A family memoir states they had twelve unnamed children though I can definitively account for only nine of them. I am not surprised given that large families often had children who died at birth or in childhood. I strongly suspect a tenth offspring, the oldest girl, who shows up on several ancestral trees, may have lived to adulthood though I cannot independently prove this.
The point of this post is to illustrate the standard to which I hold myself accountable in verifying ancestral data, not simply tell another family story to which readers may not relate. That said, ancestral trees are sometimes specific enough to direct researchers to other sources that can be independently checked to confirm the veracity of the information in a tree.
A related aside. This is likely a rhetorical question. The earliest confirmed birth year for any of their children, as I will discuss, is Figure 5 As discussed above, I know for sure Jacob Bruck died in so obviously in Marianne would not yet have been a widow.
Finally, unless Marianne was visiting Neisse, her death there rather than in Ratibor seems odd. Figure 5. Figure 8 My friend, Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, is the Branch Manager of this cemetery and sent me a picture of her headstone giving her precise birth and death dates. Figure 9 Her husband is not buried alongside her. Figure 10 He was a respected doctor and was actively involved in researching and writing about cholera. Figures 11a-b. At a future date, I will include a photo of his headstone.
This is one of the few occasions I found vital information on a family tree that I was independently able to verify. Given the exactitude of her death, I asked Kurt about it, and he sent me a copy of a letter Fanny wrote on the 19 th of February informing authorities in Breslau her husband Isaac had passed away on the 13 th of February Figure 13 The Julian and Hebrew calendar dates of death for both Isaac and Fanny are written at the bottom of this correspondence; the source of this letter is the online archives of the Centralna Biblioteka Judaistyczna , Central Jewish Library.
