great-grandsons at Yale. In four generations the family had gone from new immigrants to Ivy League graduates.

But that pride and the joy of the newlywedded couple were soon eclipsed by sadness. Less than a year after the wedding, Harry W. Hahn, Sr., Adelaide’s husband, died “after a long illness” at age 54 on December 8, 1934. He would have turned 55 nine days later. His obituary reported that he had gone to Phillips Exeter Academy, spent a year at Harvard, and graduated from Georgetown University Law School before going into the shoe business established by his father and uncles. He was also active in many civic, business, and charitable organizations.

A few months later the family gathered again to celebrate a wedding, this time for Arthur Hahn, Adelaide and the late Harry Sr.’s younger son. On June 20, 1935, Arthur married Maxine Goodkind in Chicago.⁹  She was the daughter of Abraham Goodkind and Harriet Steele. She and Arthur were only 21 years old when they married.  This wedding did not receive the big write-up in the newspaper that Harry Jr.’s wedding had received eighteen months earlier and was presumably a less elaborate affair, given the recent death of Arthur’s father. The paper did report that they were married at the bride’s home in Chicago and would be returning to Washington where they would live with Arthur’s mother, Adelaide. The paper also reported that Arthur’s mother, his brother Harry Jr., and Harry’s wife Elizabeth also came to Chicago for the wedding.

Once again, the joy of the newlyweds was crushed by another death. On September 30, 1935, just three months after Arthur and Maxine’s wedding, Adelaide Raphael Hahn died from a sudden heart attack after being involved in a three-car accident in Riverdale, Maryland.¹⁰ According to the report in the Washington Evening Star, “[a]fter the accident Mrs. Hahn alighted from her car and talked to the police and the drivers of the other machines. Suddenly she collapsed and fell to the ground. She died shortly after Dr. Martin Keane arrived.”

The article also reported that Adelaide’s new daughter-in-law Maxine was in the car with her at the time as was her “colored maid,” Florence Walker, who suffered a possible fractured pelvis. Maxine and the other two drivers were unharmed. It still floors me every time the blatant racism of those times raises its ugly head. Why comment at all on the race of the maid? No mention was made of anyone else’s race. It is so apparent that those who were not white were considered “the other” and that it was considered totally acceptable for the press to make that distinction.

According to the same article, an autopsy was performed and confirmed that Adelaide had died from a heart attack, not from injuries sustained in the accident itself. The paper also reported that Adelaide had been suffering from a heart condition before the accident, according to her personal physician.

In the space of less than two years, Arthur Hahn and Harry Hahn, Jr. had both experienced the joys of getting married and the heartbreaks of losing both of their parents.

The tragedies suffered by the extended family did not stop there.  Three members of the family died in December, 1936. First, on December 5, 1936, Martha Sondheim Rice, the wife of Sidney Rice, died from lung cancer at age 65; her brother Philip was the informant.

Then four days later on December 9, 1936, Martha’s husband Sidney Rice died at age 63 from a cerebral thrombosis. Once again, Philip Sondheim was the informant. Remember that Philip was not only Martha’s brother, but was also married to Sidney’s sister Jessica. That is, within four days Philip and Jessica each lost a sibling, and those siblings themselves had been husband and wife. Sidney and Martha were truly a couple who were together not only in life but in death.

Six days after Sidney Rice died, the last remaining child of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith, Emma Goldsmith Cohlman, died of an acute intestinal obstruction at age 85 on December 15, 1936. Her nephew Arthur Raphael, Huldah Goldsmith’s son, was the informant on her death certificate. Another nephew, Philip Goldsmith’s son Byron Goldsmith, was the doctor signing the death certificate.

In less than a month, the family had suffered three losses.

