Israel and Sarah Lichtman - 1915

 

I posted the below photo in 2009 as an Unidentified Family phOto. Going through some family folders, the image was used on a family reunion packet back in 1992, and the photo was identified as Israel and Sarah Lichtman, 1915, Austria-Hungary. 

Israel was my 2nd great grandfather, and Sarah Jonas Lichtman was his second wife. (My 2nd great grandmother was his first wife, Betty Adler.) I have no other photographs of Israel to compare, so I will just accept the identification from the family reunion packet. Especially since there was a date given, with no indication that it was an estimate, the information probably came from the back of the original.

My Great grandparents (Samuel and Helen Lichtman Deutsch) immigrated to the US in 1912 and 1913, so this photograph was apparently taken after they had left.

Surname Ngrams

Google has an interesting feature: The Google Ngram Viewer. An  n-gram references the frequency a phoneme, word, or phrase occurs across a span of text or speech. The Google Ngram Viewer allows you to search through Google Books across a span of years for a series of terms, and it will graph the rate of appearance for those terms.

 

I thought it might be interesting to graph the frequency for several of my surnames. I chose the eight surnames of my great great grandparents. However, after the inital attempt, I removed 'Deutsch' from the list since it dwarfed the rest of the surnames. Terms that are relatively similar in frequency work best in these graphs.

 

Below is the chart for Cruvant, Blatt, Feinstein, Newmark, Vanevery, Denyer and Lichtman. The span of years I chose was 1900-2000. I selected English language texts. Below the graph are links to the actual Google Books search results for each term graphed for particular decades.

 

(Click to enlarge)

If you enlarge the graph, and look carefully, you'll notice that the blue line for Cruvant appears briefly in the 1950s. This is due single-handedly to my cousin, Bernard Cruvant, who got some press for his psychiatrical work.  The surname Feinstein definitely grew in use in the last half of the century, going from least frequent to most. I was at first a little surprised "Denyer" wasn't more common, but I have to go back a couple centuries for that particular spelling of the English word, for someone who denies, to be prevalent.  And I hadn't noticed the search was 'case-sensitive.' When I plotted 'Denyer' vs 'denyer' it was clear that in the 1700s the religious term made several appearances. If I hadn't limited the seach to English texts, the Blatt surname would likely have increased in frequency significantly.

Some reviews I found online raised questions about the accuracy of the results.
1) The amount of texts from particular time periods are likely uneven, does Google weigh this into the equation?

I believe the answer must be, "yes." The Y-axis is a percentage, not number of occurrences. They claim each point on the graph is the frequency for a given year.

Of course, the type of material that has been scanned will make a difference. (Fiction, scholastic journals, reference works, etc) I suspect the diversity of digitized material decreases the further back one goes.

2) Optical character recognition can easily get confused. One example is that in older texts the letter 's' looks a lot like the modern 'f''. 

3) If a particular term has had multiple spellings over time that will also, naturally, impact the graph, as I pointed out with the surname, Denyer.

Transylvania 2012

As our honeymoon continued in Romania, Jenifer and I met up with my parents, siblings, two nephews, a niece, and some cousins. There were 15 of us in total, and using Oradea, Romania as a base, we spent two days touring a section of Transylvania where my Deutsch and Lichtman ancestors lived. When they lived there, it was part of Hungary. Now it is part of Romania.

One day we visited Huedin, Almasu (marked by the A), and Cluj. The other we visited Marghita and Simleu Silvaniei. My maternal grandfather, Martin Deutsch, was born in Almasu. The nearest train station from which the family likely departed in 1913 was in Huedin. My great grandfather's passport was issued in Kolozsvár (Cluj). In 1977 my great-uncle Ted Deutsch was recorded singing a song in part-Hungarian and part-Romanian about Kolozsvár. My great grandmother, Helen Lichtman Deutsch, was born in Marghita. Two nieces of Helen's, who remained in Romania, survived the concentration camps, but returned post-war, and settled in Simleu Silvaniei. They weren't allowed to leave under Communist rule until the 1960s. A daughter of one of the survivors, who grew up in Simleu Silvaniei, now lives near Tel Aviv. She joined us and acted as a tour guide.  

Almasu, Romania (Varalmas, Hungary)



About all we know about the home my grandfather was raised in until age 7 is that it was situated by the river. The Valea Babiu runs through Almasu. My parents took a photograph of a different house when they visited previously back in 2000. Either could be 100 years old; both have clearly seen better days. My great-grandfather was a tenant-farmer, so even if some depository had land records, his name wouldn't likely be on them.

Huedin, Romania (Bánffyhunyad, Hungary)



I like that the train station still has the Hungarian version of the town's name on it in addition to the Romanian. I also took photographs of two old benches that theoretically could have been there in 1913. One of the two benches isn't very useful anymore.  The sign on the red box says, "Pastrati Curatenia," which means, "Keep Clean" in Romanian. (There were newer benches at the train station, in addition to the chairs which can be seen in the first photograph.

Marghita, Romania (Margitta, Hungary)



We know the exact address in Margitta where my great-grandmother, Helen (Lichtman) Deutsch, was raised. However, sometimes streets get renumbered. There's a photograph of the Lichtmann leather shop prior to WW2. Is this the same building? While the front has been remodeled somewhat over the years, I believe it is.  While the building is occupied, we didn't knock on the door.

