More Manna from Heaven: Of Bessie, Joseph, Max and the Brotmanville Brotmans

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Amy

As I wrote yesterday, the notes of the conversation with my Aunt Elaine about the family history are remarkably accurate. Although much of what was in there I had learned either from my mother or brother or cousins or from my own research, there were a few stories in the notes, a few comments, that revealed something I had not known for sure before. Keeping in mind the overall accuracy of the information that my aunt gave to Joel, it is very interesting to think about this additional information.

For example, there are some details about Bessie and Joseph that were revealing. According to the notes, Bessie and Joseph were first cousins. Although family lore did say that Joseph and Bessie were cousins, I did not realize that they were first cousins. Since both Joseph and Bessie had the surname Brotman or Brot, it seems that their fathers must have been brothers. What’s odd about this is that it means that Joseph’s father Abraham had a brother who was also apparently named Joseph, if the records are accurate. It seems unlikely, given Jewish naming patterns, that Abraham would have named his son the same name as his brother, unless the brother had died. Since Bessie was younger than Joseph (her husband), that is not possible. The other possibility is that Bessie’s father and Joseph were both named for the same ancestor. And, of course, the final possibility is that the records that indicated that Bessie’s father’s name was Joseph were incorrect.

Joel’s notes also indicate that after Joseph’s first wife died, leaving him with four children, “they decided” that Bessie should marry Joseph to help with the children. The notes don’t indicate who made the decision, but it probably was not Bessie. It’s sad to think of my great-grandmother being put in that situation, and it certainly takes the idea of any romance out of the equation. But Joseph and Bessie went on to have five children of their own, so I’d like to assume that although it may have started as an arranged marriage for the convenience of Joseph, that love grew with time and the shared experiences and children that Joseph and Bessie had. Call me a romantic. I know that I am.

After Joseph himself died in 1901, the notes report that Bessie did laundry work to make money to support herself and her children, including Sam, who was just an infant, Frieda, Gussie, Tillie, and Hyman. Tillie and Hyman were working in sweatshops, so Gussie, my not-yet-seven year old grandmother, stayed home to take care of Frieda and Sam. Not long after, out of desperation, Bessie married “the shoemaker Moskowitz,” who my aunt reported to be very stingy. He had five children of his own.

I assume that my aunt’s source for these stories was my grandmother, who obviously resented Philip Moskowitz and chose to live with her sister Tillie in Brooklyn instead of staying with her mother and Sam and Frieda when Bessie remarried, so I know I have to consider the source. My great-grandmother Bessie lived with Philip for many years, more years than she lived with Joseph, and she was buried near him, not Joseph, when she died. As with her marriage to Joseph, her relationship with Philip may have started out of need and convenience, but it also must have developed into something more. Or at least I hope it did.

Bessie Brotman

Of course, it is also possible that the source of this information was Bessie herself. Bessie did not die until 1934, when my aunt was seventeen years old. Knowing my aunt’s interest in the family history, I assume that she must have talked to her grandmother Bessie herself as she grew up, so perhaps the stories are not just my grandmother’s version of the facts, but Bessie’s version as well.

One other comment from these notes is a rather sweet one that I hope Max Brotman‘s grandchildren and great-grandchildren will appreciate:

Obviously, Max, who was probably the most successful businessman of the Brotman children, was also a very generous man. He provided food to my mother’s family during the Depression. Here is a great-uncle I’d never even heard of, someone my mother was too young then to remember, who helped out my grandmother and her family in a time of need. Thank you, Max.

Max Brotman

The final tidbit from the notes from Joel’s conversation with my aunt is this one:

In case you cannot read that, it says, “Brother came to America landed in NJ started a chicken farm. So successful that they named the town after him.” The quote points back to Joseph. This is obviously a reference to Brotmanville. Although it is not entirely accurate—Brotmanville was named for Abraham Brotman, who started a manufacturing business to employ the residents whose farms were failing, not for Abraham’s father Moses, who had the chicken farm—the note nevertheless provides support for the claim that we are in fact related to the Brotmanville Brotmans. As you may recall, Moses Brotman also had a father named Abraham, as revealed by his headstone and death certificate.

He was born in 1847 in Galicia, making him a contemporary of Joseph, my great-grandfather. I cannot rely on these notes alone to assert with any certainty that Moses and Joseph were brothers, but given the overall accuracy of what my aunt told Joel, it is enough evidence for me to start once again to try and find a connection. If we can find that connection and also learn where Moses Brotman lived in Galicia, it will help to answer a number of lingering questions.

