48 Years of Research Bears Fruit

 

Finally after 48 years of research I was able to find and connect with my great-grandfather’s sister’s descendants. It has been eye opening and wonderful getting to know them, stories they have heard from their grandparents and old family photos they have graciously shared with me.

I previously wrote about finding Rachel “Rose” Steuer Schiff’s family members, November 2023. The shared photos showed that Rachel looked very much like her mother, Rasei “Rose” Keller Steuer. From the photo 1901 of Rachel, her daughters and her mother, you can see that her daughter Beatrice looks a lot like her mother.

 

Just about a week ago, January 2024, I was able to connect with Sadie/Sarah Steuer Schwartz’s great-great-grandson and through him I have been in touch with one of her great-granddaughters. I’m so excited! I have wanted to know my cousins from my own direct Steuer line since I first started my research on my grandpa Max Steuer and his family.

I was told a story by one of Sarah’s great-granddaughter that she heard from her mother. The story was that her mother’s grandmother, who came over to this country with her husband, who was teaching at Yale University.

Her grandmother was being tutored in English by a student at Yale and left her husband and went to live in Brooklyn with the student and that she had three children. The oldest one Max. She thought this was a story about her grandmother's mother, Sarah Steuer Schwartz. 

This story totally didn't fit with the information I had on her grandmother's parents. Louis Schwartz was a cap maker and their son, Max Steuer Schwartz, followed in his father's footsteps. I put on my Sherlock hat and went to work. This story was interesting, but I hadn't ever heard anything like it from anyone else in the family.

I discovered that the story was about my cousin's mother's paternal grandparents, Irving J. Secols's parents: Samuel Secol and Esther Feinstein Secol. Esther was still married when she had her third child, Milton Saxe Secol. The name Saxe is from her tutor, Moses Saxe, yet Sam was listed as his father on Social Security and death record, as wellas the obvious, his birth record. Moses and Esther married in March 1911 and they had a son, Edwin L. Saxe.

Another story was about driving to Providence, Rhode Island to visit relatives. She wasn't sure if they were Aunts and Uncles or grandparents' siblings. They were chicken farmers and they would collect eggs. I hope in time we can figure out who her mother remembered visiting in Rhode Island.

Louis and Sadie/Sarah (Steuer) Schwartz had five children: Max Steuer Schwartz, baby Schwartz, Lena "Lillian" Schwartz, Stella Schwartz and Fannie M. "Frances" Schwartz. Their youngest was born in Providence, Rhode Island. They lived in Rhode Island until 1914 or early 1915. Then the family lived in Brooklyn, New York.

Louis and Sadie's eldest, Max married Harriet Hoffman in Boston, Massachusetts, but they lived in Brooklyn, New York. Lillian, Lena as she was born, married Irving J. Secol, as mentioned above. Stella married Meyer Jacobs and Fannie married Emanuel "Manny" Weintraub.

Continuing to find out more on my new cousins and their families.