Update

Here's another archival image of the Lichtmann leather store, obviously taken at a different time than the one above because the sign above the door is different. The similarities between it and the current building are more noticeable.

Cluj, Romania (Kolozsvár, Hungary)

While in Cluj, I took a photograph of a monument. I couldn't read what it said at the base, but I figured I could look it up later.

It is a quote from Ioan Raţiu, one of several Romanians who petitioned Emperor-King Franz Joseph in 1892 for equal rights for Romanians.

Existenţa unui popor nu se discută, se afirmă!

which translates to:

The existence of a people is not for discussion, but rather for affirmation!
Photo Credits: 
John Newmark - June 2012 
Lichtman Leather Shop: Unknown photographer, Unknown date

Central Database of Shoah Victims Names

The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names is a unique international undertaking led by Yad Vashem. It is the endeavor to recover the names and reconstruct the life stories of each individual Jew murdered in the Shoah. It is our moral duty to respect their last behest and remember them. We estimate that the number of Jews commemorated in the database to date is 4 million. The database is comprised of Pages of Testimony, historical documentation and additional sources.

"The online Names Database creates a link not only with the dead but also among the living, within the Jewish people," said Nobel Laureate Prof. Elie Wiesel after filling out a Page of Testimony for his father, Shlomo. "It strengthens the connections between families, between cities, between communities. Furthermore, it brings a heightened awareness and a deepened sense of remembrance."

More information

Yad Vashem is the Israeli Holocaust Memorial and its name derives from the Biblical verse, Isaiah 56:5: "and to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name that shall not be cut off." Yad Vashem means: a memorial and a name.

Their database of names was initially put online in 2004, and has grown since then. It's easy to search.  The basic search function has three input fields.  You can enter data in only one, or all of the fields, though the search results will only provide the first 1000 records, so searching by first name alone is likely only useful for unusual first names.

The Advanced Search provides several more input fields

You're also able to specify the accuracy level of each input field (The defaults are shown above, and the four choices below)

For Year of Birth, or Year of Death, you have an option of +-2 or +-5.

Here's what the results page looks like if you search for every individual born in Almasu. (The town where my maternal grandfather was born.) I didn't specify a country, as it varied depending upon the year. If I specified Romania or Hungary, I'd only get about half the results.  However, the synonyms option yields many variations of the town name (Almasu, Almas, Almasz, Nagyalmas, Varalmas).  For those entries below with a different town, the other town was their residence in 1938.  The actual record indicates Almasu as their place of birth.

My grandfather, Martin Deutsch, was the son of Samuel Deutsch and Helen Lichtmann.  So a few entries in these results were of great interest:

Szeren Serena Deutsch
Laszlo Lichtmann
David Lichtmann

Helen had a half-brother named David, and all the information I have on his birth was "After 1882" as I knew Helen was the oldest. Helen was born in a different Transylvanian town (Margitta), but they're not too far apart. I thought all the Lichtmann children were born in Margitta, but since David was in his 40s by the time of his death, birth place and residence prior to the war could have been confused.


The information on the David Lichtman in the database, unfortunately, doesn't include parents.

Original Record No.:	BU-1/2.
Last Name:	Lichtmann
First Name:	David
Gender:	Male
Date of Birth:	14/08/1892
Place of Birth:	Varalmas, Cluj, Transylvania, Romania
Place during the war:	Buchenwald, Camp
Place of Death:	Buchenwald, Camp
Date of Death:	03/11/1945
Victims' status end WWII:	murdered/perished

Note: Clicking on the magnifying glass image searches by that input field, and clicking on the green image shows you the location on the map.  The links above work, however, the search for all those born in Varalmas, Cluj, Transylvania, Romania yields only 4 results, as it searches for no synonyms.

This could be my great grandmother's half-brother, or someone else with the same name. There's no way for me to be certain yet.

My guess is that the Laszlo Lichtmann in the results was David's son. It doesn't indicate this as a fact, but both are indicated as having died at Buchenwald.  Laszlo on Feb 22, 1945 and David on November 3. (It's important to be careful when reading dates - they are presented in the European Date-Month-Year format.)

***
There are two pages of testimony for Serena Deutsch, which appear to have been submitted by two different daughters.  Scanned images of the testimony are viewable, though the documents are in Hebrew. Szeren appears to have been the daughter of Simon and Betti Tantzos, and she married Mor Deutsch.  I do not know if or how Mor was related to my great grandfather, Samuel Deutsch.
***

I searched for several other family names at the website, and will share some of the results in future posts.

Part II

Surname Saturday: Lichtman

It's been almost six months since the last installment, but I return with the Surname Saturday blogging meme.

Discuss a surname and mention its origins, its geographical location(s) and how it fits into your genealogy research.

Lichtman is an occupational surname for a chandler, being derived from Likht, the Yiddish word for candle.  My Lichtman ancestors were from an area of Transylvania, at the time under the rule of Austria-Hungary.  Today the towns are part of Romania.  My great grandmother Helen (nee Lichtman) Deutsch immigrated to the US in 1912, settling in Chicago.  A few of her siblings immigrated around the same time, while a few others remained in Hungary.  Of those who remained, most died in the Holocaust, though two nieces survived, and made it to Israel in 1964. One of their daughters made contact with our family a couple decades ago.  I know less dates for this surname branch than some others, but I include the information I do have.

