This is an ad in Key West...
..La Rosa Espanola.
The Queen of Seidenberg cigars.
Jake as an older man at my mother's wedding.
He was the tallest person there...
..not saying a lot as most were short.
But tall than his younger brother Morris
This is a picture in many books on the History of Key West. There was a famous photographer who went to Key West in it's boom days when my family was there and had a little studio not far from their home on Whitehead Street. Jake is the taller of the three boys on the right. Morris, his younger brother is in the middle and a family friend on the left. They are seen in many photographs of early Key West but that photographer in the 1880s.
Apparently Jake didn't always listen when you told him "stop chasing after that nice photographer" as he was intrigued by what this newcomer was doing. The photographer told his mother Ida that it's fine, that having subjects in a picture shows the size and scale of the buildings better. He's right, it gave the photo an interesting sort of hook to look deeper as well as the size and scale of the buildings. More Jake below on Duval Street in Key West in the1880s.
On the infamous wharf in Key West.
My grandmother had a copy of this photo that I grew up looking at, this one is from a book on Key West History. Taller man my Great Grandfather, Jake in front of Morris in the back. Worth noting he is protectively holding the hand of his son Morris.
The photo above was enhanced by My heritage.
Again the same grouping.
Wolf on the right.
Morris in the middle.
Jake on the left.
In the doorway would be Ida and Jenny.
Though it could be Ida and Annie.
Too vague.
100% the description my grandma had of Ida.
Long white sleeves.
Something on her head...scarf or hat.
Note she wore a "sheitel" in Key West.
A "wig" made for Orthodox Jewish Women.
More on that later.
I've seen pics of Jenny then she was dressed the same.
The little boy on the far left is in the previous picture.
What a picture in time.
Again the photographer took photos of businesses.
They were close friends with the owners.
They had obviously just bought new clothes for the boys..
...or dressed up for the occasion.
Usually they look like they are out of Huckleberry Finn.
Huckleberry Finn was written in 1884.
Three things to know about doing genealogy on families connected to the cigar industry in Key West in the 1880s is that much of what went on happened in New York City. The tobacco came from Cuba 90 miles away from Key West. The tobacco was manufactured in Key West by Cubans and Jews and probably Jewish Cubans as well as a few Portuguese who moved from .......get ready for it........ the St. Augustine area that had a large population of Portuguese ...some of whom may have been Jews that ran away during the Inquisition and others who set sail to the New World to seek their fortune or fame. The beautiful cigar boxes were often designed and made my German artists and some may have been Jewish, yet it was common for Jews from Germany to show their German heritage more than their Jewish. This case in point I learned when I was sitting for hours in Key West in the "Florida Room" with Tom Hambright a magical, funny, librarian that was the heart and soul of the collection explained this German collection. I said to him "well that makes sense" as I explained to him that several famous cigar makers were Jewish from Europe and he told me he always thought they were Texas. They identified as Texan but they originally came from Germany and were Jewish as well.
There was nothing more fun than sitting with Tom in the Library, across the table from him listening to his folksy wisdom and steel trap mind that could easily take on AI and win. If you mentioned a name, in my case Francisco Marrero, he'd say I have a present for you and jump up, disappear into his vault and come out with a photo and made a large size copy for me that I treasure. It's a long story, but the point is if Tom said something you could count it was true and that's how I learned the Cigar Boxes I love were originally designed and made in Germany. At some point the prints were used to make them in New York and the lower East Side of New York was the hub of the Cigar Industry.
1. Tobacco from Cuba
2. Financially run from NYC
3. German artists made the designs for the Cigar Boxes.
Obviously the cigars were made in Key West.
Why is this important?
