Hettie’s Spirit Lives On: Her Children Walter and Blanche

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Amy

In my last two posts about Hettie Schoenthal, I was very fortunate because Hettie and her son Walter had written down their own memories and stories, making their lives so much more vivid and authentic than I could have ever done myself. The wonderful photographs that their family provided also helped me tell the story of Hettie Schoenthal, her husband Henry Stein, and their two children, Walter and Blanche.

Hettie Schoenthal, 1906
Courtesy of her family

It was a reminder of how important it is for all of us to write about our own lives and to take and preserve photographs so that someday our descendants will benefit from these shared words. My newly discovered cousin Sharon Lippincott, daughter-in-law of Blanche Stein Lippincott, writes about the art of writing memoirs at her blog, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, and has also published books on that subject.

In this post, I hope to convey how Hettie’s optimistic and energetic personality left its mark on her two children, both of whom also lived long and happy lives and were well-loved by many. All photos are courtesy of their family.

Hettie and Henry had moved east from Arizona to Philadelphia in 1924, and a few years later their son Walter left home and moved to Atlantic City to work in his aunt’s hotel there, as seen on the 1930 census. Walter remained in the Atlantic City area for the rest of his life, working in a restaurant and as a salesman over the years. He married Ruth Levaur in 1938, and they had one daughter.

His sister Blanche also married in the 1930s, marrying Ezra Parvin Lippincott in 1937. Ezra was a New Jersey native and a graduate of Rutgers University, and he worked as a banker and in the insurance business. They lived in New Jersey and had two children, a son and a daughter. Sadly, Ezra died in 1969, leaving Blanche as a widow at only 57.

Blanche Stein Lippincott, 1938

Blanche Stein Lippincott 1962

I don’t have a lot of “official” records about Walter or Blanche after 1940, but I don’t need them to convey the character and personality of these two people. Other people have already written about them both.

Both Walter and Blanche must have inherited their mother’s gene for longevity. Walter died in 2007 at age 96, and Blanche died in 2013 when she was 101 years old.

Walter Stein in Atlantic City, 1987
courtesy of the family

Walter’s obituary from the Press of Atlantic City gives a vivid portrait of the man who spent his childhood with burros and snakes in Ray, Arizona:

Walter was born in Tucson, Territory of Arizona on October 9, 1910. He was recognized as a pioneer. He spent his childhood in Ray, Arizona in a mining camp and took pleasure in saying that his boyhood was what every boy dreams of. The family moved to Philadelphia in 1923, where Walter graduated from high school. In 1929 he went to Atlantic City for a vacation and never left the area except for four years. He met and married Ruth Levaur in 1938. They recently celebrated their 68th anniversary.

Walter was a fine fisherman, a championship bowler and a prize-winning marksman. He served on many boards, but his favorite was the 23 years he served on the Board of Friends of the (PAC) Performing Arts Center of Stockton College. Walter had a deep love of the theater. Some of his happiest moments were spent with Ruth and friends at the Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Ballet, the theater and museums. He was Vice President of Atlantic Beverage for 35 years. ….

Walter was loved and respected by all who knew him. His sense of humor, his positive spirit and generous nature placed him in a class by himself. He was often referred to as a man of all seasons, and he truly was.

Walter and Ruth Stein, 2002 at Blanche’s 90th birthday celebration

Blanche also seems to have inherited her mother’s optimistic and adventurous spirit; her daughter-in-law Sharon wrote this about her on her blog on the occasion of Blanche’s 100^th birthday:

Blanche was born 100 years ago in Tucson, in the newly admitted state of Arizona. Her family soon moved to Ray, Arizona, a now deserted copper mining community, where they lived until she was about twelve. When the copper industry declined, her parents, along with a few aunts and uncles, decided to move back to Philadelphia. ….

If you asked her, she’d tell you she has had a rather ordinary life, and so it may seem to some. She’s never done anything truly flamboyant. She hasn’t set records, started a business, or written a best-seller. But she has tackled life with gusto, always open to new adventures and experiences. ….

Perhaps her most important attribute is her devotion to family, friends and community. …. No family member or friend ever has to ask for help – things are taken care of, often before the need is recognized. She always has something good to say about anyone she speaks of, and she excels at showing gratitude and appreciation. …

I could not ask for a sweeter, more supportive and helpful mother-in-law, nor is anyone prouder than she of her two children and their spouses, her five grandchildren and their spouses, and her six great-grandchildren. She is the most optimistic person I know, and should I live to be 100, I hope I’ll be as vital and involved as she continues to be.

Blanche Stein Lippincott, 1984

Blanche Stein Lippincott with her great-granddaughter 1996

You can read the rest of Sharon’s tribute to her mother-in-law Blanche at her blog here.

I feel very privileged to be even distantly related to Hettie and her children, who were, respectively, my first cousin, twice removed (my grandmother’s first cousin) and my second cousins, once removed (my father’s second cousins). It’s just too bad that I missed the opportunity to know them in person, given how long and how close by they all lived.

Blanche and Walter, August 9, 2006
courtesy of the family

Blanche, Hettie, and Walter Stein

This post completes my research of the family of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach and their many children. This has been a line of the family that has been a joy to research. Although there were a few sad stories, this was a family of people who lived long lives and seemed to enjoy those lives. They stayed close to one another even though at times they were separated by long distances. And most of them spent much of their lives close to their childhood hometown of Atlantic City, New Jersey, once called the World’s Playground.

Unfortunately, the next chapter—the story of Simon’s brother Jakob and his family—is not as joyful.

Part II: Hettie Schoenthal, An Indomitable Spirit

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Amy

In my prior post, we saw how Hettie Schoenthal Stein described the early part of her life in the memoirs she wrote to her grandson Ezra Parvin Lippincott, Jr., in 1973 and 1974. After a childhood in Atlantic City with her many siblings, she had followed her sister Gertrude to Tucson, Arizona, married Henry Stein, and then moved with him and their two children Walter and Blanche to Ray, Arizona, a mining town over ninety miles from Tucson.

Walter and Blanche Stein, c. 1915
courtesy of their family

The FamilySearch.org website provided these insights into what might have attracted Hettie and Henry to Ray, Arizona:

The small town of Ray, Arizona, located in the south central portion of Pinal County, was founded in 1870. By 1873, prospectors were engaged in silver mining and by 1880 high grade copper ore was being mined in Ray. The original founders were most likely a group of copper miners operating a small mine in this copper rich area. One of the miners, Mr. Bullinger, is said to have named the town Ray, after his daughter, Ray Bullinger. By 1909 The Arizona Hercules Copper Company had purchased the rights to the mine and constructed the town as a company town. The mining operation in Ray enjoyed a worldwide reputation because of the innovative mining practices employed in the underground mine.

Ray, Arizona copper mine y Palmercokingcoal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Ray, Arizona copper mine 1916
y Palmercokingcoal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The FamilySearch page also conveys a sense of what life was like in Ray in the early 20th century:

The original town of Ray consisted of one short main street with small businesses on both sides of the street. By 1909 the company had constructed a hospital and there are birth certificates from the hospital that date back to 1910. There was usually a doctor in Ray and the hospital employed at least 3 nurses and a cook according to Census Records. … The elementary school (Lincoln Elementary) had grades 1 through 8 in eight classrooms. …. Ray High School was a short walk uphill from the elementary school. …. Ray didn’t have a newspaper, but people in the small town subscribed to The Arizona Republic, a newspaper in Phoenix. Ray had four churches….

Obviously, Ray was a booming town by the time Hettie and Henry moved there in the mid-1910s or so.

Ray, Arizona 1916 By Palmercokingcoal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Ray, Arizona 1916
By Palmercokingcoal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Walter, their son, wrote about his own perspective on the town and his family’s life there:

To my knowledge the Steins and Millers were the only Jews living in Ray. My uncle Jake [Jacob Miller, Gertrude Schoenthal’s husband] and his brother, also called Uncle, had a dry goods and shoe store, and a general merchandise and grocery store. The general merchandise had hardware, mining equipment, farm equipment, guns, and shells. My dad ran the bakery and delivery of bread and pastries from a wagon, pulled by a horse (named Tom). One day my dad stopped for lunch at home with the bakery wagon. While he was having lunch, something frightened Tom and he bolted. There were bakery products all over the neighborhood. Tom was caught and calmed. Tom was not hurt.

My cousin (Harry) [Gertrude Schoenthal Miller’s son] used to spend the summer in Ray. He lived in Tucson and went to school there. While in Ray, Harry worked in the store. His job was to solicit orders at the houses in the residential sections of Ray. This was done on horseback.

The big event at the grocery store was uploading one hundred pound bags of flour, sugar, and salt that were skidded into the cellar on a slide. Lots of fun! We kids rode on the bags.

(From “Recollections,” by Walter Stein.)

From this excerpt, I get the impression, consistent with what I wrote about here, that Jacob Miller had moved to Ray, but left his wife Gertrude and family behind, perhaps so that his children could continue to go to school in Tucson.

Ray, Arizona 1916
By Palmercokingcoal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Walter’s description of his boyhood in Ray in many ways sounds idyllic:

I got in the swing of things, with friends I had made. Rode burros, mules, and spent plenty of time in the ball park. The burros ran loose, so you could grab one and jump on his back. If the burro was inclined to go, it was fine. If not, the burro would not move.

The mules were used at the copper mines. My friend Joe Garcia (his father took care of the mules) and I would go to the corral. One of us would bring one of the mules over to the side of the corral. The other one would climb up the side of the corral as the mules were too big for us to get on.

One thing that was standard at every house we lived in in Ray was a chicken coop with two to three dozen chickens and one or two roosters. Of course it does not take too many guesses as to who was assigned the care, feeding, and cleaning of the coop. Also a couple of rabbits and a dog (pedigree unknown).

(From “Recollections,” by Walter Stein.)

Walter Stein, c. 1919 when he was nine years old
courtesy of the family

Blanche Stein, c. 1920, when she was seven
courtesy of the family

From Walter’s perspective, it was wonderful place to grow up, but their life in Ray had some challenges. Walter described their two homes in Ray:

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.

We didn’t live there very long. Our next house was in back of the ball park. This house had both front and back doors. Standard out house. No bathroom. After we had lived there a short time, Dad had a bathroom built. Still must use out house. Bathroom contained washstand and tub. In summer to bathe, one ran water into tub, and then waited for the water to cool. The water pipes from the reservoir laid on top of the ground and the sun heated the water too hot to bathe until it cooled.

(From “Recollections,” by Walter Stein.)



Embed from Getty Images

Hettie[1] had less fond memories of their house in Ray:

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.

Hettie leading a donkey

The accommodations were not the only challenges. The wildlife and the weather also provided challenges. Hettie recalled:

One day I was stung by a wasp and another time a Scorpin this happened in Ray Ariz. We lived up on a hill. We had a few chickens and it was so hot some time when I gathered they were hard boiled and this is (no joke)

Once I remember I came across some eggs in a nest and I took them and put them in the ice box. In those days we had to buy ice. A little later on I opened one egg and found a little chicken so I hurried and put the others back in the nest and a few hatched and I called them my ice box chicks. …

I learned to ride horseback. One day my brother Maurice took me riding. We rode to the Mission that was about ten miles out of town and a big rattle snake got in front of my horse, so my bro. got down from his horse and stoned it to death and had a belt made for me. It was very pretty.