The numbering below follows the d'Aboville system, slightly modified to indicate half-siblings.
The first digit represents the order surnames make their first appearance on my ahnentafel.
I've emboldened my direct ancestors, and __s indicate living, or potentially living, relatives.

7. Herman Lichtman
7.1 Israel Lichtman married (a) Betty Adler and (b) Sara Jonas (1858- ?)

 7.1a.1 Helen (Hermina) Lichtman (1881-1958) married Samuel Deutsch (1861-1938)

7.1b.1 Bertha Lichtman married Gold
7.1b.2 David Lichtman
7.1b.3 Frank (Fere) Lichtman
7.1b.4 Gizela Lichtman married Hoffman
7.1b.5 Rosa Lichtman ( - 1933)
7.1b.6 Eugene Lichtman (1896 - ?)

7.1a.7.1 Jean Deutsch (1899-1965) - married Bernard Kamerman (1889-1958)
7.1a.7.2 Armon Deutsch (1900-1908)
7.1a.7.3 Theodore Deutsch (902 –1980) married Frances Levy
7.1a.7.4 Edward Deutsch (1904 – 1973) - changed surname to Kameran
7.1a.7.5 Martin Deutsch (1907 – 1991) married (1) Myrtle Van Every (1900-1951) (2) Marjorie Shelp (1911-1985)
7.1a.7.6 Maurice Gerald Deutsch (1909 – 1950) married Dorothy Arkin (1906-1995)
7.1a.7.7 Berta Deutsch (1911 – 2003) married Herman Freed
7.1a.7.8 Allen Deutsch (1914 – 1988) married Jean Collier

7.1b.1.1 William Gold (1906 - ?)
7.1b.1.2 Emile Gold (1910 - ?) married Fox
7.1b.1.3 Albert Gold (1915 - ?)

7.1b.3.1 Andre Lichtman
7.1b.3.2 Ella Lichtman
7.1b.3.3 Mick Lichtman
7.1b.3.4 Sanyi Lichtman
7.1b.3.5 Ana Lichtman (1924 - 1989) married ___ Knapp (1924 - )

7.1b.4.1 ___ Hoffman
7.1b.4.2 ___ Hoffman
7.1b.4.3 Estyne Hoffman (1920-2006) married Jerome Cohler (1925-2003)
7.1b.4.4 Helen Hoffman (1922-1998) married ____ Ploetz

7.1b.6.1 __ Lichtman married Geraldine ___ (1925-2004)
7.1b.6.2 __ Lichtman

My number is: 7.1a.7.5.1.3

Tombstone Tuesday: Helen (Lichtmann) Deutsch (1881-1958)

A month ago I blogged about the unusual difficulties I was having obtaining a photograph of my great-grandparents' tombstones through RAOGK and FindAGrave. Chicagoan, John Frank, of AncestryChronicles contacted me and offered to help when the weather permitted. The weather in Chicago is often the same as it is in St. Louis, magnified. So I understood.

I hadn't made the decision myself to return to local cemetery wandering, so I was surprised Saturday to find the photographs were in my email. Both proved how, even when family is pretty good at passing information down, tombstones can reveal small details.

Transcription:
Chava Leah daughter of the honored Israel
died on the 26th of Adar, 5718.
Beloved Mother
Helen Deutsch
At Rest March 18, 1958
Age 76 years

This is the first time I've seen her Hebrew names. My suspicion is that the name Helen came from the initial letters of both.

The blue rectangle says '1930' which is just the lot number, and is only on her stone. The yellow circle is on both, and I'm not sure of its meaning.

Next week: my great grandfather's tombstone provides me with an even greater surprise.

Update: I contacted the cemetery, and the yellow sticker represents the type of care the grave is receiving.

Women's History Month: Give Their Face A Place

The word prompt for the 21st Edition of Smile For The Camera is "Give Their Face A Place." March is Women's History month and you are asked to picture women back into history. The unknown, known and unsung women who are often the foundation of our family history. Give their face a place.

(click to enlarge)

From left to right:
Myrtle (Van Every) Deutsch - 1900-1951 (my mother's mother)
Margaret (Denyer) Van Every - 1868-1923 (my mother's mother's mother)
Helen (Lichtman) Deutsch - 1881-1958 (my mother's father's mother)
Bertha (Cruvant) Newmark - 1886-1978 (my father's father's mother)
Minnie (Mojsabovski) Cruvant - 1863-1924 (my father's father's mother's mother)
Rose (Cantkert) Newmark - 1865-1943 (my father's father's father's mother)
Annie (Blatt) Feinstein - 1889-1965 (my father's mother's mother)
Sissie (Feinstein) Newmark - 1914-2002 (my father's mother)

These are the eight female ancestors for whom I currently have photographs.

Amanuensis Monday: A Further Inventory of Cousins

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I'm nearing the end of a transcription of a tape my grandfather, Martin Deutsch, his older brother, Ted, and their sister, Berta (Deutsch) Freed recorded in 1977. I'm 1 hour and 50 minutes into the tape, and at this point they're trying to remember the names of their uncles, aunts and cousins.

