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The Smodkin-Shmotkin Family
This information was donated by Jeffrey Frankel. jeffreyfrankel.mail@gmail.com
Below is the UK census for 1921. You can click it on for a larger picture. Based on where and when the children were born, I guess they arrived in London around 1912 to 1913, and they came too late for the 1911 census. I have tried to find out how they arrived, presumably by boat from Hamburg, but I have had no luck. The top name is Samuel Smotkin the father/husband, my grandfather. As you can see from the bottom right the census taker, probably an Englishman, wrote that he was unable to write so signed with a mark, and from the writing I guess the census taker wrote everything. I suspect my mother, Esther, being the oldest child translated for her parents. The column where it says Birthplace is badly written, but I believe it is Vitebsk Gubernia. His wife, Anne, says she came from Vilner. On a few occasions I heard my mother tell people she was born in Russia and came from Minsk.
How a man, who could not write his name, his wife, and three children did that journey I have no idea.
When my father died I went to the London registry office and found he had married two women on the same day, Esther Smotkin and Esther Smodkin, so there was some confusion as to the correct name, and the way my mother pronounced it I wonder whether it was Shmotkin or some variation. Similarly my father's original name was not Frankel it was Krengel, and there are millions of them in America all from Plock in Poland.
Like many friends I find that there are questions I ask about the past which I had absolutely no interest in when they were alive.
If you happen to know something about this family, please contact me.
Thank you
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