Welcome!
If your family heritage includes the names Bellman (originally Beilman), Levenson, Markson or Rogalsky, you may find some friends and relations in our pages. Please look around and explore by clicking the links on the menu bar at left.
At the top of the page is Malcolm Bellman at his bar mitzvah in December 2004. He was named for his great-grandfather, Max Bellman (left, in a photo from 1913).
Who are we?
We're a group of Bellman family members who enjoy tracing genealogical history. Our primary historian is Deanna Bellman Kasten, who has already completed a children's book about our Jewish ancestors. As Lithuanian immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries family members settled in Hibbing, Minnesota and El Paso, Texas. Deanna's research provided the basis for our history and family tree. Do you have something you'd like to include?
What's in a name?
As transcribed from Russian (the official state language of Lithuania at the time) the Bellman surname is actually spelled "Beilman" (Бейлман), a transcription of a German-style surname. Mariampol, the Bellman district, was close to the German border so some Jewish surnames were German in origin rather than Russian. In German, "Beil" is an axe, so perhaps there were lumber or forestry people in our deep ancestry.
More work ahead
We can move forward only with your help. Any interesting family photos (such as the Levenson siblings, pictured at right in the 1930s), papers or stories will help us paint a better historical portrait of the Bellmans, Levensons, Marksons and Rogalskys in the USA. If you'd like to submit what you have, please send it along. If you need assistance having your materials scanned or copied, please email the webmaster for help.
Check back frequently for further family updates.