---

1:50:00

Ted: Mother’s sister, Rosenblum, Mrs. Adolph Rosenblum.
Martin: Adolph was his name
Ted: Adolph was her husband’s name.
Martin: It was Sarah wasn’t it?
Bert: That was not mother’s side, that was father’s side.
Martin: You think that was father’s side? That could have been father’s side.
Bert: Giza was another sister
Martin: Dad’s…
Ted: No we’re talking about mother’s side
Martin: Giza. What did she change her name to?
Bert: Hoffman
Martin: She never did change it from Giza, though?
Bert: It must be Gizella in English.
Martin: I remember her, Giza Hoffman, mother’s sister
Ted: That’s right, and she came to live with us around 1917 or 16
Martin: When she was unmarried?
Ted: When she was unmarried. She came out here and soon after. Soon after we got here, she came out. She lived with us on Campbell Avenue for awhile.
Martin: I had forgotten that.
Ted: Then she met this man, Morris Hoffman
Martin: It wasn’t Nathan Hoffman?
Ted: No, it was Morris, and married him around 1917. And then they have about four children.
Martin: The Hoffmans, do you remember any of them?
Ted: Esther Hoffman, she lives here
Martin: I think I met her, I recall meeting her
Ted: She’s working for the government now as a secretary, and another son is Bernard Hoffman, who is living now. And they had another son, Irving Hoffman. He died. And there’s another girl, who’s married, I don’t recall her, Helen was her first name. I don’t recall her last name.
Martin: You did pretty well to have remembered
Ted: I remember because when their mother passed away, Gizella passed away, they had an estate and probate, and that’s how I remember their names. [ed: Ted was a lawyer by profession.] Outside of Gizella, that’s the, there were only two sisters that I remember.
Martin: And no brothers
Ted: And her brother was James
Martin: Yeno, James. OK, let’s get over to father’s side.
Ted: Father’s side, we already mentioned practically all of them.
Bert: You missed Joe Deutsch, Herman Deutsch
Ted: That’s from another brother that I never knew.
Martin: Yeah, Joe Deutsch then was married to Eva.
Ted: Eva Deutsch.
Martin: And she’s still living, he’s dead.
Ted: No.
Bert: They’re both dead.
Martin: They’re both dead.
Ted: (unintelligible) five years old when she died.
Martin: So they were Dad’s…
Ted: They were from another brother. Dad’s brothers, and I don’t recall him at all.
Martin: He may have stayed in Europe and you don’t remember.
Ted: Yeah, I think so.
Martin: That was quite a big family, of course Joe Deutsch and Eva Deutsch’s children were Albert and what’s his
Ted: Sigmund.
Martin: Sigmund.
Ted: And Albert died.
Martin: Yeah, Albert died, and Sigmund is still alive.
Ted: There’s another one, Herman Deutsch.
Bert: Dora was his wife.
Ted: Who was he, I don’t recall who he was. He must have been…a brother of Joe’s?
Martin: I don’t recall Herman Deutsch.
Bert: Yes he was.
Ted: He was?
Martin: A brother of Joe’s.
Bert: And there was Sarah Goldberger
Ted: Sarah Goldberger was his sister
Martin: Whose sister?
Bert: Joe’s. And, Greenfield,
Ted: Regina.
Bert: Regina.
Ted: Sisters from this other brother
Martin: Joe. So Regina was our cousin too. Regina Greenfield. I recall the name.
Bert: She married the brother of her aunt Rose.
Ted: Herschel Greenfield. Nathan Greenfield was his brother.
Martin: Yeah.
Ted: Two brothers married two sisters.
Martin: I see. I guess I never did know the relationship because of the names. Well, now I’ve covered…
Ted: Let’s see, we mentioned Dexter.
Martin: Yeah. And he didn’t have any children I guess, did he?
Bert: No, he never did.
Martin: He just passed out of the picture. Well, I don’t know, did we leave anybody out? Brothers or sisters of mother or father?
Ted: Mother had another sister in Europe, Rosa. They were here at one time, but they went back to Europe, and never came back here.
Martin: They were here when we were here? They went back after WW1?
Ted: They came back to Hungary from the United States must have been around 1910, before we [arrived]

1:55:00

Martin: Oh, before, I see.
Ted: They stayed there and never came back. I remember they visited us and when they came back from the United States they brought a lot of money with them. At that time it was a lot of money.
Martin: If they had a couple hundred dollars.
Ted: They bought two beautiful horses, and they called them Chassar and Chular.
Martin: I’m going to stop here a moment, and come back. You say you remember mother had a couple other brothers. Do you remember the names?
Ted: They lived with the parents at that time when I
Martin: Back in Europe
Ted: When I visited them in Europe. One of them was Feri – F E R I.
Bert: Would probably be Freddy in English.
Martin: That was his brother. Now they never came over…
Ted: There was a younger one, Dezur
Martin: Dezur? I recall the name, D E Z O I supposed.
Ted: In Hungarian they spelled it with a Z. Dezur and Feri, those are the two brothers I met that I know of in Margitta, because I was there, and I visited them. I used to go when I visited them, I went out to the marketplace, I used to sell water over there. Fresh water.
Martin: Sell water? How did you get the water?
Ted: Well, we had a well. They had a well.
Martin: Oh, you wouldn’t get it from the river?
Ted: Grandfather had a well. And they had a little container that I put on my back. I was about 10 years old. We’d go to the marketplace, and sell fresh water. We made money that way.
Martin: You had goatskin probably.
Ted: No, we had a little container. I don’t recall what kind, made out of wood, that’s all I know.
Martin: Seems to me it would leak. You probably had to carry it halfway up the mountain or something.
Ted: There wasn’t any mountains around Margitta. They were in a valley more or less.
Martin: Flat.
Ted: I recall every time I visited them I stayed maybe 2 to 3 weeks. It wasn’t only for one day. I remember there was a great big plain next to their home, just a wild plain where we used to go out and play
Martin: I suppose they did farming, would you guess?
Ted: Exactly what he was doing I don’t remember.
Martin: Of course, all these relatives in Europe we lost track of either after World War One, certainly after World War Two. There was absolutely no correspondence or contact or information of anybody in any way.
Ted: No
Martin: Since World War Two anyway.
Ted: Although, Esther Hoffman told me that she had contacted somebody in Israel who was related to her mother.
Martin: Oh, is that right, so she may have left Hungary and went to Israel after WW2 I suppose. That is something.
Ted: I didn’t go into it deeply with her. That’s my recollection.
Martin: That’s something you can explore here with Esther.
Ted: That’s right.
Martin: I’ve met her. She’s a very charming girl. I haven’t seen her. I guess I met her at Herman Freed’s funeral maybe.
Bert: Yeah, you probably did.
Martin: I don’t believe I had known her before. She was of course Giza’s daughter.
Ted: Her name now is Cohler.
Martin: She married?
Ted: She’s married and has a child.
Martin: KOHLER, or something like that?
Ted: COHLER. She’s married to Jerry
Martin: Jerry Cohler.
Ted: That was the daughter of Gizella.

