And The Suitcase Just Keeps on Giving!

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Amy

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, as I was finishing up my write-up about the handwritten family tree we are calling Emil’s tree, Wolfgang’s mother discovered another handwritten tree. It appears to be written by someone else, but I don’t know who. It covers only the ten children of Jacob Seligmann and Marta/Martha Mayer and their grandchildren so is not as wide or deep in scope as the first one, but it contains some useful extra tidbits that have helped me locate more family members. (Each page has a letter “b” written in the upper right hand corner. I have no idea what that means, unless to show these page were about one particular line in the family.)

The cover page lists the children of Jacob and Mart(h)a and also the children of Isaac Seeligmann and Felicia Goetzel, that is, the two sets of Emil’s great-grandparents. Page 1 simply has Simon Seligmann’s name and that he was from Bingen, and Page 2 just has Isaac Seligmann (son of Jacob and Marta) and that he lived in Gensingen, a town near Bingen. Martha Seligmann and her children with her husband Benjamin Seeligmann are listed on Page 3. Page 4 (to be posted) covers the family of Moritz Seligmann, my three-times great-grandfather, and the family of Leopold Seligmann is on Page 5. So far all this information is consistent with what was on Emil’s tree and does not add anything very important.

On Page 6, however, there is some new information about the family of Mina Seligmann. The first tree reported, as in this one, that she married Leopold Mayer of Oberursel and had a son Adolf Eduard. Here it is clear that there were two sons, Adolf and Eduard, and also two daughters: Helene, who married Jakob or Jak (or maybe Isak?) Wolf, and an unnamed daughter who died and was not married.

Page 7 also contains some new information. This page is devoted to Caroline Seligmann, who married Moses Moreau from Worrstadt, another town not very far from Bingen. Underneath are four names that the creator of this tree originally labeled as the children of Caroline and Moses, but then crossed out and wrote “grandchildren.” The names are the same as those on the earlier tree—Markus, Albert, Bertha, and Alice. Next to Markus it says “England,” and next to Albert it says “Amerika.” I searched for both with the surname Moreau, but so far have had no luck. Perhaps, however, they were the sons of a daughter of Caroline and Moses Moreau and had their father’s surname and not Moreau. For Bertha, the notation says that she was the wife of Aschaffenburg (which Wolfgang told me is also a town in Bavaria), and for Alice it says that she was the wife of D. Mastbaum. But why are the grandchildren listed and not the children? And what are the two names at the very bottom?

The page that has provided me with the most new information is Page 8. In my last post I talked about the confusing passage at the end of the tree’s notes on Marx Seligmann. Someone had gone to America later—but who? Was it the children, the ex-wife, or Marx himself? Well, this new tree provides more clues and led me to more answers.

The first part of Page 8 repeats the information about Marx’s marriage and divorce from Rosina Loeser, and then on the bottom of the page, according to my wonderful helpers in the German Genealogy group on Facebook, it says that Marx (or Max) remarried in New York and that his son married someone named Coppel, and that they had a daughter who married a film agent, but when I went to search for Marx Seligmann in New York, I found this marriage record:

“New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1940,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2492-DVZ : accessed 8 July 2015), Max Schlesinger and Charlotte Seligmann, 17 Jun 1874; citing Marriage, Manhattan, New York, New York, United States, New York City Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm .

Although this record indicates that Marx Seligmann himself was married Sara Koppel, not a son of Marx, it can’t be just coincidence that someone named Marx Seligmann had a wife named Koppel. Also, Marx and Sara did have a daughter, Charlotte, and she married someone named Max Schlesinger. I don’t think, however, that he was a film agent.

If this second family tree is accurate and I am making correct assumptions that this is in fact the same Marx Seligmann who was a son of Jacob Seligmann and Marta Mayer and thus my four-times great-uncle, then this new tree just opened up a huge door to learn about more Seligmann cousins living in the United States. In my next post, I will write about what I’ve learned about Marx and his descendants.

For now, to finish the second family tree, Pages 9 and 10 add no information about Salomon Seligmann and Babette Seligmann that was not already included on Emil’s tree. The only thing I can’t decipher here are the faintly written words at the bottom of page 9.

Thus, once again I have been blessed with a treasure from that suitcase in Germany. What if Wolfgang had not found my blog and contacted me? I would know nothing about all these people. Sometimes you just have to be thankful for good luck.

More Hidden Treasure from Wolfgang’s Magic Suitcase

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Amy

http://www.wpclipart.com/money/. Per the license: These images are public domain. License . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have had many exciting finds through the course of my search for my family history: wonderful photographs and letters, newspaper articles, government documents, birth and marriage and death certificates, and so on. But for me some of the most special finds have been the family trees prepared by other members of my extended family, like the family tree prepared by my Aunt Elaine. These trees are special not only for the information they convey, but also because they tie me to someone else who cared about the family history and wanted it preserved for posterity.

