Rebecca Miriam Balisok Horowitz

Rebecca was born around 1853, and her mother tongue was Yiddish. The Hebrew inscription on her tombstone indicated that her Hebrew name was Rivka Miriam and that she was the daughter of Abraham.

RIVKA GURVICH appears on at least 3 Lithuanian Family List records as the wife of SHMUEL LEYZER GURVICH. These were in Russian, and Gurvich was the Russian version of the last name. Many thanks to Laine Horowitz, Rebecca's great-great-granddaughter who discovered this--and opened the door to our finding Lithuanian records for the whole extended family. They indicated that the Gurvich family lived in the town of Joniskelis in the years 1876, 1883, and 1887. But we don't know where Rivka was born.

She married Samuel around 1871. They apparently had a total of 6 children, of whom only 2 survived to adulthood, Sol and Annie (source: 1900 US Census). The Lithuanian census records listed a daughter Chaya Sora, age 3 in 1876 and age 10 in 1883, but there was no sign of her in 1887. There are no records of any others.

Samuel apparently emigrated first, on his own.

The passenger list of the SS Rhein that sailed from Bremen, Germany to New York and then Baltimore in December 1889, posted here, shows RIVKE HURVITZ, age 37, "wife," traveling with her son ABRAHAM (8) and daughter LEI (5). They are all citizens of Russia, with destination Baltimore. "Lei" = Leah, or Hannah Leah, which was Annie's Friedel's Hebrew name according to our cousin Wendy (Aronstein) Wirths.

Samuel and Rebecca lived at 407 E. Forrest St in East Baltimore from at least 1900 to the early 1920's. From 1924, listings show them at 136 N. Broadway.

Samuel died on September 26, 1928, at around age 76, and Rebecca on January 4, 1930 at age 75. They are buried in Mikro Kodesh Beth Israel Cemetery in Baltimore. Their name is spelled "Horowitz" on their stones.

Her name appears as "Mary" in the Baltimore Sun in Samuel's 1928 obituary and again in a 1929 article about a house fire. Her maiden name is Riva Miriam Mervis on a 1966 Social Security document for her son Abraham. It's spelled Mirvis on his 1994 death certificate. But we think the Mirvis maiden name was a mistake and that she was mixed up with another family member when these docs were filled out.

On her January, 1930 death certificate, she is "Mrs. Beckie Horwitz" and was age 76 at the time of her death. Her father's name there is "ABRAHAM BALISOK." Her last residence was at 2315 Wichita Avenue, her son's Samuel's address. BALISOK corresponds to her maiden name according to records kept by her granddaughter Ruth Horowitz Harris and passed down to Cecile (Cissy) Rosenberg, her great-granddaughter

Ed Friedel, great-grandson Jan 2021