I’m excited to announce a small breakthrough in the search for my Schwartz ancestors. Thanks to the indexing of Slovakian records and their availability online through FamilySearch.org, I’ve managed to find the birth records for my great-grandfather, known as Nathan I. Schwartz, and several of his siblings.
On line 13 of the above record, you’ll find Ignatz Schwarz – a name he used in this country as his middle name – born on 19 June 1874, and circumcised a week later. His parents were Simon Schwartz and Hani Neuman, and they lived at that time in Ivanovce, near Trencin. This was part of Austria-Hungary at that time, and now is in northwestern Slovakia. The witness was Aron Neuman, probably a relation of his mother’s. Some of this information I had learned already from records in the United States, and the date matches exactly with American records (which is fairly rare), but the name of the town is certainly new information.
A few years ago, I located the passenger list for Nathan’s mother, Hani Neuman Schwartz, and six children. They arrived in New York via Bremen and Southampton on 20 November 1891 on the S.S. Werra.
On line 950, we can see Hani Schwartz, traveling in steerage. She was 42, from Austria, and traveling with 2 bags and six children! They were headed to Illinois, where presumably her son, Nathan Ignatz, and possibly her husband and another son, were living. I recently located a birth record for another older son, Adolf, born in 1877. I believe Nathan was in Chicago, and Adolf and Simon could have been there as well.
I have recently been able to locate birth records for many of the children on the passenger list, and I know a bit about what happened to them in this country. So far, I have not found a birth record for Rudolphine, but once here, she married Leopold Aronson around 1897, and they had two children, Sidney and Hortense. They lived in Chicago in 1900, moved to Indianapolis and Toledo, and then returned to Chicago. After her husband’s death, Rudy moved to Macon, Georgia, to live with her daughter, and died there in 1971.
The child on the next line, “Gyula,” is a bit of a puzzle, but I’m fairly convinced it is actually “Julius,” a son known as Louis once he arrived in this country. Though the gender is incorrectly listed on the passenger list, the age is only a year off.
In the birth record above, line 7, we see Julius, born on 26 March 1880, to Simon and Hani, and circumcised on the 2nd of April. This matches records in the United States pretty closely, and no record has been found for an additional daughter of Simon and Hani named Gyula.
Julius, known as Louis, is probably the most interesting of Hani and Simon’s children. He had moved to Toledo, Ohio, by 1903, and worked as a merchant and furniture salesman. It appears he was in business with his brother-in-law, Leopold Aronson. On the eve of his expected marriage, he was killed in a streetcar accident in Toledo in 1923. In the inventory of his estate can be found numerous barrels of liquor as well as jewelry. His story may be the subject of another post!
Below “Gyula” on the passenger list is a daughter perhaps named “Linka.” No birth record or further information has yet been found for her. On the passenger list, she is given the same age as Gisella, but there is no birth record recorded for a twin.
The birth record for Gisella is above on line 2. She was born on 11 January 1882, and had her naming ceremony on the 21st of January. At this point, her parents were living in Drietoma, near Trencin, where the birth was registered. Gisella married Aaron Traxler in Cleveland in 1906, and they had a son, Siebert. She died in 1923 in Birmingham, Alabama.
The next daughter, Bertha, was born on the 30th of September 1883, and had her naming ceremony on the 13th of October. By 1923, she had married a Mr. Coatman and was living in Chicago through 1942, but I haven’t been able to find anything further.
Richard, the youngest child traveling, was born on 7 June 1885 and circumcised on the 15th of the month. The witness listed in his record was probably another relative of his mother’s, a Nathan Neuman. By 1900, Richard was living in Cleveland with Nathan and Gisella, and in 1917, he married Cora Newman. They had a son, Robert Schwartz. He and his family lived in Cleveland Heights and he worked as a dress manufacturer. He died in 1942.
So what about Nathan, the older brother who was already here? He was naturalized in Chicago in 1896, having arrived here as a minor around 1889. I have so far been unable to locate a passenger list for him.
By 1900, was living in Cleveland and working as a manager in a cloak store.
Nathan married Dorothy Richman in Cleveland in 1902, and they remained in Cleveland until moving to Chicago by 1930. They had four children, including my grandmother. Nathan eventually worked as a manufacturer of ladies dresses, and by 1942, he and his wife had moved to Los Angeles. The photo at the top of the post was taken by Max Tatch around 1945. He died on 9 April 1950.
I am thrilled to have found these records of the Schwartz family, as this family has been particularly challenging to research. Schwartz is obviously a very common name, as are almost all of the first names involved. But there are still plenty of questions.
Besides the information yet to be discovered about Bertha, we don’t yet know what happened to Adolf, born in 1877. Did he come to this country? Was he the Adolph who testified in Nathan’s naturalization record? And what happened to Hani and Simon? I haven’t been able to find any record of either of them in the United States to this point, but I know that at least Hani made it to this country. They may well have died before 1900, when Nathan, Richard and Gisella were living on their own in Cleveland, or they may have been with Louis or perhaps Adolf, who haven’t been located in 1900 yet. What about Linka, the other daughter on the passenger list? No information about her has been found yet either. Plenty of mysteries yet to solve. If you have any information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
9/27/2023: Updated information about Richard, Nathan and Bertha.
BTGenealogy 