So you can imagine how excited I was when my cousin Wolfgang sent me a four page family tree prepared at least 75 years ago by one of our Seligmann cousins in Germany. We know that this tree was prepared by a child of Karoline Seligmann, the daughter of my three-times great-grandfather Moritz Seligmann and his first wife, Eva Schoenfeld because the tree refers to Karoline Seligmann and her husband Siegfried Seligmann as “our parents.” Karoline (sometimes spelled Caroline or Carolina) and Siegfried had five sons and two daughters: Heinrich, Eva, Wilhelm, Emil, Eugen, Rosa, and Carl. Two of the sons died in infancy, Wilhelm and Carl, , and one I cannot account for beyond his birth, Heinrich. Emil, Eugen, and Eva all died during the Holocaust. Only one child survived the Holocaust, their daughter Rosa, who immigrated to the US in 1940. I discussed Karoline’s children here. I don’t know which child created this tree.

Wolfgang thought Emil was the most likely author of the tree, so for simplicity purposes I will refer to it as Emil’s tree and to its author as Emil. (The last date given on the tree is 1909, and unfortunately it stops with the generation of Karoline and Siegfried and does not include their children.) Although I cannot be sure which of the surviving children—Emil, Eva, Eugen, or Rosa—was my fellow genealogist, I am extremely grateful to whoever created this tree because it provides me with one more generation of my Seligmann and Schoenfeld relatives—the siblings of my three-times great-grandfather, Moritz Seligmann, and the siblings of my three-times great-grandmother, Babetta Schoenfeld (Eva’s sister). It, of course, also raises new questions and new pathways for research.

Starting with page 1 of the tree:

Page 1 of Emil’s tree

It says at the top, “Our great-grandparents in Gaulsheim: a) fathers side: Jacob Seeligmann, his wife: (Merle) Marta nee Mayer (Gaulsheim).” I found it interesting that the early spelling of the family name was Seeligmann. Marta (Martha) Mayer’s name is consistent with the record I obtained for the marriage of their son Moritz to Eva Schoenfeld. Jacob and Marta were my four-times great-grandparents. According to prior records I’d obtained, they were both born around 1773.

According to Emil’s tree, Jacob and Marta had ten children. Until seeing this tree, I had only found three: my three-times great-grandfather Moritz and two other sons, Leopold and Isaac. I had found Leopold and Isaac on the Steinheim Institute website, but not the other seven children. According to the Emil tree, they were Simon, Martha, Mina, Caroline, Marx, Salomon, and Babette.

The next section of the first page and the second page provide information for the ten children of Jacob and Marta. For Simon and Isaac, it seemed that Emil had no information, except that Simon was living in Bingen. The entry for Leopold simply says “in Gaulsheim.” But then on the second page of the tree (see below), Emil returned to Simon, Isaac, and Leopold and listed what appears to be the names of their children. It looks like he thought Simon had two sons, Louis and Richard, and Isaac had a son named Hermann. Leopold’s children were Malchen, Sigmund, Sophie, August, and Roschen.

Page 2 of Emil’s tree

This, however, is not consistent with what I found on the Steinheim website. According to the Steinheim website, Isaac was born in 1795 and died in 1860. He seems to have lived in Gaulsheim all his life. The Steinheim site states that Isaac married Rosine Blad and that they had five children: Pauline, Magdalena, Henriette, Ludwig (Louis), and Richard. My best guess is that Ludwig and Richard are the same people who Emil listed as Louis and Richard. I don’t know whether Emil is correct or the Steinheim site is correct as to whether they were Simon’s sons or Isaac’s sons. I also don’t know where Hermann fits into the family. Was he really Simon’s son and Emil had it backwards? I don’t know.

There is also some inconsistency between Emil’s facts for Leopold and the information on the Steinheim website. The Steinheim site lists Leopold’s wife as Caroline Marum, and I found a marriage record for them dated December 17, 1849.

Marriage Record of Leopold Seligmann and Caroline Marum

According to the Steinheim site, they had five children: Amalie, Rosalie (Roschen?), Sophia, August, and Therese. Emil did not have Therese or Amalie, but had instead Malchen and Sigmund. I don’t know which information is more accurate.

For Jacob and Marta’s daughter Martha, Emil wrote that she married Benjamin Seeligmann. To the right of Martha’s name is a box that says, “Our grandparents in Bingen.” Then next, for our mutual ancestor Moritz, Emil wrote “our grandfather in Gau-Algesheim.” There is a date underneath that looks like 13-2-1877; I believe that must be his date of death. But how could Martha and Moritz, sister and brother, both be Emil’s grandparents? Well, that will become clear later on.

For Mina, it says that she was the wife of Leopold Mayer of Oberursel and that they had one child, Adolf Eduard, who died and was never married. I wonder if this Mayer was a relative of Mina’s mother Marta Mayer. The next child of Jacob and Marta, Caroline, married Moses Moreau (?) of Worrstadt, and they had four children whose names are written underneath; the first I cannot decipher (maybe Markus?), but the other three are Albert, Bertha, and Alice.

The last entry on the first page is a long one for Marx Seligmann. With the help of the kind people in the German Genealogy group on Facebook, I was able to get a sense of what happened to Marx. He married Rosina Loeser on June 11, 1838. They were legally separated in June 1848, and he agreed to pay support for the children. They were divorced in February, 1849.

On page 2 of the Emil tree, Emil continued with the facts about Marx Seligmann.