He certainly has the Brotman cheekbones. Could this be what Joseph looked like also?

The Brotmanville Brotmans

Finding the Ruby Slippers and Getting Back Home to Where It Started: The Brotmans

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Amy

[for my aunt, Elaine Goldschlager Lehrbaum, 1917-1995]

Elaine 1933

Many of you who are more recent followers of the Brotmanblog may wonder why the blog is called the Brotmanblog. In the past several months I have barely mentioned the name Brotman because I have been focused on searching for my grandfather’s family, the Goldschlagers and Rosenzweigs. But if you go back to the beginning of the blog, you will see that my original search focused on my grandmother’s family, the Brotmans. That’s where I started my genealogy adventures. It made sense. My grandmother Gussie Brotman Goldschlager, my mother’s mother, was the grandparent I knew best, the only grandparent I knew as an adult. She was the only grandparent my husband ever met, though she died a year before we were married. It was only natural that I would start my journey trying to learn as much as I could about her and her siblings and her parents. Once I had found as much as I could find about the Brotmans, I then moved on to my grandfather’s family. The next chapter will be my father’s family. But it all started with the Brotmans.

Why do I bring that up now? Because this weekend I will finally get to meet a number of the Brotman cousins I only learned about through doing this research. There will be over thirty of us gathering in NYC to meet and eat and to visit the Lower East Side, where our grandparents and great-grandparents (and for some, great-great grandparents or parents) lived in New York. We will walk to 81/85 Ridge Street where the Brotmans first lived, now a public school, once a tenement building, and then we will tour the Tenement Museum to learn more about what life was like for all of them.

If you have not read any of my posts about the Brotmans, I have provided links here and below to some that will capture the essence of their lives. Even if you once did read them, you may want to re-read them if you are joining us this weekend and want to remember some of the details and themes I wrote about months ago. The Brotman story is the classic Jewish American immigration story, a story of poverty and heartbreak as a family moved from Galicia to NYC in the late 1880s to a story of assimilation and success as the future generations built businesses, moved beyond the Lower East Side, became professionals, and moved to the suburbs after World War II. My Brotman great-grandparents were hard-working realists who did what they needed to do to survive.

Although I was able to piece together a fair amount about their lives through census reports and other documents and through some stories my mother remembered about her grandparents, aunts, uncles and mother, at first there was no one else besides my mother and my brother to whom I could turn for information. My cousins shared stories about their grandparents, but they also knew little about the early lives of their grandparents and had no one left to ask either. So mostly I relied on documentation to learn what I could. I was able to put together a fairly complete history of the Brotman family in America and decided to move on to my grandfather’s family.

Then, like a gift of manna from heaven, about a month ago my cousin Jody sent me some notes that her husband Joel had taken from a conversation he’d had with my Aunt Elaine years ago about her family. I’ve referred to one part of those notes before—the story of how my grandmother Gussie met my grandfather Isadore on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, where my grandmother was living and where my grandfather’s cousins the Rosenzweigs were living in 1915. In the next day or two I’d like to share a few more tidbits from Aunt Elaine, via Joel’s notes.

But before I do, I want to point out that these notes are incredibly accurate. Although the conversation Joel had with my aunt must have taken place in the early 1980s, my aunt’s memory for details was astonishing. For example, she refers to the fact that Hyman’s son Emanuel worked for Kislack Realty. I checked with Manny’s children, and they confirmed that in fact Manny was President of J.I.Kislak Mortgage Corporation in Newark, NJ., which was a subsidiary of J.I.Kislak, Inc., a large residential and commercial Realtor based in Jersey City. Also, my aunt knew that David Brotman worked in the coat industry, that Max was in the cigar business, and that Abraham worked for a deli in Coney Island.

All of these are facts that are backed up by my research.

On the Goldschlager side as well, my aunt’s facts are corroborated by the information I found in my research. David Goldschlager lived in Scranton, PA, for some time and was in the hat business. Betty married a man in the dry goods business and moved to Arizona. I point out how accurate this information is to demonstrate how remarkable my aunt’s memory was and also so that you will trust the other statements she made and their accuracy when I report on those in upcoming posts.

In some ways finding these notes was frustrating. If I had found them last summer, much of the time I spent trying to figure out who Max was or whether Abraham was related to us or whether there were any other children would have been unnecessary. My aunt knew it all, and it is in these notes.

