Say Sadie

 

Say it with me: Sadie Lefkowitz

There is a saying that you die a second time the last time your name is said. But there is a third time – when your name is changed to be unrecognizable. Sadie changed her name, as did her siblings and her husband. She was the hardest Lefkowitz sibling to track and she has been asking that her story be told.

Her birth certificate was filled out according to a midwife who assisted at the home birth. Sarah Lefkowitz was born on 23 March 1902, at 283 Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. That address no longer exists, as the tenements in that area were razed and public housing has been built over many city blocks. The New York Public Library and the city archives have horrendous descriptions and photographs of the tenements of the city.

Sadie was the seventh child of Rosa Holt Lefkowitz, a native of New York City, and the tailor Aaron Lefkowitz, an immigrant from Hungary. As two of her older siblings had died young, she was the fifth of six children who lived to adulthood. She had an older sister, three older brothers and a sister who was two years younger.

 

 

Move to Chicago

 

About the time Sadie was six years old, the family moved west to start a new life in Chicago. They rented a series of apartments and houses near Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and next to the railroad yards near Lake Michigan. The move from New York must have been quite a culture shock.

Sadie was about 12 when the family fragmented. We don’t know where she lived after her parents divorced. Her father died when she was 14 and, in early 1920, at age 17, she was living with her mother and younger sister. She had left high school after finishing her sophomore year and was working as a stenographer for a barber supply business.

Meanwhile a young man named Edwin Ira Bloch, a salesman at the Princeton Neckwear Company, had registered for the draft in 1917. The Chicago native was called up in October, 1918, and was sent to flying school in Mississippi, serving under the surname Black. The war ended shortly after he was called up and he was discharged in January, 1919. Returning to Chicago, he resumed working in neckware sales.

Sadie Lefkowitz, age 20, and Edwin I. Black, age 27, were married in Chicago by Rabbi L. Kaplan, on 28 June 1922. The couple then disappeared from the records.

 

Marriage License Image from Cook County, Illinois
Mr. Edwin I Black, age 27 and Miss Sadie Lefkowitz, age 20
Married 28 June 1922 by Rabbi L. Kaplan

 

 

A New Name

 

In the 1930 census, Edward and Carolyn Black appear. Edward, age 34, had been born in Illinois and was a neckware salesman. Carolyn, age 28, was born in New York, with parents born in Hungary and New York. She was a stenographer for a barber supply business. The ages and details all matched the couple, although the first names did not.

Tracing Edwin/Edward back in time, revealed that he had been born Isidore Bloch. He left school after completing the seventh grade and, by the time he was 16, had a job making suspenders. He continued his work in menswear throughout his life, owning his own business by 1950. His 1959 obituary said that he had been a wholesaler of men’s clothing for 20 years.

Carolyn spent some time as a bookkeeper, working in menswear with Edward, according to the 1940 census. She left the workforce and became a housewife by 1950. The couple had no children listed with them in any census record.

Edward Black died on 19 December 1959, leaving only his widow, Carolyn. She requested a military marker with a Star of David to be placed on his grave. The military clerk made a number of helpful corrections when processing the form, including writing in Edward’s name as Edwin I. Black.

Application for Military Headstone or Marker by Mrs. Edward Black on 1 June 1960
A flat bronze marker with a Star of David was requested to be placed at 
Memorial Park Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois
Several corrections were made based on military records
Name of Black Edward was corrected to Black Edwin I
Date of birth was corrected from 25 Dec 1894 to 24 Dec 1893

 

Widowhood and The Later Years

 

Carolyn applied for a Social Security card in the mid-1950s. She stated her birth date as 22 March 1902, one day off from her birth certificate. At some point she moved to the Miami Beach area, living at one time in Bal Harbour, on the same barrier island as the Surfside condominium building which collapsed.

She died in a nursing home in North Miami Beach on 15 May 1996, at the age of 94. No middle name is included for Carolyn, whose occupation was listed as an accounting clerk. Her mother’s name is correct, but her father was named as Aaron Kramer, which is the surname that three of her estranged siblings adopted. She was entombed at Lakeside Memorial Park Cemetery in Miami. The informant on the death certificate was a friend or neighbor from her Bal Harbour apartment building.

Why Sadie abandoned her nickname, and the name Sarah, is puzzling. Her choice of the name Carolyn may be tied to her family history. Her maternal grandmother was Caroline and her oldest sister, Carrie, died in infancy. Her name change from Lefkowitz to Black was simply through marriage, though her implied maiden name of Kramer is another puzzle. 

 

We are left, as always, with questions.

And so I say her name one last time: Sadie Lefkowitz and Carolyn Black. May peace be upon her.

Sources

• NYC Municipal Archives Historical Vital Records, a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov
• New York vital record indexes, Ancestry.com
• US and New York Census records, Ancestry.com
• Chicago and other newspapers, Newspapers.com
• Chicago vital records and indexes, FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com
• Chicago city directories, Ancestry.com
• Social Security Death Index, Ancestry.com
• Florida death certificate, Florida Bureau of Vital Statistics
• Public Records Index, Ancestry.com
• Tenement photos, New York Public Library
• Tenement descriptions and photos, NYC Department of Records & Information Services, archives.nyc
• Military records, Ancestry.com
• Sanborn Maps, New York Public Library and Library of Congress
• Google Maps
• Surfside condominium collapse description, Wikipedia