An Almost Lost Surname: Rebecca “Rae” Shecter
When I began researching my great-grandmother, I was searching for Rae Sherman.
That was the name she used in adulthood. The name that appeared in later records. The name preserved in family memory. As far as anyone knew, Sherman was her maiden name, the identity she had always carried.
But when I turned to her earliest records, something immediately stood out.
There was no birth record for Rae Sherman.
No Rebecca Sherman.
No evidence of that surname connected to her childhood or family of origin.
At first, this absence suggested a familiar genealogical problem. A missing record. A clerical error. A gap in documentation. But the more carefully the records were examined, the more deliberate the absence appeared. The silence was not random.
When the search expanded beyond the surname Sherman, a different identity emerged. A birth record for Rebecca Shecter, a young Jewish woman born into a documented Shecter family. Census records and other contemporary documentation placed her clearly within that family unit.
Rebecca Shecter had not vanished from the records.
She had vanished under that name.
What made this case particularly compelling was the timing of her surname change and the completeness of her separation from the Shecter family. Rebecca did not simply adopt a married name while maintaining visible ties to her earlier identity. Instead, she severed them entirely. No later records connected her back to the Shecter family. No correspondence. No appearances. No acknowledgments.
An article uncovered during the research suggested that Rae may have cooperated with law enforcement at a time when her brothers were arrested. If true, such cooperation would provide a reasonable motivation for her to distance herself fully from her family of origin.
Viewed in this context, the surname change takes on a different meaning.
The evidence indicates that Rae began using the surname Sherman in April 1936, when she gave birth to her first child, Ronald Sherman Venit. This timing aligns closely with the period following the arrests referenced in the article. Rather than appearing as a passive result of marriage, the surname Sherman appears to have been adopted deliberately at a moment of transition.
The choice was not temporary. Rae told her family that Sherman was her maiden name, effectively rewriting her personal history. She named her son with Sherman as a middle name, embedding the adopted surname into the next generation. This was not concealment through silence alone, but through replacement.
Additional life choices reinforce the pattern. Rae converted to Catholicism, further distancing herself from her Jewish upbringing and the identity associated with the Shecter name. Taken together — the surname change, the severance from family, the timing, the naming of her child, and the religious conversion — these actions suggest a conscious effort to create a new life unconnected to her former one.
This does not prove motive. But it does provide a reasonable hypothesis, consistent with the available evidence, that Rae’s surname change was deliberate and protective rather than incidental.
Rebecca Shecter did not disappear because records failed.
She disappeared because she chose to.
Her surname was almost lost not through time alone, but through intention. And it was only by paying attention to what did not exist — the missing birth record, the absence of family ties, the sudden appearance of a new name — that her earlier identity could be recovered.
Almost lost, but not entirely.
Cases like this are reminders that genealogical research is not only about what records survive, but about understanding why certain records do not. Surnames, especially those carried by women, are not always fixed markers. Sometimes they are choices shaped by circumstance, safety, and survival.
Sources
Research for this case study was drawn from a combination of original records, published materials, and contextual analysis, including:
Civil birth records documenting Rebecca Shecter
Census records identifying members of the Shecter family
Marriage and later-life records associated with Rae Sherman
Birth records of Rae Sherman’s children, including the use of “Sherman” as a middle name
Contemporary newspaper coverage and secondary articles providing historical context
Religious records documenting later-life conversion
Absence of birth or early-life records under the surname Sherman
This case study also relies on the careful evaluation of negative evidence, including the absence of records where they would reasonably be expected, and on patterns of identity usage over time.
All interpretations presented here are based on the available evidence and represent a reasoned hypothesis rather than definitive proof.
