Recently I received a cemetery record from a friend of mine, who grew up with my husband’s cousins. Her grandfather and my husband’s grandfather were great friends.
In any case, she is researching her family history and did research on the Jewish Cemetery in Leavenworth, Kansas, where my husband’s grandparents and aunt are buried. She found their funeral records as well, and sent them to me and other family members. I sent it on to one more. For me they were enlightening. My husband’s mother had told me many stories about her family before she died. And these records impacted these stories.
Story Number One: Her mother, Esther, died in childbirth when she was in her 40s. The cemetery records make this clear. She died in the early 1930s and was buried with an infant. This would have been child number 11, although her oldest daughter had died years before.
Story Number Two: My mother in law was named for her older sister, Molly, who died in May. I was told she died in the swine flu epidemic in 1918 or 1919. Not true. Molly died from the pneumonia in May 1924, when she was 19 years old. Still a tragedy! But what is true is that my mother in law was born almost exactly a year later. And so was given her sister’s Hebrew name, along with another name. This impacts me, as my daughter is named for her grandmother and so also for this great aunt.
A story we did not know, is that Malvina or Molly or Malcha, was first buried in Wichita, Kansas, where the family lived. The family moved to Leavenworth some time after she died, leaving her grave behind. But after her mother died, Molly’s remains were moved to Leavenworth in 1935, to be with her mother.
My mother in law told me that her father went every to visit the grave of his wife and daughter. I have been at the cemetery and I know there is a bench there where he sat.
Story Number Three: My husband’s grandfather died in the middle of World War 2 in Leavenworth, which impacted his three youngest children. So true. His date of death is listed as December 8, 1942. Just one year after Pearl Harbor. He had been a widow for nine years.
At the time of his death, three children were minors, the others were married or serving in the military. The oldest of these three was my mother in law. She was a senior in high school. We think she stayed with friends for the rest of the school year. We know after high school, she moved to St. Louis to attend Washington University and live with an older sister and her family.
My mother in law told me that one day when she came home she saw her brother and sister sitting on the steps. Some family friends were there. And she just knew something horrible had happened. It had. After losing her mother when she was only 8, she was now an orphan.
The two youngest, 12 and 15 at the time, were first taken to Wichita. Remember the good friend? She told me that her grandfather drove through a horrible storm to get the youngest children so they would not be alone. He brought them back to Wichita. From there they went to Arkansas to live with their oldest brother and his family. Officially they were supposed to live in Kansas, according to my mother in law, but the state gave permission for them to leave the state to live with family during the war.
After the war was over, the youngest son was still a minor. He went to live with another brother and his wife in Wichita. The next youngest, a daughter, was in nursing school, but would stay with this brother as well during vacations.
All three of these youngest children went to college, which I find amazing! But I remember my husband’s aunt, the one who lived in St. Louis, telling me that although there was not a lot of money left after their dad died, there was enough for college, and the older siblings made sure the younger siblings went.
After I received the cemetery records, there was some serious texting back and forth between this friend and I, as well as an older first cousin who grew up in Wichita. Her parents are the ones who took in the youngest sibling.
It is just amazing that different people know different parts of the same story. But when you put it all together, a truer picture appears. Most amazing how finding the right records can answer so many questions!
zicharonot 