There was, however, one happier occasion during 1936. Huldah Goldsmith Raphael’s older son J. Herbert Raphael married Matilda Wishoff, the daughter of two Russian immigrants, Hyman Wishoff and Rebecca Cohen. Matilda was born in Philadephia on September 20, 1909, not long after her parents and older siblings had immigrated; her father was a barber.  When they married, Matilda was 27, Herbert was 54.¹¹

There was one final loss in the 1930s when Harry Goldsmith’s biological son Stanton Loeb Dreifus died on July 11, 1938. He was 53 years old. I don’t know how much, if any, contact he had had with Harry or Harry’s family after his mother remarried in 1901, but as he was my biological relative, I wanted to mark his passing as well. He was survived by his wife and one son. Another son had died as a toddler in 1915.¹²

By 1940, the family must have felt quite devastated by all these losses. But life did go on for those who remained—the seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith  who were still living.  They will be discussed in my next and final post on the descendants of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith.

 

 

 

By 1920, only two of the children of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith were still living, their two oldest children, Caroline and Emma. Caroline was a widow, and Emma was divorced; both were living in Philadelphia. How did these two women, now in their seventies, survive without their husbands? A woman without a husband in the 1920s was unusual. The marriage rate in 1920 was the highest ever—92% of women over 15  were married. How did a divorced or widowed woman cope in those times?That is one part of the story in this post.

Jacob and Fannie were also survived by ten grandchildren: Caroline’s three children (Rena, Sidney, and Jessica); Philip’s three sons whose lives I wrote about here; Harry’s son Stanton, whose story is here; and Huldah’s husband Chapman Raphael and their three children, Herbert, Arthur, and Adelaide. This post will report on what happened to Caroline and Emma and the children of  Caroline and Huldah during the 1920s.

I had a hard time finding both Caroline and Emma on the 1920 census. I finally found Emma listed as Emma Coleman, a misspelling of her ex-husband Abraham Cohlman’s surname. At least I think this is Emma. She was living as a lodger in Philadelphia. The age is correct as is her birthplace of Pennsylvania, but her marital status is single, and the record reports her parents were born in Pennsylvania, when in fact Jacob and Fannie were both born in Germany. My assumption is that someone else in the household answered the enumerator’s questions and did not know where Emma’s parents were born, that she was divorced, or even how she spelled her surname.

As for Caroline, she also eluded me for quite a while because I was searching for a woman who was widowed, not married. But then I found a Caroline Rice married to a Jacob Rice who was a woolens salesman, and the light bulb lit up.

(And yes, that is one of my Abraham Mansbachs living next door; that’s Abraham Mansbach V, who was related by marriage to Caroline; Caroline’s aunt Sarah Goldschmidt was married to Abraham Mansbach II, who was Abraham Mansbach V’s first cousin once removed.)

Nathan Rice, Caroline Goldsmith’s husband who died in 1913, had a brother J.J Rice; that brother had been the master of ceremonies at Rena Rice’s wedding. He had been living with Nathan and Caroline in 1900 when he was a wool salesman¹ and in 1910 when he listed his occupation as a cloth salesman.² In fact, in 1870 when Nathan and Caroline were living in Dubuque, Iowa, with Nathan’s parents, Nathan’s brother, Jacob J. Rice, was living in the household as well.³ In other words, Jacob J. or J.J. Rice had been living with his brother Nathan and sister-in-law Caroline for most if not all of their marriage.

A search of the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Marriage Indexes, 1885-1951, database on FamilySearch confirmed that in fact Jacob J. Rice married Caroline G. Rice in 1915 in Philadelphia.⁴ So Caroline had married her brother-in-law J.J. Rice two years after the death of her husband (and J.J’s brother) Nathan.

