Old Friends: Braided Forever

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Amy

My mother has often spoken about how sad she was when her family decided to move from Brooklyn to the Bronx when she was about twelve years old. There were many reasons she was upset. For one, she had to leave her dog Sparky behind. That broke her heart, and she still can’t talk about it without getting emotional.

But also she had to leave her best friend Beatty behind. Beatty lived in the same four-family house at 1010 Rutland Road in Brooklyn; she lived right down the hall from my mother. They had been close friends all through childhood, and although they tried to stay in touch after my mother moved, back in the 1940s that was not at all easy. Phone calls were expensive, and the trip from Brooklyn to Parkchester in the Bronx was a long one, especially for two young girls. So over time, they lost touch.

Beatty and my mother c. 1940

Not too long ago my mother asked me if I could find Beatty. She knew her first and last name from when she’d last seen her over 70 years earlier, but she had no idea where she was living or whom she might have married. I tried to find her, but with so little information I had no luck. If Beatty had married, it was after the last year of the publicly available NYC marriage index (1937). The only information I could find related to her siblings, who had passed away.

So you can imagine how excited I was to receive a message on the blog last week from Beatty herself. She was looking for my mother after seeing her pictures and childhood name on the blog. I contacted Beatty, and I called my mother. And I gave them each other’s contact information, and now they are reconnected after over 70 years. I get the chills (and a warm feeling) whenever I think about it.

One of the stories my mother shared with me was about Passover at Beatty’s house. Her father led the seder in a very serious way, and as many of us know, a traditional seder can get quite long and quite boring, especially for young children. To keep themselves from misbehaving and talking, my mother and Beatty would braid the fringes on the beautiful tablecloth that adorned the seder table. When my mother shared this memory with Beatty, she said that she also had shared that story with her children.

The tablecloth still exists, and even more remarkable, the braids made by my mother and her best friend Beatty are still there as well. Here is the photograph to prove it.

Beatty’s tablecloth

My mother was once my Girl Scout troop leader, and one of the songs we sang had the lyrics, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other gold.” My mother and Beatty certainly know the truth of that message.

Leah Strolowitz Adler: An American Immigrant Success Story

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Amy

As I have written before, one of the fascinating aspects of doing this research is what I’ve learned about the experience of Jewish immigrants in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It is remarkable to me how children who arrived without speaking English and living in poverty were able to assimilate successfully into American society and make a good life for themselves and their children in this country.

Leah Strolowitz Adler is a good example of this remarkable transformation from a poor Romanian immigrant to an American success story. Thanks to her granddaughter Jean, I’ve been able to learn a fair amount about Leah and to obtain several pictures of her. Leah was born on May 25, 1900, in Iasi, Romania, the seventh and youngest child of Jankel Srulovici and Tillie Rosenzweig. She was only seven years old when she immigrated with her parents and siblings to New York City, where soon afterwards her father either died or disappeared. She lived with her mother and siblings and her two cousins, Isadore and Betty Goldschlager, in a tenement in East Harlem. While her older siblings went to work in sweatshops to support the family, Leah went to Public School 101 in Harlem on 109^th Street, where she completed eighth grade in 1915. Jean recalled that Leah told her that although she was happy to leave Romania, she found the transition to America difficult. Leah remembered standing on line at the public school in NYC and being teased for speaking Yiddish. Obviously, however, Leah soon learned English and even went on to Julia Richmond High School.

After she finished school, Leah lived with her mother and sisters, working in a millinery shop, until she married Ben Schwartz on June 26, 1921. Jean shared with me the story of how Leah met Ben. Leah had been friendly with or briefly dated Ben’s brother Emmanuel. While Emmanuel was overseas during World War I, Leah dropped by his optometry office for an eye exam and met Ben. Ben asked Leah out for a cup of coffee. The family story is that when Leah finished her piece of cake, Ben offered to buy her a second piece, and she knew right then that “he was a keeper.” Ben was American born and also an optometrist, according to his draft registration and various census reports.

Here are some photos of Leah, taken by Ben, during their courtship around 1920. She looks like a genuine American woman of the 1920s. She certainly seems to have left her poor immigrant beginnings behind her.

Leah c. 1920

leah

This is Leah and Ben around 1920:

1920 Leah with Ben Schwartz

Here is a photograph of Leah around 1921, reading a Yiddish newspaper, the Jewish Morning Journal.

Leah c. 1921

Leah and Ben moved to the Bronx and had a son Ira (named for Isidor, Leah’s oldest brother), born in 1923, and a daughter Theodora (“Teddy”)(named for Tillie, Leah’s mother) born in 1927. Here is a photograph of Leah, wearing a fur coat and holding Teddy in February, 1929, when Teddy was two years old. Notice the price of the baby clothes in the window of the shop behind them: 79 cents.

Leah and Teddy February 1929

Sometime in the 1930s, Leah’s divorced sister Bertha came to live with the Schwartz family for a number of years (at least until 1940, according to the US census of that year). Teddy still remembers her mother Leah commenting that it was a good thing that her father Jankel could not see them all working on Shabbos, suggesting that Jankel must have been an observant Jew.

According to Jean, Bertha taught Teddy to sew, but Leah was upset because she wanted her daughter to do more with her life than the sewing work that Leah and her sisters had done. I found this remarkable, given that women had so few choices back in the 1930s, but Leah clearly had a progressive vision and did not want her daughter to limit herself in anyway.

Teddy and Leah and Ben
1944 after her high school graduation

Teddy did grow up to be independent. After graduating from Taft high school in 1944, she attended NYU and became an occupational therapist, a professional woman long before that was common. Because she hated the cold, she moved by herself to Atlanta, Georgia, after seeing an advertisement for a job there. She soon met the man who would become her husband, Abner Cohen, whose family had deep roots in Atlanta. Teddy and Abner stayed in Atlanta where they raised their three children.

