Louis Roth, son of Yosef Avraham and his wife Tcharne, was born about 1859 in what is now Kovácsvágás, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Hungary. He was later known as Louis, Lajos or Leo.
After the Austrian Hapsburgs teamed up with Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Hungarian Jews lost the few civil rights they had enjoyed and became subject to the Russian military draft. Louis’s older brother Jacob was conscripted in this fashion, prompting their father to urge his other sons to emigrate as soon as possible.
Accordingly, Louis and Max, the next two oldest sons, came to America in 1879. Louis appears to have filed a declaration of intent to become a naturalized U. S. citizen under the name of Lewis Roth in Fairfield County, Ohio, on January 30, 1885. By 1888, Louis and his younger siblings had reunited in Los Angeles, where he had found work with the Kline Clothing Company and the Excelsior Clothing Company. The Roth family—Max, Rosa, Kelly, Mike and Isidor—ultimately became very involved in Los Angeles’s Hungarian Jewish community.
In January, 1888, Louis’s financial position was stable enough for him to marry Miss Fannie Gerson. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last; they divorced just five months later.
By January 1891, Louis was in Phoenix, Arizona, operating his own cigar and confectionary shop on Washington Street, near the Monihon Building. It’s possible that he came to Arizona for his health, considering that he died of consumption on April 12, 1894.
Louis’s brother Max traveled to Phoenix to see him properly buried in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery and to close out his business affairs. When Beth Israel Cemetery opened in 1903, the family had his remains moved there and a fine marble monument erected in his memory.
Fast forward to January 2019, when Tim Kovacs was visiting the Beth Israel Cemetery. While there, he happened upon a broken marker on which he recognized the place name Kovacs Vagas—a Hungarian village about 33 miles from where his own ancestors originated.
On February 9, 2021, Tim received a surprising message from Geri Roth Jacobson, Louis Roth’s great-niece. She had spent thirty years looking for a grave marker for her “Uncle Leo” in California, but to no avail. Only by luck had she come upon his memorial on Find A Grave.
Because Roth had originally been buried in the IOOF Cemetery, Geri appealed to the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association for help with repairs, and its preservation team responded. The restoration was a success and, on December 21, 2022, Geri and a contingent of relatives from California visited the grave for the first time ever to view the results.
- By Tim Kovacs and Donna Carr