Page 2 of Emil’s tree

This is the hardest part of the document for me to understand, despite help from Wolfgang and the German Genealogy group. At the top are listed the names of the two daughters of Marx and Rosina: Mathilde and Sophie. But what does it say underneath? All my German helpers agreed that is says, “Underage ??? in Amerika.” One thought it said “Wife in Amerika,” another thought it said “Later in Amerika.” Who went to America? And when did they go? I have started looking, but so far have not had any luck.

(As I was finishing this post, Wolfgang sent me another handwritten version of this tree with more information about Marx and a few others. I need to finish deciphering that one and then will update with more information.)

Emil wrote that Salomon had a wife named Anna Chailly of Mainz and a son and daughter, whose names are not listed here. I found an entry in the Mainz Family Register database on ancestry.com for Salomon and his family, and his children were named Emilie, Mathilde, Siegmund, and Jacob. Jacob married Dora Rosenberg in 1887, and they had a daughter named Anna Dora, born in 1890. I have not yet found any further information for the other three children of Salomon and Anna.

Finally, for Babette, the tree recorded that she had died unmarried and had lived in Gaulsheim.

That completed Emil’s entries for the children of Jacob Seeligmann and Marta Mayer. He then drew a horizontal line across the page as if to start a new section. Under that line he wrote, “Isaac Seeligmann and his wife Felicitas nee Goetzel of Bingen.” I was totally confused when I saw this; was this the same Isaac Seligmann, the son of Jacob and Marta, about whom Emil had written already? Underneath the names of this Isaac and Felicitas was a list of their children, and they were not the same names that I had found on the Steinheim site, discussed above, for Jacob and Marta’s son Isaac. Instead, the following names were listed: Benjamin, Theodor, and Martha. Who were these people?

According to my German Genealogy helpers, under Benjamin’s name it says, “Our grandfather from Bingen.” Suddenly something clicked. This was the Benjamin Seeligmann who married Martha Seligmann, the daughter of Jacob and Marta and the sister of Moritz. Remember that Martha and Benjamin had also been named as Emil’s grandparents. This section of the tree is reporting on Emil’s other great-grandparents, the other Isaac Seligmann and his wife Felicitas Goetzel, and their children.

Was this Isaac Seeligmann related to Jacob Seeligmann, my four-times-great-grandfather? They all lived in the Bingen-Gaulsheim area. I’ve yet to find any documentation linking the two different Seligmann families, but my hunch is that they were in fact cousins if not brothers, meaning that Benjamin Seeligmann might have married a cousin, Martha Seligmann.

Emil then reported on his grandfather Benjamin’s siblings. Theodor was living in Nancy (in France, presumably), and he had a son August who lived in Paris. Martha married Isaac Cahn of Mainz, and they had a son Adolf Cahn.

That brings me to the third page of Emil’s tree.

Page 3 of Emil’s tree

This page is primarily devoted to Emil’s grandparents Benjamin Seeligmann and Martha Seligmann. He provides their birth and death dates and then the names of their seven children: Siegfried, Emilie, Hermann, Karoline, Ferdinand, Lambert, and Bertha. Under their names, Emil reported on who some of them married, including his father Siegfried, who married Karoline Seligmann. Suddenly the rest of the tree made sense to me.

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 Seeligmann, Martha’s husband, was also a cousin, there is truly a remarkable amount of inbreeding there. Here is a family chart that will (I hope) help to visualize these relationships:

Pedigree Chart for Emil Seligmann

The last entry on the third page provided me with the death dates for Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld, information I had not had before.

Finally on page four Emil discusses his maternal great-grandparents, a) the family of Jacob Seligmann of Bingen, already discussed under his paternal great-grandparents; and b) the family of his grandmother Eva Schoenfeld, sister of my three-times great-grandmother Babetta Schoenfeld, the sister who married Moritz Seligmann after Eva died in 1835.

Page 4 of Emil’s tree

As I already knew, Eva and Babetta were the daughters of Bernard Schoenfeld and Rosa Goldmann of Erbes-Budesheim. I also had records of the names and births of most of their children. Emil’s list confirmed these and added one more for whom I did not have a record, Alexander. The children as listed on Emil’s tree are Alexander, Eva and Babetta (described as the first and second wives of Moritz Seligmann of Gau-Algesheim), Maria Anna (wife of Alexander Levi of Kirchheimbolanden), Sara (wife of Leokov (?) Kahn of Bubenheim), Zibora (wife of Karl Levi of Alzey and mother of Albert, Bernhard, and Berta), and Rebecca (wife of Salomon Goldmann of Kirchheimbolanden). Then at the bottom Emil listed the children of Maria Anna and Alexander Levi: Fridolin, Leonhard, Judith, Lina, Hedwig, Elise, and Ottmar.

I was recently contacted through Wolfgang by one of the grandchildren of Zibora Schoenfeld Levi and am hoping to learn even more about my Schoenfeld ancestors.

What a treasure trove this tree is! Such a gift from one of my predecessors as a family historian—someone who died during the Holocaust and who left behind evidence not only of his ancestors’ lives, but of his own. Now it is my job to try and fill in the details and continue the story.

Happy 4th of July!

Posted on July 4, 2015 by Amy

English: Statue of Liberty Gaeilge: Dealbh na Saoirse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy 4^th to all of you who live in the US!