---

A lot of this is repetitious of names they've already discussed earlier in the tape, but it's helpful for them to repeat it, if only to verify they're remembering it the same. They do discuss their mother's siblings who remained in Europe for the first time. The Israeli cousin that Esther Hoffman had been in contact with was likely a grand-daughter of Feri/Frank Lichtmann. She and her family have traveled to the US a couple times now, and I've had a chance to meet them. The uncle they recall as Dezur, is listed in my family notes with the English name David.

I have learned through some research that the father of Joe and Regina Deutsch was an Albert Deutsch, another brother of my great grandfather, Samuel. Bert says their cousin, Herman Deutsch was also a brother to Joe and Regina. This is possible, though I haven't found any documentation absolutely connecting Herman to Albert. The records I have found show he was ten years younger than Joe, and seven years younger than Regina. My research also suggests Joe changed the spelling of his surname to Deutch (dropping the 's').

There are 20 minutes left of the tape to transcribe.

---

If you choose to join me in Amanuensis Monday and post your transcriptions, feel free to add a link to your post below, or in the comments.

Amanuensis Monday: An Inventory of Cousins

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I'm returning to transcribing the tape my grandfather, Martin Deutsch, his older brother, Ted, and their sister, Berta (Deutsch) Freed recorded in 1977. I'm 1 hour and 40 minutes into the tape, and at this point they're trying to remember the names of their uncles, aunts and cousins.

---

1:40:00

Martin: So I think we took care of Dad’s relatives about completely.
Ted: Mother’s father I remember him. He was married
Martin: Before we go here, Dad was married with a first wife.
Ted: That’s right.
Martin: Do you have any recollection of that?
Ted: I don’t remember – I wasn’t there. But I do remember his daughter.
Martin: He did have a daughter by his first wife
Ted: By his first wife, who was a step-sister to us, and she lived in Italmas.
Martin: She lived in Italmas?
Ted: And Dad took me many times to visit them. They lived
Martin: That was the one daughter he had by his first wife, she died.
Ted: She had several kids, which I don’t recall how many
Bert: Six, father used to say six.
Ted: And she had a husband, they lived next to the river in Italmas. 'It' means river in Deutsch, so they lived next to a river, and that’s how I remember.
Martin: I guess we lost track of them, between two wars
Ted: We tried to get her to come out
Martin: She didn’t want to come out?
Ted: She didn’t want to come out, and then we lost track of her all together
Martin: Which is understandable. Then you say, mother’s
Ted: Mother’s grandfather and father lived in Margaritta
Martin: Margitta. M A R G I T TA, is the way I envision spelling
Ted: I understand the Romanians changed it to Margarita, I’ve seen that on a map since the war, and he was married to Zally
Martin: Zally was his wife’s name?
Ted: His name was Lichtmann
Martin: Lichtmann. L I C H T MA N N, would you say that, double N ending?
Ted: L I CH T M A N
Martin: One N?
Ted: Maybe two.
Martin: Anyway, LICHTMAN is the name, now she had brothers and sisters.
Ted: That’s right, she had brothers here in New York
Martin: She had one brother?
Ted: Mother had a brother named…Hungarian name was Yonas, no Yeno
Martin: That was yours
Ted: YENO , and he lived in New York

