Reuben Cohen 1854-1926: You Really Do Not Want to Read This

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Amy

As I wrote in an earlier post, I skipped over Reuben Cohen, my great-great-grandparents’ sixth child and fifth son, in order to wait for some information from one of Reuben’s direct descendants. I have to admit that I had other reasons as well. My initial research indicated that Reuben and his wife Sallie Livingston had twelve children. The thought of researching another huge family was a bit overwhelming. In addition, my preliminary research had uncovered a number of very sad stories about those children, and I just did not have the heart to research, write, or even think about them after researching the story of Reuben’s older brother Hart. Little did I know that his sisters, whose lives I’d not previously researched very far, also had more than their fair share of heartbreak as well.

Once I returned to the story of Reuben and did more research, I learned that his story was worse than I had even originally thought. His life started out well. He was born in April, 1854, and grew up at 136 South Street with his parents and siblings. By the time he was sixteen he was working as a clerk in a store, presumably his father’s pawnshop. In 1878 when he was 24, he married Sallie Livingston, and in 1880 they were living at 1725 Bainbridge Street and already had two children, Sallie R., who was a year old, and Jacob, who was a month old. Reuben was working as a pawnbroker at 635 South 17^th Street in 1881.

Reuben Cohen 1880 census

Originally I thought that the 1880s must have been fairly happy years for Reuben and Sallie, as Reuben continued to work as a pawnbroker and their family continued to grow. In addition to Sallie R. and Jacob, I originally found that five more children were born between 1881 and 1890: Minnie (1882), Hortense (1887), Rae (1887), Reuben, Jr. (1888), and Arthur (1890). The family continued to live at 1725 Bainbridge Street.

Then in 1891, tragedy struck. Little Hortense, only three years old, was run over and killed by a cable car owned by the Philadelphia Traction Company.

Hortense Cohen death certificate

The company had only been in business since 1883. I found this gruesome description of the accident in the June 14, 1891 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

[According to a witness who saw the accident], the child, who was with two other children, started across the street to reach the house of her grandmother, Mrs. Livingstone, at 607 South Ninth Street, with whom she had been living. When she had crossed the tracks she saw a carriage coming, and she made an attempt to run back. The child got bewildered, and as she reached the middle of the track the car struck her. The front wheel jammed the head against the track. It required the united efforts of [three police officers] to lift the car off the child’s head.

(“Killed by a Cable Car Little Hortense Cohen Becomes Bewildered and is Run Down,” Sunday, June 14, 1891, Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA), Volume: 124 Issue: 165 Page: 5) The conductor and gripman were arrested. Little Hortense was taken to the hospital where she died.

This story raises so many hard questions. What was a three year old child doing alone without an adult? Who were the other two children, and how old were they? Were they her siblings? What a terrible impact this must have had on them as well as the rest of the family. And why was Hortense living with her grandmother? Were any of the other children living with Mrs. Livingston? I don’t have any answers to these questions.

Obviously, times were different. There were no helicopter parents, and children were much more likely to be left to their own devices than children are allowed to be today. Also, cable cars were a recent addition to the city streets, and perhaps parents and children were not yet aware of the dangers they presented, nor were these companies likely regulated to any degree to prevent such accidents from occurring. But one thing must have been true even in those days: the absolute horror the family must have endured after losing a child in such a terrible way.

Somehow the family went on. My original research found that two more children were born in the next few years: Lewis in 1892 and Penrose in 1894. The family moved from their Bainbridge Street home sometime after Hortense’s death. In 1893 Reuben’s store was at 625 South 17^th Street, and he and his family were residing at 623 South 17^th Street. They remained in that residence for many years. In 1895 Violet was born, and in 1896 Irene was born, bringing the number of children living in the family to eleven.

Then another tragedy occurred in 1896. Two year old Penrose died from some form of capillary bronchitis. Perhaps someone can help me decipher and interpret the rest of the description of his cause of death. As if the family had not suffered enough, a year and a half later baby Irene, only a year old, died also from capillary bronchitis. The family had lost three young children between 1891 and 1897. The last child, Simon, was born in 1898, bringing the number of children to nine out of the twelve that I first thought had been born to Reuben and Sallie.