But as Glinda the Good Witch tells Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz (the movie) when she reveals to Dorothy that the ruby slippers could take her home and the Scarecrow asks why Glinda had not told Dorothy that from the beginning:

Glinda : Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.
Tin Man: What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy: Well, I – I think that it – that it wasn’t enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And that it’s that – if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?
Glinda: That’s all it is!

And then when the Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow all say that they should have helped Dorothy figure it out, Glinda replies:

She had to find it out for herself.

And so I did as well. If I had started with Aunt Elaine’s notes, I never would have worked as hard to learn how to research and find these things for myself. I would never have felt the amazing sense of satisfaction I’ve gotten from putting pieces together and from finding cousins who could help me put those pieces together.

Having my aunt confirm through these notes what I have learned and what I have done is a real gift. She was someone I adored and miss dearly. It’s like having her here with me again, hearing her say, “You see, Amy Kugel, I always knew you could do anything you wanted. And I knew some day you would want to know more about your history, your family.” But, as Glinda told Dorothy, she knew I had to find it out for myself.

Elaine 1926

Elaine Gussie Florence 1933

Elaine high school graduation

Elaine and Phil 1941

Sam with Gussie and Elaine 1945

Elaine and Jeff 1949

Aunt Elaine with Jeff and me

Phil and Elaine

Turn, Turn, Turn: A New Brotman-Goldschlager-Rosenzweig Has Arrived!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Amy

Michael Paul Lammlin

Life does in fact turn, turn, turn. One day you are sad about someone who passed away, and the next you are rejoicing in the birth of a new baby. I am delighted to announce the birth of Michael Paul Lammlin, brother of Joshua Lammlin, son of David and Marissa Lammlin. Michael is the grandson of Beth and Steven Robin. Beth is my first cousin.

Michael was born on March 13, 2014, at 5:34 pm, weighing 8 lbs., 1 oz., 19 1/2 inches long. And he carries on the Brotman tradition of red hair! (His father David also has red hair, so we cannot take all the credit.)

Michael was named for his great-grandfather, Maurice Goldschlager, my uncle, my mother’s brother. He joins a number of other cousins named for my uncle, who was adored by us all.

On his maternal side, Michael is the great-grandson of Maurice and Lynn Goldschlager and the great-great-grandson of Isadore Goldschlager and Gussie Brotman. Going even further back, Michael is the great-great-great grandson of Moritz Goldschlager and Ghitla Rosenzweig Goldschlager and the great- great-great-grandson of Joseph and Bessie Brotman. He is thus related to all my cousins who are the descendants of David and Esther Rosenzweig, Ira and Beila Goldschlager, Abraham and Yetta Brotman, or Joseph and Gittel Broat Brotman, his great- great-great-great grandparents.

Mazel tov to Marissa, David and Josh, to Beth and Steven, and to all of us! The family continues to grow.

Brotmans, Resslers, Rosenzweigs, and Goldschlagers: All Roads Meet on Pacific Street in Brooklyn

Another Addition to the Brotman Family Tree: David Brotman and his wife Annie

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Amy

Family Tree drawn by Elaine Goldschlager Lehbraum

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago my cousin Jody made a big discovery: handwritten notes that her mother had made of Joseph Brotman’s children. It included all the children we already knew about: Bessie’s children Hyman, Tillie, Gussie, Frieda (Florence in her notes) and Sam, as well as the two sons we knew of from Joseph’s first marriage, Abraham and Max. My brother had recalled that our aunt had said Joseph had had four children from his first marriage, but we did not know the names of the two remaining children, and I had traced every possible Brotman I could find to see if there was a link. I had hit many dead ends and found nothing that linked these other Brotmans to our family.

My aunt’s notes were a huge discovery because for the first time we had evidence of the names of those two missing children: David and Sophie. As I wrote when Jody first sent me the tree, I was able to locate a David Brotman from Austria who was a possible match for Joseph’s missing son, but I needed to check further and obtain some documentation in order to be sure.

Well, those documents arrived the other day, and I was so excited to see that on David’s marriage certificate in 1897, he listed his father’s name as Joseph Brotman and his mother’s as Chaye Fortgang.

David Brotman and Annie Salpeter marriage certificate

You may recall that Max had also listed his mother’s name as Chaye on his marriage certificate, so this confirmed that Joseph’s first wife was named Chaye, but now we know her surname as well.

Max Brotman marriage certificate

In addition, the marriage certificate gave David’s current address as 85 Ridge Street—the same address where Joseph and Bessie were living in 1895 when Gussie was born, according to her birth certificate.