1:45:00

Martin: In English he changed it to James?
Ted: I don’t know.
Bert: I was in New York, and they lived in…
Martin: In what year would you say you were there?
Bert: About ’34.
Martin: 1934, and stayed with them? So that you got acquainted with the family.
Bert: I got acquainted with the whole family, they’re a lovely family
Martin: How many kids did they have?
Bert: They had two boys, one was George and the other I can’t remember the older boy’s name
Martin: George was one of them, you can’t remember the older boy. Anyway, you lost track of them in the meantime. You haven’t had any connection.
Ted: I haven’t had any connection with them.
Bert: After Uncle James died, we didn’t hear from them. They moved away and we didn’t hear from them.
Ted: The last I heard the two boys were, one of them was living in Washington, employed by the government. I don’t know in what capacity. One of them called me, I would say at least ten years ago when he was passing through Chicago
Martin: Oh, is that right?
Ted: He called me, and I tried to see him, but I was involved in something and I couldn’t see him that day. And I just talked with him over the phone.
Martin: So you never did meet him?
Ted: I never got any details of where he lived, what he was doing, matter of fact I asked him to come and have lunch the next day, but he said he had to go home today.
Martin: He might have been the one working for the government.
Ted: I imagine it could be, I don’t remember which one it was.
Martin: Well to get back to the other mother’s relatives. Of course we knew of Bert Gold who lived in Racine. As matter of fact her husband, she died long ago, but her husband just died not too long ago, four or five years, in his nineties.
Ted: About 92
Martin: 92 years old when he died. And of course he had…they had children. Emilie Fox, is one of them. Albert and Bill. Bill died in Arizona I understand, he moved out there and married, but he died in Arizona. Albert is still in Racine, I think carrying on with the old business if I’m not mistaken.
Ted: No, he’s in another kind of business
Martin. He’s not selling clothes?
Ted: No.
Martin: And Emilie Fox is down in Lincoln, Illinois. Now, that’s…Of course Mother stayed with Bert Gold in I guess Racine at the time.
Ted: That’s right
Martin: When she was here for a year trying to earn a few dollars to bring us all over. OK, that’s one family. Now, who else? There were a lot of families.

---

Transcribing this section, I realized the notes I took originally listening to the tape were incorrect. I had written down that my great grandfather, Samuel Deutsch, and his first unknown wife had six children. Actually, they had one daughter, and that daughter had six children, all of whom remained in Transylvania. Without any married names to go on, the odds are low on tracking what happened to them, but possibly the vital records will someday be discovered.

It's interesting how many of the 'facts' from this tape contradict other information I have. All three seem to remember 'Zally' as the name of their maternal grandfather, Israel Lichtman's second wife, or at least there is no argument. It's possible that was her Hungarian name, or a nickname derived from her Hungarian name. Other family notes I have say her name was Sara Jonas. Their mother, Helen (Lichtman) Deutsch was the only child of Israel and his first wife, 'Betty' Adler. All the siblings of Helen mentioned are half-siblings.

Yeno Lichtman actually went by the English name Eugene, not James. I have photographs of him and his family, with their names labeled on the back. Though it is also possible he used both names at different times. His two sons were Joe (not George) and Israel.

The current Romanian spelling of the Hungarian town, Margitta, is Marghita. Though the name does appear to derive from "Saint Margaret." I am unable to find 'Italmas," on a map, though I may not be hearing the name of the town correctly. According to online dictionaries, the German words for river are 'fluss' and 'strom.'

There are 30 minutes left of the tape to transcribe.

Travel Documents - Part One: Affidavits of Support

For several months I have been transcribing the audiotape of family history my grandfather, Martin Deutsch recorded with his brother Ted and sister Berta.

Ted's son recently found, and sent my mother the family travel documents from 1913 for my great grandfather, Samuel Deutsch and his six children. My great grandmother, Helen, had traveled a year earlier. Handling the fragile documents with care, I scanned them in. The passport, issued in Kolosvar, Hungary, is in Hungarian, with a little bit of French. I will discuss the passport in a future post.

There were Affidavits of Support provided from three individuals.
1) My great grandmother, Helen (Lichtmann) Deutsch (image above, right.)
2) Adolf Rosenblum, the husband of Samuel's sister, Sarah Deutsch. (image above, middle)
3) A Samuel Goldberg, who claimed on the form to be a nephew. (image above, left)

Samuel Goldberg is a new name for my database. His address on the form matches the address on Helen Deutsch's form, suggesting that there may have been some truth to his claim of relationship. Nephew could mean several different relationships though. He could be the son of a sister of either Samuel or Helen Deutsch. Or the husband of a daughter of any sibling of Samuel or Helen.

I believe I know all the brothers and sisters of Helen who made it to America and who they married. I'm not confident I know this for Samuel. But I do know that there is a 'mystery brother' for Samuel, who had a son named Herman. (Not the Herman, son of David, who changed his surname to Dexter, but the son of another brother, who didn't change his surname.) And that brother could have also had a daughter who married a Goldberg. That's my best guess as of this moment.

1910-1930 censuses weren't much help. There were about a dozen Samuel Goldbergs in the Chicago area in 1910, none living at the same address as the individual on the Affidavit of Support in 1913. The marriages at Cook County Genealogy only went back to 1916. The records at FamilySearch go back further, and there is a Kate Deutsch who married a Samuel Goldberg in February of 1915. However, this doesn't appear to be a match, unless there was at least a 2-year engagement process. (Perhaps a traditional European arranged marriage?) I'm going to research the Chicago City Directories to see if they lead me anywhere.

The other 'new information' on these forms is the occupation my great grandmother listed. We knew she had been doing some sewing. But she listed 'Mid wife' as her occupation, earning $10/week. Her cash and personal property totaled $300 in 1913. (Adolf Rosenblum earned $25/week and had $800 total, and Samuel Goldberg earned $20/week and had $3,000 total.)

A transcription project I might join....

JewishGen announced this morning:

We have exciting news for those who are researching the Transylvania region of Hungary, as well as those who are interested in preserving our heritage.

