Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Frank Anton Gerbic and Mary Schufsa (Second marriage)

Frank and Mary (Schufsa) had two children. Victor Rudolph and Anthony John.

The story as told to me by my father Anthony John was that his father had married sisters and both came from the "old country". I can find no evidence of this, Emma's children tell the story that they didn't even know of Frank's second marriage, or that they knew almost nothing. The two women could have come from Slovenia, maybe they had known each other over there. I am under the impression that Mary Schufsa was "sent for". I don't know if we will ever know how this happened. But it was not uncommon for a younger sibling or close relation to live in the family, and when the wife died he would marry the younger woman who was already in the household. (I assume this was common as the same thing happened on my other family tree to my grandfather)

My father's older half siblings were much older than he was and he only met one Anna who picked him up and took him to a birthday party when he was young. Growing up, my father, Victor and Mary were dirt poor. They really could have used some help from these older siblings but my father understood that there was some family division between Mary (his mother) and these other children. He did not know what the cause of the tension was.