The "Pop" Star and the Music Professor

2012 marks the centennial of the death of Hyman Chapman, an older half-brother of my great-grandfather Nathan. Their nephew Himie Voxman's life span filled almost this entire 100-year period.

Samuel Hyman Chapman was born Shmuel Khayim Tsipanyuk in the early 1860s in Rozhev, Ukraine, a Jewish agricultural colony between Kiev and Zhitomir. Granddaughter Sue Dreier was told he attended the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, but a likely passenger record shows he sailed into New York in January 1882.

Either way, Hyman was the first of dozens of Tsipanyuks who relocated from Rozhev to the Midwest, especially Chicago, over the next 30 years. All of them followed his example and became "Chapman." If you are Jewish, a Chicagoan and a Chapman, we're probably related.

Hyman's marriage to Esther Ginsberg in Des Moines on August 7, 1882, constituted the oldest record  in Iowa of my known relatives.

In 1884, Hyman and Esther moved to Centerville, a coal-mining town in south central Iowa. Joining them there were Hyman's oldest brother Abraham in 1887, Nathan in 1891 and their younger sister Mollie Voxman in 1906. Also arriving in 1891 was Esther's half-sister Lizzie. Hyman's half-brother married Esther's half-sister in 1892, and they would become my great-grandparents.

"Hy" Chapman grew from a tool manufacturer to the biggest soda bottler in Southeast Iowa. In Iowa, we say "pop" instead of "soda." "Chapman Pop" had a line of 35 products according to a researcher commissioned by his grandson, Lawrence "Punky" Chapman.

Len Rosenbaum, a nephew of Hyman's son-in-law Sam, said Hyman started up by purchasing bottling equipment by mail order in 1885. Len's other claim, that Hyman was one of the first bottlers in the country, would be difficult to verify, as the bottling of soda water in America began around 1800. Nevertheless, an antiques web site sold off a Chapman Pop bottle earlier this month.

Hyman Chapman died of kidney failure January 12, 1912. Early that Sunday, mourners accompanied the body on a special train to Des Moines for burial at Glendale Cemetery. My paternal grandparents, Max Feinberg and Mae Chapman, first met at that funeral.

The following September 17, Molly Voxman gave birth to a boy whom she and Morris would name after her brother, Hyman Chapman.

At first, Himie Voxman played and taught the clarinet to pay tuition at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His first degree was in chemical engineering, inspired perhaps by Hyman Chapman's son Lazarus Chapman, who ran a metals company in Chicago.

Himie's graduate study of music psychology took him in a different direction, and from 1954 to 1980 he was Director of the University of Iowa School of Music.  Outside of Iowa, he was most famous for the exercises he composed for wind instruments. I you'd like to buy them, you can easily find them online.

I discovered the Voxman branch of the family from the obituaries of Abraham and Hyman Chapman. When I first called Himie in 1996, his wife Lois had died just six weeks earlier. Over the next 15 years, I may have been the only cousin in touch with him, and I believe he enjoyed the chance to share family stories with me.

I visited him four times, twice in his house near the top of a hill east of the Voxman Music Building and twice at the Oaknoll Retirement Residence.  On those last two visits he could not remember what he just asked me, but he could still play the clarinet. Last September, a few days after his 99th birthday, he let me record a short music video.

Just as Hy Chapman's death was front page news in Centerville, Himie's death on November 21, 2011, was a major story in Iowa and in the wind instrument world.

From my 2009 visit with Himie Voxman, who never needed a cane.

Vis-A-Vis the Marcovis's and the Davis's

Although most of the early East European Jewish community of Des Moines came from Pilviskiai, Lithuania, my first ancestors to reach the city came from Romania.

The 1880 census did not list any Romanian immigrants in Des Moines, and only six in the entire state, including two Jews, Isaac Rindskopf and Paul Rosenthall, both in Council Bluffs. The entire national census listed barely one hundred Romanian-born Americans, Jewish or otherwise.

Des Moines's first Romanian Jewish immigrants appeared in the 1884 directory. They were F. Blank, who sold "notions and fancy goods" at 321 E. Walnut St. , and S. Leon, whose restaurant and residence was across the river at 210 W. Walnut St.  "S. Leon," mentioned in my previous blog, was the brother of my great-grandmother Clara Marcovis.

Both the Blanks and the Leons were in the 1885 Iowa State Census.  Another Des Moines household, headed by Albert Davis, was marked as Russian*, but later records always showed them as Romanian. Living with the Davis's at 208 Fourth St. was another Romanian, Jacob Anzelberg, brother-in-law of my great-grandfather Aaron Marcovis.

The 1886 directory showed Albert Davis, a peddler, sharing a residence with Aaron Davis, a tinner. This is odd, because Albert's sons in 1885 were Samuel and Nathan, ages 9 and 14. Also suspicious was that not a single other record could be found for Aaron Davis from Romania. We will come back to this.

Moving on to the 1888 directory, one sees for the first time a name similar to Aaron Marcovis. Harry Marcovich of 214 E. 4th Street worked for Albert Davis, a tinner who lived at 765 W. 9th St. That was the same year that Aaron and Clara married.