We have recently acquired a considerable number of register images from Bihar county, formerly in Hungary and presently in Romania, which contain around 12,000 to 15,000 records of births and marriages from this region.

As you probably know, these records have been inaccessible until a few years ago and are not available on films from the Mormons.

These records primarily include Nagy Varad (Oradea), Er-Mihalyfalva (Valea lui mihai), Margitta (Marghita), and Elesd (Alesd), as well as those of several smaller towns and villages in the region.

They are seeking volunteers to help transcribe. My Deutsch ancestors were from the neighboring county of Kolosz, so they won't likely be in these records, but my Lichtmann ancestors were from Margitta.

Amanuensis Monday: Cousins, and Coming to America

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue transcribing the tape my grandfather, Martin Deutsch, and his brother, Ted Deutsch, recorded in 1977.

---

56:00

Martin: Well then, here we are now, you’re about 10 or 11 years old say in 1912
Ted: 1912
Martin: 1911, 1911 is when mother came over by herself, am I right about that?

Ted: She had a sister here in Racine
Martin: That’s...what was her name?
Ted: Gold
Martin: I forget her first name
Ted: Bertha. Bertha Gold.
Martin: She was a half-sister. She is Emily Fox’s mother.
Ted: She was from the same father. They had the same father. And she was here in Racine, and she was doing pretty good here
Martin: Had she been here more than a year or two?
Ted: Yeah, because, well she had grown children. Not grown, but she already had children born here. At least two or three.
Martin: I think she had three all together, didn’t she Emily, Bill, and I forget the
Ted: Al. Albert. She must have been here for some time I would say five six years at least
Martin: And there were others in the family I think that came over
Ted: There were, she had also had another sister and she was out here, and she came back to Hungary. Her name was Rose, I believe, Rosa.
Martin: Did Rosa come over at the same time with us, it seems to me
Ted: She’d been here before us. Then she went back to Europe, she went back to Hungary. And she got married, and she stayed there.
Martin: Whose sister?
Ted: Mother’s sister.
Martin: Mother’s sister. I remember her. She came over, but
Ted: She came over. Her husband had two great horses, grand horses he bought after he came back from America. He had money, so he bought himself two horses and called them Chassar and Chular. I remembered that when they visited us they drove a two horse wagon.
Martin: Of course, there were still other relatives too, including Mrs. Newman, Bertha Newman.
Ted: Yeah, well her father was Dad’s brother.
Martin: Her father was Dad’s brother. She was a niece of Dad’s then.
Ted: That’s right
Martin: And she had been here awhile, I don’t know how she came.
Ted: Her father was here.
Martin: Oh, I see.
Ted: Dad’s brother, his name was Dovid Leib, Dovid Leib they called him in Hebrew. His name was David. His brother David was here, and then he went back also. What they did was they came here and they made some money
Martin: A few dollars and went back

60:00

Ted: They saved their money and went back. He bought himself a saloon over in Buchem, which wasn’t too far from Varalmash.
Martin: And settled down there
Ted: And settled down there. And then his daughter Newman, Bertha Newman, and his son came out here, and they got married here and stayed here. His son’s name was, changed his name to Dexter.
Martin: Oh, that was Dexter. So that was another nephew of Dad’s.
Ted: Dexter and Bertha Newman were brother and sister, and their father was Dovid Leib they called him.
Martin: That was then the brother of Dad’s. Dexter and Bertha Newman were niece and nephew of Dad’s, they were our cousins in other words.
Ted: Yeah, they were our cousins. They came here and lived here, but the old man went back and stayed.
Martin: That’s what it was. I get the idea now. With all that coming and going, I can see there was in the air the atmosphere a familiarity of the
Ted: That’s right, Dad, had a brother who was here and went back, and they made money. And mother had a sister who came here and went back, and they made money. So mother got an idea. She ought to go because she had a sister here, and Dad was too old. He was twenty years her senior. So she figured it woud be better for her to go. And it worked out that she had Berta at that time – 1911, and soon after Berta - she was born in 1910, I believe, as soon as she was a year old she made up her mind that
Martin: She was going to do it
Ted: She was going to do it, and she wrote to her sister Bertha, Mrs. Gold, and arranged for her to buy a ticket for her to bring her around
Martin: How much do you guess a ticket would cost - $100-$200 for a person to come over in steerage.
Ted: At that time I believe it would cost about $100
Martin: At least that
Ted: In steerage.
Martin: In the steerage of course we all know what that…
Ted: They always bought it on the installment plan, So that it took $25 and the rest a dollar a week. They had these agents.
Martin: It was still a real accomplishment. And took a lot of intelligence and knowhow to leave the backwoods of Hungary and get to wherever you could board a ship and you didn’t know the language.
Ted: Never saw a ship before.
Martin: You still had to cross those mountains to get over somewhere
Ted: Mother had a lot of guts
Martin: She did, there’s no question about it
Ted: No question about it
Martin: And she must have been the prime
Ted: To leave six kids and all, and a one year old child in care of a twenty year old man…a fifty year old man.
Martin: A fifty year old man, and of course
Ted: Of course she had Jean
Martin: Jean was the oldest, she was about 11
Ted: At that time she must have been, If I was 11, she must have been 13
Martin: Which isn’t bad if that’s true
Ted: She was 2-3 years older than I am, she could have been 14
Martin: Well..
Ted: But she took care of the kids at home while she was here.
Martin: There’s a lot of cooking and sewing, of course there wasn’t much washing of clothes or anything
Ted: No, we didn’t need much of that. The cooking and making the dinners and food, was enough.
Martin: That sure should be enough for six or seven or eight kids
Ted: They had to start from scratch when they made something to eat, they didn’t have no place to go to buy it.
Martin: Not only that but you didn’t have the facility of being able to turn on the gas stove, where would you get your heat?
Ted: Every time you had to make a fire you had to go out and get some wood.
Martin: You couldn’t get any canned peas.
Ted: Nothing. Everything came from the garden.
Martin: The garden, and of course we didn’t have any money to go buy anything

