William Brainin, Victim of the Spanish Flu

Although cases occurred before this date, a generally accepted start date for the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (commonly called the Spanish flu epidemic) is March 4, when a U.S. Army cook by the name of Albert Gitchell at Camp Funston, Kansas was recorded as being ill.  In a very short time more than 500 men at the camp had been reported sick.  Only one week later, on March 11, the flu had reached Queens, New York.

One of the groups that was hit hard by the flu was men being inducted into the U.S. Army and attending boot camp, where close quarters and the effects of physical activity helped the virus spread quickly.  My great-granduncle William Brainin was one of those men.

I don't know much about Uncle Willie, as Bubbie (my grandmother) called him.  He was born about 1892 (he used the birthdate October 23, 1892 here), possibly in Kreuzberg, Russia (now Krustpils, Latvia).  He immigrated to the United States as Wolf Brainin with his mother, Ruchel Dvojre (Jaffe) Brainin, and three siblings — Chase Leah Brainin, Pesche Brainin, and Kosriel Brainin — aboard the Caronia, arriving at Ellis Island on October 3, 1906.

The Brainin family was enumerated in the census on April 20, 1910, living at 236 East 103rd Street, Manhattan, New York.  In the household were parents Morris [Mendel Hertz] and Rose Dorothy [Ruchel Dvojre] with children Lena [Chase Leah], Sarah [Sora Leibe], William [Wolf or Welwel], Bessie [Pesche], and Benjamin [Kosriel], everyone having chosen American names to use here.  William's occupation was ladies' tailor, a common job for young male Jewish immigrants at that time.

I have not found William in the 1915 New York census, but he might have already moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to live with his older brother Max Joseph [Nachman] Brainin and his family.  Certainly he was there by June 1, 1917, where he registered for the Army draft.  I don't know when he entered the Army, but I have seen a photo which Bubbie identified as, "That's my Uncle Willie in his Army uniform."  (Unfortunately, the photo disappeared soon after that identification.  I'm still trying to figure out where it went.)

By the time of the 1920 census, William had returned to live with his parents in Manhattan.  They were enumerated there on January 12, 1920.

William had no occupation listed in the census, suggesting that he was probably already sick when the census taker came by.  Two weeks later, on January 26, William Brainin died in Manhattan.  His cause of death was given as pneumonia caused by influenza.  He was buried in the Workmen's Circle plot of Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens on January 27.

I'm fortunate that some of Bubbie's memories, which were usually spot on, have proven to be inaccurate.  She told me that Uncle Willie had come home sick from the Army while my great-grandmother Sarah was pregnant with my grandmother, that my great-grandmother became ill, and that Uncle Willie died before Bubbie was born in 1919.  But that is Uncle Willie with his family in the 1920 census, and it's definitely his death certificate, so he absolutely did not die before Bubbie was born.  Finding him with the family in 1920 made it easier to identify him in the death index and get a copy of his death certificate.

So far Uncle Willie is the only member of my family I have found to have died due to the Influenza Pandemic.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Notice of Final Settlement and Probate Court Docket

This is a calling card that is 3 3/4" x 2 1/4".  It is made of fairly heavy card stock.  It is yellowish-brown and has some staining or discoloration in the lower left corner (which doesn't show up when I look at the card itself).  It also has holes that appear to be from two straight pins that were stuck through it (although I don't think it had pins in it when I received it).  A newspaper clipping has been pasted on the back of the card, and that side has some handwriting.

The calling card is for Jean La Forêt, apparently from the same printing as the one I posted two months ago.  That card had the June 25, 1920 "Notice of Final Settlement" pasted over the front of the card  This time we can see the front of the card.

The back of the card has a copy of the same "Notice of Final Settlement" pasted on it, with blue pencil outlining the notice.  It also has a note in what looks like Jean's handwriting:

Settled 8-10-20.
accepted check for $119.94

That dollar amount has come up before also.  It appeared in Jean's notes on the breakdown of Elizabeth Curdt's estate, with his comment that it should have been $133.35.  It's the amount that Emma, Elizabeth's daughter, accepted as her portion of her mother's estate.

This piece of newsprint is 5" x 7 1/8".  It has been torn out and has rough edges on three sides.  The right side appears to be the edge of a newspaper page.  The section that was saved is the "Probate Court Docket", with Tuesday, August 10, 1920 as the first date listed.  Underlined in blue pencil is Estate "5173 Curdt, Elizabeth", with "Aug W Curdt" under "Admrs. and Extrs." (Administrators and Executors).  It was folded down the first column, maybe to fit in an envelope, but that doesn't appear to show up in the scan.

Pasted on this piece is yet another copy of the "Notice of Final Settlement" dated June 25, 1920.  (I'm really starting to believe that Jean La Forêt had a pathological fear of losing paperwork.)

The August 10 date matches what Jean wrote on this card, on the card posted earlier, and in his notes on the estate.  While the $119.94 amount matches that on Jean's notes, it does not match what he wrote on the first card, which was 119 98/00.  So there's a difference of 4 cents for some reason.  I'm leaning toward the $119.94 figure being what Emma actually accepted, since that's in Jean's breakdown, but there's no way to tell for sure just from these items.