English: Arizona Black Rattlesnake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I found it interesting that Maurice, one of the brothers who lived in Chicago, traveled out to Ray, Arizona, to see his little sister Hettie. It seems that even though the siblings were quite spread out across the US, they still stayed in touch and even saw each other. Hettie also mentioned that in 1969 she visited her brother who lived in Los Angeles, that is, her younger brother Sidney. And here is a photograph of her brother Martin with his niece Juliet Miller and nephew Walter Stein, possibly taken in Arizona when he visited from Chicago.

Martin Schoenthal, Juliet Miller Ferrin, and Walter Stein

Here is Martin with Blanche, Gertrude, Hettie, and Walter.

Martin Schoenthal, Gertrude Sch., Hettie Sch Blanche Walter

Blanche Stein, Martin Schoenthal, Gertude Schoenthal Miller, Hettie Schoenthal Stein, and Walter Stein c. early 1920s

One of the most amusing anecdotes Hettie shared in her memoirs involved the time her son Walter had to have surgery in Phoenix and she rented a room to stay with him while he had post-operative care:

After Walter got out of the Hospital I thought it would be nice if I could get a little apt near the Hospital as he had to go for treatments. Then I could have Blanche with me, so I found one. It had all new linens and silver and looked so nice. Your grandfather [Henry Stein] brought your mother [Blanche] up that weekend and the next day he was walking in the hall and a girl invited him in her apt. Then when he came in he said what kind of place I was in. Well, I was in a fast house. The first day I was there when Walter and I came out of the apt a couple of men smiled at me and I thought it was just because Walter’s head was bandaged. In the west people were very friendly. A lot of people asked me what happened to the boy and wished for a speady recovery. I moved out of there in a hurry.

Poor Hettie—she must have been mortified to realize she had taken her son to a “house of ill repute!”

In either 1923 or 1924 (various sources differ), Hettie, Henry, and their children left Ray, Arizona.[2] This was also when Gertrude and her family left Arizona to return to Atlantic City, as I wrote about here. Hettie’s description of their travels is colorful:

Now it is March 24, 1924 we are leaving the west to make our home in Phila. My brother-in-law [Jacob Miller] and your grandfather [Henry Stein] were driving to Phila. I forget what city it was but they put the car in a garage and it caught fire and every body lost there cars.

They had to take the train the rest of the way. When they arrived in Phila, they phoned us. We left the next day and a couple days later we had one stop over for one hour so my sister Gertie, your mother [Blanche] who at that time was about 12 years old and Walter took a walk. We were crossing the street when a car came along and I was run over. It was like in the movies. I was down and before you knew it I was up. All I could say is Thank God I am O.K. one wheel ran over my thigh. This man wanted to take me to the hospital but I said no. I think he gave me a card with his name and address on so in case I had any ill affects from it I should let him know. When we got to Chicago my two brothers [Maurice and Martin] wanted me to go to the hospital but I said I am O.K. I know God was with me.

(Perhaps the photographs of Martin with Gertrude and Hettie, shown above, were taken when the families stopped in Chicago.)

A few things struck me as interesting about this passage. First, I was impressed by the fact that Gertrude and Hettie traveled alone by train with their children across the country while their husbands waited for them on the East Coast. Also, once again there is evidence that these widely separated siblings stayed close, as Maurice and Martin, the two brothers in Chicago, urged their younger sister to go to the hospital. But mostly I was struck by Hettie’s spirit, which seemed as resilient as her body, jumping up after being run over by a car.

Once they reached the East Coast, Gertrude went on to Atlantic City where she and Jacob became involved in the hotel business. Hettie and Henry settled in Camden, New Jersey, and then in Philadelphia:

My sister husband and your Grand father bought a moving picture house in Camden N.J. we had that for a while then sold it and moved to Holmesburg Pa. that is part of Phila. I was the cashier, your grandfather was the ticket taker and your uncle Walter helped the operator. We all got along nicely.

I had lots of fun. There were three German men who came most every night so one night I said in german do you speak german? Well you should have heard them. I made them understand I only knew a few words but my husband understood better. They told me they came to learn the English language.

Hettie, the daughter of two German immigrants, knew only a few words of German. In some ways, that is rather remarkable as it indicates how fluent her parents were in English. But it is also somewhat sad that they did not pass on to their children the language of their native country.

Blanche Stein, high school graduation picture. Courtesy of the family

In 1930, Henry was working as a hosiery salesman. Walter was living with his aunt and uncle, Gertrude and Jacob Miller, and working in their hotel as a bellman. Blanche was still living at home in Philadelphia, working as a typist.

Blanche Stein and Hettie Schoenthal Stein, 1930, Mayfair, PA
courtesy of the family

By 1940 Blanche and Walter had both married (more on that in my next post), and Hettie and Henry were living in Philadelphia. Henry was now an office equipment salesman.

Henry Stein
Courtesy of the family

Around this time, Hettie’s nephew Bob Klein, son of her sister Estelle and Leon Klein, came to live with them.

We had a five room apt. My nephew Bob Klein lived with us. I loved to paint so I did all the painting when I got the brush in my hand there was not telling where I would stop. I painted the toilet seat and forgot to put a sign on and Bob sat down you can guess the rest.

During World War II, Hettie volunteered for the Allied Prisoner of War Service. While doing so, she made connections that led to a home-based business for her:

In Phila I volunteered one day a week for the Allied Prisoner of War Service that was in 1944 we shipped food to the War Zone. We had to show a card before we were admitted. One day one of the ladies asked me what I was to to do after we finish work so I said I am going to go get some yarn to make a wooley dog so they wanted to see them so the next week I took a couple in and they wanted to buy them so I realy got in business. Then your grandfather told one of his customers*, a florist, about my dogs. He wanted to see them, so I took six with me. He liked them so much he bought them and put them in the window. Some sailors came along and bought all six. I no more than got home when the phone rang and it was Mr. Jones. He said the dogs were gone and he would like to have 50 at once. I stayed up all night and took him what I had made the next day.

A salesman from Chicago saw them at the Florist and wanted to know how he could get in touch with me. He came to see me and ordered all I could make I had my sister Estelle and your mother and your grandpa helping and I sent him as many as I could. Then I had others that wanted them for there stores, my business got to big for me. I had to drop it.

Sadly, Henry Stein died on February 16, 1951, from prostate cancer; he was 79 years old.

Henry and Hettie (Schoenthal) Stein, 1951
courtesy of the family

After he died, Hettie lived for some time with a friend and for many years on her own in Atlantic City. She continued to have a very full and active life, as you can see from these photographs.

Hettie Stein, 75th birthday April 24, 1961
courtesy of the family

Hettie Schoenthal Stein, 85th birthday 1971

Even at 88, she was still volunteering for her synagogue’s rummage sale.

Hettie Stein’s 90th birthday 1976 with Blanche and Walter. Courtesy of the family.

When she was 95, Hettie moved in with her daughter Blanche in Medford, New Jersey. When Hettie turned 100, it was written up in the May 8, issue of the Central Record, the local newspaper for Medford, New Jersey:

Reading this interview warmed my heart. Even at 100, Hettie remained upbeat, gracious, and independent. Her description of her childhood—“We were one happy family. We would all do for the other, and we all got along nicely”–is certainly consistent with the photographs, the writings, and the facts I’ve seen and read about Hettie and her siblings.

Hettie survived her much beloved husband Henry by almost 38 years, dying on January 15, 1989, when she was just a few months shy of her 103^rd birthday. She, like so many of her siblings, was blessed with remarkable longevity.

I will close this post with the closing words of Hettie’s 1974 memoir, as they best convey the spirit and personality of this adventurous and upbeat woman:

Well, this all happened in my life time. I did have two men that wanted to marry me and two weeks ago the third one asked me. I was walking on the Boardwalk and a man I met about ten years ago came up to me and said, “Can I walk with you?” So I said yes. I knew his wife. She passed away a year ago. He wanted me to go to his apt for dinner. He had made a lamb stew. I thanked him and said my dinner was waiting for me. We talked for awhile and then he asked me if I would marry him. He has money, two sons, one a Dr., the other a Dentist and he is very good looking. But I am happy as I am.

I must tell you, I was getting some telephone calls from some man or boy. He kept telling me he wanted to come see me and give me some loving and I would hang up. On Sat. morning my son Walter took me shopping and when we came home the phone rang and it was the same person. I said wait, and I will let you talk to my husband. He hung up in a hurry and that was the end of that.

Two day is the 4th of July, 1974. A beautiful day. Your Ma [Blanche] called me. I am so happy she is enjoying life.

[1] All of the quotes by Hettie Schoenthal Stein are from her memoir, “This is My Life,” written in 1973-1974 for her grandson, Ezra Parvin Lippincott, Jr.

[2] In the 1950s, the company that owned the copper mine in Ray expanded the mining area and moved the residents to a nearby town it built. Today Ray is a ghost town.

Hettie Schoenthal, An Indomitable Spirit: Part I

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Amy

With the next few posts I will finally complete the stories of the children of Simon Schoenthal, brother of my great-grandfather Isidore. These next few posts will be about Hettie Schoenthal Stein, the third youngest child and second youngest daughter of Simon and Rose.

Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

In many ways I have saved the best for last because I was very fortunate to connect with Hettie’s grandson’s family, and they shared with me a number of photographs plus a memoir written by Hettie herself as well as an essay of memories written by her son Walter. Some of those photographs and a bit of the memoir have already been included in earlier posts—with the family’s permission. Hettie was almost ninety years old when she wrote her life story to share with her grandson. I have kept the phrasing and spelling just as Hettie wrote it in 1973 and 1974. All excerpts attributed to Hettie are from her memoir, “This is My Life.”

Hettie was born in Philadelphia on April 24, 1886, the eighth child of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach. As Hettie tells it:

I was born and they named me Hettie Schoenthal in 1886, a tiney little girl weighing 8 ½ pounds. I was only two weeks old when Mother and I were taken to Wills Eye Hospital in Phila where Mother had an eye operation. My oldest sister [Gertrude] told me this story. She said I was such a good and pretty baby the Superviser wanted to adopt me as Mother only had seven more at home, then later on two more came along. There were six boy and four girls. The first were twins.

According to Hettie, the family left Philadelphia when she was five or in about 1891 for Atlantic City. She described her childhood there:

I will tell you a little about my school days. I wish I had a picture of the school—it still looks the same as it did 85 years ago. I must tell you about the boy who sat in back of me. We liked each other. One day the teacher caught me turning around talking so she sent me to the coat room. When it was time for me to come out, she sent Frank in and I kissed him. I had a good time in there I played ball with the hats and tried on the coats.

They were the good old days.

I did not like school and I am sorry to say I did not go through high school but I am very happy and proud all my grandchildren are graduates of college. …

We had a big St. Bernard dog and I loved to take him on the beach. We would walk near the water. I made lots of friends both boys and girls.

