David Kaplan (the family name was originally Kapilian) died in Shchedrin, eleven months before Yom Kippur in 1913. The following information is about David and his children.
David (1837-1913) had been a very wealthy lumber merchant; he was called a first buyer. He lost his money when he was sued by a non-Jew in court. David had been married two or three times prior to his marriage to Elkie Elkins (1860-1927). He divorced his first wife because she gave him no children. His second or third wife bore two sons and two daughters; she later died. At the time of David's marriage to Elkie, he was 42 and she was 19; one o of his children was 18 but none of the children lived with David and Elkie. David and Elkie had four sons and three daughters: Ida (Chaya), Paul, Ben, Abe, Nate, Zella, and Sophie.
Paul married Rose Raskin in 1903; they came to America and settled in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1905, Paul sent for Ben; the two brothers sent for Abe in 1907; the three sent for Nate in 1909; and the four sent for Ida’s husband, Louis Dvorkin, in 1912.
There is very little known about Louis Dvorkin or of his family in Russia. He originally came from Ragichef and he had been a lumberjack. The marriage of Ida to Louis had been opposed by David because Louis was a Yisroel, not a Kohen.
The boys had no service records, therefore they could not leave Russia legally. However, Louis was 4-F; this fact enabled Ida to obtain a passport for herself and for her children to go to Poland. After the death of David in 1913, Ida and her six children (Charles [Charlie], Dora, Max, Sam [Larry], Sue, and Matt), her mother Elkie, her sisters Zella and Sophie, and a cousin, Nate Elkins, prepared to join the rest of the family in Sioux Ciety. Nate Elkins came over using the name and passport of Nate Kaplan.
Ida and her children went by train to Hamburg. However, the rest of the family had to sneak across the border. A guard was hired to smuggle them across the border; however, they had to stay hidden in Poland overnight because the guard who had been "bought" was not on duty. From Poland, they went to Hamburg where the family was reunited and sailed to Baltimore on a ship named Rhein.
If anyone has any knowlege of where David was originally from (his father was Matescopul Kaplan; his grandfather Charle Kaplan (Kapilian), or the identities of this other wives and children, please let me know.