None of these clippings has any note saying from which newspaper it came.  The announcement of Elizabeth Curdt's death was said to be in the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, so maybe these were published there also.

And sometimes I'm really slow, but I figured out tonight what the N. C. probably stands for on Jean's calling card:  "Non Commissioned."  It took a while to sink in because I've never seen it abbreviated in that way.  But Jean was a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in the Marines, so it makes sense.

These two items were next to each other in the original pile of papers I received.  I kept them together because they both have the "Notice of Final Settlement."

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Curdt Siblings Respond

These four sheets of lined paper measure 7 13/16" x 9 13/16".  They appear to be inexpensive and of low quality, with no watermark.  Although the paper is lined on both sides, the writing is on only one side of each page.  Unlike so many items in this collection that have been glued together, these pages are attached by an ingenious metal brad.  The pages have three fold lines; it looks as though they were folded in thirds to fit into a business-sized envelope, and then one end was folded over to fit into a shorter envelope.

This is a four-page letter, all handwritten, dated January 28, 1920.  It is from Emma (Schafer) La Forêt's three siblings — Alvina (Curdt) Schulte, August W. Curdt, and Louisa (Curdt) Schaefer — and was written to Emma in response to the letter dated January 25, 1920 that she sent to them (which I posted last week).

If you don't want to read the handwriting, don't worry — look at this.

Yes, conveniently, I also have a typed transcription of the letter.  It is not exact — several capital letters were made lower case, a few letters went the opposite direction, spelling was changed, ampersands were converted to spelled words, and punctuation (which is very casual in the original) was adjusted.  In addition, two entire phrases were omitted.  But it's a little easier to read than the handwriting.  This particular page is 20# watermarked bond (BERKSHIRE SOUVENIR BOND USA), 8 1/2" x 13", and cream in color.  If that sounds familiar, it should.  It's the same type of paper as used in the typed copy of Emma's letter to her siblings.  In fact, this is attached to those two pages.

The differences between the original handwritten letter and the typed transcription are:

The second page of the original begins with "she always did with her property as she pleased & sold to whom she pleased for what she pleased & did with her cash as she pleased and saw best".  The transcription omitted "& sold to whom she pleased for what she pleased".

About halfway down the third handwritten page is "C. F. Schaefer bought several pieces of ground at different times, & sold them at a good profit, but he bought and paid the prices Mother asked for them, you say there was ($7,000.00) severn thousand dollars worth of property sold".  The transcription left out "at a good profit, but he bought and paid the prices Mother asked for them".

In addition, the transcribed letter has two notes at the bottom not from the original:  when it was received and answered, and a comment that the letter proves distribution of property was accomplished, not a sale.

In this letter we finally hear something from Emma's siblings, giving us a new perspective on some of the goings-on in the family.  Something that particularly caught my attention were the two comments about Emma having left her children in the care of her mother:

"when you married J. L. La Foret and went to Europe & left your children & her in her old age"

"but you do not mention the debts that were on same, & which Mother was left with three small children to pay interest on"

(Although the grammar in the letter is very fractured, it's usually easy enough to figure out the meaning, so I am going to assume that the interest mentioned in the second comment was being paid on the debts, not the children.)

I admit, I have wondered why Emma did not bring her children from her first marriage with her when she married Jean La Forêt and went to Europe.  But the siblings' accusations do not ring true.

First of all, when Emma left Missouri to marry Jean in 1908, the children were not that small.  Camilla Petit was born in 1894, making her 14, and Eugene in 1896, making him 12.  Marie was the oldest.  Emma did not give her birth date on any documents I have, but Jean wrote in his diary that she was born in 1885.  So she was an adult in 1908.  In fact, she apparently was married that year, because I found Marie in the 1910 census, married to William Schulte (as Emma stated in her narrative).  The census says that they had been married for two years.  And Camilla and Eugene are living with them, not with their grandmother.  (As an aside, the census shows that Marie was born in Germany; given how friendly Emma's in-laws were toward her, I'm sure that they were even more excited to have a baby in the house.)  While I have no documents that indicate how long Camilla and Eugene had been living with their older sister, it is not unreasonable to think they had been doing so since Emma had departed.

United States 1910 Federal Population Census, Enumeration District 119
Central Township, St. Louis County, Missouri, May 13, 1910, page 24A, lines 18–22

Once I call the complaint about Emma dumping her children on her mother into question, the siblings don't have much ammunition left.  So even though they wrote that Emma was the person who should dread the family's dirty linen being aired in court, I'm still inclined to think that the siblings were probably in the wrong and deliberately deprived Emma of at least some of her rightful inheritance.

I have one more item to include in this post:

Both the original letter from the Curdt siblings and the three glued-together typed pages with the transcriptions were in this envelope.  One of the copies of the waiver signed by Louis Curdt was in it also.  What was not in it was a copy of the response to the Curdt siblings letter dated January 28, which was sent on February 3, according to the note at the bottom of the transcription.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Emma Writes to Her Siblings

This is two sheets of paper each measuring 8 1/2" x 13", attached in the upper left by some sort of glue or paste.  They are cream in color.  The paper feels like 20# stock.  Each sheet has a watermark:  BERKSHIRE SOUVENIR BOND USA.

