Tag Archives: Montreal

Moses and Mathilde’s Granddaughter Frances Alexander: A Genealogy Adventure Takes Me to Canada

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As we saw in the last post about the family of Moses Rothschild, Mathilde Rothschild died in 1931, and her daughter-in-law Rose Katz Rothschild died in 1933. There were also some weddings and some births for the children of the three oldest children of Moses and Mathilde, Samuel, Rudolph, and Albert.

Now we turn to Moses and Mathilde’s fourth child Theresa Rothschild Alexander and her children and their lives in the 1930s. This post focuses primarily on my challenges in finding out what happened to Theresa’s daughter Frances during this decade and thereafter.

In 1930, Theresa was living in the Bronx with her husband Max Alexander, who was in his own real estate business, and their two sons, Herbert (19) and Albert (14) as well as Max’s sister Esther.1 I will follow up with their lives after the 1930s in a later post.

But Theresa and Max’s daughter Frances, who would have been 24 in 1930, was not listed as living in the household, nor for a long time could I find her elsewhere. Looking for Frances led me down many a rabbit hole and provided me with a good reminder of how tricky genealogy research can be, even when you are looking for someone who lived fairly recently in the United States.

I searched for a death record, a marriage record, and elsewhere on the 1930 census, but for a long time could not find Frances. There were several other women close to her in age with the same or similar names, but I couldn’t establish that any of them was the daughter of Max and Theresa Alexander. The closest one I could find was a Frances H. Alexander who married a Joseph Jacobs, but I could only find a listing on the marriage license index and no actual marriage record. And the index didn’t provide the names of the bride’s parents. The marriage license index showed that the license was taken out on July 6, 1926, when Frances would have been only twenty years old.2

I was more certain that this was the right Frances when I found her birth certificate and saw the her middle name was Harriet, consistent with the middle initial on the listing on the marriage license index. I wasn’t positive, but pretty persuaded that Frances had married Joseph Jacobs.

But…then I found a Frances H. Alexander who married Jerome Walton in 1933. Had Frances never married Joseph Jacobs, just taken out a license?3

But when I searched for Frances and Jerome Walton on FamilySearch, I located a record there that revealed that the Frances H. Alexander who married Jerome Walton was the daughter of William Alexander and Helen Harkness, not Max Alexander and Theresa Rothschild. Also, that Frances was born in 1913, not 1907 like my Frances.4 So I eliminated Jerome Walton as a possible husband for Frances and focused back on Joseph Jacobs as the likely candidate.

Joseph Jacobs was born on November 6, 1902, in the Bronx to Max and Sarah Jacobs.5 In 1920, Joseph and his parents and siblings were living at 2020 Morris Avenue in the Bronx.6 When I saw Morris Avenue, it rang a bell. I went back to see where Frances Alexander and her family were living in 1920, and sure enough, they were at 2033 Morris Avenue.7 Frances and Joseph were neighbors! I was now more confident that my Frances Alexander had married Joseph Jacobs.

My next step was looking for Joseph Jacobs with a wife named Frances on the 1930 census, and sure enough, I found them living in the Bronx with a daughter named Joan. Joseph was working as an engineer. Joan Jacobs was born in the Bronx on July 13, 1927.8 But Joseph, Frances, and Joan disappeared after the 1930 census. I could not find them on the 1940 census nor could I find them anywhere else. Where had they disappeared to? Had they had any other children?

My big breakthrough came when I found an obituary for Frances’ brother Albert that listed “a sister Francis Jacobs of Canada” as one of his survivors.9 (More on Albert to come in a later post.) Not only did that give me the confirmation that my Frances (or Francis—both spellings appear to have been used) had married Joseph Jacobs, it told me where she was living at least in 1993 when her brother Albert died. I switched my search for Frances and her family from the US to Canada.

And sure enough I soon found an obituary for Frances Jacobs in the Montreal Gazette of June 19, 1998, that reported that Frances had died on June 17, 1998, in Montreal.10 The obituary provided the names of Frances’ survivors, including her daughter Joan and son-in-law Martin Samuels, but also two other children, a son Peter and a daughter Maggie. I then found an obituary for Frances’ husband Joseph Jacobs, who died on April 5, 1983, in Montreal.11 So I knew that Frances and Joseph had moved to Montreal at some point, but when?

