Category Archives: Goodstein

More at Montefiore Cemetery

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I’ve written in the past about Max Goodstein and his wife Anna Leibowitz Goodstein. Max was the uncle of the gardener’s grandmother Celia. When she immigrated to the United States from Russia, she was sponsored and taken in by Max and Anna and their children, Celia’s cousins.

The couple is buried at the same cemetery as Celia and Isidore Scheshko, Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens County, New York. Actually, the aunt and uncle were buried there in the 1930s (1934 for Max, 1939 for Anna). Isidore died in 1953, and Celia not until 1982.

Here are Max and Anna’s headstones.

These images were taken by the cemetery and given to me as pdf files. I had to create jpg files, and the ages are not clear. It’s possible that Max’s stone says he was 62 years old, but if he was born in 1874, as his naturalization papers would indicate, he would have been 60 when he passed.

Thanks to Tracing the Tribe on Facebook, here is the translation from Hebrew: Here is buried Mordechai, son of Mr. Aharon, died 8th of Elul 5694. May his soul be bound in eternal life.

This confirms once again that Celia’s grandfather was Aaron Goodstein.

Anna’s headstone says this: Neche, daughter of Mr. Shlomo, died 11th of Adar 5699. May her soul be bound in eternal life.

If Anna was born in 1876, as I believe, she would have been about 63 years old when she passed. Her headstone seems to say 55 or 65, but it’s very unclear.

These are very beautiful headstones. I believe the picture of Max on the headstone is from the family photo that includes Celia which I have shared before or taken around the same time.

I did learn one new thing from the headstones. Anna’s father is listed as Shlomo, but I thought her father’s name was Aaron. Maybe that was an error because of Max’s father, but I am not sure. This will take some more investigation!

I’ve taken over the memorials on Find-a-grave for both Max and Anna. If one of their descendants is on Find-a-grave and would like me to transfer them, I would be happy to do so. In the meantime, the gardener and I will watch over their memorials as their closest Find-a-grave relatives.

All Dressed Up in 1968

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Here is a photograph taken at the bar mitzvah of Eileen and Lou’s son, the gardener’s cousin. From left to right are Danny Vendola, Charlotte Riskin Vendola, matriarch Celia Goodstein Scheshko, Eileen Scheshko Horowitz, Louis D. Horowitz, Diana Shulman Scheshko Castle, Murray Scheshko Castle, and Charlotte and Danny’s best friends on the far right.

Since I have posted on this blog so irregularly I will remind you who they are. Diana and Murray, as you probably do know, are the gardener’s parents–hence, my in-laws. I’ve written quite a bit about Murray and Diana and plan to move on to Diana’s family soon.

I’ve also written many posts about the gardener’s grandmother, Celia. Yes, she’s teeny. I know you were thinking or saying that to yourself because everyone always does. At this point, in 1968, her husband Isidore has been gone for at least fifteen years.

Eileen is Murray’s only sibling. She was married to Lou, and last week I wrote about Lou’s famous paint store. Charlotte was the only known/American/living first cousin of Murray and Eileen. She lived in Stamford with her husband, Danny Vendola. They did everything with their best friends, which is, I imagine, why the couple is in this family portrait. One day they no longer were friends, and Charlotte never spoke of them again.

What kids were part of this family, though not in the photo?

Well, Eileen and Lou had two children, their son whose big day this was, and their first-born, daughter Michelle. (I don’t like to use names of living family members, in most cases, but Michelle has passed away. I wrote briefly about Michelle in More About Eileen.

Murray and Diana also had one boy and one girl, the gardener and his sister. Charlotte and Danny did not have children.

So the Scheshkos were a small family. What members of the family were left behind when Isidore and Celia came to this country (separately) from what was then known as Russia is unknown at this point.

The Great Depression Hits Hard

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In a post about the gardener’s Aunt Eileen being born, I posted a photo of the house that Isidore and Celia Scheshko had purchased in 1925. The address was 739 Essex Street in Brooklyn and is the yellow house in the Google Maps photo. They also had Celia’s cousin Rose Goodstein Cohen, her husband Isidore Cohen, and daughter Grace boarding with them.

Now I have discovered some distressing news. I subscribed to Newspapers.com because that was the only way I could get access to the New York newspapers. I actually was looking for other information and decided to do a quick “Scheshko” search since it is such an unusual surname. Sure enough, I discovered that the house must have been in Celia’s name–and was foreclosed on in 1931. (At least that is my reading of this article–lawyers, what say you?!)

This clipping was from the Brooklyn Times Union, but sadly it was in many newspapers.

There are other articles I might want to read, but they are locked. I would need to upgrade to the Publisher Extra subscription. Does anybody know if I can access it through another membership I have, such as Ancestry?