Everything on these pages is typed except the note "Retained" in the upper left.  I don't know if that refers to this typed copy being kept, but that's the only idea I can come up with.

While this letter purports to have been written by Emma (Schafer) La Forêt, as has happened often with documents I have posted, the writing style here seems to me very French, and I suspect the wording came from Jean La Forêt, even if Emma may have physically penned the original letter that was sent to her sisters and brother (which I don't have, unfortunately).  The word "informations" always makes me think of French.

The letter is pretty harsh in tenor.  The accusations of Emma's brother-in-law Charles Schaefer are direct and blunt, more so in some ways than in a previous document detailing his purchases and failings.  I am surprised, however, that Emma's sisters and brothers pretty much get a pass on culpability.  In particular, the characterization of Louisa as blameless and totally under the control of her husband seems odd to me in this context.

Blame notwithstanding, the primary purpose of this letter was to convince August, Alvina, and Louisa to cough up some of what they had gained from their mother — illicitly or otherwise — and share it with Emma.  I have felt sympathy for Emma's position in her family's machinations based on earlier documents, but this letter comes across to me more as whining than as a convincing indictment.  I think that's partly because of the melodramatic tone and partly the taunting withholding of information:  "occurrences in our family . . .  it will be better to keep away from public knowledge", "I know but will not speak of it until it becomes unnecessary."  Maybe the tone was the way average people expressed themselves in this period, but the taunting just hits me wrong.

From the first documents I posted about Emma and her life story, we've known that she and her husband did not pursue a court case against her siblings.  I suspect that's also coloring my opinion of this letter, which I realize isn't fair.  When the letter was written in 1920, Jean and Emma probably were still considering filing a lawsuit.  They must have believed this letter was the best approach.

Treasure Chest Thursday: A Note about Settling Elizabeth Curdt's Estate

This, believe it or not, is a calling card that is 3 3/4" x 2 1/4".  It is made of fairly heavy card stock.  It is yellowish-brown and seems to have some staining or discoloration, perhaps due to age.  A newspaper clipping has been pasted over printing on the front of the card, and handwritten notes are on the back.

Underneath the newspaper clipping on the top image is Jean La Forêt's calling card after he retired from the Marine Corps.  I was unable to scan it due to the way the clipping is pasted on the card.  The text reads (in a beautiful script font):

Jean L. La Forêt

N. C. Staff Officer, U. S. M. C., Ret'd.

The newspaper clipping is not dated and does not state from which newspaper it came.  It probably ran for the first time on August 25, 1920, the date at the bottom of the notice, but these notices often ran for several days.

On the back of the card are some notes in what appears to be Jean's handwriting:

Settled 8-10-20

————

Accepted Check

for 119 98/00 dal.[?]

——————

Personal estate of

Eliz. Curdt .

—————

On Jean's calling card, U.S.M.C. is obviously United State Marine Corps, but I don't know what N. C. is an abbreviation for.  It does not appear in the Unofficial Unabridged Dictionary for Marines or as anything that makes sense in context in Acronym Finder's list of military and government abbreviations.  Can someone enlighten me, please?

Because Jean retired twice from the Marines — once before he served as a Vice Consul and again after he re-upped to serve during World War I — this card could date from either time.  Whichever it is, there's nothing to indicate how old it was when he used it as a notecard for pieces of information relating to settling Elizabeth Curdt's estate.

August W. Curdt is listed as the administrator, as he was in Jean's accounting notes.  August was Emma (Schafer) La Forêt's half-brother from her mother's second marriage, to Louis Curdt.

The notice states that the final settlement of the estate was to take place on the second Monday in August 1920.  According to Jean's accounting notes and to the notes on the reverse of this card, however, it was settled on August 10, 1920, which apparently was a Tuesday.

Jean noted the amount of the check accepted, presumably by Emma, as 119.98.  I'm pretty sure I have read the letters after the figure correctly — dal. — but I don't understand what that means after the amount of the check.

In Jean's accounting notes, he wrote that the check August gave to Emma was $119.94.  Somehow I don't think the apparent extra four cents made him very happy, considering that he wrote that he believed Emma was due $133.35.  But I don't understand why there are two different figures.

Jean has usually appeared very careful in his notes that I've looked at previously, even down to the exact dates of his enlistments.  I'm surprised at the differences in the figures in his accounting notes and now in what he noted as the amount of the settlement check.  Perhaps they're an indication of Jean's mental state during all of these shenanigans.

And in case anyone is wondering why there was no Treasure Chest Thursday post last week, it was not because I was lolling around and taking the night off.  We had another heavy storm go through the San Francisco Bay area that evening, and it knocked out my power before 7:00 p.m.  I didn't get a text that the power was restored until almost 12:30 a.m.  At that point it was already Friday morning, so I decided against a late post.  So I'm putting the blame on PG&E!