I know my country isn’t perfect. I have never been blind to the mistakes our country has made nor am I blind to our continuing problems with racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, and violence. And I know, especially after traveling this summer, that people all over the world love their countries and are proud of their history, their culture, and their heritage despite the mistakes and problems of those countries.

But this is my home, and I am deeply grateful to my brave ancestors who had the courage to come here to seek a better life and freedom from oppression and prejudice and violence. I am so grateful to my immigrant ancestors: Hart Levy Cohen, Jacob Cohen and Rachel Jacobs, Bernard Seligman, John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss, Gerson Katzenstein and Eva Goldschmidt, Isadore Schoenthal, Joseph and Bessie Brotman, and my grandfather Isadore Goldschlager, who came by himself as a teenage boy and walked across Romania to get to this country, leaving his parents and siblings behind. How can I ever take that for granted?

So today I say happy birthday to the United States of America and thank you for giving my ancestors a place of refuge and opportunity and a home for their children, their grandchildren, and all their descendants.

English: Fireworks on the Fourth of July (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mystery Photo: One More Try

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Amy

Although my stats show a lot of visitors, I’ve gotten very little feedback on my last two posts (and I am very grateful for the feedback I did receive), so perhaps I am just asking questions that can’t be answered—or that need to be answered by an expert. But here is one last attempt to figure out who these people are in this photograph. Please let me know what you think. On the advice of my cousin Pete, I consulted a few web sites providing fashion information for the purpose of dating photographs, and it seems very likely that this photograph was taken sometime between 1890 and 1905. I can’t narrow it down much more than that based on the clothing.

Who are these people? When was this taken?

Today I am focused primarily on the man on the right, who is labeled Onkel Adolf.

I have only found two Adolfs in the extended Seligmann family. One is Adolf Arnfeld, Bettina Seligmann‘s husband, but this is Bettina, and she is not in the group photo, so that makes no sense.

Bettina Arnfeld nee Seligmann

The second Adolf was Adolf Seligman, my three-times-great-uncle who immigrated to Santa Fe and settled there. He did make a trip to Germany in 1900, so this photo might have been taken then. Adolf was born in 1843, so if the photo was taken in 1900, he would have been 57. Certainly the man in the photograph looks about that age.

Date: Saturday, November 10, 1900 Paper: New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) Volume: 37 Issue: 226 Page: 4

Fortunately, Adolf’s granddaughter Davita recently contacted me after finding the blog, and she sent me this photograph of her grandfather on a trip to Egypt. Adolf died in 1920 when he was 77, and I would guess he was between 65 and 70 when this photograph was taken. Is this the same man as Onkel Adolf in the group photo above?

To me there is similarity in the eyes, mouth and ears, but the older man has a fuller face (just as the older “Babetta” has a fuller face than the younger one). What do you think?

The other man in the group photograph is labeled Onkel Jakob. Since I can’t find a Jakob Seligmann who would fit into this photograph, I am wondering whether it could be James Seligman, the brother who immigrated to England and whose estate was the reason for all those Westminster Bank family trees. Perhaps James was born Jacob and Anglicized his name when he immigrated? Since I have no birth record for James, I do not know.

(UPDATE: I checked with some people from the German Genealogy Group, and several people confirmed that James was not a name used for boys in Germany in the 19th century; the German equivalent was Jakob. James was an English name. Thus, I am now persuaded that this was in fact James/Jakob Seligmann.)

If the two men are Babetta’s sons Adolf and James, it would make sense that the two women are either their wives or their sisters. Adolf married Lucille Gorman in 1902 when she was nineteen and he was sixty. The woman standing next to Adolf does not look that young nor is she labeled with any name that looks like Lucille or Lucy. James Seligman’s wife’s name was Henrietta, and the name above the woman next to him does not look at all like Henrietta.

So could they be sisters of Adolf and James? Could the two women be two daughters of Moritz and Babetta whom I just had not yet found? After all, I had no birth record for James, but only learned of him because of the settlement of his estate. Perhaps there were other children born to Moritz and Babetta. There is a six year gap between Pauline’s birth in 1847 and James in 1853, time enough for two more daughters.

One other reason I think this is possible is that Davita told me that her grandfather Adolf’s favorite sister was Minnie, depicted with him in the photograph in Egypt.

But I have no record of a sister named Minnie. Both Bernard and Adolf named a daughter Minnie, so this does seem to suggest there was a Minnie in the family. But….neither of the women in the group photo is labeled Minnie.

Here is a closeup of Minnie from the Egypt photo and a closeup of the woman on the left in the group photo.

Same person? The nose and mouth are similar, as is the hair. Again, the woman in the Egypt photo has a fuller face, and it’s hard to compare the eyes since she is squinting into the sun, but it could be the same person, couldn’t it?

But that name above her head doesn’t look like Minnie to me.

So who are these people? I am as confused now as I was when I started. Please let me know what you think!

Mystery Photos II: Oppenheimers

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Amy

I learned something important from my first Mystery Photo post. Keep it simple. Too many photos makes it too confusing for people (and for me). Although a lot of people read the post, almost no one commented. I did go to Facebook and got some feedback about whether or not these two photos are both Babetta Schoenfeld Seligmann. Most people said yes, some said no.