Penrose Cohen death certificate

Irene Cohen death certificate

I wish I could say that that was the end of Reuben and Sallie’s heartbreak, but I cannot. There was a period of relative calm. In 1900 the family was living in Cape May, New Jersey, at the time of the census.

Reuben Cohen and family at 208 Ocean Street 1900 US census

They were living back in Philadelphia by 1902, so I do not know whether the time in Cape May was a long stay or perhaps just a shorter stay for the summer. I do know from one of Reuben’s descendants that Reuben owned a home in Cape May built in 1864 at 208 Ocean Street that eventually became the home of his son Arthur and his descendants. It seems that during Reuben’s life this was not the year-round home, but perhaps just a summer home. Reuben must have been quite successful to have two residences. I found the house currently listed for sale on Trulia.com,with a description of the house and many exterior and interior pictures, such as this one.

208 Ocean Street, Cape May, NJ

1900 also was a good year for the family in other ways. Their daughter Sallie R. was married that year to Ellis Samuel Abrams in what appears to have been quite a society event. There had been a large engagement party the year before at Reuben and Sallie’s home where an orchestra played throughout the evening “behind a bower of palm trees.” The guest list was very long and included many of the aunts, uncles, and cousins I have written about on the blog: the Wolfs, the Sluizers, the Hambergs, and, of course, many Cohens.(“Melange of Events,” Sunday, December 31, 1899, Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA) Volume: 141 Issue: 184 Page: 14) Before the wedding took place on May 21, 1900, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a drawing of Sallie R., announcing the upcoming nuptials. Clearly the Cohen family was part of the elite of Philadelphia Jewish society.

Sallie Cohen

But all the business success in the world was not worth the personal losses that the family suffered. In 1907, Sallie R.’s young husband Ellis died from acute appendicitis. He was 30 years old, and they had only been married for seven years. They had had two children, Dorothy, born around 1905, and Simon, born around 1907.

Ellis Abrams death certificate

Then, two years later, in 1909, Reuben and Sallie’s son Jacob died of cardiac failure secondary to tabes dorsalis, or late stage syphilis. He was only 29 years old when he died. From his death certificate it appears that he had been sick and under a doctor’s care for five months before he died in December, 1909.

Jacob Livingston Cohen death certificate

And then, just four years later in 1913, Jacob’s older sister Sallie R., Ellis’ widow, Reuben and Sallie Livingston’s oldest child, died at age 34 from nephritis, kidney disease. That left Sallie R. and Ellis’ two children, Dorothy and Simon, orphaned at ages eight and six, respectively.

Sallie J. Cohen death certificate

On the 1920 census, both children were living with their grandparents, Reuben and Sallie. So far, I have had no luck finding out what happened to them next.

Reuben Cohen and family 1920 census

But what I did find was even more disturbing. In doing some last minute checks for additional documents on Sallie J. and Jacob, I found their headstones on FindAGrave. And to the left behind Jacob’s headstone, I spotted a headstone with eight names on it. Some were familiar: Hortense, Penrose, Irene. But five were new to me: Maria, Fanny, Joseph, Hart, and Edith. Who were they? When I saw it, I sighed so loudly that my husband wondered what was wrong. I took a deep breath and then started looking for these other five children.

Since none of these names had appeared on either the 1880 census or the 1900 census (and since the 1890 census was destroyed by fire), I assumed that they were born after the 1880 census and died before 1900 census. Eventually I found all five of these children, all of whom died before they were four years old.

As I mentioned above, I had originally thought that the 1880s were a happy decade for Reuben and his family, but this additional research revealed the opposite. After Sallie R. and Jacob were born, the third child, Hart, was born in 1881. He died February 27, 1883, when he was seventeen months old from uremia. In between Minnie was born in 1882.

