Isaac & Henrietta Birk's story

Photo from Naturalization Documents, 1939

One of my more elusive ancestors is Isaac Birk (abt 1882-1943), name later changed to Burk, a cabinetmaker from Kovno, Lithuania. Grandpa Isaac arrived in Saint Johns, New Brunswick, on December 5, 1903. He made his way to Montreal and then to the Bronx, New York, where he met Grandma Henrietta Mahler and married her on June 10, 1906. They spent the next 8 years or so moving back and forth between New York and Montreal as he found work and their four children were born (the youngest in Montreal). (Of course Henrietta will have her own page or section on this blog, very soon!)

Children of Isaac Burk & Henrietta Mahler Burk:

Mildred Burk, Harold Burk, Miriam Burk, Sidney Burk

Did Isaac come to North America with siblings? What became of his brother(s) or sister(s) and his parents? How did he get from his homeland of Lithuania to the port of Liverpool, where he boarded the S.S. Lake Erie for passage to Canada?

Here are my posts about Isaac, from 2008-2012 (see below for Henrietta Mahler Burk's links):

• When Henrietta met Isaac, 1905 (they're in the same apartment in the NY Census, but he's a boarder, his possible brother Meyer Burke [sic] is a boarder, and Henrietta is the daughter of the household head, Meyer Mahler)
• Birk or Birck? (summary of Isaac's surname and his possible hometown Gorsk, in Kovno)
• The world when Isaac married Henrietta in 1906 (a quick time-travel view of major world/national/local events that were the backdrop for my grandparents' lives at this time)
• Isaac's wife Henrietta, the mogul? (A bit of financial funny-business on paper when my Dad applied for a bond as a travel agent)
• Isaac's obit in the New York Times (quite terse, considering it was war time and his two sons were in Europe fighting in the Army)
• Isaac was Lithuanian (how I found that out)
• Isaac's Kovno (a bit about his home area, now known as Kaunas)

Henrietta Mahler Burk, 1946

Henrietta Mahler appears in my blog, 2008-2012, in these links (as well as in most of Isaac's posts):

• Henrietta Mahler Burk and her son, Harold Burk, circa 1940. 
• Henrietta and the house on Rodman Street, Washington, D.C.
• Henrietta's youngest daughter, Dora, died in 1950.