Courtesy of the Family of Fred and Ilse Michel

For my second post involving the mystery photos from the Michel album, I want to start with some photographs that are clearly labeled as members of the Oppenheimer family and that present no mystery. The Oppenheimers were the children of Pauline Seligmann, sister of my great- great-grandfather Bernard. She and her husband Maier Oppenheimer had five children: Joseph, Martha, Anna, Ella, and Moritz, according to the Westminster Bank‘s family tree for Pauline.

Pauline Seligmann Oppenheimer Family Tree by Westminster Bank

The Michel album included clearly marked photographs of the two sons, Joseph and Moritz, and one of the daughters, Ella.

Joseph Oppenheimer

Joseph Oppenheimer from Butzbach, son of Tante Pauline

Joseph was born in 1875 and died at Dachau Concentration Camp in October, 1940.

Moritz Oppenheimer

I wrote about Moritz Oppenheimer in detail here. He was the wealthy industrialist who owned the horse breeding farm and who died in May 1941, under suspicious circumstances after being “questioned” by the Gestapo. Moritz was born in 1879.

How old do Joseph and Moritz appear to be in these photos? I am guessing between 25 and 35, meaning the photographs were taken between 1900-1910. Does that seem right?

The third clearly labeled Oppenheimer photograph is this one:

To Wolfgang and me, this seemed to say Milla Oppenheimer. But neither Joseph nor Moritz Oppenheimer married a woman named Milla and there was no sister named Milla. I posted the photograph on Facebook for some feedback, and one member of Tracing the Tribe pointed out that the M could really be an E, except for the dot over what seems to be an I. Then another member pointed that the “dot” was really part of the framing around the photograph, not part of the name written on the side. So I believe that in fact this is Ella Oppenheimer.

According to the family tree for Pauline Seligmann Oppenheimer prepared by the Westminster Bank, Ella never married or had children and died during the Holocaust, although I cannot find her in the Yad Vashem database. I did find in the JewishGen database entitled “German Towns Project” an entry for Ella Oppenheimer from Butzbach, who had been born there June 21, 1878 and had moved to Frankfort in 1939, (That database was created by asking officials in numerous Jewish towns to list their former Jewish residents and their fate, if known.) But that database had no information about how or where she died.

So these three photographs are pretty clear to me. The next possible photograph of one of the five Oppenheimer children is the woman at the center of the photograph I posted last time.

Who are these people?

Here is a closeup of her face.

It certainly looks like it says Anna Oppenheimer over her head, doesn’t it?

Anna, another sister of Joseph, Moritz, and Ella, was born in 1877, and she died in 1908. In my earlier post, I assumed that the older woman in this photo was Babetta Seligmann, meaning the photo would have been taken in about 1890 or so since Babetta was born in 1810. But Anna certainly does not look thirteen in this photograph. How old does she look?

If I guess that she is 30, that would mean the photo was taken in 1907. That would make Babetta almost a hundred years old. Or maybe it’s not Babetta. Maybe the older woman is Pauline Seligmann Oppenheimer, who was also born in Gau Algesheim. Paulina was born in 1847, so she would have been sixty in 1907. That woman could be sixty (not that sixty-year old women look like that today). But then why is she labeled Grandmother? Pauline was not Franziszka Seligmann’s grandmother; she was her aunt. In the photo of Joseph Oppenheimer, she is referred to as Tante Pauline.

Franziska’s grandmother from Gau-Algesheim was Babetta. Fred Michel’s maternal grandmother was Rosa Bergmann Seligmann; she did live in Gau-Algesheim. She was born in 1853 and died in Gau-Algesheim in 1899. But that woman does not look 45, does she? I still think the elderly woman is Babetta.

But then how could that be Anna Oppenheimer? Am I misreading the name above her head?

So my only question for today: could that be Anna Oppenheimer?

That’s it for this post. I will return to the other people in this photo in a later post once I have some feedback. I am trying to narrow down the date so I can piece together the other parts of this puzzle.

Mystery Photos: Part I

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Amy

In Fred Michel’s album there are a number of photographs that are either unlabeled or labeled with names that we (Wolfgang, Suzanne, and I) cannot match to a person. I am hoping to get some input from all of you to help us in this endeavor. Please leave your thoughts in the comments so others can respond.

First, this photo of two women appears to be labeled either Anna or Minna (on the left) and Franziska on the right. I cropped and enlarged the face of Franziska. First: Is it Anna or Minna? Anna makes more sense since there is no Minna in the family as far as I can tell.

And is the woman on the right the same woman as the woman in the two photographs below it? That woman is Franziska Seligmann Michel, Fred Michel’s mother.

Fred Michel and Franziska Seligmann Michel
Courtesy of the Family of Fred and Ilse Michel

Franziska Seligmann Michel

If it is Anna and Franziska, then the Anna could be Franziska’s sister Anna, who married Hugo Goldmann, and whose family including their three children were all killed in the Holocaust. Perhaps the little girl in the photo is their oldest child Grete, who was born in 1913.

Next mystery set. The first photograph is of Emil Ochs and his wife Bettina Erlanger Ochs, discussed in my last post; I then cropped just to Bettina’s face. Is the woman in the photo below, which is unlabeled, the same woman?

