Mariampol and El Paso
El Paso, a southwestern city becoming known for its Jewish emigrants, was the destination for Raytzel Bellman (born in 1865 to Mordecai and Leah Markson in Sakiai, Lithuania) married David Hersh (spelled Girsh in Cyrillic script) Beilman, as it was then spelled.
David Hirsh Beilman was the son of Tuviash Beilmann (sometimes referred to as Reb Tevye Bellman) and his wife Kreine Beile Zilan (also known as Corona Bailey). The photo above left is most likely Tuviash and Kreine, although it has been suggested this is an early photo of David and Rayzel. Research indicates that David’s siblings included Rode (Roche), Chaya-Etel Beilmann Apter, and Friede Beilmann Goldoft.
David and Raytzel settled in Mariampol and had eight children: Samuel Isaac, Rae (Rochel), Charles (Shuje), Lamar (Leib), Alex, Mary (Marya or Mariam), and twins Benjamin and Max (Mordechai).
In 1900 David died unexpectedly at age 34 in Mariampol and Raytzel, pregnant with twins, Benjamin and Mordechai (Max), cared for the children on her own. Leib was sent to live in Shaki with his grandparents, Tuviash and Kreina for five years following David’s death. Rayzel carried on alone in Mariampol running a small business and raising her children, preparing each of them to emigrate to America when they turned 15 years old.
In 1906 her eldest son, Samuel, emigrated to the USA and found success managing a general store (owned by Sam Ravel) in La Mesa, New Mexico with his wife Helen, a scion of the Krupp merchant family, whom Samuel married in 1912. In classic “chain migration” fashion the La Mesa store became the launching pad for all of the Bellman children emigrating to America. From there they branched out to El Paso, Safford, Arizona, Chicago and Los Angeles.
At right: Benjamin, Raytzel, and Max, in a portrait taken sometime before 1917 in Mariampol.
After sending six of her children to the United States Raytzel decided to resettle there with her youngest son Max, then twenty. Just the two of them emigrated in January 1921 on the S.S. Poland. They arrived in New York on February 4, 1921. Max's twin, Benjamin, had died in 1917 during a pogrom in Mariampol. The Ellis Island ship manifest (which misspells Raytzel's first name as Raiche) shows mother and son both bound for the El Paso home of Eli Krupp, Raytzel's son-in-law who was married to her daughter Rae. In 1926, after Max met and married Bessie Levenson in El Paso, Raytzel emigrated to what was then Palestine, where she was said to have remarried. She died and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
