When I tell people that my hobby is Genealogy, I tend to get a whole lot of family stories. This is one of the weirdest and most interesting ones so far. This is only a small bite into this families journey through time which I will be posting in several parts. It’s amazing how much can happen in one single branch of a family tree.
I can’t quite remember how family history/genealogy came up in conversation, but my co-worker/work wife (Becky) started telling me about how her husband’s last name isn’t really his last name and how his grandfather tried to sell his dad and aunt after their mom, Dorothy, passed away. Intriguing already, right? Becky had wondered what Maurits looked like and knew there was a story to be told. My ADHD superpower took over and in that moment I made it my mission to find Maurits (aka hyperfixation). It was also a bit of a tangled web as surnames didn’t always match up for various reasons, such as misspellings or different spellings, and I had to rely on census reports and marriage documents to confirm the names/dates that Becky had given to me. I found him…
Maurits Groen was born on December 30th, 1906 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. By the early 1920’s, he had made his way to America on Noord-Amerika – Europa (ship), seemingly by himself. This was confirmed through passenger lists. He had married Rosa Friedmann, also from the Netherlands, in 1928. There is a good chance that Maurits’ father, Tobias Groen (1881-1945) died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust, but that’s a story for a different time.
Maurits travelled back and forth between New York and several different countries many, many times as evidenced by a multitude of arriving and departing passenger and crew lists when travel was still mostly done by boat. Sometimes it was just him, sometimes his spouse was with him. He was alone most often and possibly worked on a ship as a deckhand for a while.
Above is his naturalization card. In many records you see Maurits with several spellings including Maurice, Mauriece, and Mauritz.
After Rosa divorced him, likely on the grounds of desertion, he married Dorothy Maulsby (1921-1956). There was a 15 year age gap between the two. Both Maurits and Dorothy worked for the “Films of the Nation” movie company where he was a director and president and Dorothy wrote the scripts.
Maurits and Dorothy were only married for 10 years when she passed away unexpectedly at the age of 34. Stories passed down through the family suggest that there were some cardiac problems on the Maulsby side, and that plus a very possible combination of drugs/an unhealthy lifestyle caused Dorothy to depart the earth entirely too soon, leaving behind their two children, Georgianna and Dennis. Needless to say, with all of this documentation and family history of cardiac issues, Becky’s spouse is now taking more precautions. 🙂
After Dorothy’s passing, Maurits allegedly attempted to sell both children for an unknown reason. My best guess is that he did not want to try to be a single father which would have completely changed his lifestyle. He likely would not have been able to continue travelling like he did. Georgianna and Dennis ended up being raised by several family members, most prominent being Tamara, Maurits’ daughter from his first marriage to Rosa. Tamara (below) was born in 1929.
Maurits kind of fell off the grid after Dorothy died. There are records of him getting married and divorced once more before passing away in 1971. That divorce ended in marriage, citing gross neglect of duty.
The picture above of Maurits is the only one I could find. I still remember finding it. I was on my break at work and suddenly the picture popped up on ancestry. Everything got quiet for a moment as I felt my hard work finally paying off. I found him. I showed Becky and we were both speechless. There he was. The man who tried to “sell” his children.
Part of me likes to think that Maurits didn’t have any other choice. Or had possibly attempted to find other care for them. I want to believe that all of his travelling back and forth was to help people escape the Holocaust and the film company was a cover, hence the 30+ passenger lists I’ve looked at. I’m probably wrong, but it is plausible.
When I started working on this tree, I had no idea what to expect. My tree had been easy. I have physical documents, people that I can reach out to for clarification, and most records are within the US. This tree takes us around the world. It’s certainly been a new experience for me. I hope to continue sharing the adventure I’ve had working on this. There are more nuggets hidden in this tree and I will find them.
Linked below are some films that Maurits produced and Dorothy wrote the screen commentary for. Enjoy! Courtesy of Periscope Films©. (Dorothy will get her own post eventually. She’s pretty amazing).
Next time we will go deeper into Maurits’ family history, the Groen’s possible rights to Labrador (Nova Scotia) and his Ashkenazi Jewish roots.
Most records found on Ancestry.com or newspapers.com
Note: this blog will be a combination of my postcard project and my ancestry journeys. If anyone out there is reading this, please let me know which ones you like best!
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