Jewish Montanans: Theda Markovitch

1918-1936

Sometimes, when walking through a cemetery, one’s eye is drawn not to the fancy monuments or sprawling family plots but to single, modest headstones. Such is the case with a flat rectangular granite headstone adjacent to the south fence line at the Home of Peace cemetery in Helena. Its chiseled inscription reads: “THEDA MARCOVITCH 1918—1936” but behind these simple words lies a complicated story of immigrants coming to Montana from disparate corners of the earth, forming families, seeking financial stability, and maintaining—or not—their Jewish faith. 

Theda Markovitch's Headstone

Theda Marcovitch was a daughter of Tonia Seltzer’s second marriage. In early 1903, 18-yr-old Tonia Seltzer left her home in the Hertsa region of Romania (now in eastern Ukraine) and embarked on the SS Furnessia in Glasgow, Scotland, landing at Ellis Island twelve days later with seven dollars in her pocket. Thirteen months later, she was living in Helena where Temple Emanu-El’s rabbi officiated at her wedding to Julius Young, a Russian-born junk dealer ten years her senior.

At some point Tonia and Julius moved to Alberta, Canada where Phil and Mary were born in 1907 and 1909, respectively, before taking up residence in Boise, Idaho where Nathan was born in 1910. By late 1912, however, Tonia was a widow and wed 24-year-old bachelor Jack Markovitch at the Great Falls home of a well-known Jewish furniture retailer. Born in Constantinople, Turkey, her new husband had arrived in the US in 1897 and was naturalized in 1909.

In 1914, Jack opened a clothing store in downtown Great Falls on First Avenue South, a few blocks away from the under-construction Milwaukee Road Depot. Oddly, a couple of years later, Tonia opened her own clothing store, the Montana Clothing Store, in Helena on South Main, partnering with Jonathan Scherbu (or Serbu) and living on the premises. The historical record is not clear if her three children lived with them.  Regardless, by August of that year, Serbu had taken on a new partner.  

By 1917, the family had reunited and living in Billings where Markovitch was self-employed as a labor agent and peddler. Three months after the 29-year-old registered for the draft, he was arrested for “insulting the American flag.” The newspaper described him as an “alleged traitor” and quoted the Yiddish-speaking Markovitch as saying to the judge: “If Ah do drink Ah spends ma own money. An Ah works every day f’r ma little ole chunk o’ bread.” The plaintiff had accused Markovitch of ripping a US flag pin from his lapel in a scuffle. “Witnesses pictured Markoitch [sic] in anything but a favorable light and the judge, who accredited the trouble to personal enmity, ordered the prisoner discharged.” 

On May 11, 1918, Tonia, now 33-years-old, gave birth to her fourth child, Theda, in Billings. But it’s evident that Billings was not hospitable to the family’s breadwinner, and the blended Markovitch and Young family trekked back in Great Falls, Jack now working as a hide and fur dealer with Tonia’s older brother. 

In the fall of 1924, Tonia began treatment for lethargy but by March 1925 she was admitted to Columbus Hospital. After three weeks’ hospitalization, she died of apoplexy and encephalitis; she was 42 years old. Tonia was buried in Great Falls’ Hebrew Cemetery, leaving behind her four children, three of them Jack’s stepchildren, between the ages of seven and eighteen. 

Perhaps her widower believed the younger children needed a familiar hand for, in July 1927, he married his 18-year-old stepdaughter, Mary Young, in Chester, Montana. Over the next few years, Tonia’s three oldest children left the family home as they reached adulthood, but the 1930 US Census indicates that Theda remained living with her father’s and half-sister’s very young daughters. By late 1930, the family had moved on to Butte where Jack may have been employed as a miner. 

Despite the upheavals Theda had endured in her short life, it appears that she was industrious and energetic. Shortly before Christmas in 1931, 13-year-old Theda won a copper flower bowl in a contest sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Garden Club for compiling the longest list of objects made from copper. The newspaper recounted: “Miss Marcovitch, the winner, went to great pains in securing the names of articles made of copper including a visit to garages and service stations where she was told the names of many parts that go into the make-up of automobiles that are made of the red metal.” 

But whatever stability Theda and the family might have achieved in Butte was shattered when Mary succumbed to excessive bleeding after childbirth in the spring of 1934. Her body was transported to Great Falls where services were held in a funeral chapel; she was buried in the Hebrew cemetery, the same place as her mother, Jack’s first wife, was interred. Once again Jack was left with four children: Theda, a newborn daughter and two others aged five and six years. 

Theda Markovitch, High School Photo 1936

Through all this turmoil, Theda persisted in her studies at Butte High School, graduating on May 29, 1936, as a member of the National Honor Society and winning a Bookkeeping Certificate of Proficiency. Approximately two weeks later, she traveled to St. John’s Hospital in Helena for an appendectomy but, twelve days later, suffered a post-surgery embolism and died on June 23, 1936. Obituaries in the Helena and Butte newspapers noted her popularity and “honor student” status. Butte’s B’nai Israel rabbi and Norman Winestine of Helena conducted the funeral services at a Helena funeral chapel. Although burial in Great Falls had been mentioned as a possibility in her obituary, in the end, Theda’s final resting place was at the Home of Peace in Helena, far from those of her mother Tonia and half-sister’s in Great Falls’ Hebrew cemetery. Perhaps Jack Markovich lacked the financial resources to do for his daughter Theda what he was able to do for her half-sister, his wife Mary, who had been transported from Butte to Great Falls for her funeral and burial. Or perhaps the numerous losses he had endured over the previous eleven years had shut down any decision-making capability.

Sadly, the Markovitchs’ frequent relocations and financial instability may have prevented them from the support they might have found in Butte and Great Falls’ Jewish social and religious circles, especially. Butte had a well-established Jewish community with its Hebrew Benevolent Society founded in 1878, its B’nai B’rith lodge in 1892, and three Jewish congregations established by the turn of the 20th century. Great Falls’ Hebrew Association, founded in 1916, aimed to teach the city’s Jewish children Hebrew and employ a rabbi, both of which they achieved.  But there appears to be no documentation that the Markovitchs participated in Jewish life, except through business relationships, in either of these cities. This may be why Nathan Young, Tonia’s youngest son with Julius Young, was married in a Catholic service in Great Falls. In fact, one of his daughters, was an Ursuline nun in the mother house in Santa Rosa, California. And both Nathan and brother Philip had Catholic funerals. The dynamics of the Markovitch family remain obscure. 

Jack stayed on in Butte after Theda’s death, working as a salvage and metal dealer. He never remarried and neither Tonia nor Theda are mentioned in his obituary. He died at age 94 in 1982 and was buried in the B’Nai Israel Cemetery on South Montana Avenue in Butte.