Articles
• Arnold Ismach – Chocolate and the Jews
• Edward Winter – Jewish Peddlers
• Edward Winter & Susan Winter Schofer – The 620 Club: Where Turkey Was King
• Pamela Endzweig – Restoring Continuity
• Renee Gottesman & Reeva Kimble – Recording the Graves
• Renee Gottesman & Reeva Kimble – Immigration to the United States
• Renee Gottesman & Reeva Kimble – Origins of Jewish First Names
• Renee Gottesman & Reeva Kimble – Jewish Surnames in Northern & Eastern Europe
• Your Ancestors Were What?
Jewish Peddlers
By Edward Winter
I borrowed Avotaynu (Volume XXXIV, Number 1, Spring 2018) from our group library and read an article titled “Wandering Jews: Peddlers, Immigrants and the Discovery of the New Worlds” by Hasia Diner. Hasia Diner is a historian at New York University. If you want to read more about Jewish peddlers, Hasia Diner has written a book, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way.
I will be reviewing only the article in Avotaynu. About the same time I read this article I found an article in the Minneapolis Tribune from November 21, 1911 on Newspapers.com about my paternal grandfather and his success as a peddler. As a result not only will I review Hasia Diner’s article, but I will also include information about both my paternal and maternal grandfathers. They were both peddlers.
Diner in summary suggested that Jewish peddlers were an important reason that Jews migrated all over the world. Peddlers settled North and South America, South Africa, Australia and the British Isles. Because Jews were familiar with peddling in the old world, they had an occupation that they could take up in the new world. According to Diner that also had internal networks of credit.
She defined peddler as a seller of retail goods who goes door to door marketing their wares. Most peddlers were men and there were 4 million peddlers (one third of world Jewry). 85% to 90% went to the United States. She said peddlers never sold food or fuel. They sold buttons, needles, pins, ribbons, lace, fabric, scissors, mirrors, watches, jewelry, eyeglasses, pictures, picture frames, cutlery, sheets and pillow cases, towels and blankets, all goods associated with the home and bought by women.
They sold mainly to non-Jews. They were robbed and murdered and easy prey to ruffians. They started on Sunday and came back to their communities on Friday. Some slept in their customer’s homes. They sold to Negro people in the South and addressed them as “Mr. or Mrs.” They competed with local stores and angered some shopkeepers, pitting Jewish peddlers against non-Jewish merchants. This led to anti-Jewish agitation.
When the peddlers amassed enough savings, they might open a store. They used peddling as a way to leave it. It was a stage in Jewish life. Some did spectacularly well: Lehman, Seligman, Guggenheim, Gimbel, Straus, etc.
I found Diner’s article interesting. It showed how peddling enabled many Jews to immigrate to the United States (and other countries). But I think she made some generalizations about peddling that left out some methods of peddling. This was in fact the case with both my grandfathers. My maternal grandfather (Louis Rein) was a junk peddler in St. Paul, Minnesota. I believe he went around collecting junk and selling what he collected. Diner did not discuss this type of peddling. My mother said Louis had a horse and cart. Unfortunately he developed cataracts, had surgery for them, which was unsuccessful and lost his sight. He was unable to work after that and was not trained in any other occupation. I have found the city directories in Ancestry.com to be very valuable in my research for both of my grandfathers. In the case of Louis it shows his occupations by year from 1909 until 1930 when he became unemployed. In 1909 he was a porter for a department store. In 1910 he became a janitor for a department store and a watchman in 1911. From 1912 to 1930 he was a peddler. In 1930 the city directory specified that he was a junk peddler. Louis had been born in Okny, Russia (now Ukraine) and came to the U.S. in 1908 when he was 28 years old. He died in 1962 when I was in my early twenties. I regret not asking him about his life in Russia and about his experiences as a peddler.
My paternal grandfather was Jacob Winter. He first came to the United States in 1908. He had an older brother already in Minneapolis. Jacob peddled apples in Minneapolis for 3 years and then went back to Ostrava (Austro-Hungary, but now Czech Republic) in order to bring his family back to Minnesota. Diner said that peddlers did not sell food, but this was not the case with my grandfather, since he sold apples. This article from the Minneapolis Tribune is about his success in selling apples.