My mother had this theory she would not let go of and she may have been right, though it's hard to nail down. She believed that her Grandmother Ida's first husband was originally a Seidenberg not a Seiden and that was how the family ended up in Key West. Her first husband died very young, soon after they were married and they had a son named Jacob who was "adopted" by her 2nd husband my great, grandfather Wolf Abrams. While first in America Jacob went by Jacob Abrams. As he approached adulthood he went by Jacob Seiden to honor his birth father. But in a 1895 census from Malaga, NJ Jake is listed as Jacob Sidenberg. Somewhere in Tampa where the family moved their main headquarters to in Ybor City he started a Tobacco Company with the name Seiden. Note he didn't spell it Seidenberg but Sidenberg but it's close enough to say my mother's theory definitely has legs.
Also worth noting there were over 20 years between by Grandma Mary the "baby" of the family and her older brother Jake. So he's more like a Great Great to me than a Great Uncle in the frame work of time and generations. Wolf was more like the average person's Great, Great Grandfather than the Great Grandfather. His grave his seen below. Jacob's grave marker is below, spelled SIEDEN another wrench in the hypothesis. Was that a clerical mistake or does it align with his spelling in NJ with the Sidenberg?
Let's compare a bit with Joseph Seidenberg.
There is a long, factually written discussion on Joseph Seidenberg, explaining how he got into the cigar industry while in Key West doing other things. Note, it also says the first cigars he sold in Key West were manufactured in German, later he opened up one of the largest, best run factories on the island.
Worth mentioning here that a profession genealogist asked me if he could look at my chart some and suggested to me that many roads lead to Baden a city in Germany that was never on the family list. I was a bit skeptical but it's true that German Jews spread out across Europe looking for business endeavors ending up deep into Lithuania, Hungary and especially to America. Is Jake the missing link or does that go to my Chitrik/Rosen ancestors who connect somehow with the Carlebach family from Germany. Still not sure.
Worth noting Joseph's son was named
William James Seidenberg
James usually aligns with Jacob in Hebrew.
Most Jack's I know are Yaakov.
Yaakov is James.
According to AI
Joseph and his brother Samuel...
..both used Jacob for a middle name for their sons.
My Uncle Jake listed two different places on his records. His naturalization papers showed a town in Lithuania named Ledvayners, Russia which genealogist friends have told me would be known as Liudvinavas a town that many countries owned in Lithuania, but at the time was part of Russia.
From his naturalization papers.
2nd page shows his birthplace.
Suwalk, Russia.
Jake owned tobacco farms in Quincy, FL
He traveled frequently to Havana.
Also I have been told Key West.
My mother said referencing her uncles.
My mother said they're always going back & forth
to Cuba for tobacco business.
Map shows both cities.
Baden is fairly far from Suwalk.
Baden is fairly far from Nezhin (Chitrik/Rosen)
I've learned people got around more than we think.
Especially if they had money or contacts.
Not everyone stayed in the Shtetl like Teyve...
My mother's hypothesis was that while Ida remarried they were still in touch with her husband who died young and perhaps his Uncle would have a proprietary interest in Jake and suggested or helped them move to Key West.
That's not how the story goes from Grandma, but my mother was a writer and stories came to mind especially stories that would align with her interest. She grew roses and loved roses and loved that he put a rose on his cigar boxes. There is a street in Key West named Seidenberg after the famous factory that due to politics between the Cubans working there and the Spanish workers (long story) he picked up and followed his friend to Tampa and built a huge tobacco factory there. It's worth noting my Great Grandparents packed up after almost dying from Malaria or whatever plague was going around and moved to Malaga NJ though they were in Philadelphia where they had relatives in 1900 according to the census. They still went to Key West for business and followed many others (not just Seidenberg) to Tampa where they started over. The reason being as my grandmother pointed out was that "Tampa had running water and her mother was tired of having to use mosquito infested water from the cisterns in Key West" and I'll add this was huge as my Grandma never stopped talking about the cisterns they had to have behind their home to get water from vs running water.
I have tried to find information on the Joseph Seidenberg family, but not enough to get nail down the connection though I do believe it's there. Jake being a cigar dealer as was Joseph a fairly large smoking cigar. Time of being in Key West and the move to Tampa could be more than a coincidence.
