Suwałki Governorate
Born in Vladislavov, in the Suwałki Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Kudirkos Naumiestis, Lithuania) to a Lithuanian Jewish family, he was the second son and fifth child of Duvvid Schubart and Katrina Helwitz. He was four years old when the family emigrated to the United States in 1881. They settled in Syracuse, New York, where a number of Jewish families from there already were living. His father's alcoholism kept the family in difficult financial circumstances, and at a very young age Sam Shubert had to work as a shoeshine boy.