Gussie birth certificate

This confirmed for me that David was Joseph’s son, Max and Abraham’s full brother, half-brother to Hyman, Tillie, Gussie, Frieda and Sam, and our great-uncle. I am still in a state of amazement that I was able to find him. Thank you, Aunt Elaine, for leaving behind this great clue to our family.

Once I had this information confirming the relationship, I located whatever census reports and other records I could find for David and his wife, Annie Salpeter. I found them on census reports for 1900, 1905, 1910, and 1920. David was a tailor according to the first three census reports, and he and Annie were living on the Lower East Side until at least 1910. At times Annie’s brother Morris lived with them as well as a cousin Meier, but there were no children listed on any of these census reports.

At the time of his World War I draft registration in 1917, David and Annie had left the Lower East Side and were living at 143 Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn, which was also their address on the 1920 census report, when David’s occupation was given as a cloak dealer in a “cloak house.” Annie and David were now 44 years old and still had no children living with them, so I assume that they never had children. So there are no more second cousins to find and probably no pictures of David and Annie. (But I’ve learned never to say never.)

I’ve yet to find David and Annie on the 1930 or 1940 censuses, but I am still looking. It seems unlikely that they had left Brooklyn. I was able to locate a 1946 death certificate for a David Brotman married to Anna living at 10 Sumner Avenue in Brooklyn, and I believe this is the same David, despite the fact that the death certificate has his father’s name as Isaac. I’ve learned enough to know that death certificates are notoriously unreliable. I will continue to see if I can find anything about David and Annie after 1920.

I do have David’s petition for naturalization in 1920, and it indicates that he had arrived in NYC on October 14, 1889, on the “Updam” from Tarnof, Austria.

David Brotman petition for naturalization 1920

Tarnof could be Tarnow, a city about fifty miles north of Tarnobrzeg/Dzikow and even further from Czchow, the two areas that I have been focusing on as the Brotman hometown based on Hyman’s listing of “Jeekief” and “Giga” on his documents. But Tarnof could also be Tarnobrzeg, the larger town that is near Dzikow. So did this new information help our search for our hometown in Galicia or did it just make it more confusing?

That led me to search for the ship manifest for David, now that I knew when he arrived and on what ship. With some help from Renee, I located a September 4, 1889, German ship manifest for the Portia, sailing to Rotterdam, listing Dawid Brodmann as a passenger. I was excited to see that David was traveling with his older brother, Abe Brodmann. I had not previously been able to find Abraham on a ship manifest, so this was another exciting discovery.

David and Abe Brodmann on the Portia 1889

On the Portia ship manifest, Abe and David are listed as coming from “Grambow, Russland,” not Austria at all, let alone Tarnow, Tarnobrzeg, Dzikow or Czchow. I would have found this an indication that these were not the right boys, but there is a town right near Tarnobrzeg called Grebow, and according to a 1914 map, Tarnobrzeg was very close to the Russian border. So perhaps our family lived in Grebow? Or maybe that is where Joseph lived with Chaye and then moved to Dzikow when he married Bessie?

On the manifest for the Obdam, sailing from Rotterdam to New York arriving on September 19, 1889, David and Abe are listed as coming from Austria, not Russia, which appears to be correct.

David and Abe Brodman on the Obdam to New York 1889

There is obviously some confusion and conflict here, but it’s another clue and another place to look for the Brotman home in Galicia. I already have contacted several people researching this area to see if I can uncover more clues.

I have a few more leads to follow to fill in the gaps in David’s life story, and maybe they will even lead me to Sophie, the only remaining child of Joseph to locate. There is also some potential evidence that will link our family to the Brotmanville Brotmans, but again, I need to do more research before it is worth speculating about that connection.

The Illusion of Accuracy: Hyman Brotman’s Story

Big Brotman Family Update!

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Amy

I’ve been focused on the Goldschlagers these last few weeks, but I have not at all forgotten my Brotman cousins. I have just not had anything new to report as I am still awaiting a few documents and also hoping to break the brick wall that prevents me from finding out about our Galician home and our earlier ancestors.

But today I actually have some news about the Brotman family. My first cousin Jody sent me the document depicted below:

Family Tree drawn by Elaine Goldschlager Lehbraum

It’s a family tree written by her mother, my aunt Elaine Goldschlager Lehrbaum, my mother’s sister. At first I didn’t realize there was anything new about it until I read it over a second, third and now fourth time. My aunt provided the names of all the other children of Joseph Brotman, including Max and Abraham, confirming what we already knew, that is, that they were Joseph’s sons from his first marriage. But now we have the names of the other two children from that first marriage: David and Sophie! This is huge news for me and gives me a new start to researching the other Brotman cousins.