That question was answered when I found an obituary for Frances and Joseph’s daughter Joan Jacobs Samuels, who died on August 16, 2021. The Montreal Gazette ran a long and detailed obituary for Joan on August 21, 2021, that reported that Joan “had moved with her family to Montreal in 1933.”12

Interestingly, I had earlier been confused by Joseph Jacob’s 1942 World War II draft registration, which listed 2033 Morris Avenue in the Bronx as his mailing address, but gave a Westmount, Quebec address in Canada as his place of residence. I had assumed that he was temporarily living in Canada for business, but otherwise still a US resident living in the Bronx. Now, after finding that 2021 obituary for their daughter Joan and looking more closely, I realize that he gave 2033 Morris Avenue, his in-law’s address, as his mailing address for purposes of his required registration with the US military. But they were living in Westmount, a section of Montreal.

Joseph Jacobs World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

So Frances and Joseph had moved to the Montreal area with Joan in 1933, where they would have two more children, Peter and Maggie. As we saw above, Joseph died in 1983, Frances in 1998, and Joan in 2021.Joan Jacobs was predeceased by her husband Martin Samuels, who died on December 23, 2003.13 Joan was survived by her children and grandchildren and her brother Peter and sister Maggie.

Sadly, Maggie Jacobs died on November 4, 2024, just days before I found the family of Frances Alexander and Joseph Jacobs. She is survived by her brother Peter and her nieces and nephews and their children.

It took some doing, but I am so glad I persisted and located my Canadian cousins.

 

 

 

  1. Max Alexander and family, 1930 US census, Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0609; FHL microfilm: 2341221, Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census ↩
  2. Francis H Alexander, Gender Female, Marriage License Date 6 Jul 1926, Marriage License Place Bronx, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse Joseph N Jacobs, License Number 4383, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Bronx, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  3. Frances H Alexander, Gender Female, Marriage Date 19 Jul 1933, Marriage Place Kings, New York, USA, Spouse, Jerome M Walton, Certificate Number 10142, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Extracted Marriage Index, 1866-1937 ↩
  4. “New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1938”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2CD-FHZF : Sat Mar 09 21:15:06 UTC 2024), Entry for Jerome Maury Walton and Frances H Alexander, 19 July 1933. ↩
  5. Joseph Jacobs, World War II Draft Registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947. Max Jacobs, Naturalization Petition, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Petitions For Naturalization From the U.s. District Court For the Southern District of New York, 1897-1944; Series: M1972; Roll: 178, Archive Roll Descriptions: (Roll 0178) Petition No· 29218-Petition No· 29480, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1882-1944 ↩
  6. Max Jacobs and family, 1920 US census, Year: 1920; Census Place: Bronx Assembly District 8, Bronx, New York; Roll: T625_1141; Page: 14A; Enumeration District: 416, Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census ↩
  7. Max Alexander and family, 1920 US census, Year: 1920; Census Place: Bronx Assembly District 8, Bronx, New York; Roll: T625_1141; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 416, Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census ↩
  8. Joseph Jacobs and family, 1930 US census, Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 0689; FHL microfilm: 2341224, Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census ↩
  9. “Alexander, Albert E.,” Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, September 17, 1994, p. 5. ↩
  10. Montreal Gazette, June 19, 1998, p. 60. ↩
  11. Montreal Gazette, April 7, 1983, p. 31. ↩
  12. Montreal Gazette, August 21, 2021, p. CS18. ↩
  13. Montreal Gazette, December 26, 2023, p. 86. ↩

Levi Rothschild’s Daughters Thekla Rothschild Weinberg and Frieda Rothschild Phillipsohn: One Survived, One Did Not

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This is the story of the last two children of Levi Rothschild and Clara Jacob who lived to adulthood, their daughters Thekla and Frieda. Both have heartbreaking stories though Thekla survived and Frieda did not.

The fifth child of Levi and Clara, their daughter Thekla, married Manuel Edward Weinberg on August 19, 1907, in Borken. Manuel was born in Lichenroth, Germany, to Lazarus Weinberg and Karoline Oppenheimer on October 11, 1880.

