What Happened to Rachel?

By the time my grandfather was born in Valea Seacă, Romania, his own father had been dead five months in the large city of Iasi, about 100 miles north. It's nearly impossible to know the path that a pregnant Jewish woman of the 1890's had to take. Some have suggested that she would have gone home to her own family to give birth.  Indeed, his birth document reads, "This is the birth certificate of Haim of israelite religion, of the male sex, born the day before yesterday in the Comune Valea Seacă, in the house of his mother." His mother was 24 years old. There appears to be no way I can know today what she did to get to Valea Seacă, I only know that she made the trip. My grandfather was born on March 15, 1891, by the Julian calendar, regardless it was the date he always used through his life.

And then his mother drops out of the picture. At the moment, I still do not know what her surname was before marriage. More importantly, I spent years wondering what happened to her. I knew that by 1914, she had made a home in New York City, because the manifest for my grandfather's entry to NYC stated that he was going to his mother's at 14 Horatio St. But, while I could see her name given as Rachel, I could not suss out her last name. It was a Facebook Jewish Genealogy group that came to my rescue - they told me that her name was Rachel Solomovitz, and as I found records I found that her husband was Josef. Later they would shorten their name to Soll. And, in fact, their surname morphed quite a bit - fodder for another story.

Once this connection had been made, I found that there is someone on Ancestry who has a tree with Rachel, her husband and their children.  Ever hopeful, I sent a message to the woman who managed the tree - and she replied! As it turns out, her family didn't know of Rachel's first marriage in Romania or her first-born son, my grandfather. Why should they? I'm sure it was all water under the bridge for Rachel at some point - and the fact that my grandfather settled in California, and didn't appear to keep in touch with his family.

I have never dared to hope for a picture of my great grandmother, thinking I would never find her. This week I received a digital photo of the actual photo, and it warms my heart to see her face.

Rachel died July 4, 1943, a year after her son, my grandfather died. She is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in New York.