City directories in Ancestry.com, the census and Newspapers.com were very helpful in discovering the progression of Jacob from peddler to businessman. Jacob returned to Minneapolis in 1913 with my father and one uncle. His wife and other son came in 1914 just before World War I started there.
In an interview with my uncle in 1974 in the Minneapolis Tribune he said the following: “For $4,000 Jacob Winter bought his family a house on Elwood Ave and Olson Memorial Highway on the near north side of Minneapolis. Jacob hustled apples from a pushcart downtown, but before he was through cutting his path, he was moving loads of distressed merchandise to area department stores.” According to the 1921 city directory in Minneapolis, Jacob’s family was now living in the house on Elwood Ave. In the 1970's my father took me to see the house on Elwood Ave and I took a photograph of the house that was purchased for $4,000 in 1921.
City directories show the following timeline for Jacob. In 1916 he was still a peddler. By 1918 he had a cigar store. In 1919 he added a billiard hall. According to the 1920 census he still had the cigar store and my father worked for him there. City directories for 1921 show he had a soft drink business. The city directory of 1928 said he had a restaurant. My grandmother Bertha was also involved in the restaurant. My grandfather Jacob died in 1936. I was born in 1941 and never met him, but heard many stories. There are stories about arrests for selling liquor and an amusing story about my grandmother in the Minneapolis paper. I will leave these stories for another time.
Restoring Continuity – Personal Thoughts on Researching Family History
By Pamela Endzweig
Growing up, I marveled at my friends, whose “nuclear” families included grandparents and other relatives, all living close by, with stories to tell and family heirlooms to pass to successive generations. Today my best friends still live in the town of their birth, only blocks from their parental homes.
Things were different for me, a first-generation American, the product of people who fled with only their lives, if they were lucky. For a long time, it seemed that even my ancestral history would evade me: being Jewish, without the benefit of church records, how could I fill gaps in my parents’ memories, push back in time to illuminate the histories of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and their parents before them?
My first and greatest discovery was that of community—that there are thousands researching their family lines—many with families uprooted like mine, often with even less knowledge to begin with—and finding success! This is truly a group effort, which succeeds by the sharing of information on genealogical resources, and by networking with others rooted in the same shtetls, tracking the same family names. It is a world-wide community, connected now more than ever through the internet, but anchored in local genealogical societies like our Jewish Genealogical Society of the Willamette Valley, Oregon (JGSWVO).
It would take many pages to reflect on what I have learned—this is an amazing journey that never ends. Sure, I know who I am named after; but my mother, born in Canada, and with encyclopedic knowledge of her side of the family, had not known that she, too, is probably named after her grandmother, who died in Europe and was thus never a part of Mom’s life. Where in Europe? Well, I’m still working on that. Or my paternal grandmother's cousin, Nissen Nachtgeist, who I have followed through ships’ manifests, as he arrived in New York after World War II, to return to Europe in 1950, and again in 1952, when he made his way back to New York, with Sheindl. Who was she? That too, remains to be discovered, but I know I will find her, and perhaps her parents, and her grandparents. It is a gift I give to myself, in reconnecting with my history, and a gift to my family, in honoring theirs.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County in January, 2012
Recording the Graves
By Renee Gottesman and Reeva Kimble
Honoring the deceased is an ancient Jewish tradition. Prayers are recited annually and yahrzeit candles are lit to commemorate the anniversaries of the deaths of loved ones. A visit to the cemetery is customary at least once a year. A small stone is placed on the tombstone as a sign that the deceased has been remembered.
Since the Jewish community is a truly world-wandering lot, by virtue of choice or coercion, many family members no longer know the location of family gravesites. However, there is now an online archive of Jewish burials worldwide, where one can search for and find the graves of family members. This service is free of any charges at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/
The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) is a growing permanent archive for Jewish burial records on the Internet. As of December 2010, JOWBR had 1.5 million burial records from 3,000 cemeteries in 47 countries. Some of the records include Hebrew names of the deceased, parents’ names, place of birth, etc., in addition to the text on the headstone.
More than ten years ago, members of what is now the Jewish Genealogical Society Willamette Valley Oregon (JGSWVO) visited the dedicated Jewish section at Rest Haven Cemetery, recorded the names of people buried there, and submitted the data to JOBAR.
