{"id":5415,"date":"2013-03-24T23:45:50","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T03:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=5415"},"modified":"2019-05-06T11:51:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T15:51:47","slug":"what-happened-to-gertrude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/what-happened-to-gertrude\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to Gertrude"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of this post refers to my great-aunt, Gertrude Silver, and I struggled to decide if the title should be a statement or a question.\u00a0 I think I need a new punctuation mark, because the answer is a bit of both.<\/p>\n

I’ve written about Gertrude and her husband Sam before.\u00a0 Here is a brief synopsis.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"sam<\/a><\/p>\n

Sam Silver was 18 or 19 when he fought in the Spanish-American War.\u00a0 When he left the army he went to New Orleans where he met the very young Gertrude Eliach.\u00a0 Sam was about 23 and Gertrude 14 when they ran away to San Francisco and may have married.\u00a0 At this point in the story my unromantic, pragmatic sensibilities say, “Gertrude, young, foolish, believing she was in love.”\u00a0 And what of Sam?\u00a0 My best-case scenario is youngish, equally foolish, maybe in love.\u00a0 Worst-case scenario, hm, I’d rather not go there. This is not a story I expected to end well.\u00a0 But here’s the thing, Sam and Gertrude stayed together for 22 years, until Sam’s death at the age of 41.\u00a0 They had four children, only one of whom, Joseph, survived until adulthood.\u00a0 Gertrude’s father died a few years after the marriage and by 1910 Gertrude’s mother was living with the couple.\u00a0 She lived with them the rest of their married life.\u00a0 Even the cynic in me has to say, “If that’s not love, what is?”<\/p>\n

That’s what I knew until recently.\u00a0 I put Gertrude and her son Joseph on the back burner and moved on to other genealogical challenges, but Gertrude was always on my mind. Her story seems so moving and so sad.\u00a0 An elopement that seemed likely to end quickly turned out to be the story of a couple who lived, loved and struggled together through hard times and so much sadness until Sam’s early death.\u00a0 I needed to know what became of Gertrude and Joseph.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I learned.\u00a0 Gertrude’s mother, Libby, died in 1935.\u00a0 Gertrude and Joe buried her in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.\"libby<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1934 Joseph married Beryl Reilinger. According to the 1940 census Joe and Beryl lived in a guesthouse run by Beryl’s parents.\u00a0 Their block in Los Angeles seems to be a long row of boarding houses and guesthouses.\u00a0 The couple had a son, Stanley, who was four years old in 1940.<\/p>\n

Gertrude married again in 1966 at the age of 73.\u00a0 She married Louis Philipson, also 73.\u00a0 The California Marriage Index lists the marriage twice with Gertrude listed as Gertude Chertin and Gertrude Eliach, her maiden name.\u00a0 There is an asterisk next to the last names. Was Gertrude married three times?<\/p>\n

Lou and Gertrude had seven years together.\u00a0 Lou died in 1973, leaving Gertrude a widow once more.\u00a0 Gertrude died in 1980, she was 93. Sam must be gone by now too, but their son Stanley is likely still alive.\u00a0 There are lots of avenues for me to explore, but I doubt they will answer my real question.<\/p>\n

I want to know if Gertrude was happy.\u00a0 No, I want to know that she was happy, but I suppose I can live with the answer no matter what it is.\u00a0 I need to find Stanley Lee Silver or I need him to find me.\u00a0 I need to hear about his grandparents.\u00a0 I know Stanley was married for a few years.\u00a0 Are there children, Sam and Gertrude’s great-grandchildren?<\/p>\n

Stanley Silver was my father’s name too. Stanley, where are you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this post refers to my great-aunt, Gertrude Silver, and I struggled to decide if the title should be a statement or a question.\u00a0 I think I need a new punctuation mark, because the answer is a bit …<\/p>\n

What Happened to Gertrude<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[288,287,286,75,77,285],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-eliach-family","tag-philipson-family","tag-philipson-genealogy","tag-silver-family","tag-silver-genealogy","tag-stanley-silver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7210,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions\/7210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}