Also, note that my aunt said that Joseph and Bessie were first cousins. (No wonder our gene pool carries so many repeating traits—like those distinctive cheekbones.) That may help me locate them in Europe since we now know that they had the same grandparents.

Finally, I never knew that my aunt’s Hebrew name was Esther. That was Gisella’s mother’s name—Esther, married to David Rosensweig. So my aunt was named for her great-grandmother. I wonder if she knew that.

Another one of those days when a small document can just bring tears and smiles to my eyes.

Jody also sent some wonderful pictures which I will post later. Thanks, Jo!

Pessel bat Yosef

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Amy

We decided to go to synagogue for Shabbat services this morning, and for the first time in a very long time, I had an aliyah. When the gabbai asked me for my Hebrew name to insert in the blessing, I said “Pessel bat Yosef.” I had not used my Hebrew name in any public way since I started doing all the genealogy research, and beforehand it had not meant anything too layered for me. It was just my Hebrew name.

The “Pessel” I knew was for my great-grandmother Bessie, but I knew almost nothing about her.

Bessie

The “Yosef” was manufactured by the rabbi who married us back in 1976. He had asked me for my father’s Hebrew name for the ketubah, and I didn’t know what it was. When I asked my father (whose English name is John), he said he had never had one. He’d not had a bar mitzvah, but had been confirmed in a Reform congregation which did not use Hebrew names. So the rabbi picked Yosef, figuring it was at least a name that started with a similar letter to John. That was fine with me. For a while I thought I’d switch to Yohanatan, figuring it was closer to John, but then I thought I should stick with what was on the ketubah (and easier to say).

So when I told the gabbai this morning that my name was Pessel bat Yosef, I felt a real connection to Bessie Brot Brotman, my great-grandmother, and I had a revelation. I didn’t know it in 1976 when I was married; I hadn’t even known it when I last had an aliyah several years ago. But now I know that Pessel bat Yosef was Bessie’s Hebrew name as well. Her father’s name was Joseph. So that rabbi in 1976 did not realize it, but he had in fact given me the same Hebrew name as my great-grandmother. When I realized that for the first time this morning, it gave me the chills.

Now that I know so much more about Bessie and her life, I feel particularly honored and moved to share her name. I am proud to be called Pessel bat Yosef, carrying her name and her memory into the present day and into the future.

Something fun

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Amy

One day a while back my brother asked me whether I thought Uncle Sam looked like our grandmother. I said that I saw a family resemblance among all four of Bessie and Joseph’s children for whom we had photos. (Poor Frieda—there does not seem to be any picture of her. Maybe Harry took off with them all…) To me, they all resembled Bessie. Here are some close-up head shots of Bessie and the four children.

Bessie Brotman

Hyman Brotman

Tillie

Gussie Brotman

Sam Brotman

I did not see as much resemblance between Max and the other children, not surprisingly since he had a different mother.

Max Brotman

That made me wonder whether Max looked more like Joseph than the other children, or did he look like his mother? (And sadly, we have no pictures of Abraham. It would be nice to be able to compare Abraham and Max. Morty and Paula, if you are still reading, do you have any photos of your grandfather??) We have no photo of Joseph, so it’s all speculation.

So I thought maybe if we combined a picture of Max and Hyman we’d have some clue as to what Joseph looked like. Totally unscientific, I know, and also illogical, but when you are searching, anything seems like a possibility. So here’s a picture that morphs Max and Hyman.

max and hyman morphed

Here’s Hyman and Sam morphed—a much closer resemblance:

Sam and Hyman morphed

Then I went a step further and combined Tillie and Gussie—the results are striking. The two sisters had a strong resemblance.

Tillie and Gussie morphed

Finally I combined all four of Bessie and Joseph’s children (Hyman, Tillie, Gussie and Sam) and all five of Joseph’s children for whom I have pictures (Max, Hyman, Tillie, Gussie and Sam).

Hyman, Tillie, Gussie and Sam

Max, Hyman, Tillie, Gussie and Sam morphed

Obviously these prove nothing, except perhaps that I am easily amused! What do you think?

Looking back on the first six months: Seven lessons learned by doing genealogy

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Amy

As my semester has drawn to an end, as the year draws to an end, I want to take some time to reflect on what I have learned in the last six months or so since I began this project in earnest and what I still want to learn and to accomplish as we start a new year.

So first, what have I learned?

