Kaplans: From Schedrin to
Compiled by Marilyn Elaine Dvorkin Warren
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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.
David's oldest child by his previous wife
was 18 years old when David married Elke, but none of the children lived with
David and Elkie. Elkie's father, a
rabbi, was greatly in favor of Elkie's marriage to David because David was an
extremely wealthy man.
David and Elkie had five sons (four
surviving childhood) and three daughters: Ida (Chaya), Paul, Benymin (Ben),
Abraham (Abe), Nathan (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.
David Kapilian (Kaplan) died in 1913 in
Schedrin, shortly after performing the circumcision of his grandson Matthew
(Paul and Esther Rose's son); it was eleven months after [one source says before]
Yom Kippur.
The boys had no service records, therefore
they could not leave Russia legally. However, Louis was the equivalent of
"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 City. 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.