Mary (Miriam), 1898-1953

Miriam Bellman, known as Mary in the United States, was the last daughter and sixth child of David Girsh (Hersh) Bellman and his wife Raytzel Markson. her name is spelled Marya on the passenger manifest for the S.S. Chemnitz when she emigrated in 1913 to the port at Galveston, Texas. Her brothers Sam, Alec, Lamar, and Charles had already arrived in the United States.

Mary appears in the society columns of the Safford, Arizona newspapers, which reported her 1921 marriage to merchant Herman M. Belasco in 1921. By 1927, when Mary applied for naturalization, she listed herself as Mariam Bellman, single.

In the 1930 census Mary was listed with her older brother Sam and his wife Helen in El Paso, Texas, working as a saleslady in a dress shop. During the 1930s Mary married Curtis William Long. Long, originally from Kansas, was the proprietor of a furniture store in Safford, Arizona, where Mary already had relatives. This is where the 1940 and 1950 census records find the couple.

Sadly Mary and her sister Ray (Rachel) Krup lost their lives in 1953 while on a flight from Miami to New Orleans when inclement weather caused a catastrophic failure of their aircraft. National Flight 470 was lost over the Gulf of Mexico. The two Bellman sisters were mourned by the entire community.