1. I’ve learned that I had two great-uncles whom I’d never known about. For at least two months of my research, I was sure that Joseph and Bessie had only had five children: Hyman, Tillie, Gussie, Frieda and Sam. When I kept running into a Max Brotman married to Sophie with children named Rosalie and Renee, I just figured Hyman had changed his name to Max. My mother didn’t know about her cousins Joseph, Saul and Manny, but she had met Rosalie and Renee, and I was sure they were Hyman’s daughters. My mother knew that Hyman’s wife’s name was Sophie. So instead of looking harder, I just assumed Max was Hyman and that the other Hyman Brotman married to a Sophie was not my relative. Only when I was able to find Max’s granddaughter Judy and Hyman’s grandson Bruce did I learn that Max and Hyman were BOTH my great-uncles, that both had married women named Sophie, and that Rosalie and Renee were the daughters of Max, not Hyman. That was a HUGE turning point for me and a big lesson. Lesson learned? Don’t trust memory alone, and don’t assume that documents are wrong just because family memories conflict with those documents.

Herman and Sophie with sons 1920

2. The second new great-uncle was Abraham, and finding him was also somewhat of a lucky break. I ran across many Brotmans in my research, but most I assumed were not our relatives because I could not find any document linking them to our relatives and because no one in our family had ever heard of them. I can’t even remember all the details, but I recall that it was my brother Ira who found Abraham’s naturalization papers—I think (I am sure he will remember and correct me if I am wrong) it was in the course of looking into the Brotmanville Brotmans. When I saw Max’s name on those papers, I did not assume it was the same Max. (There were many Max Brotmans living in NYC at that time.) Once I checked the address for the Max on Abraham’s card against the address I had for Max on the census form from that same time period, I knew it was in fact “our” Max. That led me on the search that brought me to Abraham’s headstone and death certificate, indicating that his father was also Joseph Jacob Brotman. Lesson learned? Don’t dismiss any clue. You never know where one document may lead you, even if in a direction you never expected.

Naturalization of Abraham Brotman
Max as Witness

3. Contrary to Lesson #1 and Lesson #2, I have also learned that often you cannot trust documents. Documents lie. People lie. People give bad information, and bureaucrats transcribe information inaccurately. People who transcribe handwritten documents for indexing purposes make errors. In particular, our relatives were entirely inconsistent when it came to birth dates and birth places. I now know why one relative found it so easy to lie about her age. It was family tradition. So lesson #3: Don’t assume that because it is written on some “official document” that it is reliable in any way.

Sam's Birth Certificate Joseph was NOT 42!

Sam’s Birth Certificate
Joseph was NOT 46!

4. One of my most rewarding accomplishments was finding out what happened to Frieda Brotman. Now we know who she married and how she died and even the name of her infant son Max, who only lived one day. We even know what happened to her husband Harry Coopersmith after she died. I never thought I’d be able to track down her story. That experience is what will keep me going as I continue to look for the answers to more questions. Lesson #4: Do not give up. Do not give up. Do NOT give up!

5. There are more helpful and supportive people in the world than there are mean or evil people. I know we hear all the time about all the evil in the world, and there is far too much of it. And even if not evil, there are also many people who are rude, incompetent and unhelpful. We all know that. But we often forget that there are also many, many more people who are kind, helpful and competent. In my six months of doing this research, I have gotten help from many strangers—government employees who patiently helped me find a document, FHL volunteers who helped me track down a document request I had made, JewishGen and GesherGalicia members and other genealogists who have gone far out of their way to teach me how to find documents and how to connect with other researchers, who have photographed gravestones and given me directions to gravestones, who have translated documents for me, who have helped me find a clue when I was sure I had hit a brick wall. I cannot tell you how much these people have touched me and changed my views on human nature.

I want to express special thanks and deep appreciation to Renee Steinig, who contacted me many months ago in response to my cry for help on GesherGalicia and who has truly been my teacher and is now my friend as I have gone from being a total newbie to a fairly competent novice with her guidance. She is the one who found the obituary of Renee that led to me finding Judy. She is the one who suggested I post an inquiry on a bulletin board that led me to Bruce. When I look back, in fact, I know it was Renee who got me to where I am today. Thank you, Renee, for everything.

Lesson #5: If you ask for help, there will be generous and kind people who will reach out and help you. Don’t do this alone.