In 1920 Caroline’s daughter Rena and her husband Edwin Sternfels were still living in New York City, where Edwin was in advertising.⁵ Caroline’s son Sidney and his wife were living in Philadelphia, and Sidney was also in advertising, working as a traveling salesman. ⁶ Jessica, Caroline’s youngest child, was still living in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her husband Philip Sondheim, the lawyer, and their daughter Ruth, who was now seventeen.⁷

As for Huldah’s children, her younger son Arthur Seligman Raphael and his wife Josephine Isaacs were living in Philadelphia in 1920; Arthur’s father Chapman and older brother Herbert were also part of that household. Arthur was a shoe salesman, and his brother Herbert sold shoe polish. Arthur and Josephine’s son Ross was born on March 10, 1920, in Philadelphia.⁸

Huldah’s daughter Adelaide and her husband Harry Hahn were living with their sons in Washington, DC, in 1920; Harry was still a shoe merchant.⁹

The 1920s were a relatively quiet decade for the family, at least in terms of major lifecycle events.  In 1924, Ruth Sondheim, daughter of Jessica Rice and Philip Sondheim and granddaughter of Caroline Goldsmith Rice, married Adrian Kramer in Brookline, Massachusetts.¹⁰ Adrian’s background is a mystery.   According to his military record from World War I (see below),  and his World War II registration card, ¹¹ he was born in New York City on December 14, 1896. But despite searching in numerous places for all Kramers and all Adrians within two years of that date, and all boys born on that date, I have not found his birth record. Perhaps he was born with a different name.

I also cannot find Adrian on the 1900 census; the first record I have for him is the 1905 New York State census, when he was living on West 88^th Street in the household of Maier Kramer. Adrian was eight years old and listed as Maier’s son, but there was no wife. Also living in the household were six of Maier’s siblings: Sandilla, Joseph, Leo, Eva, David, and Minnie. At first I thought Sandilla or Eva might have been Maier’s wife, but earlier records show that they were in fact his sisters.

The 1910 census also shows the six Kramer siblings living with Adrian on West 88^th Street, but now Adrian is identified as their brother.  That seems like an error—he was fifteen and the youngest of the other “siblings” was thirty. And earlier census records show that Maier’s father was born in about 1837 and his mother was born in 1845; it seems quite unlikely that they had a child in 1896. According to the 1910 census, all of the Kramer siblings were single, except for Sandilla, who was divorced. I can’t find them on the 1920 census, but in both 1930 and 1940, the siblings were still living together, and all were unmarried, except Sandilla, who now reported on both that she was a widow.

So who was Adrian? I don’t know who his parents were, but I do know that he was in the United States Marine Corps during World War I, serving overseas in France from August 26, 1918, until January 13, 1919.

By 1921 he was living in Boston, working as a salesman.¹² And in 1924, he married my cousin Ruth Rice Sondheim. Two years later they had their only child, a daughter named Natalie.¹³

On December 3, 1925, Hulda Goldsmith’s husband Chapman Raphael died in Washington, DC. He was 75 and had been sick for some time.

The last family lifecycle event in the 1920s came on July 10, 1928, when the oldest of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith’s children passed away.  Caroline Goldsmith Rice died from bronchopneumonia at age 79. The informant on the death certificate was her husband/brother-in-law, Jacob J. Rice. And the doctor who signed the death certificate was S. Byron Goldsmith, her nephew and the son of her long-ago deceased brother, Philip Goldsmith. I was heartened to see that Philip’s son had stayed in touch with his father’s family even though he had been taken in and cared for by his mother’s family when his parents were killed in 1896.

Thus, by 1930, Emma Goldsmith Cohlman was the only surviving child of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith. Unfortunately, the 1930s would bring the family more heartbreak.

 

My last post ended by alluding to the mysterious whereabouts of my cousin Harry Goldsmith, the younger son of my three-times great-uncle Jacob Goldsmith.

As I wrote here, in the mid-1880s, Harry had been in the fishing tackle business with his father Jacob, but after 1888, Jacob was in business with his other son Philip, and it was hard to determine Harry’s whereabouts because the number of Harry Goldsmiths and their addresses and occupations on Philadelphia directories between 1889 and 1898 was completely befuddling.

In 1889 there was only one Harry Goldsmith, and he was a tobacco dealer who would be charged with fraud that same year, as I wrote about here.