We are currently updating our cemetery data and expanding the records to other Jewish burial sites in the area. Contact us with information on local Jewish burials that are outside of the Rest Haven Jewish section, so we can include your friends and family members. Also, give us details about the parents of the deceased, their original surname, birthplace, etc. for any Jewish graves in Lane County.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County in Spring, 2011
Immigration to the United States
By Renee Gottesman and Reeva Kimble
Contrary to popular belief, in the 100 years between 1824 and 1924 not every immigrant Jew who arrived in the USA came by ship and landed at Ellis Island. Did you know that many of our ancestors who came here took other routes as well?
Castle Garden was the New York City port that received immigrants from 1824 to 1892. Then the immigration process was moved to Ellis Island and that location was used until 1957. At the same time immigrants were arriving in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New Orleans. Smaller ports included sites in Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maine, Rhode Island, Florida, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Michigan, California and the state of Washington.
Canadian land and seaports provided other points of U.S. entry for Jewish immigrants. People getting off the boat in Canada were not subject to as rigorous a health scrutiny as the exam given at U.S. shipping ports. The U.S. has records of people transitioning from Canada 1895-1954. Land ports include Coutts, Windsor, Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Cornwall, Emerson, Sweetgrass, Sarnia, Kingston and others. Ferries took people to the U.S. from Nanaimo, Victoria, Yarmouth, and Ocean Falls.
Because passenger lists are arranged by port and then chronologically, it is important to know when and where your relative arrived. The U.S. Federal Census for 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 lists the year of immigration.
There may be years between leaving the old country and arriving in the USA. Some immigrants who left Eastern Europe may have first traveled to Argentina, South Africa, Japan, or some other country where Jews were welcome to settle. The U.S. may have become a final destination after discovering that life in that first setting was not agreeable, or a planned brief visit became extended because going “home” was not safe.
An immigrant’s final destination was determined by many factors, including family contacts, job opportunities, affiliation with a specific immigration sponsor organization, and just plain chance.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County in Fall, 2009
Origins of Jewish First Names
By Reeva Kimble and Renee Gottesman
His mother called him Herschele, the Rabbi called him Hirsch-Tzvi, his boss called him Harold, and his friends called him Harry. So, what was your grandfather's first name?
We know that Jewish babies are often given names that honor or memorialize family members. By tradition, Ashkenazi Jews name newborns after deceased relatives. Sephardic Jews, on the other hand, name babies after both living and dead grandparents or other relatives.
But there is much more to it. When Jews left the old country, they often left names behind and took new ones. Just as they took a sound from their own name to create a new American name (or Spanish name or French name), they did much the same thing when naming their children after an ancestor. In the US they might use Great Grandma Fejga's first initial and named the baby Frances. Or they used Great Grandma Fejga's Hebrew name Tzipporah and named the infant Tiffany. And then, because both Fejga (Yiddish) and Tzipporah (Hebrew) mean bird, the same child is nicknamed Birdie.
The man with the original name Hersh, might be Hirsch or Gersh on records in the old country. His Yiddish name might be written Hershil, Hershke, Hershko, Hershl, Herske, Hirshe, Hirshik, Hirshke, Hirshko or Hirshl. If he immigrated to Israel, he might have become Naftali, for like Hersh and Tzvi, it means deer.
When you were looking for records of your ancestors, you must take Jewish naming traditions into consideration. When you see several cousins with the same first name, born within a few years of each other, you can guess that they had an ancestor in common who died a few years before.
When you find a German first name in the Ellis Island records of your grandmother from Russia, you can guess that she gave her Yiddish name and the ships' officer at the port of Hamburg spelled it the way he heard it.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County 2009
Jewish Surnames in Northern and Eastern Europe
By Reeva Kimble and Renee Gottesman
For most Jews living in the Pale or the Austrian Empire in the 19th century, the use of surnames was a relatively recent practice. If your ancestors lived in this region before 1800, they were probably known by their first name plus the first name of their father.
For example: Yakov ben Shmul (Jacob, the son of Samuel), Sarah bat Yosef (Sarah daughter of Joseph).
Suppose there were two people named Samuel in the shtetl, one might be a tailor and one a baker, so Jacob would then be referred to as Jacob ben Shmul Beker (baker) or Jacob ben Shmul Portnoy (tailor). This naming system functioned perfectly well in small communities, but not outside. Last names changed every generation.