6. I have also learned that I have many second cousins and second cousins once and twice removed—people I would never have discovered if I had not started down this path. This has been probably the biggest gift of all from doing this research. What a wonderful and interesting group of people I have gotten to know—by email, by phone, by pictures and stories. When I look at the pictures and see the distinctive Brotman cheekbones shared by so many of you and your parents and your children, it gives me such a great sense of connection. This may be the best lesson I’ve learned: everyone is looking for connections, everyone is looking to find their place in time and in the world. I am so glad to have made these connections with so many of you, people who never even knew my name until this fall but whom I now consider not just cousins, but friends.

7. Finally, and in some ways the point of this whole adventure, I have really learned more than I ever could have hoped about my great-grandparents and their children and how they lived in the United States. Joseph and Bessie were nothing but names to me six months ago; now they are flesh and blood people, my flesh and blood. Their drive and courage is an inspiration to me, as it must have been to their own children. After all, Abraham, Hyman and Tillie all named a son for their father Joseph, and perhaps some of the great-grandchildren were named for him as well. I was so blessed to have been named for Bessie, as were some of you. Bessie and Joseph—they are the real heroes of this story. That’s the real lesson.

Joseph’s headstone

Bessie Brotman

Next post: Looking forward to the next six months

The Brotmanville Brotmans (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)
The American Immigrant Experience: The Brotman Story (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)
One Uncle Sam mystery solved (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)
The Illusion of Accuracy: Hyman Brotman’s Story (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)
Tillie’s Death Certificate (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)
Max Brotman: Who was his mother? (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)

Mt Zion and Mt Hebron

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Amy

[This is the second part of my post about the weekend in New York. If you haven’t read the post about the Lower East Side, that is Part One. This is Part Two.]

Before I write about my trip to Mt Zion and Mt Hebron cemeteries, let me tell you that I have never been someone who understood why people go to cemeteries, and it always seemed a little creepy to me. I don’t believe in an afterlife, and it seemed to me that you could remember those who had died without standing over the place where their bodies were buried.

I initially saw a cemetery trip this time as a way of doing more research. Then when I realized that Joseph was not buried near any of his children or his wife, I felt badly. It was likely no one had been there for a hundred years. Did that matter? Joseph didn’t know, so why did I care? I am not sure, but somehow I felt compelled to pay him honor. In fact, once I received the photos of the headstone and footstone from Charlie Katz, I no longer needed to go for research. I was going for some emotional reason that was mysterious even to me. The trip to Mt Hebron, which is only ten minutes away from Mt Zion, then seemed like an obvious addition to the trip to Mt Zion.

So off we went on Sunday morning, first to Mt Zion. It is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in New York City, and the graves are very close together with almost no open land left. I knew from Charlie Katz that it would be hard to find Joseph’s gravesite. The stones are so close together that it is very difficult to walk between and around them, and without Charlie’s directions, we might never have found it. But then suddenly we spotted it.

I stood there, not really knowing what to do or to think. I thought of his life, thanked him silently for bringing his family here, tried to imagine what he looked like. Did he have red hair? No idea. Then I left on the headstone one of the beach rocks I had collected the prior weekend. I had decided to bring a piece of something I loved to leave at the graves, and the beach is the place that always makes me the happiest. I left feeling that I had at least done something to honor his memory.

Then we went on to Mt Hebron, a much larger and much less crowded cemetery. The section where Bessie is buried is across the road from the section where my grandparents and Sam are buried. [What I didn’t know then is that Frieda is also buried there, but that’s a story for another post.] I saw Philip’s headstone right away, but did not realize that Bessie’s was right behind it, as you can see in the photo below.

It took some counting and looking, but finally Harvey spotted it. I felt the same way standing at Bessie’s grave—grateful and wistful. I found myself drawn to her name—both in Hebrew and in English—and rubbed my hand over the name Bessie, saying, “That’s my name.” I also was very touched to see that the Brotman name was included on her headstone, not just Moskowitz.

I left one of my beach rocks there as well and then walked across the street to the other section.

In that section I first saw Sam Brotman’s headstone. I never met Sam, and I really felt badly about that, given that he lived until I was 22 years old. I left a beach rock on his stone, saying, “I am sorry I never met you.”

In the row behind Sam’s grave I found my grandparents’ grave. The headstone was covered with ivy, which looked pretty but made reading the inscriptions impossible. I gently tore away the ivy so I could see the stones.

My grandfather died when I was almost five, so I have only the vaguest memories of him, but have heard lots of stories about him—how funny he was, how smart he was (he knew several languages), and how opinionated. He walked across Romania to escape oppression and poverty. I wish I had had a chance to know him better. There was a rock left on his headstone when we arrived. Who could have been there? I don’t think it could have been anyone recently, but perhaps it had been there for many years. I placed mine next to it and rubbed his name.