Hart Cohen death certificate

The next child, Maria, was born in September, 1883, meaning Sallie was pregnant with Maria when Hart died. Maria died in Cape May, New Jersey on August 2, 1886, just shy of three years old, from paralysis caused by diphtheria (also evidence that the family had been spending summers in Cape May for quite some time before 1900).

Maria Cohen death certificate

But in between Minnie and Maria, Reuben and Sallie had had two other children, both of whom died before they were a year old. In January, 1884, Fanny was born, and six months later in July, 1884, she died from enterocolitis. On April 17, 1885, Joseph was born, and he died on August 9, 1885, not yet four months old. Thus, in each year from 1883 through 1886, Reuben and Sallie buried one of their children. Perhaps that is why some of the children were living with Sallie’s mother?

Fanny Cohen death certificate

Then came the tragic accident involving three year old Hortense in June, 1891. What I had not known before I found the additional names on the headstone is that in July, 1891, the very next month, Sallie had given birth to Edith. Perhaps that was some relief, but only for a very brief time because Edith died less than a year later on April 24, 1892, from “Diptheritic Laryngitis.” I am not sure what that means, but it seems like it must be some complication from diphtheria. And then, as described above, Penrose died in 1896 and Irene in 1897.

Finally, there were the untimely deaths of Jacob L. and Sallie R. as adults. So between 1883 and 1913, Reuben and Sallie had lost ten of their seventeen children and also had two young grandchildren who were left without either a mother or a father. Aside from Hortense, who died from an accident, all the other young children died from an illness that today would likely have been either prevented by a vaccine (diphtheria) or treated with antibiotics or somehow otherwise controlled by medicine. Reading about all these babies’ deaths made me aware once again of how grateful we all should be for the developments of 20^th century medicine.

How did Reuben and Sallie go on? It is unfathomable. But they did. Did they find strength in the seven children who survived? Or did these deaths leave them bitter, angry, depressed? How does a marriage survive all that stress? Did they find strength in religion? In their large extended family? I do not know; I only know that in the last few days as I researched this family’s saga, I also was spending time with my newborn grandson and my four year old grandson, both of whom are so precious to me, not to mention their parents and other grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandparents. Seeing either grandson cry over even the smallest pain or disappointment breaks my heart. I found myself so disturbed by reading about Reuben and Sallie’s children that I was not sure that I could bear to write this story down. But then I had to do it, if only so that those little children could be perhaps more than just names on a headstone. Someone should know that they lived and were loved.

Reuben and Sallie had seventeen children (at least—perhaps others lived who have not been recorded somewhere). They were married for many years. Somehow there was enough love to keep them together so that they could continue to raise the children who survived, including their two grandchildren from Sallie R.

Reuben died on December 31, 1926; he was 72 years old. His wife Sallie died four years later in 1930 when she also was 72. There were seven children left who survived them, and almost all of them lived long lives, but I will leave their stories for a later post.

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Amy

I am not usually a big fan of Mother’s Day. It’s always seemed like a “Hallmark” holiday to me, manufactured for commercial purposes to sell cards and overpriced meals at overcrowded restaurants. And I say this as a mother, not as a daughter. But this year I’d like to pay tribute to all the mothers I’ve learned about through my genealogy research.

First, to Bessie Brotman, my great-grandmother, who journeyed to America like so many other immigrant women alone with two young children, who took in the young children of her husband Joseph’s first marriage and raised them. Bessie then lost that husband after being in the US for only ten years and after bearing three more children with him, one born just months before he died, leaving her as a widow with three very young children and several older children. Bessie remarried and then took care of not only her children but the numerous children of her second husband, Philip Moskowitz. She was a sweet and loving woman who brought love to all those children.