By the end of the 18th century, Government officials determined that they could keep track of people to collect taxes and determine eligibility for the army draft if individuals and families had permanent last names. Jews were eventually required by law to take surnames: Austrian Empire (1787), Russian Pale (1804, but not enforced until 1835/1845), Russian Poland (1821), West Galicia (1805), France (1808), various German states (between 1807 and 1834).
Sources of Surnames and examples:
Patronymics / Matronymics: Based on a parent's given name: (Slavic suffixes -owicz, -ovitch, -off, -kin, Germanic suffix -son.)
JACOBSON – son of Jacob
GOLDIN - son of Golda
Toponyms: Based on a geographic place name: (Slavic suffix -ski, Germanic suffix -er.)
WARSHAWSKI - one from Warsaw,
BERLINER - one from Berlin,
WILNER - one from Vilna.
Occupational: Based on vocation:
REZNIK [Polish/Yiddish], SHOCHET [Hebrew] - butcher.
SHNYDER [German/Yiddish], KRAVITS [Polish/Ukrainian], PORTNOY [Russian] - tailor.
SINGER - cantor
WEBER – weaver
LEDERER - tanner
Personal: description or characteristics:
SCHWARTZ - black,
WEISS - white,
KLEIN - small
GROSS – large
ROTHBART - red-bearded
Religious:
COHEN (KAHN, KATZ),
LEVINE (LEVIN, SIEGEL)
Artificial: Fanciful or ornamental names: Many names ending in -berg, -stein, -feld...
ROSENBERG - mountain of roses,
FINKELSTEIN - glittering stone.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County 2008
Your Ancestors Were What?
Who were they, those people who lived before us? Where did they live? What language did they speak? Who did they look like? What did they eat? Were they Sephardic? Were they Ashkenazi? Did they belong to some other group of Jews?
This is just one of the many subjects that members of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Willamette Valley Oregon discuss here in Eugene. JGSWVO provided the material in this article to give you some clues about your family history.
Jews belonged to fascinatingly diverse groups with different ethnic, geographical, and cultural origins. Our ancestors likely came from among four major ethnic groups (Ashhkenazi, Sephardic, Oriental, Yemenite), but perhaps they came from one of the smaller groups.
Ashkenazi Jews lived in Germany or France before migrating to Eastern Europe. The name Ashkenaz was applied in the Middle Ages to Jews living along the Rhine River in northern France and western Germany. The center of Ashkenazi Jews later spread to Poland-Lithuania and eventually there were Ashkenazi settlements all over the world. Yiddish was their traditional language.
Sephardic Jews lived in Spain or Portugal. The word “Sephardim” comes from the Hebrew word for Spain, Sepharad. It is believed that Jews have lived in Spain since the era of King Solomon (c.965-930 B.C.E.). Their traditional language was Ladino.
Following the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, the Sephardic Jews were dispersed, some migrating to Europe, where they formed large communities in Venice, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Hamburg and later London. Others eventually traveled to Eastern Europe where they were assimilated into the Ashkenazi. Large numbers escaped to the Middle East where they joined the Oriental Jewish community
Oriental Jews had lived in the Middle East and North Africa, but later spread to Central Asia and South Asia. In common usage, most Oriental Jews are called Sephardic, for the religious rites of Oriental Jews and Sephardic Jews are essentially the same. Many of them spoke Arabic, Aramaic or Persian.
Yemenite Jews are Oriental Jews whose geographical and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community allowed them to develop a liturgy and set of practices sufficiently distinct from other Oriental Jewish groups so as to be recognized as a different group.
Smaller groups of Jews include the Ethiopian Jews (also known as the Falasha or Beta Israel), the Bene Israel Jews who lived in Bombay, India, the Cochin Jews another group living in India and the Romaniotes, who are Greek speaking Jews living in the Balkans since around 330 BCE.
Sub-groups of Jews include the Gruzim (Georgian Jews who lived in the Caucasus, especially Tbilisi), the Juhurim (Mountain Jews mainly from Azerbaijan and Daghestan in the eastern Caucasus), the Maghrebim (Jews from the Arab-Berber region of North Africa who established communities before 1450) and the Abayudaya (Ugandan Jews).
Recent discoveries in biology and medicine indicate that there are some group differences in DNA. The research continues. JGSWVO members regularly receive updates of the latest relevant scientific news.
This article appeared in the Newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Lane County 2008
©2024 JGSWVO. All rights reserved.
|