The 1890¹ Philadelphia directory listed only one Harry Goldsmith, a clerk who was living at 1610 North 12^th Street in Philadelphia. There is no Harry Goldsmith in the 1891 directory, but in 1892 there is one, in the insurance business. ², and in 1894, there were two Harrys, one a salesman and one a clerk,³ and in 1895 there were two Harrys, one a clerk, one a boilermaker.⁴ Then in 1897, there were three Harrys, a printer, a paperhanger, and a salesman,⁵ and in 1898 there were three Harry Goldsmiths once again: a paperhanger, a tobacconist, and a salesman.⁶ Were any of these men my Harry? I am not sure.

In March 1898, according to the Philadelphia Times article describing Rena Rice’s wedding,⁷ my Harry Goldsmith attended his niece Rena’s wedding, appearing on the guest list as a married man: Mr. and Mrs. Harry Goldsmith. But I have had no luck finding a marriage record for Harry before 1898.

And I’ve had no luck finding him with any certainty on the 1900 census. I searched for any Harry Goldsmith born in Pennsylvania between 1848 and 1868 (my Harry was born in 1858), and I found only four men fitting those parameters on the 1900 census. The first was a printer living in Philadelphia, unmarried, and born in 1862 to English-born parents.⁸ The second was living in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and working as a house painter; he was married to a woman named Jennie and was born in 1863. His parents were both born in Pennsylvania.⁹

The third Harry Goldsmith also had Pennsylvania-born parents, was living in Everett, Pennsylvania, and working as a clothing merchant. He had a wife named Annie and a two-year-old son named Robert. He was born in 1868.¹⁰  The fourth Harry Goldsmith was a farmer living in Evesham, New Jersey; he was married to a woman named Marianna, and he was born in 1856. His parents were also born in Pennsylvania.¹¹

None of those four fits my Harry, whose parents were born in Germany. And when I followed up on these four Harrys in other records, it was clear that none of them was my Harry.

But there was a fifth Harry Goldsmith on the 1900 census who might be my cousin. He was born the same year as my Harry, in July, 1858, was living on North 63^rd Street in Philadelphia in 1900, was married to a woman named Florence, and had two children, a fifteen-year-old son Stanton and an eight year old daughter Janet. At first I was excited, thinking that “Janet” could have been the “Jeanette” who was the flower girl at Rena’s wedding. The matching year of birth and the fact that he lived in Philadelphia also made me think this might be my Harry. If this was my Harry, then he was the Harry Goldsmith who was in the tobacco business because in the 1899 and 1900 Philadelphia directories, the Harry Goldsmith who was a tobacconist lived on North 63^rd Street, just like the Harry Goldsmith married to Florence on the 1900 census.¹²

But according to the above census record, the Harry Goldsmith married to Florence was born in Germany and only came to the US in 1885; he’d been married sixteen years, meaning he had immigrated with his wife whom he’d married in 1884. My Harry was most definitely born in Philadelphia in about 1858. Despite this inconsistency, I was still leaning towards thinking that this was my Harry.

The Harry Goldsmith who was married to Florence on the 1900 census was sued for divorce in 1901. Maybe this was the Harry who went bankrupt, leading to the dissolution of his marriage?

 

If my Harry was the one married to Florence, what happened to him, and what happened to his children, Stanton and Janet, after the divorce?

The name of his son—Stanton Goldsmith—struck me as an unusual enough name that he would be easy to find. But alas, he was not. I could not find any records for a Stanton Goldsmith other than that 1900 census record and a birth record in the Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1790-1950 database on FamilySearch, showing his birth date of March 13, 1885, and parents Harry and Florence L. Goldsmith.

So I searched for any “Stanton” born in Philadelphia in 1885, and records for a Stanton Loeb Dreifus popped up.¹³ A few more clicks around Ancestry and FamilySearch, and I learned that Florence, Harry’s former wife, was born Florence Loeb, daughter of Joseph and Sophie Loeb. Her father Joseph had been in the tobacco business, just as  Harry had been.¹⁴

So where did the surname Dreifus come from? Why was Stanton using that name? Well, Florence remarried pretty quickly after her divorce from Harry. On July 17, 1901, she married Emanuel Dreifus in New York City.¹⁵

If you look back at the 1900 census for Harry Goldsmith above, you will notice that living with Harry, Florence, and their children was a boarder named….you guessed it….Emanuel Dreifus. And it seems that not only did Emanuel take Harry’s wife, he took his children as well and they adopted his surname.

