My Grandfather was the last of four Paktorovics siblings to make his way to the New World. An Ellis Island record (reproduced in part above) shows that one "Paktorovics, Daniel" (Line 1), a 19 year old Hungarian "Hebrew" last residing in Minaj, Hungary, left Bremen, Germany aboard the Friedrich der Grosse on 31 December 1910 and arrived at the Port of New York on 11 January 1911. On the left hand page, Daniel Paktorovics is listed as a farm laborer by profession, single, and able to read and write; his final destination is given as NY. In the space for the nearest relative in his country of origin, his father is named clearly as "Izsak Paktorovics" of Minaj, Hungary; so there can't be any doubt that this was my grandfather's younger brother Daniel, eighth of the nine children of Izsák Paktorovics and Hana Moskovics. His birth date is given elsewhere as 31 December 1892; it seems that he sailed on his birthday and, unless the birth year is incorrect, arrived in New York having just turned 18, not 19. On the right hand page is recorded that he paid for his own passage, had $60 on him, had never been to the US before, and that he had a relative living here already, his brother-in-law ("br i l") "Orszag Alex". This would have been his older sister Regina's first husband, Alex Orszag (married 07 June 1908). Daniel Paktorowics is further described as being 5' 4", not deformed or crippled, in good mental and physical health, of fair complexion, having brown hair, brown eyes, and no distinguishing marks, and being neither a polygamist nor an anarchist.
Twenty years later, the 1930 US Census shows him living (on 07 April) with his wife, Mary (Mary Friedman, also born in Hungary), and their five children, Samuel, Julian (photo below), Mildred (photo below), Rosaline, and Beulah, at 54 Hollander Street in the Roxbury section of Boston, MA. The record below shows the change of surname to Pactovis, and it lists his age as 40, which suggests again that his year of birth might not have been 1892, or that perhaps his memory of it wasn't terribly precise. It shows the year of his immigration to the US as 1910, which is consistent if one counts from the day he sailed from Bremen, and certainly correct if one considers the earlier day when he must have left his home in Hungary. His wife is also listed as 40 years old, and both Daniel and Mary were 23 when married, so one can conclude that their wedding took place in 1917.