I was sorry to see that Celia and Isidore lost the house they must have loved and been so proud of. The American Dream gone a little sour on them.

The Fun of Finding Old Photos

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A long time ago I posted a photo of the Scheshko family in the old country (probably Odessa, but maybe Tiraspol). Every member of the family is there, including a boy whose name I don’t have, EXCEPT Malka, the oldest child. That is because she had already emigrated.

Once I realized that Malka was not in the photo, I lost all hope of ever seeing a photo of her. In the United States she became Molly Riskin after marrying Isadore Riskin. Their only child was Charlotte Riskin Vendola.

But in going through that little orange box of photos we recently found, I spotted another photo of Charlotte and her father–this time she’s an adult–and a woman who has got to be her mother, Molly Riskin (Malka Scheshko).

 Moral of that story: never lose hope.

Here’s another photo I found.

This is a photograph taken at the bar mitzvah of Eileen’s son. Charlotte is in the center of the photo, looking striking as usual. Danny to her left and to Danny’s left are their best friends, Sally and Tut.

What I would like to find out is who is seated across from them. Eileen’s son thinks that these might be friends of his parents.The gardener says that there were three men at the bar mitzvah who were some sort of cousins, but nobody who is alive today knows who they were or how they were related. Could they be the men in this photo? The gardener thinks one of the men he vaguely remembers could be named Archie The bar mitzvah happened in 1968–maybe someone someday will see this post and supply names to the faces. Friends or family, I’d love to know who they are!

Always getting a little closer to the information, but not close enough. But finding these old photos is FUN.

This is my last post until September. I plan to do more research in August. Plus it is really really hot here in Phoenix . . . .

 

 

Mystery Man Not Solved!

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I’m posting the results of the poll about the mystery man. If you go to the link you can find the three choices for familial resemblance.

 

Here is the winner!

The funny thing is that while you were voting, I found a note that Charlotte had written years ago. She says she doesn’t know who the man is!

That means he couldn’t be Danny’s father because she knew him. It’s still possible that he could have been a relative in Italy, and Charlotte never made the connection.

So could he be related to the Goodstein (Anna, Rose, and Max) family in some way? It’s possible, but why would Charlotte have their photo? She was related through the Scheshkos, not the Goodsteins. But, of course, she DID have the photo of the Goodstein family which features Celia Goodstein (who became Celia Scheshko), so maybe . . . .

It’s likely we will never know.

But I do know that the following photo is Charlotte and Danny in 1946. Are they in front of the bar or behind it?

And this photo is Charlotte as a baby on horseback (ponyback?). She looks a bit like her first cousin Murray (the gardener’s dad) here.

Murray:

Work is being done on the gardener’s mother’s family, but they are a tough genealogical nut to crack–and a huge family.

Murray’s Further Military History

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Some time back, I wrote about my father-in-law’s U.S. military history. He was part of a heroic team in WWII. His father Isidore, who had served in both Russian and American militaries, must have been very proud of him. At the end of that post, I mentioned that before Murray settled down, got married, and became a business executive, he made one detour.

I mentioned that Murray experienced anti-Semitism while stationed in England. He was deeply affected by what happened there. At the end of the war, the stories of the death camps and murders of Jews at the hands of the Nazis must have also affected him a great deal.

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel–and this time period found Murray in Israel, as an Israeli soldier. He served with a man who became his best friend and eventually his brother-in-law, Jack Blanc. Jack was an older Canadian soldier who was married with one child (at that time).

Although the quality is not the best, here is an AP photo that was published on 16 August 1948 in newspapers all over the United States of Murray and Jack in Israel (Jack’s name is misspelled). As the caption indicates, Murray is second from the right and Jack on the right..

What a lighthearted photo and caption (pin-up photos?) for such a serious mission they were on.

Here is the full page; check out the bottom left:

Murray was always very proud of his service for Israel, but it did take a toll on his life as he wasn’t able to pursue the higher education he so desperately wanted (I think I have mentioned before he wanted to be a lawyer). He was a soldier in Israel when his peers back in the U.S. were going to college and professional school.

After Israel, Murray came back to New York where Jack Blanc introduced him to a pretty art student from Canada named Diana Shulman. Diana was Jack’s wife’s younger sister. Murray and Diana eventually married and had first the gardener and then his sister. Here is Murray with Diana and the gardener.

 

The gardener wasn’t yet gardening at that point, but I imagine he was pretty active and kept his parents on the go.

 

 

 

More About Eileen

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Last week I introduced Eileen Scheshko, the daughter of Celia and Isidore. Here she is on our right, a bit more mature than in the photo with her parents.

The dresses and accessories on Eileen and her friends are absolutely gorgeous and of the era: the 1950s! The sweetheart neckline, the wicker basket handbag, the button earrings!