Thekla Rothschild and Manuel Weinberg marriage record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 920; Laufende Nummer: 843, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Thekla and Manuel had a son Hans Herbert Weinberg born in Frankfurt, Germany, on November 2, 1908.1

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, Manuel Weinberg was imprisoned at Buchenwald for a short time,2 and that may have motivated the family to leave Germany. By 1940 if not before, the family had left Germany for France, and according to Yad Vashem, Thekla’s husband Manuel was deported in 1940 to the internment camp near Toulouse, France known as the Recebedou camp.3

According to one website, the camp of Recebedou was created in July 1940 to receive refugees and those who had been evacuated. It was turned into a hospital camp in February 1941. But conditions in the camp deteriorated over time due to the lack of adequate medical care and a shortage of food. By late 1941, there were 739 interns, many of whom were over 60 and ill; 118 of them died in the winter of 1941-1942. Manuel Weinberg was one of those who died; he died on March 4, 1942.4

I don’t know for certain whether Thekla or their son Herbert, as he came to be known, were also interned at Recebedou because there are no documents I can find that indicate that they were. However, I do know that they must have been in France because Herbert and his wife, Edith Seckbach, had a daughter Yvonne born in Toulouse, France sometime in 1943.5  I could not find a marriage record for Herbert and Edith, but according to other records, Edith was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in about 1918. 6

Wherever they were in France, somehow Thekla, Herbert, Edith, and their baby daughter survived. A document on Ancestry’s collection of Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959 (JDC) indicates that as of November 1942, Thekla, Herbert, Edith, and Yvonne were in Vigo, Spain, which is almost seven hundred miles from Toulouse, France. How they got there in the midst of the war is a story I do not know.

Ancestry.com. Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959 (JDC)

From Vigo they went to Madrid as of December 26, 1943. The Refugee Card lists two people as the “parents,” which I assume really means sponsors in this situation. One was Walter Hirschmann, Thekla’s nephew, the son of her sister Betti Rothschild Hirschmann.7 The other, Jacob Bleibtreu, was a banker and later a governor of the New York Stock Exchange who had immigrated to the US from Germany as a young man in 1909. He also was on the Greater New York Army and Navy Committee of the Jewish Welfare Board. Perhaps he knew Walter from the banking and broker business and agreed to help rescue his aunt and other family members.8

On March 23, 1944, Thekla, Herbert, Edith, and Yvonne all arrived in Philadelphia after sailing from Lisbon, Portugal. The ship manifest shows that they all had last been residing in Madrid, Spain, and were heading to Montreal, Canada under the sponsorship of the Joint Distribution Committee. Herbert reported that he was a chemist by occupation.

Thekla Weinberg and family passenger manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Number: 4492386; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85; Series: T840; Roll: 177, Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1798-1962

Herbert’s wife Edith must not have lived very long after their voyage from Portugal to Philadelphia because on September 8, 1946, Herbert married his second wife, Anna or Anya Grodzky, in Hochelaga, Quebec, Canada. Anna was born in Russia on June 18, 1910, and was a beautician. Herbert is listed as a widower on their marriage record and as a chemist by trade.

Hans Herbert Weinberg marriage to Anna Grodsky, Marriage Sep 8 1946 Westmount, Québec, Canada, Groom Herbert Hans Weinberg, Groom’s birth 1908 Germany, Bride Anna Goodsky, Certificate number upd46-128967, Quebec Marriage Returns, 1926-1997, found at https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10723-1831907/herbert-hans-weinberg-and-anna-goodsky-in-quebec-marriage-returns

The family all settled in Montreal, where Thekla died on March 11, 1962, at the age of 76.9 Herbert lost his second wife Anna on July 9, 1976.10 He died February 12, 2001, at the age of 92, and was survived by his third wife Sally Lazoff Bailen.11

I have not found any further information about Herbert’s daughter Yvonne despite searching everywhere I could and receiving help from members of Tracing the Tribe. I don’t know whether she died, married, or moved from Canada and changed her name. There just is no trace of her after a mention in her stepmother Anna’s obituary in 1976. She is not mentioned in her father’s obituary in 2001.12

Although Thekla Rothschild Weinberg survived the Holocaust, she lost her husband, her homeland, and, as we will now see, her sister Frieda to the Holocaust.

Frieda was born May 31, 1993, in Borken, Germany.  As we saw, she first married Leonard Marxsohn and was widowed and then married Paul Phillipsohn, with whom she had a daughter Hannelore, born December 3, 1926.