1:05:00

---

Martin and Ted get confused with ages often. It was established earlier in the tape that their sister Jean was likely born in 1899, which means she would have been 13 in 1912 when their mother left for America. Ted, born in 1902, would only have been 10, while Berta, born in 1911, was 1. The rest of the family followed a year later in 1913.

Relatives mentioned:

Sisters of Martin and Ted's mother, Helen (Lichtmann) Deutsch: Bertha (Lichtmann) Gold, and Rosa Lichtmann

Children of Bertha Gold: Emilie (Gold) Fox, Bill Gold, Albert Gold

Brother of Martin and Ted's father, Samuel Deutsch: Dovid Leib (David)

Children of David Deutsch: Bertha (Deutsch) Newman, and Herman (Deutsch) Dexter.

---

If you choose to join me in Amanuensis Monday and post your transcriptions, feel free to add a link to your post below, or in the comments.

Some Words

The last two Wednesdays I have posted for Wordless Wednesday photographs received from a first cousin of my mother's. There was no writing on the back of the photographs and the cousin was unable to identify them. However, they were with other photographs of Deutsch and Lichtmann kin, so we are relatively certain (no pun intended) they are from those family lines.

This means they are likely from a region of Transylvania that was then Hungary, and is now Romania. (Though it is possible they are relatives post-immigration to America.)

Here are the faces of the two men:

It is my understanding that both the Lichtmann and Deutsch families were Orthodox Jews. And the individual on the right looks like traditional images with which I am familiar. Not so the individual on the left.

The head covering the relative on the right is wearing appears reminiscent of what I sometimes see Hasidim wear. The relative on the left appears to be wearing a more 'cowboy-style' hat to me. Though it may just be the way the hat is turned.

Even more interesting than the hats, is the facial hair, or the lack thereof.

With the spread of kabbalism to Eastern Europe, trimming the beard was gradually prohibited by leading rabbinic authorities (Noda bi-Yhudah, Mahadura Tinyana, YD 80) and with the rise of Ḥasidism, the removal of the beard became tantamount to a formal break with Jewish tradition. [Source]

Not growing up in an Orthodox household, and used to 20th and 21st century changes in tradition, this difference didn't occur to me until I pasted their faces one next to the other. My Great-grandfather, Samuel Deutsch, also didn't have a beard. This may be representative of a generational break with tradition, as if the two pictures are from a similar time period, the individual on the right appears older.

The woman in last week's photo is holding a book.

I wonder what the book is. While such movies as Yentl have ingrained in popular culture the idea that Jewish women in Eastern Europe were discouraged from education -- it has been suggested recently that paradoxically, the restriction from reading religious literature resulted in women reading secular literature, and becoming key players in the latter half of the 19th century enlightenment. (The law of unintended consequences strikes again.)

I'd like to be able to put some names to these faces someday. Perhaps similar pictures will turn up in other cousin's collections, but with labels.

Wordless Wednesday: Unidentified Family phOto

Unidentified Deutsch or Lichtmann ancestors (Transylvania)

Wordless Wednesday: Unidentified Family phOto

Unidentified Deutsch or Lichtmann Ancestors (Transylvania)

Smile for the Camera: They Worked Hard for a Living

The word prompt for the 15th Edition of Smile For The Camera is "they WORKED hard for the family." The professions of our ancestors are almost as interesting as the people themselves. Some of our ancestors worked very hard; they took in laundry, worked the land, raised many children, or went to school and became professionals. Photographs of them working are called occupational photographs and are rather hard to find.

I agree, they definitely aren't easy to find. However, I have found a few. I'll start with my maternal grandparents Martin Deutsch (1907-1991) and Myrtle Van Every (1900-1951) who worked at the St. Louis Post Office together in 1935 when this photo was taken, less than a year before they were married. I've drawn a box around my grandparents.
The below photograph of my paternal grandfather, Melvin Newmark (1914-1992), shows him with gavel in hand as a City Judge. I like how the nameplate reflects in the photo.
Here's a photograph of my great grandmother, Margaret (Denyer) Van Every (1868-1923) at work on the farm. The photograph was likely taken after 1920, as the writing on the back suggests my grandmother, the recipient of the photograph, had already moved to St. Louis. The writing also indicates that El Paso had received some snow. Which isn't completely unheard of.
Finally, I have a photograph - circa 1935 - of the Lichtmann Leatherworks shop in Margitta, Hungary - Address: 43 December Street - birthplace of my maternal great grandmother, Helen (Lichtmann) Deutsch (1881-1958). The people in the photo are my grandfather's first cousins, Andre and Sanyi Lichtmann, sons of Helen's brother, Frank (Fere).