Mystery Monday: NOT Dora Lillie Mahler, Madcap

Are these photos of my great-aunt, Dora Lillie Mahler? NO. UPDATE: Subsequent research turned up true photos of Dora. This is photo above is not the same Dora.

My mother said that some of the photos were "Dora, friend of Grandma," also known as "Madcap Dora" because she was what was once called a "stitch." But my mother may not have known that her mother-in-law Henrietta Mahler Burk had a younger sister named Dora, who died in June, 1950.

Above, Dora seems to be in a traditional folk costume of Eastern Europe. Below, she's with a beau. The bottom photo is probably the oldest--check out that teeny, tiny waist!

Sympathy Saturday: Dora Lillie Mahler

My great-aunt Dora Lillie Mahler died on June 9, 1950, and her life and death remain a mystery. She was living in a nice area of the Bronx with her mother, Tillie, at this time...and possibly with her widowed sister Henrietta Mahler Burk, whose husband Isaac Burk had died unexpectedly in 1943. (Henrietta and Isaac were my paternal grandparents.)

Dora was a millinery saleslady, as this cert shows and as I also found in the 1930 Census. But apparently by 1950 she had been retired 10 years. (This is a good reason to check the 1940 Census when it comes out next month!) And this cert shows she had been under the doctor's care from April 1939 until her death. Did she have a chronic illness? 2022 update: Yes, a chronic illness confirmed by a cousin who remembered this ancestor.

Her June 10, 1950 obit in the New York Times was short and to the point: Dora Lillie Mahler was the "devoted daughter of Tillie and the late Meyer Mahler, dear sister of Henrietta Burk; David Mahler; Sarah Smith; Morris Mahler; Ida Volk; and Mary Markell." 

PS: Morris, Dora's brother, gave her birth date on the cert as July 11, 1905. Impossible: The New York Census shows her as 11 years old in 1905; the US Census shows her as 6 in 1900, 15 in 1910, and 24 in 1920. Locating her actual birth cert in 2022, I see her birth year is 1894. Mystery solved!

Treasure Chest Thursday--Madcap Dora

This photo is marked "Dora" and others are marked "Madcap Dora, Grandma's friend." Asked about the nickname, my mother said (long ago) that madcap was an affectionate term for someone who did slightly zany things. The only Dora I've ever been able to find in the family is Dora Mahler, my paternal grandmother's younger sister, who was just 56 when she died. UPDATE in 2022: Dora Mahler is NOT Madcap Dora. Dora Mahler is in fact my grandma Henrietta Mahler Burk's daughter. 

We have more than half a dozen photos of Madcap Dora, and she does appear in a few photos with this gentleman at her side. Who is he? Who is Madcap Dora? 2022 update: no news about who this Dora might be, yet. 2024 update: New possibility for Madcap Dora!