Mayer Uberstine - An introduction to the album

Mayer Uberstine's branch - An album

wagon-195h-7k.jpg (6418 bytes)

The story goes that as a young man, Mayer Uberstine was so strong he could lift a wagon wheel. He could even hoist it over his head, said his grandson, Elliott Uberstine.

We are indebted to Elliott for a good part of the photos in this web album.

Mayer was only three years older than Draishka, the mother of his five children, yet he outlived her by 12 years. The couple are among the nine members of our family buried in the first plot set up in Mt. Zion, Masbeth, Queens, by the Horodoker Relief Association. A son-in-law of Mayer's sister, Toby, was one of the Association's founders; the now rusty gates to Path 43 were opened in 1903. (Toby, her husband, and their young son, Eli, were buried elsewhere at Mt. Zion.)

In the space of the five years from 1897 through 1901, Mayer and Draishka had five children, and two of them died young.

When a young person dies, the custom is that they be buried on the outskirts of the plot, and that they have a smaller headstone than adults. The fourth child of Mayer and Draishka died in 1916 at the age of 16. She was buried at the far end of the Horodoker's Mt. Zion plot under an elegant, half-size headstone, and the photo I took is in Mayer's album. (Her mother was buried at the end of the main path, directly in front of her, 20 years later.)

Leo Uberstine, the third oldest of their children, died at the age of 31 in Denver, Colorado, where he had moved in hopes of recovering from tuberculosis. Thanks to Elliott Uberstine, we have the photo of a healthy-looking Leo sporting a natty straw hat. Elliott kindly also provided photos of his grandparents, his father, and his own wedding. The 20 photos in this web album come from no less than six sources.

Mitch Uberstine, Elliot's son, E-mailed the scanned image of a day at the beach with his wife and two sons. Doris Hoffman Slater, a granddaughter of Mayer's sister, Ida, loaned the photo of Mayer with his brothers.

Lucille Breslin Caine, a daughter-in-law of Mayer's grandson, Irving, loaned the photo of her wedding. Shirley Gelman Hausman provided a photo of her own engagement luncheon attended by her aunt Lena, Mayer's oldest child.

Mayer's granddaughter, Debbie Uberstine Bowden, loaned photos of both her mother's wedding and her own. She also loaned one of her father's business cards.

To the top