Emil Ochs and wife, daughter of Mathilde Erlanger geb Seligmann

Bettina Erlanger Ochs

Unknown—is it Bettina Erlanger Ochs?

The men do not appear to be the same man, do they? If it’s not the same woman, there certainly is a strong family resemblance, but Bettina did not have a sister, as far as I’ve found.

Finally (for now), there are these two photographs. The first is definitely Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld, the daughter of Hieronymous Seligmann:

Bettina Arnfeld nee Seligmann

The same dog appears to be in this photograph. But is it?

Uncle Adolf and Grandmother Gau Algesheim

Who are these people?

According to Wolfgang, the label on the bottom right says Grandmother Gau Algesheim, so perhaps this is Babetta Schoenfeld Seligmann. Here is Babetta in an earlier photograph:

Courtesy of the Family of Fred and Ilse Michel

Could these both be the same person?

I think they could both be the same person. Do you? I don’t know when Babetta died, but she was born in 1810. Even if she is 80 years old in the later photograph, the photograph would have been taken by 1890.

If so, who are all those other people? The man above Babetta is labeled Uncle Adolf, I think. The only Adolf I’ve found in the family is Adolf Arnfeld, the husband of Bettina. That might have made sense, given the dog appearing in both the family picture and the portrait of Bettina. But Bettina was born in 1875, and she didn’t even marry Adolf until 1900. And the woman next to Adolf does not look like Bettina. And the name over her head appears to be Anna Oppenheimer.

And I don’t think the woman on the left is Bettina either. Here’s a close up of that woman.

Is this Bettina Arnfeld?

Finally, the names in the left hand margin. The man appears to be labeled Uncle Jakob, and I can’t read at all the name for the woman sitting below him—-Tante (aunt) something? Ends with an I? Not a clue. I can’t find an Uncle Jacob or anyone to match the Aunt he is paired with. More on this photo in the next post.

As for the dog, if Bettina Arnfeld was a young woman when holding that dog, what year would this be? Bettina was born in 1875, so if she is twenty in that photo, this could be around the same time as the large group photo with what appears to be the same dog. I am confused!

So…please do share your thoughts with me. It often takes a fresh set of eyes to see what I may be missing.

My Ever-growing Seligmann Family Tree

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Amy

Of all my family lines, I have had the best luck with my Seligmann line. First, early on I found my cousin Pete, Arthur Seligman’s grandson, who had a wealth of information about the New Mexico Seligmans. Then I was lucky to find people in Germany who provided me with the copies of vital records for Moritz Seligmann and his family as well as a book about the Jews of Gau-Algesheim. From those sources, I learned the names of many of my German ancestors.

Then my cousin Wolfgang found my blog, and he has provided me with invaluable information and documents as well as his continuing help in deciphering and translating what he found in his cousin’s suitcase. From there I was able to find my cousin Suzanne, who has provided me not only with more information and more documents but also with priceless photographs of many of my Seligmann relatives.

And now I have connected with two more cousins: George, an American descendant of Hieronymous Seligmann, a brother of my great-great-grandfather Bernard, and Davita, a descendant of Adolph Seligman, also my great-great-grandfather’s brother, who also settled in Santa Fe.. And from George and Davita I hope to learn even more about the family.

Right before I left and then while I was away, Wolfgang and Suzanne sent a bunch of new documents and new photographs that I want to share. I am not even sure where to begin. I think I will start with the newly discovered Westminster Bank document revealing the names of all the children of Hieronymous Seligmann; it answered some of the questions left open by my posts about the list of heirs to the estate of English James Seligman.

Westminster Bank family tree for Hieronymous Seligmann

This must have been the family tree that Elsa Oppenheimer had found erroneous as described in her letter of July 9, 1984. She had asserted that Hieronymous did not have a daughter named Johanna or Elizabeth (Bettina, on the tree), as the Bank’s tree indicated. But Elsa also said that Moritz did not have a son named Adolph, and she was wrong about that. I now think she was also wrong about Johanna and Bettina. How do I know she was wrong? Because there are pictures of both of these women in the photograph album that belonged to their cousin, Fred Michel.

First, here is a picture of Johanna Seligmann Bielefeld from the Michel album. Despite Elsa’s protestations, Johanna was clearly the daughter of one of the Seligmann sons, and there is no reason to think that she was not a sibling of Jack, Rosina Laura, and Mathilde, as indicated on the Bank tree, and thus a daughter of Hieronymous.

Johanna Bielefeld nee Seligmann

As I posted earlier, Johanna married Alfred Bielefeld, and they had two children, Hans and Lily, both of whom immigrated to the United States. Alfred and Johanna were both deported to Terezin, where Alfred died. With the help of the archivist at Terezin, I was able to locate Alfred’s death certificate.

Albert Bielefeld death certificate from Terezin

Alfred Bielefeld death certificate from Terezin

From what I can interpret here, Alfred died from myocardial deterioration and cellulitis. Johanna did not die at Terezin, but was later transported to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

As for Bettina, this beautiful photograph appears in the Michel photo album.

Bettina Arnfeld nee Seligmann

Wolfgang located a page in German for the stolperstein placed in her memory in Muelheim-Ruhr.