Come 1890, "Harry" is "Henry" but the spelling "Marcovis" appears for the first time. It also marks his move to 784 9th Street just south of Keosauqua Way, near the Davis's, except that the Davis's have moved to 214 E. 4th Street! Albert's "hardware and tinware" shop is still on West 9th, one block north of Aaron's "stove and tinware" shop. Two or three years later, the Davis's moved to Galesburg, IL.

The connections between Albert Davis, Jacob Anselberg and Aaron Marcovis demand and receive an explanation. For one thing, Aaron's mother was Sarah David (1925 Iowa State Census). "David" was a common Romanian Jewish surname, while "Davis" is never seen among Romanian immigrant ship passenger. For another, Albert's daughter Jeanette E. Davis Flournoy was sited in Artists in California, 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes, which says she was born in Braila. That's where Aaron was born.

According to the census you look at, Albert Davis (David) was born between 1838 and 1853. Sarah David  Marcovici would have likely been born around 1840. Thus, it's likely that Albert Davis was Aaron Marcovis's uncle.

And now we better understand how my great-grandparents, who came from different parts of Romania, came to Des Moines and married. Sol Leon paved the way for his sister Clara, and Albert Davis paved the way for his nephew Aaron. As heads of two of the three Romanian Jewish households in town, the match was inevitable.

This Thursday would be Aaron and Clara's 124th anniversary.

Albert and Annie Davis later lived in Peoria and Springfied before moving to Los Angeles, where they were still alive in 1930. Jeanette (1880-1958) lived in Vista, California, from 1931 onwards. From her first marriage she had a son, Lynn Welvart (1901-1976), and a daughter Marion, Mirriam or Miriam (picture from passport application shown below).  Son Samuel, his wife Elizabeth, and daughters Margaret and Maxine were in Indianapolis in 1930. Son Edward had one son, Alvin (1961-2001), who was raised by Albert and Annie. Son Nathan had no known family.

* The 1885 census was edited, crossing out the names of certain countries and writing "Oc" (other country) over it. Northern and western European countried such and Germany and Sweden were not crossed out.

Pictured below, passport photo of Mirriam Welvart, a granddaughter of Albert and Annie Davis.

Des Moines: Land Where My Fathers Died

One of the questions I always get is, "Are there really Jews in Iowa?" After I explain that all my great-grandparents are buried in Des Moines comes the next question, "How did Jews get there?" This post attempts to explain how they got there, or, specifically, to their final resting places at Glendale Cemetery.


Aaron and Clara Marcovis, parents of my maternal grandfather Abe, are the only greatgrandparents who lived their entire American lives in Des Moines. Aaron arrived in 1884 or 1885, Clara probably arrived in 1886, and they married in 1888. While Aaron was the first of his siblings to arrive, Clara was preceded by her brother Sol Leon, who was in Des Moines by 1881. Supposedly, Sol went to Iowa because he wanted to be in an grain-growing region, similar to the part of Romania he left behind.


Clara, Sol and their sister Annie Rise are joined in Glendale by their mother Leah Rachel, my only great-great-grandparent buried in Iowa.


David Cecil Feinberg, a baker, brought his second wife Jennie and their five children to Des Moines from Chicago in 1900. Those children included my grandfather Max. In Chicago, David had a strong tie to a Lappen family. One of the Lappens, Morris, moved to Des Moines in the mid-1890s. According to Ann Badower, Morris arranged to bring the Feinbergs because Des Moines' Jews needed a baker "who specialized in wedding cakes."


Maurice and Emma Rubinson, parents of maternal grandmother Esther, both came to Oskaloosa, Iowa, in the late 1890s and married in nearby Ottumwa in 1899. After Esther was born in 1902, they moved to New York City, where Maurice's parents lived, but settled in Des Moines in 1910. At that time, Emma's brother Abraham Rothschild had moved there from Oskaloosa. In addition, Des Moines was home to many immigrants from Pilviskiai, Lithuania, including several of Maurice's Rubinson cousins.  (Maurice himself may have come from Pilviskiai.)  Around 1940, they followed sons Milton and Norton to Cincinnati, only to return in 1959 to live their final years in the Iowa Jewish Home for the Aged.


Nathan and Lizzie Chapman, parents of paternal grandmother Mae, followed their respective older half-siblings Hyman and Esther Chapman to Centerville, Iowa, around 1890. The Chapmans, together with Mae and Max Feinberg, moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in the late 1910s. In 1940 or 1941, seven years after Max Feinberg brought his family back to Des Moines, Nathan and Lizzie joined them to live their final years.


The question remains, what attracted Jews to Des Moines when they could live in large cities like New York and Chicago? For one thing, America in the late 1800s was still mostly rural, and Jews could be found in every corner of the country. Des Moines began a period of rapid growth after getting its railroad connection in 1866. As with Interstate 80 today, the Des Moines was situated on the main  transportation artery linking New York City and San Francisco. Thus, it provided ample economic opportunity for Jewish immigrants from Europe.

All three Des Moines synagogues use the southwest corner of
Glendale Cemetery, located north of University Ave. between
50th and 56th streets in the west side of town.

First Thoughts

Why this blog?

• To get attention to my extensive family history research. Family, are you there?
• While I'm at it, I can slip in some of my own personal history, including current events about ME. Oh, Dear Diary!
• It's another place to sound off about politics. Especially Middle East politics. Nobel Peace Prize nominations welcome.
• More excuses to come. Let's see if I'm not just mumbling to myself.