Bessie Brotman

I’d also like to pay tribute to my other great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Ghitla Rosenzweig Goldschlager. She also made the journey to America, only to find when she arrived that her husband Moritz had died months before her arrival. She also persisted and survived, as did her sister Tillie, also widowed shortly after arriving in the US and having seven children to care for herself. She had a generous enough heart to take in my grandfather and his sister Betty after their father died and before their mother arrived from Romania. The third Rosenzweig sister Zusi also lost her husband and raised her son Nathan on her own after losing his twin brother as a month old infant. All the Rosenzweig sisters suffered such terrible heartbreak.

Ghitla Rosenzweig Goldschlager

I am thinking also of my grandmother Gussie, who never spoke of her childhood and who lost her father when she was only five years old. She then moved in with her sister Tillie when her mother remarried rather than live in a household filled with stepsiblings and a stepfather she did not like. She took care of her younger siblings from a very early age and then took care of her three young nephews before marrying my grandfather and raising three children of her own. Despite her own unhappiness, she was a loving grandmother and always made us laugh and smile.

Gussie with Jody Julie Ira and me 1962

My grandmother’s two sisters also come to mind this Mother’s Day—Frieda, who died from complications of childbirth and thus never got to experience the joys of motherhood, and Tillie, who my mother and her siblings remember as being a devoted aunt who took them places and brought them baked goods, gifts and most importantly lots of love and affection.

Tillie

My other grandmother, Eva Schoenthal Cohen, whose story I’ve not yet told, also lost her husband at a young age and managed to move on, remarrying later in life. My memories of her are of a soft-spoken, beautiful woman, who had experienced a great deal of sadness but carried herself with a lot of pride and dignity. I also think about my two great-grandmothers, my father’s grandmothers. who took care of him and my Aunt Eva when his parents were not able to do so.

Eva Cohen

All who read this blog know that my Aunt Elaine was our family matriarch, the one who kept the family history and saw to it that we all knew each other and were part of each other’s lives. She was thirteen years older than my mother and often like a second mother to her as well as her sister and friend. She could always make us laugh, always make us feel loved.

Elaine and Jeff 1949

And, of course, I am thinking of my own mother. She is and always has been a devoted, loving mother who gives her love unconditionally. Alhtough she has said that she was so young when I was born that she had no idea what she was doing, she did everything right. She, along with my father, have always made me feel special, loved and valued. I grew up believing that I could do and be anything I wanted. To this day my mother is someone I turn to when I have something good or bad to share. She is always there to listen, not to pass judgment, but to listen and to provide support.

My mother and me 1952

My mother and my daughters and grandson 2011

And finally, I am thinking of my daughters, the ones who enabled me to take on the title of mother myself. Somehow despite all my mistakes, and there were many, they both grew up to be amazing young women who love with all their hearts and bring joy to all who are lucky enough to know them. They taught me how to be a mother just by letting me watch them become the people they were always meant to be. I don’t need cards or overpriced meals at overcrowded restaurants. I am just happy getting to be their mother every day of the year.

Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Women are Difficult…to Find and Track, Part I: Lillian Rosenzweig

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Amy

One thing that has been clear to me for a long time is that women are much harder to track in vital records than men, largely because they traditionally changed their names when they married. The Rosenzweig daughters are a case in point.

I have now located and tracked from birth to death the five sons of Gustave and Gussie: Abraham, David, Jacob, Harry and Joe. For those who survived to adulthood, I know who they married, where they lived, and what they did for a living and their military service. I still need to trace the children of Abraham and Jack, but I wanted to see what I could find about the five daughters of Gustave and Gussie first. I’ve been looking all along, but kept hitting walls and so decided to focus on one daughter at a time. Here’s what I know about Lillian.

The oldest child and the only one born in Romania was Lillie or Lillian. According to the 1900 census, she was born in July, 1884, in Romania, but since that was only a month after Gustave and Gussie’s marriage, it seems likely that this was an error and that Lilly was probably born during 1885. The census also says that Lillie arrived in 1884, but her father’s naturalization papers say that he arrived in 1887. In 1900 when she was only fifteen years old, Lillie was working as a typist while her younger siblings were all in school.

