Among all of my grandfather's siblings, my Great Aunt Regina lived the longest, and she is the only one I can still picture (albeit in a vague fragment or two) from personal memory. Like us, she was a New Yorker—although, like several others in our family, including my grandparents, she eventually migrated to California. She also rivalled my grandfather in size, as is apparent from the photo at right, taken in 1956. She was married twice, first to Alexander Orszag, who died in 1920, and then to Bruno Weisz. Orszag married Regina Paktorovics on 07 June 1908; interestingly, the 1910 US Census (see record reproduced below, lines 82-89), shows, as of 19 April, 3 children in the Orszag household at "304 to 336" Broome Street in Manhattan, New York City, "Lazlo" (a misspelling of Laszlo,10 years old), Paul (8), and Joseph (3 months); one can conclude from this that La[s]zlo and Paul were Alex's sons from a previous marriage, while Joseph was a child of Alex and Regina. It was therefore logical for Daniel Paktorovics to use Alex as reference upon his entry to the US in January 1911, since Alex was his brother-in-law at the time and living near Daniel's port of entry. The street name for Alex Orszag on Daniel Paktorovics' immigration record looks like some misspelling of Broome Street, but the number appears to be 334, giving his brother-in-law's address more precisely than the Census. Alex's occupation is listed as "wholesale merchant" (and something else I can't make out).
The record reveals quite a bit more of interest. Aside from a boarder, Samuel Tannenbaum, and Alex's mother, listed as "Bella" Oesterreicher (my interpretation of her surname, which omits an apparent—and unlikely—extra "r" after the "t"; compare also the subsequent 1920 US Census, and her 1906 immigration record, discussed below), the record lists one "Bella Paktorowits" as "sister-in-law". There are few surviving explicit mentions of the elusive Paktorovics sister, Bella, who unfortunately died young, in 1918; here she is listed as 20 years of age, which is consistent with a birth date of 1889, as given elsewhere. This record shows that Bella had entered the US in 1907, and that she worked in a factory as a corset-maker. According to the same record, Regina actually arrived in the US after Bella, in 1908, but this is not corroborated by subsequent documents, which list her immigration date as 1902.
The other immigration dates tell a consistent story. They show that Alex immigrated to the US in 1905, but his two older sons and his mother didn't join him until later, in 1906. This is corroborated by a 1906 immigration record (reproduced at the bottom of the web-page), which establishes that Alex's mother—Rozalia Oesterreicher—came over with the children, Pal* and Laszlo Orszag, but his wife did not. It is documented elsewhere that Orszag was widowed rather than divorced, and it seems reasonable to suppose that his wife did not make the trip because she was deceased prior to 1906. Thus, it appears that Alex, like many other immigrants to the US (including my grandfather), left his wife and children behind, the plan being to send for them after establishing himself in his new home; in the interim, in Alex's case, his wife died, and it was left to his mother (herself a widow, according to the record), to bring the children.
Finally, even if one didn't know Broome Street lay within the boundaries of the classic Jewish Lower East Side of Manhattan, it would be apparent that they lived in a neighborhood heavily populated by Russian/Yiddish Jews. They are the only Hungarians listed on the page, and the only ones not claiming Yiddish background.
*Pal is the Hungarian equivalent of the name Paul.
