Hello! My name is Ted Martin and I am researching family related to my maternal grandparents. They immigrated to NYC, USA in 1922/23 from the Podolia region of Ukraine in the Pale of Setttlement. My mother’s given name was Baruha (so she said) but called Bertha Baltowsky for civil records and later changed her name to Betty Balton. Before she was 8 years old, both of her parents had died. My grandmother had two older children (Rose and Harry) from a previous marriage who accompanied them to America. Her first husband died in what is called the mini holocaust, the period between Russia's surrender to Germany and the formation of the USSR. My mother was born while in transit to the US. They were sponsored by an Uncle Benjamin Barnett Baltowsky whom I never knew and whom did not have the means to help them. My mother's life would make a great movie, full of drama, adventures, tradgedy but with a happy ending.
As far as I'm aware my grandfather's name was Isador, Itzich, Itzaak Baltowsky/Baltovsky. His wife was Lillian Leah. I think my mother told me her surname was Seitz but I'm not sure whether that was her maiden name or her previous married name. Of course I never wrote it down. My uncle Harry (Gersham?) was old enough to remember the actual name of the shtetl and of course I didn’t write it down. I remember being told that he served in the Russian navy in the Russo-Japanese War. He was married prior to marrying my grandmother and perhaps fathered children with a woman who left him to join a traveling theater group according to family lore. A New York State Census report shows them living in Brooklyn where he worked selling herring from a barrel.
I have 6 siblings, 5 alive and scattered around the USA. Through Ancestry, we found 2 unknown half brothers, one from my father and one from my mother. My siblings and I have reunited with both and of course my mother’s unknown son turned out to be a doctor, an overall humanitarian, like she always wanted!
All this said, it seems we do have a DNA connection and I'm wondering how to fit in pieces of the great puzzle. Any thoughts/insight?
Thanks! Ted Martin
