The Case for Sadie Simmons and Isidor Waldman Teschner

In 2013, a DNA test revealed that my wife was 1/8  Jewish. A little digging quickly led me to her mother's mother's mother, Mildred Tabor, who was likely 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. Ninety years ago, my wife's great-grandfather, Russell Tenure, served five years in Sing Sing for the crime of bigamy, remarrying without first obtaining a divorce from his wife. On his prison admittance record, he claimed that he had left Mildred and his children because it had been a forced marriage and that he discovered that she was a Jewish girl. 

But we had a mystery. That whole maternal line was Lutheran, not Jewish. I was very curious to when and why the family had converted. This line was straightforward to trace back to my wife's 2x great-grandparents, Sadie and William Tabor. However, Sadie and William had appeared out of nowhere on the 1900 census and I couldn't find any trace of them on earlier records. But I did find that William had another name: Isidor Waldman Tabor. If he changed his given names, might he have changed his last name too? 

Religious conversions, name changes, families appearing out of nowhere... what was going on here? Well, it took over 5 years of digging but finally, I might have an answer. In late 19th century New York, there was a tale of illicit romance, desperate marriages, hiding out in Mexico, and music. However, this document really isn't about telling that story, only proving it. 

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Mildred Elizabeth Tabor Tenure and Ethel Tenure, 1916 New York