Name: Jack Silver 11/23/1903-7/13/1950
Family: Wife: Bertha Friedman.
Children: a daughter who passed away shortly after childbirth and a son Hilliard. Hilliard provided information about his father.
“Jake" had rheumatic fever as a small child. He was very frail and as a baby, he slept in a dresser drawer in his mother's bedroom. He remained frail throughout his life.
He married Bertha Friedman who had lost her mother at an early age. Apparently Rosa, Jake’s mother, took Bertha under her wing to mentor her. Jake was trained as a jeweler, but he ran a grocery store up into the 1940's. During the war when food was rationed, the store did not prosper, Jake went on to work in a pawn shop in his later years.
According to Hilliard, his father was a happy person, always had a joke to tell. He and his wife were outgoing and very social They would "always brighten up a room when they entered it."
One year after he was married, they had a little girl who died shortly after birth and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Durham Hebrew Cemetery. Bertha was devastated and the couple moved back to Virginia where Bertha had family support. Their son, Hilliard, was born several years later.
Jake died young at the age of 47. Despite living in Virginia for much of his adult life, he asked to be buried in the Durham Hebrew Cemetery next to his father and grandfather.