Not all of Hettie’s memories were as pleasant:

I must tell you when I was seven or eight years old my sister was baking a cake and our maid said “Miss Gertie, you spilled some flour,” so I ran to get my little broom. When my sister came from the stove with boiling milk, I ran into her and was scalted very badely. I still have the scar. My hair covers it. I was lucky it did not go in my eye.

But that incident had some benefits:

My father was a strick man. He thought everything my mother cooked we should eat and I remember we had some sweet and sour beans. I would not eat them. I had a little apron on with a pocket and the beans landed in there. My dad happened to see me do it. He came over to my side of the table, took me by the hand, lead me in the other room, my panties came down, and the hand went to work. It was not to bad. I was the pet of the family because of my accident with the milk.

Clearly, Hettie was a spirited child.

Hettie also shared this story, which occurred when she was about twelve years old or in 1898:

One day I was walking on the Boardwalk and a photographer came along and wanted to take my picture so he did. Then Mr. Persky the Artist saw it and wanted to make a painting. It realey was beautiful it had a very expensive frame. It was put on display in a furniture store window. I was passing and I saw a crowd. I got way up front and some man said, “Here is the kid now.” My parents were able to buy it. It hung in our home for many years.

Fortunately, among the photographs I received from Hettie’s family was the one described above:

Hettie Schoenthal, c. 1898

No wonder the photographer was taken with her! Hettie’s adventurous spirit is revealed in this anecdote from about 1903 when she was a teenager:

Now I think I am around 16 or 17 years old. I liked this boy very much. His name was Roy Willis. He wanted me to elope with him, so I would meet him around the corner. One night he had to work late, so I went for a walk and I met a boy who lived near us and he daired me to go on the Pier with him. So I went and Roy caught up to us and was very mad. The next day he and my brother Martin were going on vacation up in the mountain. He did not say good by. A few days later I got a post card with a picture of a fellow falling off of a horse saying I went off so suddenly he did not sign his name but did after he returned.

Hettie Schoenthal, 1906, about 20 years old
Courtesy of her family

In 1898, Hettie’s older sister Gertrude had married Jacob J. Miller and had moved soon thereafter to Tucson, Arizona. When she was about twenty years old or around 1906, Hettie followed her big sister to Tucson. It must have been quite a shock for a girl who had grown up in the urban environment of Atlantic City. Their house in Tucson “had a big screen porch and we slept out there most of the time and we would hear a coyot and sometimes we would smell a skunk.”

But Hettie seemed quite happy and had an active social life:

There were quite a few young folks in Tucson and I was having a good time horseback riding, card parties and Picnics. Two of the men were very nice to me. They wanted to date me every night. One was a traveling salesman and had to be out of town some time so Henry Stein was the winner. That summer it was very hot in Tucson so we went up to the mountains to a place called Orical. The hotel was run by an American Indian and his wife.

We had one very large room with four beds. When we went to bed the first night we saw a big Tarantular. That is a great big black spider on the ceiling. We were afraid for all of us to go to sleep so my sister and I took turns watching it. We had very little sleep.

On Sunday Henry and my sister’s husband drove up to see us and had dinner with us. Well we had a good dinner but I said the chicken tasted different. I found out later it was rabbit. I got so I liked Henry much better but I did not know if I loved him. He asked me to marry him but I thought he was so much older than I. There was 15 years difference. I came back to Atlantic City. After awhile I got restless, then my sister’s husband came east on a business trip and I was again for the west. I loved to travel.

Henry Stein and Hettie Schoenthal 1907
courtesy of their family

Hettie also shared this story of her return to Atlantic City:

I must tell you, one day in Tucson Ariz, I think it was 1908, a girl from Phila and I went horse back riding. My horse belonged to our neighbor. I had ridden him many times and never had any trouble, but this time I don’t know if he got scared or what, but he tried to throw me. I stayed on him as long as I could. A man came along and told me I had better get off. I believe this girl’s name was Lena. One day she said “I am going back to Phila,” so I got restless so I said, “I will go with you.” So I got ready.

In those days it took 4 or 5 days by train. It had a Pullman car and the chairs were very comfortable. We met two very nice gentlemen. They wanted to treat us to a drink. We did not drink the kind they did. We had root beer. The one I liked best had a pretty red tie on. I admired it, so the next day when I saw him, he had a package for me. Guess what was in it? The red tie. That night I put on a white blouse and had the tie on. When they came in the dining car they got the next table to us. He said it looked better on me. Then he told me his wife made it. I said maybe I had better give it back and he said no. When we were getting near Phila he wanted my address. I told him I did not go with married men.

This photograph of Hettie with three of her siblings must have been taken during that return to Atlantic City in 1908 (love the wild hairstyles):

Hettie Schoenthal and her siblings, 1908 Atlantic City. Estelle, Martin, and Maurice?

Hettie Schoenthal and others—I think Sidney, Hettie, Estelle, and Jacob. Atlantic City 1908 Courtesy of the family

Hettie must have returned to Arizona from the East not long after, and when she did, she seemed to have gotten over the fifteen year age difference between herself and Henry Stein:

Marriage license notice for Hettie Schoenthal and Henry Stein
Los Angeles Herald Tribune, August 24, 1909, p. 14

The summer of 1909 we went to Los Angeles, Cal, and Henry came up there and we decided to get married, so on Aug 24 we did and went on a nice honeymoon. Then we went back to Tucson to make our home.

Henry was the first white barber in Tucson. He shaved Grover Cleveland before we were married. His aunt brought him over from Uhel, Slovakia. He was very young. He had a younger brother over here who was in an accident and killed.

We built a very pretty home next to my sisters and we were very happy.

Two years later on Oct. 9, a little boy came along. We named him Walter, then Sept. 22nd two years later, a little girl. We named her Blanche. That was your mother. She was really beautiful.

Birth certificate of Walter Stein
courtesy of the family

Henry Stein with his son Walter, 1910
courtesy of the family

Walter and Blanche Stein, 1913
courtesy of their family

A few years after their daughter Blanche was born, Hettie and Henry and their children left Tucson for Ray, Arizona, a small mining town that was about 100 miles from Tucson. What would have led them there?

Part II addresses that question and describes their life in Ray.

Blanche, Hettie, and Walter Stein

Sidney Schoenthal, the Youngest Sibling: A Long Life, but a Short Post

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Amy

The last-born and tenth child of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach was their son Sidney, born September 18, 1891. There was a gap of almost twenty years between the oldest son, Harry, born in 1873, and Sidney.

The three youngest children of Simon and Rose Schoenthal
Estelle, Hettie, and Sidney, 1904
Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Sidney was only thirteen when his father died in 1904, and as a teenager he worked with his older brothers in the family’s laundry business in Atlantic City, as seen in the 1911 directory for that city.

Incomparable Laundry
Schoenthals brothers 1911 Atlantic City directory
Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Original sources vary according to directory.

But sometime between 1911 and 1914, Sidney left home for southern California and lived there for the rest of his life. Of all the children of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach, Sidney was the one who spent the least amount of time in Atlantic City, living in Los Angeles for all but twenty of his almost hundred years of life.

Downtown Los Angeles c. 1910
By Pierce, C.C. (Charles C.), 1861-1946 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In 1914 he was living with his brother Louis and working in his cigar business as a salesman in San Pedro, California. He was living at the same address (930 ½ Santee) in 1915, now listed as part of Los Angeles. The following year he was living at 1415 Winifred, working as a salesman for H.S. Webb. H.S. Webb is listed in the 1916 directory under the Cigars and Tobacco category, so Sidney had continued to be in the cigar business, although no longer working for Louis.

Location of the San Pedro region of the City of Los Angeles, California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By 1918, Sidney was married, according to his draft registration for World War I. He was working as a cigar salesman for United Cigars, once the largest chain of cigar stores in the US.

Sidney Schoenthal World War I draft registration
Registration State: California; Registration County: Los Angeles; Roll: 1530897; Draft Board: 11

As seen on the 1920 census record, Sidney had married Harriet Lehman, and they were living along with their infant son Stanley with Harriet’s parents, George and Amelia Lehman, and her brother William. Harriet’s parents were German immigrants, and in 1920, her father was working as a waiter at a club in Los Angeles. Sidney continued to work as a cigar salesman, as his father Simon had done and as his brother Jacob was doing back in Atlantic City.

1905 advertisement for the Henry Clay brand of cigars. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sidney and Harriet had a second son Robert born in 1925. In 1930 they were all still living in Los Angeles along with Harriet’s father George, who was now a widower and continuing to work as a waiter at a clubhouse. Sidney was still a cigar salesman.

Living a life of remarkable consistency, Sidney was still a cigar salesman in 1940, living in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons. In 1942, he reported his employer to be Kelson Brothers, which is listed in the 1942 Los Angeles directory as a liquor business; perhaps they also sold cigars.

Sidney Schoenthal World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. National Archives and Records Administration

I found it interesting that Sidney listed someone named Sam Bornstein as the one who would always know his address and not Harriet. Researching Sam Bornstein revealed that he was employed by the City of Los Angeles, married, and born in Chicago. Perhaps he was a close friend and Sidney just didn’t think that naming his wife was the appropriate response.

Harriet Lehman Schoenthal died on February 12, 1956, in Los Angeles; she was only 62 years old. Her husband Sidney long outlived her. Like so many of his siblings, Sidney lived a remarkably long life, dying on May 15, 1991, just four months short of his 100^th birthday. Sidney and Harriet both died and are buried in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, I could not find an obituary or any other information to fill out the years between 1956, when Harriet died, and 1991, when Sidney died. In fact, I could not find one news article about Sidney. I imagine he was like most of us—a man who worked hard, supported his family, and lived a good and decent but quiet life. I would love to know more about him—to fill in the empty spaces between the census records, directories, and draft registrations. Perhaps one of his descendants will find me, or perhaps I will find them.

Sidney Schoenthal
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoethal Stein

My next few posts will be about Sidney’s sister Hettie and her family. I have been very fortunate to connect with Hettie’s family and learn a great deal about her and her life. Unfortunately, they did not have any additional information about Sidney or his family.

Where Did Baby Rose Go?

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Amy

Although there are a number of unresolved matters in this post, the big question left is — what happened to little Rose Schoenthal, the daughter of Jacob Schoenthal and Florence Truempy? Maybe you can help me.

Having now worked through the first five children of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach (Harry, Gertrude, Louis, Maurice, and Martin), it’s clear that Atlantic City had a strong hold on the family. Although Simon had first settled in Pittsburgh and he and Rose had married there and had their first three children there, they had left for Philadelphia by 1880 and then around 1892 for Atlantic City. Atlantic City is where they stayed.



Embed from Getty Images

Their oldest child Harry[1] lived there for most of his adult life after spending about ten years in Philadelphia between 1910 and 1920. Gertrude and Martin also left and returned, Gertrude after about 20 years in Arizona, Martin after about ten years in Chicago. Only Maurice and Louis of the siblings I’ve covered so far moved away from Atlantic City permanently. Louis moved to California and never returned. Maurice moved to the Midwest in about 1910 where he met and married his wife Blanche, a Missouri native. Maurice and Blanche lived almost all of their married life in Chicago.