Stolperstein for Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld By RalfHuels (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

According to this page, Bettina was born in Gau-Algesheim on March 17, 1875, the daughter of Hieronymous Seligmann and Anna Levi. She attended school in Bingen and married Adolf Arnfeld in 1900. Adolf was in the fabric and clothing business in Mulheim-Ruhr, and he and Bettina were living there when their son Heinz was born in 1902. Adolf died in 1927, and Bettina was still living in Mulheim when she was deported to Terezin on July 21, 1942. She died six months later at Terezin from pneumonia. Here is yet another chilling death certificate issued by the Nazis.

Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld death certificate from Terezin

Unfortunately, I was not able to locate these death records while at Terezin so was unable to locate the specific gravesite where Albert Bielefeld and Bettina Arnfeld were buried.

Bettina’s biography also discussed her son Heinz. After initially working for his father’s company, Heinz became an attorney and worked as a clerk in the court system until dismissed in 1933 under the anti-Semitic laws adopted by the Nazis. He was imprisoned for a period of time in 1938 at Dachau (mostly likely in the aftermath of Kristallnacht), but was released. He immigrated to England in 1939, where he married Liselotte Schondorff in 1945. Heinz died in England on May 4, 1961. I have not located any descendants.

Based on the photographs and the other information and documentation, I think it is quite evident that both Johanna and Bettina were the daughters of Hieronymous Seligmann, the younger brother of Bernard Seligman, my three-times great-grandfather.

There were two other names I was not certain about when I wrote about the list of heirs to the estate of English James Seligmann: Anna Wolf and Bettina Ochs. I think I now have answers for those as well, with the help of Wolfgang and the photographs from Suzanne.

The list of heirs to English James Seligman’s estate had listed Anna Wolf right below Johanna Bielefeld and Bettina Arnfeld and referred to Johanna as her aunt. It also indicated that Anna had died in December 1935 in Mulheim-Ruhr, the town where Bettina had lived.

On the Hieronymous family tree from the Westminster Bank, depicted above, one of his daughters, Mathilde Wolf, is listed as having a daughter Anna, who died in 1935. This certainly seems to indicate that the Anna Wolf on the list of heirs was the daughter of Mathilde, sister to both Johanna and Bettina. That assumption is further supported by this photograph of what appears to be a stock certificate with the name Mathilde Wolf geb. (born) Seligmann written upon it. I don’t know what happened to Mathilde or her husband or why she herself is not listed as an heir instead of her daughter Anna.

There are several photographs of unidentified couples from the Michel album. Perhaps one of these is Mathilde Seligmann Wolf and her husband; perhaps one is a photograph of Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld and her husband. I don’t know. I will post some of these in a subsequent post and ask for help from all of you.

As for Bettina Ochs, I had been quite perplexed by her name on the list of James Seligman’s heirs. As I wrote, she is listed as Frau Bettina Ochs from Milan, Italy. Ochs thus appeared to be her married name, so I had thought her birth name must have been Seligmann or Oppenheimer, but the list names her brother as Arthur Erlanger, suggesting that Bettina’s birth name was Erlanger. So who was she, and how was she related to the Seligmanns?

I was stumped.

Until I saw this photograph:

Emil Ochs and wife, daughter of Mathilde Erlanger geb Seligmann

It says “Emil Ochs and wife, daughter of Mathilde Erlanger nee Seligmann.” So Bettina Ochs was the daughter of a Mathilde Seligmann, who had married someone named Erlanger. But which Mathilde Seligmann?

Thanks to Wolfgang, I now have an answer. Wolfgang found a page on Geni.com, another genealogy website, for Mathilde Erlanger nee Seligmann, which identified her as the daughter of Moritz and Babetta Seligmann. I looked back at my notes for the children of Moritz and Babetta, and sure enough there was a daughter named Mathilde for whom I had had no information beyond her birth date of January 31, 1845, which came from the records I’d obtained from Gau-Algesheim. Now from the Geni page, the list of heirs, and the photograph, I know her married name and the names of her children, Bettina and Arthur, and I know Bettina’s husband’s name, Emil. Unfortunately, however, I do not know what happened to Mathilde, her husband, Arthur or Bettina and Emil. I don’t know why Bettina was listed as living in Milan or why she had an English lawyer, according to the list of heirs. I don’t know why her brother was only listed as a secondary heir.

The only other record I have for Bettina so far is from the JewishGen database labeled “Switzerland, Jewish Arrivals 1938-1945,” which includes a listing for “Bettina Ochs-Erlanger (Bettina Oberdorfer).” That listing says her nationality was Italian and that she arrived in Switzerland on August 5, 1944. Where did she go from there? Why is she also listed as Oberdorfer? What happened to Emil? I don’t know.

So as always, some questions have been answered, leading to more to be answered. Next post I will look at some of the other photographs from the album of Fred Michel.

Thank you and Back to work

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Amy

First, I want to thank you all for the kind words of comfort I received about Cassie—from those who emailed me or commented on the blog or on Facebook. It really did help to know that others understand how our pets are family. For those who are interested, I have added a few photos of Cassie when she was younger to the blog post.

