Tag Archives: Scheshko

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.

What Happened to Scheshko?

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Amy at Brotmanblog: A Family Journey asked how the surname Scheshko became Castle. I thought that I had explained that in a previous post, but I cannot find that I mentioned it.

After Murray and Diana moved from NYC to Michigan with their two children, Murray decided to change their last name. You can see what the petition states as to the reason. It fits exactly with what the gardener always told me about the name change.

“The name Scheshko has caused embarassment to myself and my family. People have a hard time remembering the name and a hard time pronouncing it.”

What the petition doesn’t state is how Murray arrived at the name Castle.

He picked it out of a phone book, or so the story goes.

I did “redact” the names and birth dates of the gardener and his sister from the document.

Here are the two pieces of text I removed!

at Palmer Lake, Michigan

first home after NYC, before the name change in Kalamazoo

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 Early Years

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A year after Diana and Murray Scheshko’s marriage took place, they had a son, who happens to be my gardener (for those who don’t know, my gardener is also my husband hahaha). He was born in Jackson Heights, but I’m not sure where they lived at that time.

By 1959, they had another baby, the gardener’s sister.

So there you have the gardener playing Parcheesi at his mom’s feet. Diana is holding the gardener’s beautiful new baby sister.

What else happened to the family in 1959? You can see in this newspaper article.

“Borough president Clancy yesterday picked the winning ticket for the Fiat 500 Bianchina sports sedan awarded by the Steinway Merchants Association at the climax to its successful Steinway Jubilee Sales event  which broke all records last week.

Clancy chose the ticket belonging to Mrs. D. Scheshko of 34-15 12th Street, Astoria. The Astoria woman received her new car.”

That is our Diana who won the Fiat. I love how their address is included in the article, although it’s a little scary by today’s standards! The address is probably their first apartment in Ravenswood, a project of brown brick apartment buildings. There are 30 or 40 buildings in total. They still exist. A few years ago we visited Astoria to see the gardener’s old stomping grounds, and at Ravenswood, a woman leaned out a window and asked our daughter if she was with the city. Apparently she had some complaints about her apartment. When the Scheshkos lived in Ravenswood, the people were not as poor as they are today. And there was more diversity in those days: residents were all races and nationalities. The neighbors that the gardener was the closest to were his Italian teen babysitters (who bought him candy) and the Chinese couple who lived next door.

Back to the Fiat. This was a sports minicar, not a vehicle for a young mother with a preschooler and a baby. So the family traded it in for a used Pontiac and some lovely Italian provincial furniture that Diana and Murray kept for the rest of their lives.


A huge thank you to all the offers to help, including Amy of Brotmanblog who did a preliminary search for me. You all are wonderful and still might hear from me LOL!

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.

UPDATE on The Gardener’s Parents Get Married

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FOR THE UPDATE, PLEASE GO TO THE END OF THE POST. I NOW KNOW EXACTLY WHERE DIANA AND MURRAY WERE MARRIED. I found an index record of Diana Shulman and Murray Scheshko’s 1954 marriage, recorded in Manhattan. Diana’s name is spelled Diane in the index.

Then I got my hands on their marriage certificate (where her name is Diana, as it should be). Let’s see if this document yields any good info.

Murray’s address was 326 E. 58th St. He was a radio and television technician. First I’ve heard of that. I’ve always heard the more colorful stories ;).

Diana lived at 483 West End Avenue. She was a portrait artist. Yes, that is true.

Here are Google Map images of the apartment buildings where they probably lived (I think these buildings have been there that long) and the distance between the two apartments.

Murray’s Residence

Diana’s Residence

 

Here is page 2:

This second page is very interesting. It is a page completed by the rabbi who performed the ceremony. According to this document, the wedding took place on 17 January 1954 at 66-15 Wetherole St. in Queens. I asked the Facebook group Tracing the Tribe about the location and was told: “66-15 Wetherole Street is a Building located in the Rego Park neighborhood in Queens, NY. 66-15 Wetherole Street was built in 1950 and has 6 stories and 113 units.” SEE UPDATE AT THE END OF THE POST.

Marriage ceremony location

So do the two pages go together and mean a wedding date of 17 January 1954? Because the date according to family lore was 20 January 1954. But documents from the City Clerk of the City of New York cannot lie. Right? And the rabbi would certainly know the date. Or was there a civil ceremony after the religious ceremony?

Because I have never seen a photograph that looked like a wedding portrait and the gardener has never heard about his parents’ wedding, I had assumed that they had a civil ceremony, but this looks like they had a religious ceremony. I just wish there was a photograph of the day!

There are two witnesses on this document who I have never heard of. Were they friends or relatives or perhaps random people provided by the rabbi? Charles Joseph Charnow and Hyman WHAT? Cigine? C. Kine? What do you think it says?

Well, it didn’t take long to find Charles Joseph Charnow. He married Grace Cohen in 1940. You probably don’t remember Grace, but I knew she sounded familiar. She was Murray’s second cousin–and the kids lived in the same household when they were very small because their parents, being first cousins, lived together for a bit. So in 1954, Murray was still close with his extended family in NYC. It leads me to believe there were family and maybe friends at the wedding!

So who lived at 66-15 Wetherole? Who did Diana live with prior to marriage and who did Murray live with prior to marriage? I would like to search these addresses in the 1954 city directory. Does anyone know if it’s available online or how? I can’t find it. It seems as though it hasn’t been put online yet??? (The 1950 census would be helpful here, but as we know it is not yet available). SEE UPDATE AT THE END OF THE POST.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

In lieu of a wedding portrait I will post the only early photo I can find that isn’t with children. It is possible that the gardener had just been born. The small child in this photo is Murray’s niece Michelle who was three years older than the gardener and Michelle’s younger brother (the boys were only 8 days apart). Maybe Murray’s brother-in-law Lou’s mother was taking care of the babies while the young couples went to the beach with Michelle, her parents, Lou and Eileen, and YES, that is Celia Goodstein Scheshko in the middle! OR is Michelle only two here and Diana and Eileen not yet “showing” or didn’t yet know they were pregnant? I actually favor the idea that this photo was taken in the summer of 1954, about 9 months before the boys were born.

I admit I did crop the photo a bit as it is a beach photo, and I don’t think they expected to have it put online decades down the road.

 

UPDATE!!!

66-15 Wetherole St. in Queens, where Murray and Diana were married, was the home of Murray’s sister Eileen (in photo above behind Diana) and her husband Lou Horowitz (who was probably taking this photo). This was a discovery by the gardener’s cousin, Eileen and Lou’s son who recognized it as the address on his own birth certificate! So we have quite a merry bunch already at that wedding because in addition to the witnesses (and their affiliated family, possibly), Celia (center of photo above) would have attended her son’s wedding, too. And perhaps other family and friends still unknown. Other information Eileen and Lou’s son provided is that the building was at one time called the “Oklahoma,” built by real estate tycoon Samuel J. LeFrak who owned a lot of property around Rego Park. The name LeFrak eventually became famous for LeFrak city, which featured over 4,600 apartments in one area.

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 . . . .

 

 

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!