Of the four remaining children of Simon and Rose—Jacob, Hettie, Estelle, and Sidney—two were Atlantic City “lifers” —Jacob and Estelle. Jacob was born in 1883 in Philadelphia; Estelle was born in Philadelphia in 1889. They were both children when the family moved to Atlantic City. In 1900 when he was seventeen, Jacob was working in the laundry business with his brother Martin and living with his parents and siblings.

Jacob Schoenthal
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Here is a photograph of Estelle, on the right, taken with her sister Hettie in 1906.

Hettie Schoenthal and Estelle Schoenthal, 1906
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

In 1910, Jacob and Estelle were both still living at home; their father had died in 1904, and they were living with their mother and their younger brother Sidney. Jacob and Martin were still working in the family laundry business. In 1911 Sidney joined them in that endeavor, called Incomparable Laundry.

Incomparable Laundry
Schoenthal brothers 1911 Atlantic City directory
Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Original sources vary according to directory.

Their sister Hettie later wrote about the family laundry business:

When we moved to Atlantic City my father went into business. He had a stationery store. Next door was a cigar store and laundry office. The laundry was called the Incomparable Laundry. We had a branch of it. Two of my brothers had a big laundry wagon with big hampers to put the bundles. They’d pick it up on Monday and take it to Philadelphia, then deliver it on Friday. Some people brought their own bundles. Nobody had washing machines then. They had washboards and tin tubs for doing laundry at home.[2]

But in 1912 and in 1913, only Jacob was listed in the Atlantic City directories in connection with Incomparable Laundry. Martin and Sidney had left Atlantic City, and the only Schoenthals listed in the directories for those two years were Jacob, Estelle, and Rose (their mother), all living at the same address, 25 Massachusetts Avenue.

Then in 1914, Jacob is the sole Schoenthal listed at all in the Atlantic City directory, still associated with Incomparable Laundry. Where were his mother and his sister Estelle?

Estelle Schoenthal
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

I knew that Rose had been in Arizona with Gertrude in 1917 from my research of Martin Schoenthal, but was she also there in 1914? A search of the 1914 Tucson directory revealed that Estelle Schoenthal was living there that year at the same address as her sister Gertrude, 516 South 5^th Avenue. Perhaps Rose was there as well, just not included in the directory. Estelle was working as a cashier at a business called Steinfeld’s.

Estelle Schoenthal 1914 Tucson, Arizona directory
Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Original sources vary according to directory.

And then between 1915 and 1918, there is not one Schoenthal listed in the Atlantic City directories. Harry was still in Philadelphia; Gertrude and presumably Rose and Estelle were in Arizona as was Hettie; Martin and Maurice were in Chicago; Louis and Sidney were in California. Where was Jacob?

Jacob was still in Atlantic City in 1915, according to the New Jersey census of that year. He was listed as single and working as a driver. (Thank you to Marilyn Silva for sending me a copy of that census record.) In September 1918, when Jacob registered for the draft, he was still living in Atlantic City, married to a woman named Helen. He was still working as a driver–for Abbott Dairy.

Jacob Schoenthal World War I draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls.

Thus, it appears that Jacob may have never left Atlantic City between 1915 and 1918 when the rest of his family had left to go west; he may be simply missing from the Atlantic City directories for those years.

By 1920 Jacob’s older brother Harry, his younger sister Estelle, and his mother Rose were back in Atlantic City. Harry was married with two young children and working as a clerk in a hotel, and his mother and his younger sister Estelle were also living with him.

Jacob is listed in the 1920 Atlantic City directory still married to Helen and living at 421 Pacific Avenue and working in the real estate business. But according to the 1920 census, Jacob was single and boarding with a family living on Atlantic Avenue. The census record listed his occupation as an agent in the produce business. Since the census is dated January 16, 1920, I thought that the directory for 1920, probably compiled in late 1919, predated the census and that thus Jacob’s marriage to Helen had ended by January 1920, and he had moved out and changed jobs.

But then in the 1921 Atlantic City directory, Jacob is still listed with Helen, living at 408 Murdock Terrace and working in the real estate business.

Jacob is not listed in the 1922 or the 1923 Atlantic City directories. When he reappears in the 1924 directory, he is listed with a new wife named Florence.

Jacob and Florence Schoenthal 1924 Atlantic City directory
Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

What happened to Helen? Where was Jacob in 1922 and 1923? And who was Florence?

All good questions, but so far I can only answer the last one. I asked for help from the New Jersey Genealogy group on Facebook, and an incredibly generous member, Marilyn Silva, volunteered to look for marriage records for Jacob in the archives in Trenton, New Jersey. Marilyn concluded after searching several different ways for all possible years that there were no New Jersey marriage records for Jacob Schoenthal either to a woman named Helen or to a woman named Florence.

Where else could Jacob have married Helen and Florence? Pennsylvania? Had he gone to Arizona or California or Illinois where his various siblings were living? I haven’t found one document that explains where and when Jacob married Helen or Florence or where he was living in those years. I don’t even know Helen’s birth name or where she was born or when.

But I do know something about Jacob’s second wife, Florence. She was born Florence A. Truempy on December 30, 1892, in Pennsylvania (probably Philadelphia). She was the daughter of Daniel Truempy and Annie Christina Lipps. Daniel was born in Switzerland, Annie in Germany. They had married in Philadelphia in 1883 and had had two sons before Florence was born in 1892. Then when Florence was only three months old, her father died from inflammation of the lungs. He was only 27 years old and left behind three very young children.

Daniel Truempy death certificate
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J6MC-B24 : accessed 12 February 2016), Daniel Truempy, 19 Mar 1893; citing cn 20331, Philadelphia City Archives and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; FHL microfilm 1,902,335.

Florence’s mother Annie remarried in 1894; her second husband was John Geary O’Connor, born in Ireland. In 1900 Florence was living with her mother, stepfather, and half-sister Mabel in Philadelphia. Her stepfather John O’Connor was working as a police officer. Florence is listed as “O’Connor” in the 1900 census, so I thought perhaps John had adopted her. But on the 1910 census she and her two brothers are living in John O’Connor’s household and listed as his stepchildren, their surname as Truempy. Florence was then seventeen years old. The family was at that time living in Camden, New Jersey, across the river and the state line from Philadelphia. John had no occupation listed, but his wife Anna was working as a laborer for an oil cloth company. (I do wonder whether the enumerator placed John’s occupation on the line for Anna, but that’s just sexist speculation on my part.)

In the 1911 and 1912 directories for Camden, Florence is listed as working as a waitress and living at the same address as her two brothers. But in 1920 Florence is not listed with her mother, stepfather, and siblings on the census. I don’t know where Florence went. Like Jacob, she does not appear on any record I could find during those years until she re-appears in the 1924 directory for Atlantic City, married to Jacob. Perhaps Florence had been married to someone else in that period, just as Jacob had been married to someone named Helen during the 1910s. I don’t yet know. But Jacob and Florence stayed married to each other for the rest of their lives. Assuming they were married in about 1923, Jacob would have been 40 when they married, Florence 31.

English: Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey by William Trost Richards. Oil on canvas, 29.9 x 50.8 cm. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Meanwhile, Jacob’s sister Estelle also married sometime in the early 1920s. Her husband Leon Klein was born in 1879 in Alsace-Lorraine, then under German control, and had immigrated to the US as a young child in 1881. After living in Philadelphia, the Klein family had relocated to Atlantic City. In 1910, Leon and his brothers Abraham and Charles were the owners of a delicatessen in Atlantic City called Klein Brothers. They were still listed that way in the 1916 Atlantic City directory.

But when he registered for the draft in September 1918, Leon was working as a grocer, living in Philadelphia. In 1920, he was living with his brother Abraham and sister Rose in Philadelphia and still working as a grocer. Then he returned to Atlantic City, where he is listed in the 1922 directory, married to Estelle, working as a grocer. If he and Estelle married in 1921, they would have been 40 and 32 years old, respectively, when they married.

Thus, both Jacob and his sister Estelle married at “mature” ages for that generation.

Leon and Estelle had two sons in the 1920s, Morton and Robert. By 1927, Leon had left the grocery business and was working in the hotel business like so many of his Schoenthal in-laws. The 1928 and 1929 directories list his occupation as salesman; the 1930 census recorded his occupation simply as clerk, and the 1931 directory described him once again as a salesman.

The 1935 Atlantic City directory listing for Leon Klein reads, “Klein, Leon (Estella; Klein Haven).” Klein Haven was also listed separately as “Klein Haven (Leon Klein) furn rms.” Was Leon in the hotel business or a salesman? I was confused by the flip-flopping of his described occupations. Then I saw the 1940 census and learned that Leon was selling typewriter supplies. Interestingly, Estelle is listed on the 1940 census as the head of household and the proprietor of a hotel, the Klein Haven. Imagine that! A woman as the head of household in 1940, owning a hotel in her own name.

Estelle Schoenthal Klein and family 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: Atlantic City, Atlantic, New Jersey; Roll: T627_2300; Page: 83A; Enumeration District: 1-2

I found the text of an advertisement for the Klein-Haven in the August 1, 1930 issue of The Jewish Criterion:

KLEIN-HAVEN
Open  All  Year 103   States  Avenue Atlantic  City,  N. J.
UNEXCELLED  CUISINE All outside rooms with private bath or running- water.    
Bathing privilege.    Family rates. Phone 4-0994        EstelJe S. Klein

As for her brother Jacob, he was not in the hotel business. By the mid-1920s, Jacob was working in the cigar business, a business he pursued from then and throughout the 1930s. He and Florence had a daughter Rose born in early 1929 (she was fifteen months old as of the date of the 1930 census, April 10, 1930). It is that daughter who later disappears.

By 1930, two of the other siblings, Gertrude Schoenthal Miller and Martin Schoenthal, had also returned to Atlantic City and were also involved with hotels like Harry and Estelle, but Jacob continued to sell cigars throughout the 1930s, as his father Simon had done many years before.



Embed from Getty Images

In 1940, the census reported a different occupation for Jacob; he was now working as a clerk in a private office. His wife Florence was working as a stockroom “girl” in an auction house. Her mother Anna Lipps Truempy O’Connor was also living with Jacob and Florence.

But where was their daughter Rose, who’d been only fifteen months old old on the 1930 census? She was not listed with her parents. Where could an eleven year old girl be? I feared the worst. Had she died?

Marilyn Silva volunteered to search for a death certificate for a Rose Schoenthal born around 1929 who died between April 10, 1930 (the date of the 1930 census record) and April 18, 1940. But Marilyn found no reported deaths in the New Jersey archives for a child with that name in that time period. I searched Pennsylvania and other states where I thought Rose might have lived or died. I couldn’t find her alive, and I couldn’t find any record of her death. I even contacted the cemetery where Jacob and Florence are buried, Beth Israel near Atlantic City, and Rose is not buried with her parents.

Any ideas? I am at a total loss. I’ve searched the newspaper databases as well as Ancestry, FamilySearch, and, thanks to Marilyn Silva, the New Jersey state archives, and I cannot find out anything about what happened to Rose Schoenthal. Perhaps she never existed and the enumerator received bad information? Maybe she was institutionalized somewhere and not recorded?

