A FAMILY MYSTERYIn this letter home of April 1821 to his freshly married wife Ribca Meldola, David de Sola, son of Aron de Sola from Amsterdam, freshly appointed Hazan of Bevis Marks, writes very movingly of his visit to his fathers deathbed. He talks of how difficult it is to enter his fathers house not knowing what he will find, and later he writes how his visit had uplifted his fathers spirits. The mystery here is, why he does not write a single word about his stepmother, Simcha, or Simmetje Barzilay, whom his father had married in May 1818, a year after the death of his first wife, Sara de Isaac Namias Torres.As it happens, 1818 is also the last year that David de Sola studied in Amsterdam at Ets Haim. He left in the summer of 1818, still in the second highest class of that institution, which means that he did not complete his studies. In the spring of 1818 David left for London. In his letters home to his father he discusses his travails to get to be appointed Hazan, and he discusses his upcoming marriage to the daughter of Haham Meldola of Bevis Marks. But not a word about his stepmother. David gives greetings to his sister, to his aunt, to his friends in the letters to his father, but none to Simmetje Barzilay. As if she didn't exist.Maybe he did not know her, as he may have left before the second marriage took place, and maybe she was hidden from him at his father deathbed? Unlikely. Maybe she was written out of history by the publisher of the letters of David de Sola? Again, not likely.I think, but do not know, that father and son had a spat about the second marriage of the father, and that the son choose to ignore her. The argument may also have led to his early exit from Ets Haim.You will not find Simcha, or Simmetje Barzilay in any published genealogy of the De Sola family - or at least not in the ones that I find online. Not out of any wish to conceal her, I think, but because the De Sola family has not been properly researched, yet. And of course because her stepson David de Sola did not write about her in his letters.