Gustave Rosenzweig and family 1900 census

In 1905 the family had moved to Fulton Street in Brooklyn, and Lillian, now 21 according to the census, was doing housework as her employment. In addition to the siblings listed on the 1900 census, there were now two additions, Rachel, who was four, and William, who was three. William is described as a son of the head of the household, which led me to believe that he was another child of Gustave and Gussie. I was unable, however, to locate William on the birth index as William Rosenzweig, nor did he reappear on the 1905 or 1910 census with the family.

Gustave Rosenzweig family on the 1905 NYS census

Once again I searched the death index for a child of Gustave and Gussie, but could not find a death record for William Rosenzweig either. If he was not living with his “parents” and siblings in 1905, where could he be? I searched on ancestry.com for William Rosenzweig and found him living at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphanage in 1906. I knew it was the right boy by his age (four years old), the address from where he was taken (1021 Fulton Street, Brooklyn), and his mother’s name—Lillian nee Rosenzweig.

William Rosenzweig at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphanage in 1906

Brooklyn Hebrew Orphanage

William was not Gustave and Gussie’s son, but Lillian’s son. His father is only identified as “Frank (dead),” with no surname. For the other children listed, their father’s first name is also all that is supplied, but that’s because the child presumably has that surname. For William, his surname is the same as his mother’s—Rosenzweig, and no surname is given for his father. I could not find any marriage record for a Lillie or Lillian Rosenzweig between 1900 and 1902 to a Frank, so had Lillian had William out of wedlock? Who was Frank? Was he really dead?

I did find a Frank Cramer who died between 1902 and 1906 and a William Cramer born on March 2, 1902, the birth date provided for William on the orphanage records. I sent for the birth certificate for William Cramer, but unfortunately that William’s parents were not named Frank and Lillian.

Then last night I went back once again to the marriage index and looked again for a marriage record for Lillian Rosenzweig, but this time I did not limit my search to grooms named Frank. I restricted the dates to 1900 to 1902, based on the fact that Lillie was single in the 1900 census and that William was born in March, 1902. I found one marriage of a Lillie Rosenzweig in July, 1901, to a Toscano Bartolini. Could Frank have been his more American nickname? I turned to the death index and searched for a death record, and there it was—Toscano Bartolini had died on April 27, 1904, at 27 years old. Finally I looked for a birth record for a William Bartolini and found one—born March 9, 1902, a mere eight months after Lillie’s wedding to Toscano in July, 1901. It was all starting to come together. I obviously have to send away for all these records to be sure that Lillie is Gustave’s daughter and that William is Lillie’s son, but it certainly seems likely that the records will back up my hunches here. In fact, I checked today on FamilySearch for Toscano Bartolini and found a more thorough description of the marriage record, including a reference to the bride’s parents’ names, Gustav and Gussie. I will still order a copy of the certificate, but I am now certain that Lillie married Toscano, who died just a few years later, leaving her with a two year old son named William.

UPDATE: All these facts were confirmed by the documents. See my more recent post with images of the documents.

After finding all this, I remembered something that Joe’s grandson Ron had told me—that one of Gustave’s daughters had married someone who wasn’t Jewish, and Ariela had said she thought one of the sisters had married someone with an Italian name. Ron had told me that the family was not happy about this, and that for a long time there was some estrangement. Despite whatever they felt, however, in 1905 after Frank/Toscano died, Gustave and Gussie took both Lillian and her son into their home.

It also occurred to me that perhaps the reason Lillie used the name Rosenzweig for William and not Bartolini was based on the fact that he was being taken to a Jewish institution. Obviously Rosenzweig would seem more clearly Jewish than Bartolini.

But why he was taken from the home in 1906 is not explained by the records. The orphanage record indicates that William was discharged to his mother on September 3, 1906, and reports that her address was then 307 East 120th Street in Manhattan, so perhaps there was a falling out with the family. But in 1910, Lillian was living again with her parents and siblings in Brooklyn, and William was not living with her. Lillian’s occupation was listed as a trained nurse at a hospital, and she was listed as single, not widowed. But where was William?