On his World War II draft registration Jacob reported that his employer was Superior Cleaners. He and Florence were still living in Atlantic City, where they continued to live throughout the 1950s and where Jacob continued to work in the cleaning business, according to Atlantic City directories from that decade. Florence died in July 1967 when she was 74 years old; Jacob died in February 1976; he was 92 years old.

Jacob Schoenthal World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. National Archives and Records Administration. Full Source Citation.

Jacob’s sister Estelle also remained in Atlantic City for the rest of her life. She and her husband Leon are listed in several Atlantic City directories during the 1950s, although without any occupation listed. Leon died on November 4, 1957, when he was 78; Estelle died on November 26, 1978, when she was 89 years old.

Both Jacob and his sister Estelle lived long lives, married “late” but had long marriages, and spent almost their entire lives in Atlantic City. Jacob in particular seems never to have wandered too far from Atlantic City. He, however, did not devote his career to the hotel business as so many of his siblings had. He worked in the laundry business, produce, real estate, the cigar business, and the cleaning business over his long life in Atlantic City. His sister Estelle spent some years in Arizona, but returned to Atlantic City where she met and married Leon Klein and had two children. She worked in the hospitality business as did so many of her siblings, and remarkably she was the hotel owner while her husband worked as a salesman.

Although Estelle’s story is quite complete, there are many holes left in the story of her brother Jacob—when and where did he marry Helen, and what happened to that marriage? When and where did he marry Florence? And most importantly, what happened to his daughter Rose?

[1] Harry’s twin Ida had died when she was a young teenager. There were nine surviving siblings.

[2] Hettie Schoenthal Stein, “This is My Life.” Courtesy of her family.

[3] Hettie was actually older than Estelle, but for several reasons I decided to write about Jacob and Estelle together and will pick up on Hettie in a later post.

The Gift of Photography: Bringing Faces to the Names

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Amy

I know I just posted yesterday, but I am so excited by the photographs I received last night that I can’t wait to share them. I have been very fortunate to connect with the family of one of Simon and Rose (Mansbach) Schoenthal’s children, the descendants of their daughter Hettie, whose life story I’ve yet to tell. The family very generously shared with me a multitude of photographs, and I will share many of them on the blog in upcoming posts.

But some of these photographs are of family members about whom I have already posted. I’ve added those photographs to the appropriate posts, but since I know it’s unlikely that people will go back to find those photographs, I wanted to share some of them here. All of the photographs here are courtesy of the family of Ezra Parvin Lippincott, Jr., Hettie Schoenthal Stein’s grandson.

First, here are photographs of Simon Schoenthal and Rose Mansbach, the patriarch and matriarch of this large family:

Rose Mansbach Schoenthal

Simon Schoenthal, my great-great-uncle

Simon and Rose had ten children; their first two were twins, Harry and Ida. Ida died when she was a young teenager, so I was very touched to see this photograph of Simon with the twins, taken in 1875 when they were two years old.

Simon Schoenthal with twins Harry and Ida 1875
Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

And here is a collage of photographs of the nine surviving children: Harry, Gertrude, Louis, Maurice, Martin, Jacob, Hettie, Estelle, and Sidney. They were my grandmother Eva Schoenthal Cohen’s first cousins.

The nine surviving children of Simon and Rose (Mansbach) Schoenthal
Photo courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Looking at all those faces, I cannot help but admire their mother Rose, especially knowing now how close these siblings were to each other. Here are some additional photographs of Rose Mansbach Schoenthal:

Rose Mansbach Schoenthal
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Rose Mansbach Schoenthal 1916

Harry, the oldest surviving child, had a liquor business in Philadelphia for some time before returning to Atlantic City and working in the hotel business there. I believe this photograph must be related to his Philadelphia business:

Uncle Harry's Beer Business Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Uncle Harry’s Beer Businesss
Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

I am not sure, but perhaps one of those men is Harry himself.

I loved this photograph of Arthur H. Ferrin, who married Juliet Miller, the daughter of Jacob J. and Gertrude (Schoenthal) Miller. You can tell that Arthur was a Tucson native:

Arthur H. Ferrin 1905
courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

There are many more to come, but I didn’t want these to get lost in the shuffle.

Two Brothers in Chicago: One Stayed, One Left

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Amy

It’s been a while since I left off with my discussion of my Schoenthal relatives, in particular the ten children of my great-grandfather Isidore’s brother, Simon Schoenthal, and his wife Rose Mansbach. Of their nine children who survived to adulthood, I have discussed Harry, who made his life in Atlantic City where his parents had moved in the 1890s and remained; Gertrude, who married Jacob J. Miller and settled for many years in Arizona; and Louis, who moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco and may have spent part of his career working as a showman in the carnival industry. Now I will write about the next two sons: Maurice and Martin, both of whom ended up together for at least some years in the midwest---in Chicago.

Maurice Schoenthal Courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

Maurice Schoenthal, born in 1879, had been working with his brothers in 1904 in Atlantic City as a manager of their pool hall, but by 1910 he had relocated to Saint Louis, Missouri. I’ve no idea what drew him to St. Louis, but he is listed as residing there on the 1910 census, lodging with the family of Ferdinand Bach.

Maurice Schoenthal 1910 US census
Year: 1910; Census Place: St Louis Ward 25, Saint Louis City, Missouri; Roll: T624_822; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 0393; FHL microfilm: 1374835

But there is something odd about the census entry. It says that Maurice was a Missouri-born lawyer in private practice, which made me think this was not the right Maurice Schoenthal. But the entry underneath is for a Louis Mayer, described as a Pennsylvania-born bookkeeper for an automobile store. Could the two lines have been accidentally switched by the enumerator? A search for Louis Mayer in the St. Louis directories confirmed my hunch. Louis Mayer was a lawyer, my cousin Maurice must have been the Pennsylvania-born bookkeeper.

I don’t know when Maurice arrived in St. Louis nor, as I said, what brought him there, but I know what kept him in the midwest. On September 8, 1910, he married Blanche Woolf, as seen in this news item:

Blanche was born in 1881 in St. Louis, the daughter of George Woolf, who was born in New York, and Leah Morris, who was born in England. George Woolf had died in 1908, and in 1910 Blanche was living with her mother and siblings. Her oldest sibling, Morris, was already married and the owner of a silk business, Morris Woolf Silk. Although Maurice and Blanche were still living in St. Louis in 1913, by 1914 they were living in Chicago, where Maurice was working as a credit manager. As reflected on his World War I draft registration, he was the credit manager for Morris Woolf Silk, his brother-in-law’s business.

Maurice Schoenthal World War I draft registration

Maurice and Blanche had two children born in 1913 and 1918. In 1920 they were all still living in Chicago, and Maurice was still working as a credit manager for the silk company. Morris Woolf Silk at one time must have been a very successful business; a search on newspapers.com brought up many ads from papers in many states: Texas, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, for example.

In the spring of 1920, Maurice represented the company on a trip across the country with over forty other “prominent” or “notable” businessmen (yes, just men) from Chicago that included stops in several cities, including El Paso, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Bernardino, California, Portland Oregon, and Phoenix, Arizona. See, e.g., “Chicago Party to Visit Phoenix Next Wednesday,” The Arizona Republican, May 3, 1920, p. 8; “Chicagoans Are to See Valley This Morning,” San Bernardino Daily Sun, May 6, 1920, p. 7; “Chicago Business Men Guest of City,” Portland Oregonian, May 18, 1920, p. 11.

Martin Schoenthal courtesy of the family of Hettie Schoenthal Stein

During these years, Maurice’s younger brother Martin was also living in Chicago. In 1910, Martin had been living with his mother and younger siblings, working in the family laundry business, but by 1914, he is listed as a salesman in the Chicago directory. His World War I draft registration is more specific; Martin was working as a car salesman.

Martin Schoenthal World War I draft registration
Registration State: Illinois; Registration County: Cook; Roll: 1439759; Draft Board: 13

(Interestingly, he listed as the person who would always know his address a Mrs. R. Schoenthal of Tucson, Arizona. When I saw that, I assumed it was his mother, Rose Mansbach Schoenthal, who must have been living her with her daughter Gertrude Schoenthal Miller at that time, but who was back in Atlantic City by 1920. I checked the 1917 Tucson directory to confirm that Rose was in fact living at the same address in Tucson as Gertrude that year.)

In 1920, Martin was still living in Chicago, according to the 1920 census. He was living as a lodger, and he reported his occupation as a manufacturer, Federal Bakery. But after that I cannot find any document or other source that indicates that Martin was in Chicago after 1920.

Martin Schoenthal 1920 US census
Year: 1920; Census Place: Chicago Ward 2, Cook (Chicago), Illinois; Roll: T625_306; Page: 8A; Enumeration District: 85; Image: 1134

From what I can gather from various newspaper articles and advertisements as well as some court decisions, Federal System of Bakeries of America was a supplier of baking equipment to associated bakeries all over the United States. This news article from 1920 described them as a $25,000,000 enterprise with over 600 stores all over the country. “Missouri Fair Price Commission Asks Department of Justice to Investigate Why Price of Bread Was Raised,” Rockford (Illinois) Republic, February 27, 1920, p. 9. This ad conveys something about the business model of the Federal System of Bakeries.

Martin may have run into trouble with his own store because on July 23, 1920, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a classified ad on p. 24:

At any rate, I cannot find a listing for Martin in Chicago in the 1920s. The directories that are available on Ancestry.com for Chicago during those years do not include alphabetical listings of residents, only directories by business category or address, so Martin might have been there, but I did not find him under Bakeries nor by the address I have for him from the 1920 census.

I was able to locate Maurice in the 1920s, however, because he and Blanche had moved to the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, by 1925. He was still working in the silk business as a credit manager, according to these directories (1925, 1927) and according to the 1930 census.

Meanwhile, Martin had returned to Atlantic City by 1931. I cannot find him at all on the 1930 census, but he is listed in the 1931 Atlantic City directory, working as a distributor and living at 141 St. James, the address of the Lockhart Hotel where many members of his family had lived in prior years. In 1938 he was living at 161 St. Charles Place and working as a clerk. According to the 1940 census, he was working as a hotel clerk and still residing at 161 St. Charles Place, where his sister Estelle and her family were living and running the Klein-Haven Hotel.

Estelle and Martin Schoenthal 1940 census

Martin Schoenthal in household of Estelle Schoenthal Klein 1940 US census Year: 1940; Census Place: Atlantic City, Atlantic, New Jersey; Roll: T627_2300; Page: 83A; Enumeration District: 1-2

In 1941 the directory lists him working as a clerk at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, located at 3850 Atlantic Avenue. According to his World War II draft registration the following year, his employer at the Cosmopolitan Hotel was J.J. Miller, that is, Jacob J. Miller, his brother-in-law, married to his sister Gertrude. His residence was still 161 St. Charles Place.

Martin Schoenthal World War II draft registration
The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of New Jersey; State Headquarters: New Jersey; Microfilm Series: M1986

As for Maurice, according to the 1940 census, he had had a career change and was no longer working for Morris Woolf Silk; he was now working as a broker in the commercial real estate field. It appears that Morris Woolf Silk had liquidated its stock in the summer of 1929 (although Maurice had still listed his occupation as credit manager for a silk company on the 1930 census.)