Unfortunately, I have no happy ending for Frieda, Paul, or Hannelore. On June 11, 1942, they were all deported to Theriesenstadt. None of them survived. According to Yad Vashem, Paul died on December 20, 1942. I have no exact dates for Frieda or Hannelore, only that they also died in about 1942.13

Thus ends the story of Levi Rothschild’s family. Although most of them survived the Holocaust and made it to the US, Israel, or Canada, they were scattered across the globe, and their lives were all forever changed. The family members who were killed must have left holes in their hearts forever.

 

 

  1. Hans Herbert Kaufmann Weinberg, Gender männlich (Male), Record Type Inventory, Birth Date 02 Nov 1908 (2 Nov 1908), Birth Place Frankfurt am Main,
    Last Residence Frankfurt am Main, Residence Place Frankfurt am Main, Father
    Edmund Weinberg, Mother Thekla Weinberg, Spouse Edith Seckbach, Notes Inventories of personal estates of foreigners and especially German Jews
    Reference Number 02010101 oS, Document ID 70370883, Arolsen Archives, Digital Archive; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Lists of Persecutees 2.1.1.1, Ancestry.com. Free Access: Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees, 1939-1947 ↩
  2. Arolsen Archives, 1 Incarceration Documents / 1.1 Camps and Ghettos / 1.1.5 Buchenwald Concentration Camp / 1.1.5.3 Individual Documents male Buchenwald / Individual Files (male) – Concentration Camp Buchenwald / Files with names from SYS and further sub-structure / Files with names from WECK /, Personal file of WEINBERG, EMANEL, born on 11-Oct-1880, Reference Code, 01010503 002.042.476, Number of documents, 1, found at https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/7388346 ↩
  3. Yad Vashem entries for Manuel Weinberg, found at  https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/13545516 and at https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/3229127 ↩
  4. See Note 3, supra. ↩
  5. Yvonne Miriam Weinberg, passenger manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Number: 4492386; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85; Series: T840; Roll: 177, Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1798-1962 ↩
  6. Edith Weinberg, passenger manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Number: 4492386; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85; Series: T840; Roll: 177, Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1798-1962. See also Edith Weinberg geb. Seckbach, Arolsen Archives, Digital Archive; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Lists of Persecutees 2.1.1.1, Description Reference Code: 02010101 oS,
    Ancestry.com. Free Access: Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees, 1939-1947 ↩
  7. It was Walter’s name on this card that led me to discover that he was the child of Betti and Emanuel Hirschmann. ↩
  8. “Jacob Bleibtreu, Former Governor of New York Stock Exchange, 90,” The New York Times, December 6, 1976. ↩
  9. Thekla Weinberg death notice, The Montreal Star, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mon, Mar 12, 1962, Page 16. ↩
  10. Anna (Anya) Weinberg death notice, The Montreal Star, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Sat, Jul 10, 1976, Page 10. ↩
  11. Marriage of Herbert Weinberg to Sally Lazoff, Nov 15 1980, Côte St Luc, Québec, Canada, Groom Herbert Weinberg, Groom’s birth Nov 5 1908, Germany, Groom’s age 72, Bride Sally Lazoff, Bride’s birth Aug 15 1917, Québec, Canada, Bride’s age 63, Groom’s father Manuel Weinberg, Groom’s father’s birth Germany, Groom’s mother Thekla Rothschild, Groom’s mother’s birth Germany, Bride’s father Gedaliah Lazoff
    Bride’s father’s birth Russia, Bride’s mother Telia Brasgold, Bride’s mother’s birth Russia
    Certificate number upd80-141452, Quebec Marriage Returns, 1926-1997, found at https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10723-2419633/herbert-weinberg-and-sally-lazoff-in-quebec-marriage-returns. Herbert Weinberg death notice, The Gazette
    Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mon, Feb 12, 2001, Page 35. ↩
  12. Anna (Anya) Weinberg death notice, The Montreal Star, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Sat, Jul 10, 1976, Page 10. Herbert Weinberg death notice, The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mon, Feb 12, 2001, Page 35. ↩
  13. See Yad Vashem entries at https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/11607287 for Frieda, https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/14969310 for Paul, and https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/11607287 for Hannelore. ↩