In 1951, Eileen married Louis Horowitz. The following year she gave birth to her first child, Michelle. The year after that her father, Isidore, passed away. In 1955, her second child and only son was born in the same month that the gardener was born.

In the next photo, Eileen and Lou are seated on our deck in Michigan in April 1985. They were in Kalamazoo/Portage for the occasion of the unveiling of the headstone of Eileen’s brother Murray (the gardener’s father).

Sadly, on 15 June 1994, their only daughter, Michelle, passed away.The inscription reads Michelle Trager, her married name. Her Hebrew name was Malka.

Less than a year later, on 17 April 1995, Uncle Lou passed away as well. Aunt Eileen was plagued the last few years of her life with a brain tumor that caused her excruciating pain. Her strength was remarkable. She herself passed on 6 January 1998 and was buried at New Montefiore Cemetery in New York (where Uncle Lou and Cousin Michelle are buried). Eileen’s parents are buried at Montefiore Cemetery. I added Eileen’s headstone photo and sponsored her memorial at Findagrave.

Eileen lived just long enough to meet her two beautiful grandchildren through her son and his wife.

Enter Eileen

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Isidore and Celia Scheshko had a daughter when their son Murray was four-years-old. Eileen Ruth Scheshko was born on 2 December 1925.

The couple still had Celia’s cousin Rose Goodstein Cohen, her husband Isidore Cohen, and daughter Grace boarding with them at that time in their home at 739 Essex Street in Brooklyn. They lived at what is now the yellow house. Thanks to an inspiring comment from Sharon at Branches on Our Civitano Tree and Branches on Our Haimowitz Tree, I discovered that they moved into a brand new house in 1925!

This is only 12 years after Isidore arrived in the United States–and 15 years for Celia. I learned this information from the 1925 New York census. Another interesting piece of info on that census is that both the Scheshkos and the Cohens were apparently naturalized in 1916.

I’ve shared the photos of Isidore and Celia when they were young and before they had children. Here is a photo of them, older, with their daughter all grown up. I suspect Murray was away in the military, but maybe not. Perhaps it is a photo taken upon the occasion of Eileen’s engagement in 1951. If anybody in the family knows, please let me know, and I will correct this post.

Celia’s footwear has changed from those beautiful two-toned boots she wore in the photo I had colorized by Val Erde. A change of shoes happened to me over the years, too, so I completely understand.

I love that the women are wearing similar brooches. Isidore’s double-breasted suit is pretty snazzy!

Goodstein Cousins

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In order to learn more about Uncle Max and his children, Inna and I tried to track down family. She had more luck than I did. We ended up with two branches, stemming from two of Max and Anna’s children.

The first branch is represented by finding Stanley Cohen,who is the son of Rose and Isidore Cohen. Stanley is the oldest generation we have found so far. What is remarkable is that although the families did not remain close as time moved on, Stanley remembers the exact Hebrew name of Celia and Isidore Scheshko’s daughter, Eileen, Stanley’s 2nd cousin (right? the children of 2 first cousins?).

I want to take us back to the image of Celia with her uncle, aunt, and cousins in Brooklyn. She was recently arrived from Russia, and she was living with Uncle Max and Aunt Anna. Rose, Stanley’s mother, is the tall girl standing next to Celia.The second branch brought us to the gardener’s and my generation. We discovered this branch in California. See the boy in the back row, on our left? That is Jacob Goodstein, also called Jack. Jack was born around 1897-1899 in Russia (most likely Tiraspol). Jack’s grandson believes it was 1898, and his granddaughter thinks he was born 21 March 1898. That is the date I am going to go with for my tree, although since he was born in the Russian Empire, it is impossible to know for sure unless his birth record was discovered. Rose was older than Jack and Ethel, a bit younger, was born in 1900.

On 23 October 1922, in Kings County, New York, Jack married Etta Rose Bieler (1903-1971). Her birthday was January 22. (Note: the family remembers the anniversary of Jack and Etta as October 28, but the record I’ve found clearly states October 23. The only way to know for sure is to order the certificate record).

Their son Edwin was born on 25 September 1924, and their daughter, Gilda Ruth, was born 22 March 1926 in Brooklyn.

By the 1940 census both Jack’s parents were gone and he was still living in New York, but by 1954, he was in Los Angeles, specifically Burbank.

In the 1930 census his occupation was a “manager” in a garage. In 1940 he was listed on the census as an “agent” in the laundry business.

Jack’s grandson explained that Gilda’s family moved from Brooklyn in 1948. In the early 50s, Jack and his wife Etta moved to the area to be near his family, as did their son Edwin Bieler (he went by his mother’s maiden name, perhaps starting when he joined the navy). Edwin started a trucking business. In the 1954 Los Angeles city directory Jack was an “expeditor” for Lockheed in Burbank. An expeditor facilitates any kind of process.