Maurice and Blanche and their son, now 21, were still living in Chicago in 1940, and their son was working as a messenger for the railroad. Their daughter had married by then and was living with her husband in Chicago. On his draft registration for World War II in 1942, Maurice reported no employment; he and Blanche were still living in Chicago.

Maurice Schoenthal World War 2 draft registration
The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II Draft Cards (Fourth Registration), for The State of Illinois; State Headquarters: Illinois; Microfilm Series: M2097; Microfilm Roll: 258

Martin Schoenthal died in Atlantic City on September 22, 1946. He was 67 years old and was buried with his parents at Mt. Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia. As far as I can tell, he had never married or had children.

His brother Maurice was living in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1952, but that is the only year for which I can find a listing for him in that location, nor can I find him in any other directories or sources after 1942. I cannot find a record for Maurice’s death, but I did find Blanche’s death certificate. When she died on July 1, 1965, she was already a widow, so Maurice must have died sometime before that date.

Blanche Woolf Schoenthal death certificate

Maurice and Martin Schoenthal: two brothers, two years apart in age, who had started their adult years in business together. After Maurice married and settled in Chicago, his younger brother Martin followed him there and lived nearby for several years. But whereas Maurice seemed to have both personal and business success in Chicago, Martin returned to his former home in Atlantic City to work, as so many in Simon Schoenthal’s family did, in the hotel business.

Part II: The Benefits of Teamwork

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Amy

So who was Frederick Selinger, and how did he fit into the family? And who was Fanny Selinger’s mother?

In Part I, I described the research I had done first with Val Collinson in 2014 and then separately with Shirley Allen during the summer and fall of 2015 to try and find the connections between all our various Selinger relatives. Through that research we had established with a fair degree of certainty that Julius and Alfred Selinger, who married two of my Cohen cousins, sisters Augusta and Fanny, were themselves brothers, the sons of Seligmann Selinger and Breinle Hofstadter. We had also established that Helena Selinger Auerbach, who had been Val’s great-grandmother, was a first cousin to Julius and Alfred and the daughter of Abraham Selinger and Rosalia Wilhelmsdorfer.

We also had established that Fanny Selinger Rosenthal, Shirley’s grandmother, was also a daughter of Abraham Selinger, but Shirley and I had not found any document that revealed whether her grandmother Fanny was a full or half sister to Helena and the other children of Abraham Selinger; we had not found her mother’s name or where she was born.

And I still didn’t know how Frederick Selinger fit into the question.

We also knew that Abraham Selinger had immigrated to England by 1871 because he appeared on the 1871 UK census with a second wife, Gali, along with several children: Sigfried, Helena, Cornelia, and Oscar. By 1881, Abraham had died, and his widow Gali was living with some different children: Morris, Flora, and Sidney, plus Oscar. Aside from Helena, who were all these children, and where were they born? I had no birth records for Cornelia, Morris, Flora, Sidney, or Oscar.

So by late November, we had many answers, but many questions remained.

Fast forward again to January 13, when I again heard from Shirley. She had received a copy of the marriage authorization for Fanny Selinger and Jacob Rosenthal from the Chief Rabbi in London. It confirmed that Fanny was the daughter of Abraham and that she was born in Hurben, but did not reveal her mother’s name. Although we did not have any new information, the new communication inspired us to try again to get answers to our primary questions: Who was Fanny Selinger’s mother? And how did Frederick Selinger fit into the family, if at all?

Fanny Selinger Rosenthal and her husband Jacob Rosenthal and children Gladys, Daniel, and Alfred
Courtesy of Shirley Allen

After reviewing everything we had, I decided to post on the German Genealogy group on Facebook for information about records in Ansbach , where Oskar Selinger had claimed to be born on his UK naturalization record. Although I was unable to find Ansbach birth records for the appropriate years, my friend Matthias did find two websites with information about Abraham Selinger in Ansbach: one, a website listing past and present tobacco businesses in Germany; Abraham Selinger was listed as the manager of Equity and cigar-tobacco factory in Ansbach from 1862 until 1871. Thus, it made sense that Oscar Selinger was born in Ansbach.

The second website was even more revealing. It was an Ansbach police report from 1870 reporting the arrest on May 31, 1870 of Abraham Selinger from Hurben, manager of a cigar factory, for fraud. Perhaps that is why 1871 was both the last date he had the cigar business in Ansbach as well as the first year he appeared on UK records.

http://des.genealogy.net/search/show/9889703

But it also meant that the children I believed had been born to Abraham in the 1850s—Frederick, Fanny, Morris, Flora, and Sidney—were probably not born in Ansbach if Abraham’s business there didn’t start until 1862. So where were they born? Shirley continued to contact various offices in Germany, and I tried to think of new paths for research.

And then I had the best idea I’d had yet. While doing all this work with Shirley in 2015, I had somehow forgotten about my correspondence with Val Collinson back in 2014. Maybe Val had made some new discoveries or would have some new ideas. I wrote to Val on January 22, 2016, and now we had three heads working on the mysterious Selingers.

Filament Productions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The emails started flying back and forth among the three of us, and it became clear fairly quickly that Val and Shirley had some relatives in common, that is, relatives they both had met or at least had heard of. I just sat back, enjoying the fact that I had brought these two cousins together. They both were descendants of Abraham Selinger: Shirley through his daughter Fanny, Val through his daughter Helena. We weren’t yet sure whether Helena and Fanny were full or half-sisters, but in any event Shirley and Val, who’d never heard of each other before and who live about 60-100 miles apart in the UK, are third cousins. I was thrilled that I’d brought these two wonderful family researchers and cousins together.

Shirley and Val both had lots of information about the marriages and descendants of some of the other Selinger siblings and also some wonderful photographs, but neither had any information about Frederick and neither was sure as to the identity of the mother or birthplaces of Fanny, Cornelia, Morris, Flora, or Sidney.

And then on January 29, 2016, the walls started tumbling down. Val found this on Ancestry:

Ludwigshafen?? Where was that? It’s a town very close to Mannheim. Could be this OUR Fanny? Val asked me to follow up because I have the broadest Ancestry subscription (All Access), and I was able to pull up a scan of the actual record. And not only did I find birth records for Fanny, I found them for three other children, all born to Abraham Selinger and Rosalia Wilhelmsdorfer, his first wife.

The four children born in Ludwigshafen were: Babetta, born in 1853, died in 1854; Flora, born in 1855 (later Flora Wallach); Fanny, born December 5, 1856; and Sigmund (later Sidney) born in 1858. We finally had a birth record for Fanny, and we knew now that she was in fact a full sister to Helena as they were both the daughters of Abraham Selinger and Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer. Val and Shirley were officially third cousins.

Fanny Selinger birth record from Ludwigshafen
Ancestry.com. Ludwigshafen, Germany, Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1798-1875 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Ludwigshafen Zivilstandsregister, 1798-1875. Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen, Ludwigshafen, Deutschland.

So that left three children whose birthplaces were still unknown: Morris, Cornelia, and, of course, Frederick. Since Morris and Cornelia were both born before 1862 when the Selinger family arrived in Ansbach and after 1848 when the family had moved to Mannheim, I assumed that they were probably born in Mannheim. The 1881 census recorded Cornelia’s age as 18, two years younger than Helena, whom they reported as twenty. But even English census records are unreliable. Helena would have been turning 22 that year; maybe Cornelia was really 19 or 20 and thus born in 1850 or 1851. The 1881 census said Morris was 28; he was probably born in 1852 since Babetta, the child who died in 1854, was born in 1853, in Ansbach. Cornelia and Morris would also probably have been the children of Abraham and Rosalia since there were four children born to that couple even after Cornelia and Morris were born.

So I went back to the Mannheim records because my initial search had been only for the years between 1853 to 1859; now I searched the set of records before it, dating from 1842 to 1852. And there they were, birth records for Cornelia (1850) and Morris (1852). And Helena (1849). All three were the children of Abraham Selinger and Rosalia Wilhelmdoerfer.

landesarchiv_baden-wuerttemberg_generallandesarchiv_karlsruhe_390_nr-_2862_bild_147_4-1229196-147 Birth record for Helena Selinger from Hurben

landesarchiv_baden-wuerttemberg_generallandesarchiv_karlsruhe_390_nr-_2862_bild_147_4-1229196-147
Birth record for Helena Selinger from Mannheim (center, left page)

So there are two birth records for Helena, one in Hurben, one in Mannheim. Go figure.

Meanwhile, Val found yet another document:

(I cannot understand why neither the Ludwigshafen nor the Ansbach registers showed up for me when I searched. Val has a magic touch with the search engine logic that I don’t have.)

I then retrieved the image of the actual document:

Abraham Selinger family in Ansbach
Ancestry.com. Ansbach, Germany, Lutheran Parish Register Extracts, 1550-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Ansbach Lutheran Parish Register Extracts. Digital images Tobias Brenner Collection.

This document revealed two more things: that Gali’s birth name was Kohn and that she and Abraham had had another child before Oskar, Isidor, who died when he was an infant. So now I had a record confirming that Oscar was born in Ansbach and that his mother was Gali Kohn, not Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer.

Shirley, Val, and I had pretty much closed the circle on the children of Abraham Selinger. But despite all our efforts, we still had not found one record for Frederick Selinger. If he was born in 1856 as his passport application and his death certificate indicated, he should have been included with those children born in Ansbach. He would have been born around the time of Flora or Fanny, maybe even a twin of one of them. But he wasn’t there. And he wasn’t in the Mannheim records or the Hurben records.

So something did not make sense. Frederick was not the child of Abraham Selinger with either of his wives. I was convinced of it now. So who was he? What was I missing?

P question (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the part of the story where I just want to kick myself. I went back once again to the Hurben birth records and looked more closely at the children born to Seligman Selinger. There were nineteen of them. NINETEEN. Nine were born to Seligman and his first wife between 1835 and 1844. They all were born too early to be Frederick. Ten children were born to Seligman Selinger and his second wife, Breinle Hofstadter, between 1849 and 1866. There were five girls and five boys from that second marriage. The five boys were Heinrich (1852), Julius (1853), Sigfried (1855), Hugo (1860), and Alfred (1866). Julius and Alfred were the two who had married my Cohen cousins Augusta and Fanny. That left Heinrich, Sigfried, and Hugo. Could any of them be Frederick?

Sigfried. Hmm, I thought. That could have become Frederick, maybe?? But he was born December 29, 1855, and Frederick was born in December 1856, according to his US death certificate and his US passport application. So what, I thought? People lie! He made himself a year younger. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that Sigfried was Frederick. The disparity in the dates in December for his birthday (the death certificate said December 27, the passport application December 21) didn’t bother me either. Jews in Europe might not have known their birthday on a Gregorian calendar, only a Jewish calendar. Frederick might have just known that his birthday was close to Hanukkah and nothing more precise than that.