Seeing my grandmother’s headstone was the most difficult for me. She lived until I was 23, and when I was a little girl I loved her very much. She was fun and loving with her grandchildren, despite having had a difficult and often sad life. I have thought of her so many times while doing this research and learning what her life was like, but standing there, thinking of her, I suddenly was overcome with emotion and found myself sobbing, thinking of her and her life and the memories I have of her. As I did with Bessie and Isadore, I found myself rubbing my hand over her name, Gussie, feeling some unexpected emotion in doing so. I left my beach rock, specially selected for her, and wished I had asked her more questions while I could have.

Apparently, I was wrong. Going to the cemetery can bring you closer to those who are gone.

The Lower East Side

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Amy

The Lower East Side

I just returned from a wonderful weekend in NYC. Although seeing my grandson Nate (and his parents and his great-grandparents) was the best part of the weekend, I also had an opportunity to do two things I’ve wanted to do for a while: go to the Lower East Side and see where the Brotmans lived in the early 1900s and go to the cemeteries where my great-grandparents and grandparents are buried. I am going to divide those two experiences into two posts rather than one. This one will be about the trip to the Lower East Side.

On Saturday morning Harvey and I left our hotel down near Wall Street and walked north through the financial district and Chinatown, under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, to the Lower East Side. As we crossed streets like Grand, Henry, and Delancey, I tried to imagine what that neighborhood would have been like on a Shabbat morning a century ago. Now it is a mix of various ethnic groups, but I was surprised to see a number of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox men dressed for shul, walking past us. I hadn’t expected to see any sign of a Jewish community surviving there. As we passed two men dressed in Satmar garb (big furry hats, long black coats, beards and payes), I wondered, “Did Joseph dress anything like that? Were they at all observant? Did they go to shul? Or were they completely non-religious once they got to the US?’ I know that my grandmother had a kosher kitchen at first, but gave that up by the time I knew her. She was not at all religious, and I know that my grandfather was also not at all religious. What about your grandparents? Do you know how observant any of them were?

We crossed under the Williamsburg Bridge and then down Broome Street to where it intersected Ridge Street. Joseph and Bessie lived at 81 Ridge Street in 1900; it is where they lived with Max, Hyman, Tilly, Gussie, Frieda and Sam. It is also where Joseph died in 1901. The picture below shows the corner of Broome and Ridge:

We walked down Ridge to where 81 once stood. There is now a school there, as you can see :

Although I was sad that there was no longer a tenement building there, I thought that having a school there was the best possible alternative. Education helped our predecessors and all of us get to where we are today, so replacing what was probably a run-down tenement building with a modern new school seems appropriate.

Across the street at 80 Ridge is a newer building also, so obviously the original buildings are all gone.

I took these pictures at the corner of Ridge and Rivington where there was an older building. Perhaps that was more like the one where our family lived.

As we walked up and down the street, I tried to imagine my grandmother being a little girl, living there. I thought of her being just five years old when her father died, and how awful that must have been for them all. And I thought of poor baby Samuel who was four months old and would never know his father. It must have been a sad and very hard time for them all.

New York City is a remarkable place. The layers of history are all there, and you can feel them as you walk from neighborhood to neighborhood. Ridge Street is a nice street with clean and newer apartment buildings. You wouldn’t know today that it once was a crowded street with tenements filled with new immigrants, speaking Yiddish, and struggling to survive in what was supposed to be a place with streets lined with gold. As we walked past Asian and Latino residents who themselves are likely immigrants or the children of immigrants, I realized how that experience continues to make New York the rich, fascinating and challenging city that it is. I may have left the New York area long ago, but it still calls out to me as my home. I am sure the same is true for many of you, whether you are living in Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, California, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts—or New Jersey or Long Island.

Isn’t it also interesting how some of the fifth generation children have returned to New York City themselves?

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: Bessie

More Manna from Heaven: Of Bessie, Joseph, Max and the Brotmanville Brotmans

Finding the Ruby Slippers and Getting Back Home to Where It Started: The Brotmans

Turn, Turn, Turn: A New Brotman-Goldschlager-Rosenzweig Has Arrived!

Another Addition to the Brotman Family Tree: David Brotman and his wife Annie

Big Brotman Family Update!

Pessel bat Yosef

Something fun

Looking back on the first six months: Seven lessons learned by doing genealogy

Mt Zion and Mt Hebron

The Lower East Side

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