Our Wandering Klotses
by Ellen Stepak
Our family "knew" that our
Lithuanian ancestors immigrated to New York City from "Kupishek".
We even have a photo of the old family home in Kupiskis, brought to the
US by another family which had later resided in this same home. I had
assumed that my grandmother Dina nee Klots (ca. 1896-1972) was born in
Kupiskis, as were her seven siblings and her parents, Moshe (ca.
1861-1934) and Nehama Zlata (ca. 1865-1921) nee Kling.
Some frustrating years later, I learned that although Moshe (Movsha),
son of David (b. ca. 1828) and Pesha Klots, married Nehama Zlata
daughter of Shlomo and Sprintza Kling in Kupiskis on June 10, 1883, the
family did not appear in any earlier or many later records. And Movsha
was registered in Seta (Shatt), but probably never lived there. My
educated guess is that he was born in the village of Vadokliai (Vadokli),
which is located approximately 75 kilometers southwest of Kupiskis.
Nehama was registered in Vabalninkas (Vabolnik), and in her case I
believe that she actually was born there. Movsha, Nehama and their four
older children, including Dina, may be found in an 1898 list of people
dwelling outside of towns, on a farm near Vabolnik and Kupiskis.
Later I discovered that the two youngest
children of Movsha and Nehama were indeed born in Kupiskis, in 1905 and
1906. And the parents of Nehama, Sprintsa (1827-1912) and Shlomo
(1824-1900) son of Mendel Kling, died in Kupiskis, as did Pesha Klots
(1825-1907), mother of Movsha. So some time around the year 1900, the
family settled in Kupiskis, which they all left for New York between
1909 and 1913. There remains the mystery of how the marriage of Movsha
and Nehama Zlata was arranged, and how they came to be married in
Kupiskis. To complicate things further, the brother of Nehama Zlata,
Yehiel (Iokhel) David Kling, married (ca. 1880) Hanna Ester Berger
(1864-1924), daughter of Shmuel and Reva of Kupiskis. And Frieda, sister
of Hanna Ester, married Hatskel (1850-1941) Pelis, also of Kupiskis.
(Photos courtesy of Ellen Stepak)
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