The historical record of my great-grandfather David Cecil Feinberg begins with his 1894 marriage to Jennie Katz, his second wife, in Chicago.
Missing from the record are the birth records of David's two children from his first marriage: Anna and my grandfather Max. Also missing is any evidence to help identify that first wife, the subject of this entry.
Grandpa Max had no interest in discussing his biological mother, whom he was too young to remember in the first place. His slightly older sister Anna Ginsberg might have been more helpful, but she died before I was even born. Filling out her death certificate, her son Joseph could not identify Anna's mother. Luckily there were others who could help me solve the mystery.
My late aunt Helena Rosenberg claimed to be named after that mysterious woman. As the eldest daughter, one would expect she would receive the name of her deceased grandmother. Their Yiddish name was "Chayka" (hard "Ch" like "Chanukah"), a diminutive of the common Yiddish name "Chaya." For reasons unknown to me, immigrant Jews named "Chaya" often changed their names to "Helena" or "Helen."
Grandpa Max's sister Anna Ginsberg also named a daughter "Helen." On the 1925 Iowa State Census, which asks for names of parents, Anna identified her mother also as "Helen." (Max lived in Nebraska in 1925 and did not have to respond to that question.)
Their cousin Dora Pidgeon Wolfson told me Chaya's maiden name was Goldring. Her source was none other than her Aunt Jennie Katz Feinberg.
Combining these clues, we get Chaya Goldring as the maiden name of David Cecil Feinberg's first wife. She should not be confused with the David's mother, also named Chaya. That Chaya, whose maiden name was Epstein, was previously married to Lev Goldring. They were the parents of David's half-brother Moshe (Maurice) Goldring, born 1862 in Sakiai, Lithuania, and who later lived in Canada, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Ashkenazi Jewish marriages in the "Old Country" usually involved some sort of family connection. Thus it appears David Feinberg's first marriage was to one of his mother's former Goldring in-laws. While there are many vital records for Goldrings in and near Sakiai, none have been found to show just how Chaya was related to Lev Goldring. So while I can identify Chaya Goldring as my natural great-grandmother, my family tree cannot go any further back with any certainty.
Nevertheless, there is a good chance Chaya's mother was named Chana-Bayla, which happens to be Anna Ginsberg's full Yiddish name, as inscribed on her monument at Des Moines Glendale Cemetery. Just as Max and Anna would later name daughters after their deceased mother, it was reasonable that Chaya named Anna for her own deceased mother.
The family tree can now show a qualified "Chana-Bayla?" as my great-great grandmother. Is that all we will know about her?
Suppose I found a second Chana-Bayla who was born around the same time as Anna Ginsberg and who had some connection to my family. People with the same name born around the same time are often cousins, namesakes of the same grandparent. It so happens that "Chana-Bayla" is a relatively rare name combo, so if I did find another, it would be worth checking out.
I never did find a perfect candidate, but I did find a woman of interest. Her legal name was Anna, which of course in Hebrew or Yiddish is "Chana." Growing up in Iowa, her nickname was "Billy." How could a Jewish girl be known as "Billy?" Perhaps it was an Americanization of "Bayla," the other part of her traditional Yiddish "double-name" used by her Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents.
Anna "Billy" was born in 1900 when Anna Feinberg was age 9, so yes they could have been cousins. The trouble with this "Billy," however, is that she is not related on Grandpa Max's side, but on Grandma Mae's side. In fact, Anna "Billy" was Mae's sister.
Billy, Mae and the other children of Nathan and Lizzie Chapman had a maternal grandmother identified in Lizzie's transliterated birth record as Gena Pakalnishki, the second wife of Avram Ginsberg. "Gena" (hard "g") must have been a variation of "Chana," because on vital records, along with that same 1925 Iowa State Census, Lizzie and her Ginsberg siblings referred to her as "Anna."
If Gena (Chana) Pakalnishki was the mother of the Ginsberg family, how could she also be the mother of Chaya Goldring Feinberg? The answer, as always, boils down to remarriage. David Feinberg was married twice. His mother was married at least twice. Lizzie Chapman was born to her father's second wife. Who is to say her mother Chana-Bayla was not also previously married - to a Goldring.
This possibility would explain why Max Feinberg and his sister both married descendants of Gena Pakalnishki and Avram Ginsberg. Anna married their son Hyman Ginsberg in 1913. Max married the daughter of Lizzie Ginsberg Chapman in 1915. Earlier in this posting, I said it was a common practice in the "Old Country" to arrange marriages between connected families. Clearly, Iowa's immigrant Jews had not yet abandoned this tradition in the early 20th Century.
Often the connected families were so close as to make newlyweds out of cousins. There is no secret that two of Mae's Chapman cousins from Centerville married each other. However, no marriage record is found in Centerville for Max W. Chapman and Ruby Voxman. Perhaps they married in Missouri, where, unlike Iowa, cousin marriages were legal.
If my theory is correct, my grandparents, who would have had the same maternal grandmother, were also cousins. Because their mothers would have been half-sisters, they would technically have been "half-cousins."
By the same token, it would mean that Anna Feinberg had married her "half-uncle" Hyman Ginsberg.
Both the Feinberg-Chapman and Feinberg-Ginsberg weddings were in Iowa.
As I stated at the top, Grandpa Max spurned questions about his biological mother. He insisted that "Jennie was my only mother." Others told me he wanted to discourage the notion that he and Anna were separate from the nine children born by Jennie.
Now we see another, more pressing reason for Max to bury the subject. Cousin and uncle-niece ("avuncular") marriages were illegal in Iowa. If somehow it became known that such marriages had taken place, they could be declared illegitimate. What would that make the children of these marriages?
The stigma of "illegitimacy" is not so burdensome today, but it is possible that maintaining a secret about David Feinberg's first wife saved my father, his sisters and his Ginsberg cousins from tremendous grief.