Edwin gave Jack 4 grandchildren–3 girls and then adopted a boy.

Gilda gave Jack 3 grandchildren–2 boys and a girl.

Here is a portrait of the family of Jack and Etta with their children and their first four grandchildren, taken March 1961, on the occasion of their grandson David’s bar mitzvah. Daughter Gilda is second from our left and Ed is on the far right. Jack and Etta are on either side of David.

 

Etta passed away in 1971.

Jack passed away at age 78 in 1976.

They are both buried at Sholom Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Jack’s grandchildren seem like lovely people. I can’t help but wonder if Gilda was named for Anna’s mother or Max’s mother–it could be either one of them.

Meeting the cousins has not produced any remarkable information about Max or Celia or their immigrations or life in the Russian Empire. But it is really nice to see that the descendants have fared well in the United States.

Why Port Chester?

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Celia (Goodstein) Scheshko gave birth to the first of her two children, Murray (the gardener’s father), on 5 June 1921 in Port Chester, Westchester, New York.

If the family lived in Brooklyn, why was he born in Port Chester?

I wish the gardener knew the answer to this mystery.

Celia’s sister-in-law Malka (Molly) and her husband lived in Port Chester, but did Isidore and Celia briefly live there? It would have been about this time that Isidore was working as a house painter (according to the census)

Let’s look at the documentation. On the 1920 census, it seems that Isidore and Celia still lived in Brooklyn, as boarders with the Steinharts.

Then Murray was born in 1921.

On the 1925 NY census the three of them lived at 739 Essex Street in Brooklyn with their own boarders, cousin Rose Goodstein Cohen, her husband, and their child.

I have yet to find the family on the 1930 census. By the 1940 census they were living in the Bronx.

So what did Malka’s husband, Isidor Riskin, do for a living? First I have to say that some of the documents for Isidor are listed under the name Waldimer Riskin. We have no idea why this name is connected with him. The name Vladimir was not a name traditionally given to Jewish sons. Isidor Riskin’s documents say he was born in Moscow, which of course was not in the Pale of Settlement. Maybe that explains the name. So was he Isidor or Waldimer? Isidore was his Yiddish name. Perhaps Waldimer was his Russian name.

In the 1910 census Malka’s husband is listed as a Black Smith in the Horseshoes industry. They lived at 65 Travers Avenue, Port Chester.

In the 1920 census he (called Isiaac here) was a Packer in the Nuts and Bolts industry. They lived at 58 Townsend Street, Port Chester. Their only child, Charlotte, was born in 1919, the year before. This is only a year before Murray was born.

In the 1930 census they lived at 43 Townsend Street, close to where they lived during the previous census time. But now Isidor was a Wrapper in the Hardware industry.

I can’t find them on the 1940 census. But, on his WWII draft registration, I discovered that Isidor Riskin worked for Ruby Golding at 141 Wilkins Avenue, Port Chester.

Amy Cohen so kindly found an obituary for Ruby Golding’s sister Rose here.

What kind of business did Ruby run and what did Isidor do for him?

Another kind Facebook group member provided this information and told me that Ruby Golding’s business was Awnings and Shades:

Ruby Golding n Port Chester in the city directories, and in the 1940 Census that owned an awning and shade business. (below)
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FamilySearch Indexing
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Ruby Golding
United States Census, 1940
Name: Ruby Golding
Event Type: Census
Event Date: 1940
Event Place: Port Chester, Rye Town, Westchester, New York, United States
Sex: Male
Age: 31
Marital Status: Single
Race (Original): White
Race: White
Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Son
Relationship to Head of Household: Son
Birthplace: New York
Birth Year (Estimated): 1909
Last Place of Residence: Same Place
Household Role Sex Age Birthplace
Yetta Golding Head Female 58 Russia
Ruby Golding Son Male 31 New York

I searched stevemorse.org by address for the Riskins on the 1940 census, but 43 Townsend, the address listed for them on the 1930 census AND his WWII draft registration, is not listed as an address on the census. And I couldn’t find the family anywhere on Townsend Street.

This is not the first time that I have searched for a specific address only to see the address not listed on the census. These are apartment buildings, so there are many families at the same addresses. I think this makes it even stranger because it’s not as if a one-family house was missed.

I even tried searching on the 1940 census for a “Charlotte” in Port Chester, and there is no trace of Charlotte in Port Chester. She would have been 21. I don’t yet have Charlotte’s marriage record, so I don’t know what year she and Danny Vendola married.

Back to the original mystery: why was Murray born in Port Chester? Could they have been visiting the relatives when it was time to give birth? Could they have chosen Port Chester for Murray’s birth for medical or familial reasons? Any ideas on how to find out more information?