Secondly, it’s time for me to get back to the real work of this blog—genealogy. It’s been over a month since we left for our trip and since I’ve done any serious genealogy work. I think having a break like this was really important. I tend to be compulsive about what I am doing, and I love the genealogy work so much that, unlike when I had a real job, I could spend endless hours lost in my research and then blogging about it. I have been driven to keep digging, keep blogging, since I retired a year ago, and I think I worried that if I stopped, I would lose steam and never get back to it.

So taking a month off was probably a very good thing. Now I have new motivation for continuing my work, having seen so many new places and learned so much about Jewish history and history in general. And I have a whole new branch of my family to begin—my paternal grandmother’s family.

But before I do that, there are some other new things to report and to share. My Seligmann family tree continues to provide me with new members and new documents and new photographs. I am trying to be sure I understand who is who before posting, but will share those soon. I also have new documents to share regarding my Schoenfeld family tree as well as various other tidbits here and there.

So tomorrow there will be a post with new information about my Seligmann family. Thank you all once again for your thoughts about Cassie and for following my adventures around Europe.

Cassie July 2000-June 2015

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Amy

Cassie

We said goodbye to our wonderful dog Cassie this week. It was a terribly hard and upsetting decision, but she was failing, and her quality of life had deteriorated to the point where we knew we had to make the right decision for her. We are at peace. She lived a good and long life for a dog. But we are also incredibly sad.

Cassie was a pound puppy. We got her at the Thomas J. O’Connor animal shelter in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2001. The police had picked her up after finding her tied to a tree in a trailer park in Chicopee, and no one would claim her as theirs. She had been in the pound for only a few days when I saw her on Petfinders.com and suggested we go take a look.

She was skinny, dirty, and overly excited. Harvey and Maddy were skeptical, but I was in love, and I knew right away that she was sweet and gentle and loving. And I was right. Cassie never once growled at a person or a cat, and she only growled at dogs if they invaded her space, which wasn’t very often. She never, ever hurt anyone. She loved everyone. When we told family and close friends that she was gone this week, everyone described her as loving and sweet and gentle.

August 2001

Our vet estimated that she was about a year old when we adopted her at the end of July, 2001, so we assigned her a birth date of July 31, 2000. She took almost no time to adapt to living with us. She was clean and playful and smart. She could run like the most graceful of animals. The first time we took her to the beach, she ran all the way up a high dune. We raced after her, fearful we’d never see her again, but there she was waiting for us at the top. It took a long time before she was ever let off the leash again.

Cassie was with us during that dreadful fall of 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11. She was such a positive distraction. When my family, all shaken still by the events of that September, gathered for Thanksgiving, it was Cassie who made us laugh. She was still new and puppy-like, and she’d run from one member of the family to another, excited and happy.

My dog and me November 2001

November 2001

Once she settled in, she became calm and unflappable. No matter where we took her—to the Cape, to a new house, to a temporary apartment before our new house was ready, to our cottage—she adapted almost instantly. We even once dragged her all the way to Geneva, New York, so she could visit Maddy at college. She was great in the car, great with children, and great with us. I often felt badly that she was growing up in a home with no small children since she would get so excited any time she saw a young child. And children loved her. She would kiss them, and they would hug her.

So gentle with Nate when he was a five month old

And with Nate when he was three

About the only thing she didn’t like were elevators. Can’t say that I blame her. She liked going to the groomer, she liked going to the vet. She liked strangers, she liked anyone. She didn’t bark at people at the door or those who entered our home. She never jumped on people or pushed them around, despite the collie herding instinct. She was definitely not a watchdog. She was a love dog.

And our cats Smokey and Luna adored her. From when they were little kittens, they would curl up on her, and to the very end of her long life, Smokey still treated her like his mother, kneading his (clawless) front paws into her belly and nuzzling his nose into her fur. The only thing that seemed to light up Cassie’s eyes as she declined was Smokey. She would even chase after him a bit to play.

Look how gently she handled Smokey as a kitten

Cassie was an incredible companion—on long walks in the neighborhood or the woods or the beach (even though she didn’t love the beach much) and just being with us in our home. She was always right there with us wherever we went. I can’t tell you how much we will miss her and how much we agonized over her decline and our final decision to give her peace. But she had been there for us, and we had to be there for her.

So we are at peace. She is no longer distressed and confused, and we can look back with deep love and gratitude for the fourteen years we had her with us. Goodbye, Cassie. You will always be our dog, and we will always keep you in our hearts.

Happy Fathers Day!

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Amy

Today I want to pay tribute to all the fathers in my family tree, in particular my own father, who is always a source of inspiration for me. He is passionate about many things—most of all his family, but also art, music, politics and human rights, the environment, cats and dogs, food and drink, and, of course, architecture. His passion for all of these things is matched by his knowledge about them and his continuing curiosity about everything, except maybe computers.

Happy Fathers Day also to my husband, Harvey, with whom I also celebrated our 39th anniversary this weekend. I could not have asked for a better father for my own children. He’s been my parenting partner from the beginning—a totally engaged, loving, caring, and attentive father. My daughters are sweet and kind and compassionate because they have him as their father.

Happy Fathers Day also to my son-in-law Brian. He is a wonderfully devoted father whose face lights up with joy whenever he is with his sons.

And Happy Fathers Day to all the other fathers out there as well.

What follows are photographs of all the fathers in my direct lines for whom I have a photograph or at least a photograph of their headstone.