Gustave Rosenzweig and family 1910 census

I had not been able to find him as William Rosenzweig in the 1910 census, but now I searched for William Bartolini and found him, living at a residential facility, St. John’s Home in Brooklyn.

William Bartolini 1910 at St John’s Home, Brooklyn

Maybe Lillie placed him there so that she could get training to be a nurse. Perhaps she just could not take care of him. Perhaps I can find some records from St John’s Home.

I also was able to find where William was in 1915: another home for children, this one the New York Catholic Protectory, in the Bronx. (Interestingly, this facility was located where Parkchester is today; Parkchester is an apartment building complex developed by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the Bronx and is where my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and my parents once lived; I lived there also until I was four and half years old.)

William Bartolini 1915 Catholic Protection Bronx

William Bartolini 1915 Catholic Protecory Bronx

It seems that in both 1910 and 1915 William had been placed in Catholic institutions after being at a Jewish orphanage briefly in 1906. Had Lillie given up her parental rights? Was neither set of grandparents interested or able to take care of the boy? Was William troubled or disabled in some way that made caring for him at home a problem for everyone? I don’t know the answers, but will try to find out what happened to William after 1915. Apparently you can order microfilm from the Family History Library and see the actual records for the children who resided there, which I plan to do.

And I cannot find Lillie in 1910 or thereafter. She was not living with her mother and siblings in 1915 or in 1920. I cannot find her as Lillie Rosenzweig or as Lillie Bartolini. Perhaps she remarried and changed her name, but I have not yet found a marriage record. But now I know that I just have to keep looking. I almost gave up after Frank Cramer did not pan out. And then last night I looked a different way and found Toscano Bartolini. I hope I can eventually uncover what happened to Lillie and to William.

David Rosenzweig and The Reality of Infant Mortality

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Amy

In the course of researching Abraham Rosenzweig’s life, I discovered a tenth child born to Gustave and Gussie Rosenzweig. On the 1910 census there were nine children, all but one born in New York City between 1888 and 1904. (Lillian, the first child, was born in Romania around 1884.) There were four boys, Abraham, Jacob/Jack, Harry and Joseph, and five girls, Lillian, Sarah, Rebecca, Lizzie and Rachel. The NYC birth index covers those years, so I started my research of Abraham by looking for a birth record. I had several records indicating that he was born sometime around 1890, but I could not (and still have not) found a record for Abraham’s birth.

Gustave Rosenzweig and family 1900 census

I expanded my search to look for any Rosenzweig born around 1890-1892, using FamilySearch as my tool as it allows for liberal use of wild card searching and, unlike ancestry.com or other sites, reveals the names of the parents in the search results. I still did not see any Abrahams or Abes, but in scanning the results, I noticed a child named David who was born to Gadaly and Ghitel Saak Rosentveig. Before receiving the Romanian records for Gustave and Gussie I might not have recognized that these were their Yiddish names: Ghidale Rosentvaig and Ghitla Zacu on their marriage records from Romania. I knew that this could not be a coincidence, that this baby had to be their son, born September 5, 1891. Since I still have not found Abraham on the birth index, I cannot be sure whether David was born before or after Abraham. What I did realize was that David must have been named for my great-great-grandfather, David Rosentvaig, who had been alive in 1884 when Gustave married Gussie in Iasi but who must have died sometime before the birth of this new David.

But where was the new David in 1900, only nine years later? Since he was not listed on the 1900 census, I assumed the worst, as I have gotten accustomed to doing, and checked the death index. Sure enough a one year child named David Rosenzweig had died on December 25, 1892. Although I have not yet seen the death certificate for this child, I have to assume that this was Gustave and Gussie’s son David. My great-great-grandfather’s namesake had died before his second birthday.