Tragically, little Janet died from endocarditis on April 28, 1902, less than a year after her mother remarried. She was only ten years old. Her death record recorded her name as Janet Dreifus and her parents’ names as Emanuel and Florence.

The death notice in the Philadelphia Inquirer did not mention Harry Goldsmith; instead it identified Emanuel Dreifus as her father. It would appear that Harry was no longer a part of his children’s lives. Emanuel may have even adopted them.

But was this Harry Goldsmith my cousin? Was he the one married to Florence on the 1900 census? Was the 1900 census wrong in saying he was born in Germany and had just immigrated to the US in 1885? What do you think?

I think he was. I found one final clue that convinced me. I reviewed the list of those who attended Rena Rice’s 1898 wedding,¹⁶ and this time a new name jumped out at me: Mrs. Sophie Loeb. That had to be Florence Loeb’s mother, Harry Goldsmith’s mother-in-law.  Florence’s father Joseph had died in 1895, so Sophie would have attended alone.¹⁶

The Harry Goldsmith who’d been married to Florence Loeb and who had had two children, Stanton and Janet, was, I believe, my cousin. In 1900, he was a married man with two children working as a tobacconist. By 1901, he was divorced, and his wife had remarried and given his children the name of her second husband, a man who had been boarding in Harry’s home in 1900.

Do you think I am right? Please let me know in the comments.

As for what happened to Harry after his divorce in 1901—well, that created a whole other set of research puzzles.

To be continued…..

UPDATE! Thank you to everyone who provided feedback and questions on this post.  I am especially grateful to Renee Stern Steinig, who many of you may recall was my mentor and my inspiration when I first started doing family history research about five years ago.  I shared this post on Facebook, and Randy Schoenberg saw it and suggested that I also share it on the Jewish Genealogy Portal on Facebook. So I did, and within half an hour, Renee saw it and found the article below that somehow despite all my searching, I had missed, probably because Harry is called Henry here.  Now I know for sure that the Harry Goldsmith who was married to Florence Loeb was in fact my cousin.  The big clue—-Rena Rice was one of the maids of honor!

 

Two years after the tragic deaths of Philip and Nellie (Buxbaum) Goldsmith, the family of Jacob and Fannie Goldsmith had an opportunity for a joyful celebration. On March 9, 1898, Jacob and Fannie’s oldest grandchild, Rena Rice, daughter of Nathan and Caroline (Goldsmith) Rice, was married to Edwin Sternfels in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Times provided a detailed report of the festivities:¹

One of the most important of the many weddings which have taken place this winter was performed after the rites of the Jewish faith last night in the New Mercantile Hall…. It was the wedding of Miss Rena G. Rice, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Rice [Caroline Goldsmith], to Edwin Sternfels, of New York.

The guests assembled in the hall and there awaited the entrance of the bridal party. At the hour appointed, to the ever-new strains of the “Lohengrin” Wedding March, played by the orchestra, which was hidden behind the bank of bay trees, palms and exotics of every description, the bridal party entered the hall and moved slowly forward to the dais which had been erected just in front of the stage.

The master of ceremonies, J.J. Rice, led, followed by the ushers….[including] Sid G. Rice [brother of the bride]…of this city, following them coming the groom upon the arm of his mother and then the bride, dressed in a white satin gown, trimmed with duchesse lace, with diamond ornaments, and carrying the bridal Bible and lilies of the valley, upon the arm of her father.

….

Upon reaching the dais, around which was banked bay trees and palms, while overhead a canopy of exquisite beauty was made with festoons of asparagus vine studded with carnations, they stepped upon this platform, where the rabbi was standing, and the ceremony was performed which made them man and wife.

…

Following the ceremony a wedding feast was served, followed in turn by a reception and dance in honor of the happy couple.

