Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Uncle Julius and Aunt Josie are coming to dinner tonight, and I am going to be allowed to sit at the table in the dining room. Only this time if Uncle Julius brings me candy in a bag, I mustn’t ask him why he doesn’t bring it to me in a box like other people. Uncle Julius isn’t bad, and he looks like a walrus with his huge mustache. Aunt Josie brings me wonderful books, like “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Tonight, I don’t think she will bring me any, because two days ago she brought me “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.”

Uncle Julius didn’t bring me any candy and Aunt Josie didn’t bring me a book, but they did bring Grandmother a bouquet of flowers. Grandmother doesn’t like Aunt Josie, and says she is a snob, but I would rather have a snob who brings me books than someone who isn’t a snob who brings stockings. I guess I behaved all right. No one told me I didn’t.

Looking at family history can be very confusing because names are repeated so often in generations. I could not figure out who “Uncle” Julius was since I could see no one on the family tree with that name. Hilda’s Aunt Tillie would eventually marry a man named Julius Zentner in 1930, when she was almost 50 years old. His first wife died in 1929 and was named Josie. The Levy and Zentner families were business partners in a produce firm and their social and business lives were probably quite intertwined. According to Julius’s obituary, the families had rival businesses until after the 1906 earthquake when they decided to join forces to survive. I included an excerpt from his obituary in an earlier post.