I have expressed in an earlier post my thoughts and feelings about the impact the deaths of babies and children must have had on their parents and their siblings. The numbers are staggering. On the 1900 census Gussie Rosenzweig reported that she had had thirteen children, only eight of whom were then living (Rachel was not yet born). In 1910, she reported eighteen births and only nine living children. Had she had five more infants die between 1900 and 1910? My great-grandmother Bessie Brotman reported in 1900 that she had given birth to nine children, only four of whom were living (Sam was not yet born). We also know that Hyman Mintz died within a month of birth and Max Coopersmith within a day of birth.

These infant deaths were not at all unusual for that time period. According to a PBS website for a program called The First Measured Century, “[p]rior to 1900, infant mortality rates of two and three hundred [per one thousand births] obtained throughout the world. The infant mortality rate would fluctuate sharply according to the weather, the harvest, war, and epidemic disease. In severe times, a majority of infants would die within one year. In good times, perhaps two hundred per thousand would die. So great was the pre-modern loss of children’s lives that anthropologists claim to have found groups that [did] not name children until they have survived a year.”

This same source reports that most of these deaths were caused by poor infant nutrition, disease and poor sanitary conditions. In the early 20^th century substantial efforts were made to deal with these causes of infant and other deaths. “Central heating meant that infants were no longer exposed to icy drafts for hours. Clean drinking water eliminated a common path of infection. More food meant healthier infants and mothers. Better hygiene eliminated another path of infection. Cheaper clothing meant better clothing on infants. More babies were born in hospitals, which were suddenly being cleaned up as the infectious nature of dirt became clear. Later in the century, antibiotics and vaccinations join the battle.” The infant mortality rate began to decline, and today it is well under ten deaths per thousand within the first year of life in the United States.

Infant mortality

But what impact did this high death rate for babies have on their parents? There have been many books written by sociologists, social historians and psychologists on the history of society’s view and treatment of children. According to this research, until the 18^th century, children were not valued highly by parents, perhaps in part because of the high infant mortality rate. The likelihood of losing a child was so great that it made it difficult for parents to become too attached. In Europe often parents did not even attend the funerals of their children and even wealthy parents had their children buried as paupers. See, e.g., Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (1994); Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (1984). Both authors also observe that the attitude towards children changed during the 18^th and 19^th centuries as people began to be more concerned about their children’s growth and development and families started to become more child-oriented and affectionate. This change in attitudes contributed to the increased efforts to reduce infant mortality.

It’s so difficult for me to imagine that these parents were indifferent or unaffected by the deaths of so many of their babies. I know I live in another era, an era when parenting has become not just a part of life, but in some ways an obsession. I plead guilty to being a helicopter parent, to being probably too involved in my children’s lives as they were growing up. We live in a time of thousands of books on parenting, dealing with every issue imaginable. There are experts to help you before a baby is born and experts to help you deal with every imaginable childrearing issue that can arise after they are born: doulas, lactation consultants, sleep consultants, life coaches, tutors, college admissions consultants, and probably some I don’t even know about. So many of us center our lives on our children. Losing a child is often said to be the worst thing anyone can experience.

Could it really have been so different back then? Were children really seen as disposable and replaceable? Is that why people had so many children—in order to ensure that at least some would survive to adulthood? Or was it simply the absence of effective birth control, not the desire for so many children, that led to these huge families? Did those huge families make it easier to accept the loss of so many babies? Were even those who survived devalued and distanced as a defense mechanism against their possible death? It seems unlikely they were as doted upon and cherished as children of today, given both the cultural attitudes and the economic and environmental conditions of the time.

Maybe that made those children stronger and more self-reliant, less indulged and less entitled. But it also had to have left its scars. Maybe it is why so many of them did not want to talk about their families, their childhoods, their feelings.

Thirteen Abraham Rosenzweigs or How I Almost Threw My Computer through the Window

First Cousins: The Grandchildren of David and Esther Rosensweig

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Amy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isadore and Gussie’s nine grandchildren

Jeff and Jim 1971

jody julie and ira 1963

Beth 1954

Julie, Robin, Amy, Suzie, and Ira 1962

Amy and Jeff (with Elaine) 1953

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