The article concluded with a very lengthy list of some of those who attended the wedding. Among those listed were the following of my relatives:

Mr. and Mrs. A. Coleman: Emma Goldsmith and her husband Abraham Cohlman (typo in the article); Emma was Rena’s aunt, Jacob’s daughter.

Mr. and Mrs. A. Goldsmith: Abraham Goldsmith, Jacob Goldsmith’s brother, Rena’s great-uncle, and my three-times great-uncle

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Goldsmith: Harry was Jacob’s son and Rena’s uncle

Martin Goldsmith: I think this might be another typo and should be Milton Goldsmith, Abraham Goldsmith’s son and Rena’s first cousin, once removed.  I have no record of a Martin Goldsmith.

Mrs. Fannie Goldsmith: Rena’s grandmother and Jacob Goldsmith’s widow.

Byron Goldsmith, Herbert Goldsmith, and Jerome Goldsmith: the orphaned sons of Philip and Nellie Goldsmith and Rena’s first cousins.

Jeannette Goldsmith: named as the flower girl, so presumably a child, but I’ve yet to find her. A mystery to be solved.

Mrs. I. Levy: Hannah Goldsmith, Jacob Goldsmith’s daughter and Rena’s aunt

Mrs. S. Mansbach: Sarah Goldschmidt Mansbach, Jacob Goldsmith’s sister and Rena’s great-aunt

Julius Mansbach: Rena’s first cousin, once removed, and son of Sarah Goldschmidt Mansbach

The Messrs. Raphael and the Misses Raphael: the family of Hulda Goldsmith Raphael, Jacob Goldsmith’s daughter and aunt of the bride

S.G. Rice: the bride’s brother Sidney Goldsmith Rice

In addition, although not included on the list of those attending, Jessie G. Rice, the bride’s sister, was named in the article as the maid of honor.

This was obviously quite an expensive affair, evidence of the prosperity of Nathan and Caroline (Goldsmith) Rice. According to the 1900 census, Nathan was still in the clothing business in Philadelphia, and he owned his house free of any mortgage. His son Sidney was “mostly” employed in the lithography business; he was now 27 years old. Also living with Nathan and Caroline in addition to Sidney and their youngest child Jessie was Nathan’s brother, Jacob J. Rice (presumably the master of ceremonies named as J.J Rice in the wedding article), Caroline’s widowed mother, Fannie Goldsmith, and two servants.

Caroline’s sister Emma and her husband Abraham Cohlman were also living in Philadelphia in 1900 where Abraham was employed as a salesman; their home was subject to a mortgage. They had no children, but two boarders were living with them.²

A third sibling, Hulda Goldsmith Raphael, was also living in Philadelphia, along with her husband Chapman Raphael and their three children. Chapman was in the wholesale liquor business, and their home was rented. They also had a servant living with them.³

One sibling had left Philadelphia. Hannah and her husband Isaac Levy were living in Circleville, Ohio, a small town of about 6000 people about 30 miles south of Columbus, Ohio, the closest city of any size. What were they doing there and when had they arrived? On the wedding guest list for Rena’s 1898 wedding as reported in The Philadelphia Times, Hannah was reported as Mrs. I. Levy of Circleville, Ohio, so she and Isaac were already living in Ohio by that time. On the 1900 census, Isaac had no occupation listed, but they did own their own home there, free of a mortgage.[^4}

 

But why Circleville, Ohio? I did find an unmarried man named Isaac Levy on the 1880 census living in Circleville and working in the clothing business, but he was born in France. Was this the Isaac Levy who married Hannah Goldsmith in Philadelphia twelve years later?⁴

Was the 1880 census just in error in naming his birthplace as France? As I wrote in my earlier post, Isaac Levy is such a common name that I can’t seem to narrow down the possibilities to learn more about the Isaac Levy who married Hannah Goldsmith. Unfortunately, Circleville is so small that I can’t even find directories or newspapers to search.

The other sibling whose 1900 whereabouts are somewhat mysterious is Harry Goldsmith. That is a subject for another post. Or another few.