I went back to Ancestry to look at the records I had for Frederick. The earliest two—his 1880 marriage record and the 1880 census—list him as Fred, not Frederick. Fred could be a shortened version of Sigfried, couldn’t it? So I decided to search for Sigfried Selinger.

Marriage record for Frederick Selinger and Rachel Cohen 1880

And I found this ship manifest from 1872:

Siegfried Selinger ship manifest 1872 to Baltimore
The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Records of the US Customs Service, RG36; NAI Number: 2655153; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85

Siegfried Selinger, sixteen years old, arrived in Baltimore in June 1872, when Sigfried Selinger of Hurben would in fact have been still sixteen years old. I thought that this could very well be the man who became Frederick Selinger. Supporting this assumption was the fact that his marriage record states that he was from Baltimore and that he ended up marrying a woman from Washington, DC, so it would make sense that he would have entered the US through Baltimore, as his naturalization papers indicated. (They also say he entered the country in June 1871. People lie! People forget!)

Frederick Selinger passport application
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, 1795-1905; Roll #: 378; Volume #: Roll 378 – 14 Jul 1891-31 Jul 1891
Description
Volume : Roll 378 – 14 Jul 1891-31 Jul 1891

And when I searched for Fred Selinger in Baltimore, I found two listings in Baltimore directories, one in 1875, one in 1878. I am quite certain I have found Frederick and now know that he was Sigfried Selinger, the son of Selinger Seligmann and Breinle Hofstadter. He was the middle brother to his brothers, Julius and Alfred, who followed him to the US in the following decade and married respectively the aunt (Augusta) and the sister (Fanny) of Frederick’s wife Rachel.

So why do I want to kick myself? Not only because I should have seen this much, much earlier, but because Ralph Bloch in fact told me he thought Sigfried could be Frederick way back in August, 2015. I’d forgotten that until I reviewed all the old emails to write this blog post. I probably saw his comment and forgot it or thought that I needed more proof. And I got caught up in searching for Fanny and the other Selingers and for some reason assumed Frederick had to be the child of Abraham. I could have so easily searched back then for Sigfried in the US and found what I found just this past week.

But actually I am so glad that I didn’t. Because if I had done that in August, I might never have continued searching and working with Shirley and Val. I might never have brought Shirley and Val together, third cousins who’d never known each other before. I would have missed out on all the fun Val and Shirley and I have had as we worked together to solve this mystery. That makes this all very worthwhile.

All this, you might say, for people who aren’t even my blood relatives? For people who happened to marry my distant cousins Rachel, Augusta, and Fanny?

It’s moments like this that I want to say, “We are all cousins. Our families are all entangled. And every person’s life, every person’s story is worth remembering and is worth memorializing.”

The Benefits of Teamwork: Part I

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Amy

In my recent post, I mentioned that I had been working with two other researchers on the mystery of the three Selinger men who married my Cohen cousins. Frederick Selinger had married my cousin Rachel Cohen in 1880 in Washington, DC. Rachel was the daughter of Moses Cohen, my three times great-uncle (brother of my great-great-grandfather Jacob). Julius Selinger had married Augusta Cohen in 1884 in Washington, DC; Augusta was the daughter of Moses Cohen, Jr. and niece of Rachel Cohen. Finally, Alfred Selinger had married Fannie Cohen in Washington, DC, in 1893. Fannie was also a daughter of Moses Cohen, Jr., also a niece of Rachel Cohen, and a sister of Augusta Cohen.

Julius and Augusta Cohen Selinger passport photos 1922

Way back on July 22, 2014, when I first posted about the three Selinger men, I had speculated that they all had to be related. Both Julius and Frederick had documents indicating that they had been born in Hurben, Germany. Alfred and Julius had lived together in DC before they’d married, and Alfred had traveled with Julius and Augusta to Europe before he married Augusta’s sister Fannie. But I had nothing to support that speculation besides that circumstantial evidence.

Then a month later on August 5, 2014, I wrote about the marriage of Eleanor Selinger to Henry Abbot. Eleanor was the daughter of Julius Selinger and Augusta Cohen; Henry was the son of Hyams Auerbach (Abbot) and Helena Selinger (some records say Ellen or Helen). I was curious as to whether Helena Selinger was somehow related to Julius and the other Selinger men, Alfred and Frederick. I thought that she might be since how else would an American woman have met an Englishman? And the shared name seemed too uncommon to be pure coincidence.

Eleanor Selinger Abbot and Abbot family-page-001

Eleanor Selinger Abbot (center) with the Abbot family Courtesy of Val Collinson

As I wrote then, I had contacted the owner of an Ancestry family tree who turned out to be Eleanor Selinger and Henry Abbot’s great-niece: Val Collinson. Val and I exchanged a lot of information, but we could not at that time find any definitive evidence linking Helena Selinger, her great-grandmother, to Frederick or Julius or Alfred. All were born in Germany, but it seemed from the records in different locations. Helena’s marriage record indicated that her father’s name was Abraham Selinger, whereas Julius had indicated on his passport application that his father was Sigmund Selinger. We were stumped. And that was that. Or so I thought.

Fast forward a full year to August, 2015, when I received a comment on my earlier blog post about Eleanor Selinger and Henry Abbot from someone named Shirley Allen, whose grandparents were Jacob Rosenthal and Fanny Selinger:

Fanny Selinger Rosenthal and her husband Jacob Rosenthal and their children Gladys, Daniel, and Alfred
Courtesy of Shirley Allen

I’ve been delving into my paternal (Rosenthal) family history. I’ve found that my grandfather Jacob Rosenthal was married to Fanny Selinger. Unfortunately I haven’t found anything further about Fanny other than she was born in Germany, probably in 1857. However, I’ve recently come upon a wonderful paper lace invitation to the 1873 wedding of Hyams Auerbach and Helena Selinger that you referred to. What I don’t know is why Fanny would have been invited. Clearly she and Helena were related – but how ?

Needless to say, I was intrigued. Maybe Fanny Selinger was related to Helena and/or maybe she was related to Julius, Frederick, and Alfred. Shirley and I communicated by email, and we both started digging.

Invitation to the wedding of Helena Selinger and Hyms Auerbach
Courtesy of Shirley Allen

I found a website called Jewish Genealogy of Bavarian Swabia (JGBS) that had records for Hurben and located 25 Selingers in their database, including those for Alfred and for Julius, who were the sons of Seligman Selinger and Breinle Hofstadter and thus were brothers, as I had suspected. Shirley and I both thought that Seligman Selinger had been Americanized to Sigmund by Julius on his passport application and that the birth records for Julius and Alfred confirmed that they were in fact brothers.

I also found a birth record for Helena Selinger, whose father was Abraham Selinger, not Seligman Selinger. Abraham and his wife Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer had six children listed: Seligman (1842), Raphael (1843), Pauline (1845), Karolina (1847), Heinrich (1848), and Helena (1849). Pauline, Karolina, and Heinrich had all died as young children, leaving Seligman, Raphael, and Helena as the surviving children of Abraham. Here is Helena’s birth record from Hurben in August 1849.

Helena Selinger birth record from Hurben http://jgbs.org/SuperSearch.php?Sp=3&Book=birth&Com=11

Helena Selinger birth record from Hurben (third from bottom)
http://jgbs.org/SuperSearch.php?Sp=3&Book=birth&Com=11

But what about Frederick? And Fanny? And was there a connection between Helena’s father Abraham and the father of Julius and Alfred, Seligman Selinger?

A little more digging on the JGBS site revealed that both Abraham Selinger and Seligman Selinger were the sons of Joachim Selinger, thus confirming that they were brothers and thus that Helena was a first cousin to Julius and Alfred.

Marriage record from Hurben for Abraham Selinger, son of Joachim, and Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer http://jgbs.org/detail.php?book=marriage&id=%206671&mode=

Marriage record from Hurben for Abraham Selinger, son of Joachim, and Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer (second in page)
http://jgbs.org/detail.php?book=marriage&id=%206671&mode=

Seligmann Selinger, son of Joachim, marriage to Breinle Hoftsadter (second from bottom) 1848 http://jgbs.org/detail.php?book=marriage&id=%206695&mode=

That meant that Eleanor Selinger, daughter of Julius Selinger, had married her second cousin, Henry Abbot, son of Helena Selinger.

But that still left us wondering about Frederick Selinger and Shirley’s great-grandmother Fanny Selinger. How did they fit into this picture?

I contacted Ralph Bloch, the webmaster for the JGBS website, and he was extremely helpful. More helpful than I realized at the time, but more on that later. Ralph also could not find any evidence that Fanny was born in Hurben, and he reassured me that the birth records for Hurben were quite complete. He even searched through the original pages to be sure that Fanny hadn’t somehow been missed when the records were indexed. (There was a Fany Selinger born in the 1830s, but that would have been far too early for Shirley’s ancestor.) Ralph also sent a photograph of Seligman Selinger’s headstone, which confirmed that his father’s name was Joachim or Chaim, his Hebrew name.

So once again we hit the brick wall. We still had not found either Frederick or Fanny. Shirley said she would pursue it on her end, and I turned back to the other research I’d been doing when I received Shirley’s comment.

Not much happened again until late November when I heard again from Shirley, telling me that she had received a copy of Fanny Selinger’s marriage certificate, which revealed that Fanny was the daughter of Abraham Selinger. Now we could link Fanny to Helena, also the daughter of Abraham, as well as to Julius and Alfred, Abraham’s nephews. But we didn’t know if Fanny and Helena were both the daughters of Rosalia Wilhelmsdoerfer.

Shirley’s research of UK records showed that by 1871 Abraham was married to a woman named Gali, and we assumed that Abraham had left Hurben at some point, that his first wife Rosalia had died, and that he had had several children with Gali. That is what the UK census records from 1871 seemed to reflect. Abraham and Gali were living with Sigfried (28), Helena (20), Cornelia (18), and Oskar (4). But there was neither a Fanny nor a Frederick.

Abraham Selinger and family 1881 UK census
Class: RG10; Piece: 555; Folio: 86; Page: 3; GSU roll: 823397
Description
Enumeration District : 10
Source Information
Ancestry.com. 1871 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
Original data: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1871. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1871.

Abraham died in 1880, and in 1881, Gali was living with four children, but aside from Oskar (13), they were all different from those on the 1871 census: Morris (28), Flora (surname Wallach) (25), and Sidney (23). Now I was really confused. Who were these people, and where had they been in 1871? Flora was presumably married to someone named Wallach and now a widow, but Morris would have been eighteen in 1871 and Sidney only thirteen. Where were they living? Who were they? None of those children were listed on the Hurben birth register on the JGBS site; in fact, there were no children listed for Abraham Selinger and any wife in Hurben after Helena’s birth in 1849.

Gali Selinger and family 1881 UK census
Class: RG11; Piece: 472; Folio: 118; Page: 55; GSU roll: 1341103
Description
Enumeration District : 9 Original data: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1881. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1881

I assumed that Morris, Flora, Sidney, and Oscar, all born after 1850, were born in a different place and perhaps to a different mother. Certainly Oskar had to be Gali’s child since he was so much younger than all the rest and only four on the 1871 census.

