In the course of my research on my paternal grandfather, I came across a few early facts. He apparently came to the United States in 1905 at the age of 25 and settled in Pittsburgh. How he came to be there was an absolute mystery. His papers had contradictory information, some saying he was from Russia and some saying he was from Barr (perhaps a town called Barr Podolsky in Ukraine?). It's impossible to know where exactly he came from and the information given to my father and his older sister was that Harry came from Odessa. Again, we will never know, since too much time has passed. Harry also claimed that his last name was always Marshall, which would've been highly unlikely as a Jewish man from Odessa. Could the name have been Marshallkovich (a Russian name that was listed in the directory of my mother's cousin's condo building, which was full of old Eastern European folks in the '80's)? Could it have been Marshalik? Moshkovitz? Had it been changed at Ellis Island when he came to America? Had HE changed it to sound less Jewish? I will never know the answer to that question, unfortunately. The only other name that appears on Harry's papers is his father, Morris and again, I have no way of knowing if that was even my great grandfather's real name.
What I do know is that he ended up in Pittsburgh, his profession was listed as a salesman and the rumor/story was that he had taken over his first wife's family business and she ended up killing herself. That last part was both fascinating and horrifying to me. Harry and the mysterious first wife had a son in 1906, named Milton. He was my father's eldest half brother. There is much more about Milton to come later. As I said, the mysterious circumtances of this first wife haunted me... Was it just a rumor and a made up story or did she really exist? Those questions rattled around in my brain for years, until I finally went down a research rabbit hole, looking for more information about Milton, through Ancestry, which led me to another site entirely that led me to the truth... Harry Marshall's first wife HAD existed! Her name was Szeni (Jeni) Bakler and was a Hungarian Jew. She was born in 1885 (how she came to be in Pittshburgh and met my grandfather is another mystery), she had 12 siblings, 2 of which died young, she married Harry in 1905, their son Milton was born in 1906 and she died in 1907 at the age of 23, two years after marrying my grandfather, when her son was a year old. The information I uncovered about her death nearly knocked me off my chair... Her cause of death was listed as carbolic acid poisoning. It was actually a suicide! I couldn't imagine what would drive a person to kill themselves in such a horrible way, since carbolic acid (phenol) is highly corrosive and causes burns to the mouth, esophagus and digestive tract when ingested, it causes immediate tissue necrosis as well as acting on the brain, the lungs, liver and kidneys. It depresses the nervous system, causing shock, rapid heart rate and is fatal when not treated immedately. In the early 20th century, is was used as an antiseptic agent and was found in many comercially available household products. Why would anyone do something like this to themselves? Especially a 23 year-old woman with a baby. Had she been dealing with mental health issues or was it something else? Had my grandfather actually driven her to such extreme lengths? Again, I will never know the answers to those questions, but the scenario was indeed tragic on several levels. The only other information I was able to find out about poor Jeni was that her parents, Esther Hapt & Lobi Louis Bakler died in Los Angeles in 1925 and 1928 respectively and had 13 children between them. I can only assume they went to California to escape the tragedy of their daughter's suicide or they had relatives or possibly some of their other children living there. Interestingly, they did not take their grandson Milton with them. His fate lay elsewhere.
At some point soon after, my grandfather married again, presumably to have someone to help raise his young son. That woman was Selma Wallach, a German Jewish lady, who's profession was listed as a cook. Since my grandfather was Russian, I can only assume that he spoke Yiddish with Selma (and poor Jeni, who was Hungarian), since that would've been the common language of ALL Jews of Eastern and Western European origin, aside fom their new American language, English. I have no clue how Harry and Selma met. I Imagine that he either met her through the Pittsburgh immigrant Jewish community or perhaps they met at a restaurant or bakery she was working at. I know virtually nothing about Selma's origins or how she came to be in Pittsburgh. In any event, Harry and Selma went on to have three more children, Johanna, Mathilde (Mittel) and Benjamin. Milton was also integrated into this "new" family. Again, I know nothing of their lives during this time, but I do know that by the 1920's Harry apparently owned a few taverns in Pittsburgh and had made quite a bit of money, despite prohibition. I like to imagine that he probably dealt with bootleggers and perhaps members of the local mafia, who procured booze up in Canada & smuggled it across Lake Erie and down the Allegheny river to supply the speakeasys in Pittsburgh. All I know is that by the mid-1920's, Harry had adandoned Selma and his four children, for reasons that I will never know. I do know that a census record from that time showed that Selma listed herself as "widowed", so I can only imagine there was conflict and a bitter divorce that left her with three young children of her own and a step-son. What kind of man would do this? How could Harry have left his second family and why?
The answer lay halfway across the world, in Moldova/Bessarabia, where the fate of a dark eyed, dark haired beauty named Riva Leia Nusamovich was about to be intertwined with a man named Harry Marshall. And this next chapter is where things get VERY interesting.
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