What we know about Henry Stone - it’s complicated… He was born Solomon Samuel Dreizenstock, in Latvia on April 8th 1890. His parents were Jacob and Esther Dreizenstock.

He, with his brother and sister and both parents migrated to the US in 1902. The family lived in New York until about 1906 when they relocated to Norton, Massachusetts where they set up a small family farm. Upon finishing school, ‘Sam’ married a Mary Galitsky in 1908, and welcomed his first daughter into the world, Evelyn Dreizen. Samuel then abandoned the family and we think he went back to NYC briefly before travelling to Europe in 1910/11.

He purportedly studied Art in Milan and then worked as a Ticket Inspector on the Malta Tramways 1912-13. We believe he then returned to the US using a new name (Henry Stone) and joined the US Army as a private, and was stationed at barracks in Rhode Island. In 1919, Henry requested furlough from the Army to visit whom he referred to as his ‘Foster Mother’ who was unwell in Naples. Italy.

It is at this point that he claims to be Italian, although he stated NYC as his birth place. Worth also mentioning that Solomon (his real name) was Jewish, although when he returns to the US circa 1913/14 he has a retrospective certificate of Baptism issued by a Roman Catholic church in New York.

This states his date of birth as 24th Sept 1890. He fails to travel to Italy, as he is returned as a stowaway, but he does the make it to England in 1921 where he changes his name again to Henry Carlow. In London, he marries Mabel Sayce in Dec 1924 and has a Son and a Daughter in 1925 and 1926 respectively. He works as a Signwriter and Glass Painter, running his own business in northwest London. Rather mysteriously, he returns home from work early on 15th July 1936 claiming he needs to travel to Manchester to visit friends. Two days later, the family receive a letter from him stating his ‘relatives’ have moved onto Belfast and that he was in pursuit of them. He is then never heard of or seen of every again by our family…!

A Henry Stone, who gives a birthdate of 21st Sept 1890, arrives in the US in the autumn of 1936. I have traced this Henry Stone, who uses both the 21st and 24th Sept 1890 as a date of birth on several documents and applications. I eventually found a card from the US Military Veterans Administration, with the same name and date of birth, also with his date of death - 4th November 1964.

He had a Florida issued social security number (262-18-5675) and in death master record, I knew he died in “Floridas or West Indies”. It was only by chance that I found the burial record of a Henry Stone, died 4th November and was interred in Westbury Cemetery in Bridgetown, Barbados on Friday 6th November. The quick burial, and on a Friday, suggests it was known that he was Jewish. There may be a star of David on his headstone, if there is a headstone at all. The record states he was 74, but he would have actually been 75.

According to travel manifests, he never remarried, and was retired when he died on the Island. He had worked as an ‘Engineer’ in the 1940s. He did travel to Bridgetown in March 1961, on a cruise from New York with a Sayde Stone, though they were not married.

They did both return to the US, but he must had returned to the Island a year or two later, prior to his death. I believe he would have died with no wife or children, despite abandoning his families in Boston and London. He was interred by Raphael Gallagher, who was a priest at the St Patrick's Church in Jemmotts Lane in 1964.