Machla Harris

Machla Amelia Salomon Harris

Birth: 1810 in Bydgoszcz, Miasto Bydgoszcz, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Polandor or Fordon, Germany

Death: 1880 in Seattle, Washington

Plot: Row D – Plot 48

Inscription:
MACHLA
wife of
Itzic Harris
Born Fordon, Germany
Died Seattle
August 18, 1880
Age 70 years

Biography:
Machla was born in Posen, then a town in Prussia, Germany. It was returned to Poland at the end of the First World War. Shortly after 1950 it was absorbed into the City of Bydgoszcz.

According to the 1880 US Census, Machla was living with her daugther, Yetta, her husband and six children ranging in age from nine years to three months. Machla’s occupation was listed as ‘at home’.

Machla’s granddaughter Rachel Kaufman is also buried in this cemetery.

The following biography was written by Seattle historian Roger Lippman:
Machla Harris came from Prussia (now in Poland and Germany). She had three daughters. One of them, Hulda, had a childhood sweetheart, David Kaufman, who settled in Victoria in the early 1850s and later made his fortune outfitting miners headed for the Fraser Valley gold rush. After a while, he sent for his beloved, who came, with her mother, to New York. David met them there and brought them around the Horn to Victoria. In 1869 the family, with David and Hulda’s four children, relocated to Seattle. A couple months later, Hulda and David became the parents of the first Jewish child born in Seattle.

David and Hulda prospered. They bought up land in Seattle that became very valuable. When Hulda’s mother, known in Seattle as Amelia, died, in 1880, there was no Jewish cemetery in Seattle, so she was buried in Victoria.

Spouse:
Itzic Harris

Children:
Hulda Kaufman (1829-1906)
Rosetta Harris Schultz (1842-1909)
Yetta Harris Davis (1846-1935)