I recently received a copy of Henry’s death certificate from the New York City vital records archives, and it contained information regarding the names of his parents. Though I have not yet been able to verify actual parentage as documented here (the records are in Poland and I’ve not yet located the trail online), the names are difficult to make out. (Typical physician handwriting?) The father’s given name is also different on the death certificate from one of the marriage certificates, but Henry’s signature on the marriage certificate is consistent with other instances of his signature, and the factual information on the death certificate (address, occupation, spouse, years in the US, etc.) are consistent to indicate this is the same individual despite different given parental names. I suspect the lack of information regarding Henry’s parentage on his death certificate is due to lack of knowledge by his third wife of Henry’s family in the old country. The couple had been married nine years when Henry died at the age of 65 (Fannie was 59 at the time).

Henry’s mother’s surname is also a bit confusing. It does not appear on any other document I have found so far, but again, the handwriting and what appears to be an inserted letter (which is also unclear) makes it more difficult to decipher. I continue to work on this. However, until I can find a good source to track records in Poland for vital records, this will continue to be a bit of a mystery. I am working with the JRI-Poland and JewishGen and have located some town records, but it’s difficult to confirm much at this stage.

Burial information is courtesy of a BillionGraves+ search which shows not only individual gravesites and headstones, but also (for subscribers to the BG+ service) family plots and the names and headstones of those buried near the person of interest. The cemetery where a person is buried (if there is a burial or cremation interment) is generally indicated on the death certificate. Henry’s death certificate cemetery matches where I located him on BillionGraves+ as well as the cemetery’s own internal plot listing.

It appears – hypothetically speaking now – that Henry and his first wife Mary were both from a small shtetl (a tiny village, often just one or two families) named Lask, which has different spellings and slightly different name variations depending on which language is used and that in turn is dependent upon which country had control of the territory at the time. Just as in modern days, many times people who lived in shtetls would identify their place of residence as being the nearest large town near them or the county/province/etc. Lodz is the nearest large town to Lask (also seen as “Lusk”). I only have one piece of documentation at present that specifies a town of birth for Mary, and it shows “Lusk” on it. Research on town names in the fantastic book “Where Once We Walked” (Revised version), published by Avotaynu, provides geographical coordinates of the town, alternate names and spellings, populations, and where it is situation in relation to other towns and borders. This information is extremely close to what I find online in a similar resource through the JRI-Poland database.

Tracking Henry’s movements to the degree available at present, I suspect that he and Mary wed, and (depending on how accurate you want to consider some of the documentation) had their children – Beatrice (our direct ancestor) and Solomon – all in Lask, then not long after the children were born, moved to Lodz. Lodz was a comparatively large city at that time, with probably more opportunities than the small shtetl of Lask (which is listed as having been a population of 59 during that period, compared to Lodz’s thousands of inhabitants). Many young men would travel to Bialystok to learn trades and take apprenticeships. It appears that this is what Henry may have done after the children were born.

Unfortunately, while Henry was in Bialystok, pogroms resumed, and after a particularly intense pogrom in Bialystok in July of 1906, Henry apparently felt it better to get away from the violence. He departed for the USA in September of 1906, two months after that July pogrom. The pogroms were spreading throughout the entire region rapidly at that point, but before it got too bad in Lodz, Mary and the children were also able to leave Lodz in 1907 and rejoin Henry in New York City, NY, USA.

I suspect that the move to Lodz may have happened shortly after the birth of Solomon because in most of the documents generated by Beatrice, she states she was born in Lodz, but in documentation pertaining to the emigration of Mary and the children, Mary put that she and the children were all born in Lask. Again, this is simply a reporting of what is on the documentation, and I have not yet been able to conclusively confirm anyone’s birthplace through local records at this point. I also have not been able to confirm the identify of any specific Solomon as being Beatrice’s brother – “Solomon” was a very common name in New York City at that time, and there are a large number of Solomons with similar birth dates residing in a very small area where I know the Milgrom family was residing. I am trying to whittle away at this from various rule-out angles. Hopefully once I am able to identify which Solomon is the correct one, I will be able to triangulate specific vital statistic information more accurately for the family.

As I am able to verify or exclude these hypothesized relationships, I will be updating the timeline, names, and any additional information as necessary.

Henry’s parents as listed on his death certificate (his surname is spelled “Milgrim” here and in the cemetery):

• Father: Wolf (no surname provided, born in Russia)
• Mother: (no name listed, born in Russia)

Henry’s parents as listed on his marriage certificate to his third wife (widowed), Fannie (Turteltaub) Rosenblatt Milgrom:

• Father: Zalman Milgrom
• Mother: Bessie Lorzen (?)

Henry’s marriages:

1. Mirel “Mary” Wolkowitz (abt. 1873 – 10 Jan 1924, m. abt. 1895) * Our line’s direct ancestor; Henry is buried near Mary in the Old Montefiore Cemetery at Springfield Gardens, Queens, NY. Mary’s headstone inscription states she is “Mirel, daughter of Zev.”
2. Fanny (Nadler) Siegal (or Segal) – widowed when married Henry on 12 December 1924 (abt. 1886 – 25 Oct 1928) * Uncertain if buried with first husband, Phillip Segal (d. 1914), or not, but she is at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, NY – the same cemetery as Beatrice’s parents-in-law, Samuel and Sprinze (Markowitz) Rothman.
3. Fannie (Turteltaub) Rosenblatt – widowed when married Henry on 24 March 1931 (29 Jan 1881 – 4 Nov 1947) *Survived Henry by 7 years, buried in Glendale, Queens County, NY with her first husband, Bernard Rosenblatt (d. 1920) and she is buried with the Rosenblatt surname rather than Milgrom. Interesting note: Fannie was born in Romania, and her mother’s name is Freida Yetta Rothman. Her father was Naftali Aaron Turteltaub.