#FamilyTree365 – Day 14 September 14, 2016
I actually missed a day so this post is backdated and will be a 4 day 4 parter.
Part One is a little bit about Maier Krochmal, who if I am right (and I usually I am), is a second cousin of my great grandfather Markus Rothstein. According to the 1920 census Maier arrived in the US in 1897 and that point he was married to Tillie Lapidus and was living in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He was born in 1880 in the town of Brzezany which is outside of Tarnopol to Schulim Krochmal and Jente Golde Schapira and was their only child. I believe that they eventually made their way to Zloczow about 30 miles away and was where Schulim was from. Sometime between 1880 and 1884 they divorced and they both eventually remarried. Schulim married a woman named Rachel Dobresz Lehrer and Jente Golde married a man names Chaskel David Reiser. I will talk more about Schulim in a future post.
Maier and Tillie had seven children – Herbert, Milton, Norman, Dorothy, Aaron, Daniel, and David.
Fast forward to the late 1950’s his daughter-in-law Miriam was a teacher at Sunnyside Elementary School in the Stanton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Miriam was married to his son Norman. In comes a special (to me at least, if not to others) student named Edna Rothstein. Edna has father named Harry Rothstein who was the son of the aforementioned Markus Rothstein. Unfortunatley no one alive remembers the whole story but my guess is the following happened: my grandfather (Harry) saw that Edna had a teacher with the last name of Krochmal which, lo and behold, was his grandmother Laura’s maiden name. So Harry, Miriam, and Norman (and probably my grandmother) got together and discussed how they were connected. It probably included a phone call to my great grandfather Markus as well who was still living in New York.
Maier passed away in 1967 (so he may have been part of the above conjectured conversation as well) and is buried a few rows behind Harry in B’nei Israel Cemetery in Homewood.