Searching again on Ancestry, I found a new record: an entry for Abraham, Rosalia, Seligman, and Raphael Selinger on the Mannheim, Germany, family register dated November 26, 1848. What were they doing in Mannheim? By that time the three younger children, Pauline, Karolina, and Heinrich, had died. Perhaps they needed a change of scenery. But what about Helena? She was born in Hurben in 1849.

Then I found a second Mannheim family register that included Helena, the final entry on the page:

Abraham Selinger and family, Mannheim register
Ancestry.com. Mannheim, Germany, Family Registers, 1760-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Polizeipräsidium Mannheim Familienbögen, 1800-1900. Digital images. Stadtarchiv Mannheim — Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Mannheim, Germany.

My friends in the German Genealogy group, Heike Keohane, Matthias Steinke, and Bradley Hernlem, came to my rescue and translated it to read, “Helene, his daughter, here born the 22 August 1849.” So Helena’s birth is entered on the Hurben birth records (on the same date) and on the Mannheim records. I’ve no idea which is the correct birthplace; maybe Rosalia went home to Hurben to give birth and returned to Mannheim afterwards where the family was living.

But perhaps now I could find out where Frederick was born, not to mention Morris, Flora, Sidney, and Oscar. Maybe they were born in Mannheim. I checked the Mannheim birth records from 1853 through 1866 and found not one person named Selinger. I checked over and over, looking at each page until my eyes were blurry. There were no Selingers born in Mannheim during that period that I could find.

Then I discovered that Oskar Selinger had listed Ansbach as his birth place on his UK naturalization papers and thought that perhaps the family had moved from Mannheim to Ansbach.

Oscar Selinger UK naturalization papers
The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; Duplicate Certificates of Naturalisation, Declarations of British Nationality, and Declarations of Alienage; Class: HO 334; Piece: 54
Description
Description : Piece 054: Certificate Numbers A20701 – A21000

I had no luck locating Ansbach birth records for that period, and by then it was Thanksgiving, and other matters distracted me, and I put the Selinger mystery on the back burner.

To be continued…..

Two More Generations Back! The Amazing Seligmanns

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Amy

Get ready for a real brain twister here.

As I mentioned in my last post, my cousin Wolfgang sent me several new documents relating to our mutual Seligmann ancestors. Wolfgang and his mother received these from Beate Goetz, who had also sent me several important documents over a year ago. I continue to be amazed by how much information is available about my Seligmann forebears.

The first document is a death certificate for Jakob Seligmann, my four-times great-grandfather, father of Moritz Seligmann and grandfather of Bernard Seligman. Until now Jakob was the earliest relative I had found in the Seligmann line; he was born in Gaulsheim, Germany in 1773 and died there in 1851. His wife, my four-times great-grandmother, was Martha Mayer.

Jakob Seligmann death record

With help from Wolfgang, his mother, and my friend Matthias Steinke, I learned that this document says that Jakob Seligmann died on December 21, 1851, when he was 78 years old. He was born in Gaulsheim, the son of Seligmann Hirsch, deceased, a merchant in Gaulsheim, and Mina nee Mayer. The informants were his son Leopold Seligmann and Konrad Vollmer, not related. What was most exciting about this document was that it revealed the names of Jakob’s parents: Seligmann Hirsch and Mina Mayer.

Seligmann Hirsch and Mina Mayer were thus my five-times great-grandparents. I now had another generation back to add to my family tree. And then something occurred to me. When I saw that Mina’s birth name had been Mayer, I was puzzled. Was she related to her daughter-in-law Martha Mayer? Of course, it could be. But when I thought about it a bit more, I realized that when Mina was born in the mid-18^th century, Jews were not using surnames. Instead, they were using patronymics—Mina was probably the daughter of a man whose first name was Mayer, not whose surname was Mayer. She was Mina bat (daughter of) Mayer.

So if Jakob Seligmann’s father was Seligmann Hirsch, it meant that he was probably Seligmann ben (son of) Hirsch. That meant that the Seligmann surname really came from Jakob’s father’s first name. When Jakob had to adopt a surname in Napoleonic times, he must have taken his patronymic of Jakob ben (son of) Seligmann and compressed it into a first name and surname, creating Jakob Seligmann. Seligmann ben Hirsch was thus the original source for the Seligmann surname that survives to this day in my family with Wolfgang himself.

And that meant that Seligmann ben Hirsch was the son of a man named Hirsch, who was my six-times great-grandfather.

That hunch was corroborated by another bit of evidence that Wolfgang brought to my attention. Back in July 2015, I posted about Moritz Seligmann’s sister, Martha Seligmann, who had married a man named Benjamin Seligmann, son of Isaac Seligmann and Felicitas Goetzel. Martha and Benjamin’s son Siegfried had married Moritz and Eva Seligmann’s daughter Caroline. Caroline and Siegfried were the parents of Emil Seligmann, who created that very long and detailed family tree I wrote about here. That is, Emil was the grandson of both Moritz Seligmann AND his sister Martha Seligmann. He was his own second cousin.

Here’s the chart I posted last time. I know this is all confusing, but if I don’t write it down, I will never remember my own thought processes.

Pedigree Chart for Emil Seligmann

Or as I wrote then, “Emil’s father Siegfried was the son of Martha Seligmann; his mother Karoline was the daughter of Moritz Seligmann. Moritz and Martha were siblings, so Siegfried and Karoline were first cousins. Thus, Emil’s paternal grandmother Martha and his maternal grandfather Moritz were sister and brother. Now if in fact Benjamin Seligmann, Martha’s husband, was also a cousin, there is truly a remarkable amount of inbreeding there.”

And I think that’s in fact the case: Benjamin and Martha were also first cousins. Back in July I had thought that perhaps Benjamin Seligmann and his wife Martha Seligmann were cousins since both had the surname Seligmann. I thought that their fathers, Isaac and Jakob, respectively, could have been brothers, but I had no way of proving it. But now I know from Jakob’s death certificate that his father’s name was Seligmann ben Hirsch. Was that also the name of Isaac’s father?

A look at Isaac’s gravestone from the Steinheim Institute website revealed this, one of the most beautiful grave inscriptions I’ve ever seen:


האיש החשוב משכיל וטהור		Here lies the respected man wise and pure,
החבר ר’הירש בן כ”ה זעליגמאן		the Torah Scholar Mr. Hirsch, son of the honored Mr. Seligmann of
גוילסהיים: למלאכתו מלאכת		Gaulsheim. For his work was Heaven’s work. As swift as
שמים כצבי מהיר אור תורתו	5	a deer was the light of his Torah. Like a sapphire.
כספיר תאיר צדק קדמו פעמיו:		righteousness was before him. A wholly righteous man, great in deeds, doing
איש תמים ורב פעלי’ גומל חסדים		many acts of lovingkindness for the
רבים: לרעבים וצמאים		hungry and thirsty.
אורו נגנז יום וי”ו ך”ה ובא		He died on six, 25 Iyar, and he came
למנוחתו כבוד יו’ א’ך”ו אייר	10	to his honored resting place Day 1, 27 Iyar.
לפרט יקר בעיני ד’המות’ לחסידי’		Especially dear in the eyes of the Lord is the death of the pious.
תנצב”ה		May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life.

(Thank you to Neil, Bracha, and Gerald from Tracing the Tribe on Facebook for help in translating the Hebrew; the original German translation on the Steinheim site did not translate well into English using Google Translate, so I decided it would be better to get a translation of the Hebrew directly rather than getting a translation of the translation. If the lines of the translation do not line up exactly with the Hebrew text, that is my error, not that of my translators.)

And thank you to my friend Dorothee who told me about the link to the photograph of the headstone.

Hirsch “Isaac” ben Seligmann headstone
Found at http://www.steinheim-institut.de/daten/picsbng/xl/0358_bng.jpg

“Isaac’s” Hebrew name was Hirsch, son of Seligmann. His father was thus named Seligmann, as was Jakob’s father. Furthermore, Jewish naming patterns suggest that Isaac’s father could have been Seligmann son of Hirsch, the man who was also Jakob’s father. Hirsch/”Isaac” was older than Jakob; when Seligmann son of Hirsch had his first son, he named him for his own deceased father, Hirsch. Jakob and Hirsch/“Isaac” were most likely brothers, both sons of Seligmann ben Hirsch.

Why then is Isaac referred to as Isaac, not Hirsch as his gravestone indicates? I don’t know. The Steinheim Institute site notes that “Hirsch from Gaulsheim called Isaac Seligmann. He was a schoolteacher in Bingen,” without further explanation. On the page for Hirsch/Isaac’s son Benjamin, the Steinheim site comments that “Benjamin Seligmann was in Gaulsheim (today district of Bingen), the son of school teacher Hirsch (later: Isaac) 1798 Seligmann and his wife Felicity born.” [Translation by Google Translate] Hirsch must have changed his name to Isaac.

So that means that Benjamin Seligmann, son of Hirsch/Isaac, and Martha Seligmann, daughter of Jakob, were first cousins. Their son Siegfried was thus not only their son but also a first cousin removed from each of his parents. Oy vey. Siegfried then married his first cousin Caroline, daughter of his mother’s brother Moritz. ENDOGAMY, anyone?? No wonder Emil’s tree was so convoluted!

Here is an updated pedigree chart for Emil Seligmann. Notice that Seligmann ben Hirsch and Mina Mayer appear as his great-grandparents in three different places:

Extended Pedigree Chart for Emil Seligmann

Where am I? Oh, right. I now know that my six-times great-grandfather was named Hirsch and that he had a son named Seligmann, who had at least two children, Hirsch (who became Isaac) and Jakob.

But what about Jakob Seligmann’s wife Martha, daughter of Mayer, my four-times great-grandmother? The second document Wolfgang sent to me was her death certificate. Martha died on December 17, 1849 in Gaulsheim when she was 76 years old. She was born in Oberingelheim and was the daughter of Jakob Mayer, deceased, a merchant in Oberingelheim, and Odilia, nee Simon. The informants were her husband, Jakob Seligmann, and Konrad Vollmer, who was not related to her.

Martha Seligmann nee Mayer death record

Thus, I now know another set of five-times great-grandparents, Martha’s parents: Jakob Mayer (probably Jakob ben Mayer) and Odilia Simon (probably Odilia daughter of Simon). And I know where to search for them: Oberlingelheim. And if I am right about the patronymics, then I know two more of my sixth-great-grandfathers, Mayer, father of Jakob, and Simon, father of Odilia.

All that from two pieces of paper dating from the mid-nineteenth century.

Thank you, Beate Goetz, Wolfgang Seligmann and his mother Annlis, Matthias Steinke, and the members of Tracing the Tribe, for all your help.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Hettie’s Spirit Lives On: Her Children Walter and Blanche

Part II: Hettie Schoenthal, An Indomitable Spirit

Hettie Schoenthal, An Indomitable Spirit: Part I

Sidney Schoenthal, the Youngest Sibling: A Long Life, but a Short Post

Where Did Baby Rose Go?

The Gift of Photography: Bringing Faces to the Names

Two Brothers in Chicago: One Stayed, One Left

Part II: The Benefits of Teamwork

The Benefits of Teamwork: Part I

Two More Generations Back! The Amazing Seligmanns

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