I did find a DNA cousin named Jake Seidenberg but he went to Galveston and others. They all put down their old home as Odessa or other places in Mogilev in the Ukraine. But I will say there are repetitive names that are similar. I can't find that picture right now and have tarried with this blog way too long. Again the blog is notes for me to work off not great literature, I'm not even proofing today.
Definitely not Baden.
Love the wicker.
There are a lot of Seidenberg families that show up as distant relatives.
Also Jews often married other Jews that had similar backgrounds. A "Litvak" married another Litvak or it would be considered a mixed marriage. I know many list Odessa and supposedly my grandma's family lived in Odessa way back as well as England and other cities far from the Ukraine or Lithuania let alone Germany.
left
Women covering their hair in America in that time period usually meant they came from a very religious background or they were somewhat Orthodox and German. German's were very strict at both ends of the spectrum, very traditional or very secular.
What can I say about Jake?
I met him when I was a small child, barely a toddler or maybe that was Morris. My grandma lived in Miami and her siblings lived in Tampa, we were not big travelers. Annie, her older and closest sister, stopped into Miami to see me on her way to San Juan on a trip as I was an infant. There's a picture of Jenny, her oldest sister, also in Miami visiting to see "the baby" and Morris I remember as a shadowy, but nice figure who moved to Miami after his other siblings were gone and left my Grandma his much loved, very vicious Chihuahua named Baby.
Jake was a traveler.
Jake was restless and always in action.
Jake made money and had a walking stick with a diamond on it when my mother was little.
Jake owned land in Quincy, he and Morris remained close to the Falk Brothers in the Tobacco world after their sister Annie got a divorce and moved back to Tampa with Morris.
Jake had a beautiful house in Sarasota near the water.
Jake had 3 fiances but never married. That always hit me as interesting.
Jake had no children, or at least none we know of...
Jake had a fiance in Chicago and traveled there often.
Jake had a fiance in New Orleans who lived in the Garden District who was part of the family, they never married. After my grandmother's mother passed away they sent her off to the fiance in New Orleans. Worth noting she lived close to Annie's daughter Bessie Ruth Falk's mother-in-law Jeanette Levy Falk.
Not sure where the other fiance was but I have tried finding records in the society section of the Tampa papers and it doesn't show up though there's lots of articles on the family.
Jake is a bit of a mystery.
One of many.
I'll work on it later this week as I try to keep my mind busy in that time period after the Hurricane Seaosn is over and after football season ends.
No proofing. Just notes for me and that is what this blog is for...
Jake and Morris came to Miami for my mother's wedding. Her father had died less than two years before and Morris walked her down the aisle. Neither Annie nor Jennie came in for the wedding. It was small affair at the Rabbi's house across the street from my family. They had a small reception at home. She always would contrast that to the large synagogue wedding her older sister had when her father was still alive though that also had much to do with my Uncle's father being the President of Beth David and needing a larger hall than the smaller Beth El where my grandfather was a member. Times had definitely changed and my grandmother has a sort of sad look in her eyes and it hits me she's wishing her husband was here to see this wedding.
Uncle Oscar Rappaport on the far left.
His wife my Aunt Ada.
My Grandma Mary next to Ada.
My mother the bride.
My father and his parents on his right.
Behind Grandma is Jake Seiden.
2 family friends ...
My father's Aunt Ida and Morris.
Lastly........
why is genealogy so difficult for me?
on my mother's side
on my mother's side
Jake did not marry nor have children.
Morris did not marry nor have children.
Jenny had two daughters.
One daughter never married no children.
Other married with 2 daughters..
..only one married and had children.
Annie had Bessie Ruth.
Bessie Ruth had no children.
My Aunt had my cousin I grew up with...
My Mother had 3 children, go figure.
Very few 2nd cousins on her side.
Morris had a fiance who died in a fire...
..like the Triangle Shirt Waist one but not that.
He was heartbroken could never fall in love again.
(so sad)
I'm done.
Thanks for reading if you found this blog.
Again simply my scratch pad with notes.
To research......another day.
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