Mrs P Richard Taylor
Louisville, Ky.

Madam:

Yours of the 20th inst. came to me as a sound from above to recall to my attention memories of the past which in the pressure of life's earnest occupations had recended into the vary background of the soul. Your letter has called me back to the halcyon times of my earliest youth, when I was listening to the voice of my beloved father, an old venerable Rabbi of eighty-three years; relating some of the traditions of the Elkin family.

Our original name was Elkan, but in as far back past, of which there is no record to be found, the name Elkan was changed to Elkin.

The family is of Spanish decent. Two brothers survived the persecutions our people suffered, from the so-called "holy inquistion". But in the despersion, they became seperated; one, the older brother, Elkin Hassophardi, became Rabbi somewhere in Poland. The younger brother, Rabbi Benjamin Elkin, went to London, England, as an assistant Rabbi to Menesseh Ben Isrel. My father was Grandson to the older brother in Poland. But the family, it seams, did not stay in Poland, as it, in later years loomed up in Pressburg, Hungary.

There were family records to that extent, but are to my mind irrevocably lost. The name Hannah or Annah greatly prevaled among the female branch of the family for long generations. It may, perhaps, be of some interest to mention an other tradition, namely, that in the veins of the Roman Emperor Autoninus (Titus Aurelius) ran the blood of the family Elkan or Elkin.

While I was Rabbi for eleven years in Liverpool, England, I made every effort to find out something about the family, Elkin; but all I could learn was that a family Elkin emigrated in the long past, among the first emigrants to the West Indies and here my research stopped, as I despaired of any success in my inquiries.

This, Madam, is about all that I know of my families decent and traditions.

If you, as you state, think yourself decended from Rabbi Elkin, then in your veins and in mine may run the same blood, of the father of the Prophet Samuel. How mysterious are the ways of God, and how significant the words of the Prophet, "have we not all one father".

If you, Madam, can give me some further information on this one dear subject of the Elkin family, you would confer a great obligation up,

Dear Madam yours most respectfully,

Rabbi M Elkin,
9 Mahl an or au

Attest.
Anne Roark, Dora Ashby Lovelace
(copied by Nannie Copeland)

(re-typed- Amarillo, Tx 4-8-88)