Down the Rabbit Hole

In 1917, war was raging around the world and the United States instituted a draft to raise a sizeable army to join the fighting. Three mysterious Chicago brothers appeared from nowhere to register. They claimed to have been born in boroughs of New York City, but there were no matching birth records. They should have been listed in earlier census records, but they were not, nor were their sister and parents. Their past was blank.

 

When one person is missing from records, it piques the interest of a genealogist. When the whole family is missing, it is an irresistible puzzle. I just could not look away. I soon found myself down a rabbit hole in the unfamiliar world of a fragmented Jewish-American family with Hungarian and German roots, living in the tenements of New York City.

 

A Question Starts a Quest

 

It was all the fault of a first cousin. I’ll call them CousinQ, as the adventure started with their question to me about Swedish roots. CousinQ wants to move to Sweden and asked me if they had a grandparent who had been born in Sweden. I had many notes from years of interviews with aunts, uncles and cousins, so was able to quickly respond that all of CousinQ’s grandparents had been born in the United States.

Later, I had an epiphany. CousinQ’s other parent, the one related to me by marriage, is still living. I’ll call them ParentQ. Did ParentQ have a grandparent born in Sweden that could be leveraged in some way? I added another generation to ParentQ’s Swedish line and discovered that indeed there were two grandparents born in Sweden. I shared the details with CousinQ to do with as they wished.

 

The Lost Family 

Having extended ParentQ’s Swedish line back a generation, I decided to similarly extend their German-Jewish line. But I could find no records prior to the 1917 draft registrations of Joseph Holt, Fred Kramer and Charles Kramer. My interview notes included the three brothers, sister Lillian Kramer and parents Aaron Kramer and Rose Holt Kramer. 

Extensive searching for the Kramer family was fruitless, so I turned to Rose Holt as the most unique name. Was Holt her maiden name, as believed, or was it a name from a prior marriage? The only marriage found in indexes was for a Rosa Holt and a man named Aron Lefkovits. I ignored that marriage through several hours of searching. Finally I decided to explore the possibility and so remove the record from consideration.

Image of a New York City Marriage Return dated 21 January 1885.
It was the first marriage for both parties.
The reverse shows that the marriage was performed by an alderman.
The groom signed his name as Aron Lefkovits.
He was a tailor, living at 120 Read [possibly Reade or Ridge] St.
He would be 23 on his next birthday and was born in Hungary to 
Natal Lefkovits and Eva Lefkovits, which was his mother's maiden name.
The bride signed her name as Rosa Holt.
She was living at 93 Sheriff St. and would be 20 on her next birthday.
She was born in New York City to Frederick Holt and Caroline Jacoby.

  

When I looked at the Lefkowitz family in census records, it was a stunning match. The 1905 census of Manhattan listed the expected first names of the parents and children and added two more daughters, Flora and Sadie. All the family members had been born in New York, except Aaron, who had been born in Hungary. Could proof be found that this was the right family? 

The records of Fred Kramer provided the first proof. He had petitioned the court for a name change from Friedrich Lefkowitz to Fred M. Kramer. His 1914 court filing was mentioned, along with others, in a Chicago newspaper. His original New York birth certificate was changed years later to reflect the court-ordered name change. 

 

 

Image of a New York City Birth Certificate dated 18 April 1891.
The original information was for a white male named Friedrich Lefkowitz, 
born 4 April 1891, at 100 Cannon St.
His father was 28-year-old tailor Aron Lefkowitz, born in Hungary.
His mother was 25-year-old Rosa Holdt. 
Her birthplace reads Hungary, which was an error by the midwife. 
Rosa had two previous children, with two of the three living.
The certificate was altered on 3 December 1952. 
The name of the child was changed to Fred M. Kramer, 
based on a court order of 21 September 1914.

There is more to the story. Future posts will explore the history of the Lefkowitz and Holt families in an attempt to assure the discoveries remain forever accessible to my cousins and their cousins.

Sources
    • NYC Municipal Archives Historical Vital Records, a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov
    • New York vital record indexes, Ancestry.com
    • Draft Registration Cards, Ancestry.com
    • US Census records, Ancestry.com
    • Chicago newspapers, Newspapers.com
    • Chicago vital records and indexes, FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com
    • Swedish-American church records, Ancestry.com
    • Swedish emigration and church records, ArkivDigital.se and Riksarkivet.se