Hello, Jewishgenners. You may remember the story I have presented about the
discovery that my great-great-grandfather had a first wife in Zhitomir
before he moved on to the Odessa area. The first wife had been previously
divorced several years earlier and was in fact years older (between 4 and 10
depending on the record).

Now I have discovered that my gggf and his first wife divorced in Zhitomir
in 1875 (1-2 years after the marriage) when the first wife was two months
pregnant with a son who was eventually born and attributed in the records to
my gggf and not to a case of adultery.

In terms of the family, no one ever heard or mentioned this child, but the
most interesting question would be what possible reason in 1875 could have
forced this divorce just after the wife became pregnant?!

The only possibility I could come up with is that although the child was the
son of my gggf perhaps his wife was "fooling around". Of course what makes
this difficult is simply that she had been previously married and divorced,
so if she had this trait it is hard to conceive that he would have married
her, **unless** possibly **he** was having a relationship with her when she
was still married to her first husband.......

This even goes beyond the question we discussed earlier about why my young
gggf would have even married an older divorcee in the first place (who had
only been married for a couple of years to her **first** husband who according
to the records was 30 years older than her!).

I look forward to your comments.

David Goldman

Dear all,

I add a story to this thread.

One of the main reasons for divorce among Jews of that time was if the wife
was considered to be barren.

My great-great-aunt Broche Telechansky was happily married to a young Jewish
man but they had no children, so they were forced to divorce. My ggaunt was
married off to Joseph Farber, an older widower with young children, and to
her surprise, she had a girl and a boy as well after her marriage. After
Joseph died, she remarried a 3rd time, no children. I finally figured out her
3rd married name since she used it on her US passenger manifest. In the US
she used the Farber name. I've never managed to discover the name of her
first husband. I doubt his 2nd marriage resulted in children!

Yours,
Jenny Schwartzberg

There is a similar case in my family. One of my ancestors divorced his wife
because she wasn't able to have children, not realizing that she was actually
pregnant at the time! He moved to the U.S. and remarried. When the child (Ben
ENTES) was old enough, he presented himself to his father who acknowledged
him as his legitimate son. It would not be that unusual for a woman who was
only two months pregnant to not realize that she was carrying a child. Even
today with our better nutrition and medical care, it's not that unusual for
some women to occasionally skip periods.

One of the main reasons for divorce among Jews of that time was if the wife
was considered to be barren.

Mindie Kaplan
Montgomery Village, Maryland

From: David E Goldman lugman@verizon.net