Jean recalled that Leah was scared to death to fly and so she and Ben would take the seventeen hour trip by train from NYC to Atlanta once or twice a year. Jean remembered, “At the station, while we waited for the train to arrive, we placed copper pennies on the track and after she disembarked and her train left, we would collect the flattened Abe. Grandma baked wonderful rugelach and some round brown sugar cookies. We made such a to do about her cookies that she would arrive toting the dough already mixed and formed ready to bake.”

Leah and Ben

Leah in 1968 with a cousin Margie

Leah and Ben’s 50th anniversary 1971

Eventually Teddy’s parents Leah and Ben moved to Atlanta, where they lived the rest of their lives.

So Leah Strolowitz Adler, who was born in Iasi and moved to America at age 7, not speaking English and living in a Harlem tenement, grew up and lived a comfortable life in New York, raised a daughter who became a health care professional, and retired with Ben to Atlanta, where she was able to get to know her grandchildren, including Jean, my fellow family historian. To me, it is a remarkable story, another example of the amazing resilience and persistence of the immigrant generation who made life possible for all of us today.

And A New Branch for the Goldschlager Tree: The Third Rosenzweig Sister

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Amy

These last few days have been very exciting ones for me. Not only did I find persuasive evidence of another member of the Brotman family, I also have persuasive evidence of a new member of the Goldschlager family, a third Rosenzweig sister, Zusia, also called Sonsa, Celie, Susie and Susan. I am still piecing together her life and need to obtain more documentation to do that, but this is what I know so far.

Ghitla Rosenzweig Goldschlager

First, some background: Moritz Goldschlager, my great-grandfather, married Ghitla Rosenzweig, daughter of David and Esther Rosenzweig, according to the records found by my researcher in Iasi, Romania. Ghitla, who was also called Gittel, Gussie and Gisella, emigrated to the United States in 1910 with her son David, following my grandfather Isadore in 1904, her husband Moritz in 1909, and her daughter Betty in 1910. As described before, her husband died in April, 1910, and her two children, Isadore and Betty, moved in with Tillie Strolowitz, herself a widow, and her seven children. According to Tillie’s death certificate, her birth name was Tillie Rosenzweig, and her parents were also David and Esther Rosensweig. Tillie had emigrated with her husband and her three youngest children in 1907, following her older children who had emigrated over the years 1901 through 1907. I was quite excited when I figured out that Tillie was my grandfather’s aunt and had taken him and Betty in after their father had died.

Then a few weeks ago, I reviewed my grandfather’s ship manifest from 1904 (under his brother David’s name) and noticed again that he was supposed to meet an uncle, Morsche or Moische Mintz, in New York City. I had not been able to find this uncle before, and I was stymied again when I searched for him. Then I located a document indicating that my grandfather had been shortly detained at Ellis Island, apparently because his uncle had not been able to meet him. Instead he was met by an aunt Zusie Mintz, who lived at 110 East 117^th Street. But who was she?

Record of Detained Aliens
Isadore listed as David Goldschlager meeting Zusie Mintz

By searching the NYC marriage index, I was able to locate a Zusie Rosenzweig married to a Harry Mintz and wondered whether this could be the aunt who met Isadore and whether she was another sister of Ghitla and Tillie. I ordered a copy of the marriage certificate and also looked for further documentation of Zusie Mintz. I found one census reference for a Sonsa Mintz, living with cousins Jacob and Rachel Reitman in 1900 as a widow. If this was the same person as Zusie Mintz, it explained why the uncle had not been available in 1904; he had died. But was Sonsa also Zusie, and who were the Reitmans?

I looked for Zusie or Sonsa or Susie on the later census reports, but could not find her on any of them. Had she remarried and changed her name? Had she died?

I then looked for and found a death certificate for a Susie Mintz dated March 11, 1931, and I ordered that as well. At that point I decided to wait for these two documents to arrive before going on what might be a wild goose chase. I received those documents two days ago, the same day I received the documents evidencing that David Brotman was my great-uncle. Could I have struck gold twice in one day?

Yes, I could, and I did. The marriage certificate, dated December 6, 1896, confirmed that the Zusi Rosenzweig who married Harry Mintz was the daughter of David Rosenzweig and Esther Gilberman, revealing for the first time Esther’s birth name. The certificate confirmed also that Zusi was from Romania. Zusi had been living at 136 Allen Street, and Harry was living at 191 Allen Street, so presumably they had met in the neighborhood. Harry was 31 years old, born in Austria, and was marrying for the first time. Zusi was 24 years old, but already a widow.

Zusi Rosenzweig and Harry Mintz marriage certificate

Had she married before she left Romania, or since arriving in NYC? Why had she gone back to her birth name, Rosenzweig? These are questions for which I still do not have answers.

The second document I received, the death certificate for Susie Mintz who died on March 11, 1931, also confirmed that Zusi, now Susie, was the daughter of David and Esther Rosenzweig, born in Romania. Susie was 54 years old at the time of her death, meaning that she was born in 1877, whereas if she had been 24 in 1896, her birth year would have been 1872. The death certificate also indicated that she was a widow, and it provided her current address: 523 East 108^th Street in the Bronx.

Susie Mintz death certificate

The reverse side of her death certificate contained some surprising information. It revealed that the undertaker had been employed by “Mr. Mintz,” Susie’s son. Susie had a son? If so, where was he in 1900 when Sonsa was living with Jacob Reitman? Or was that really Susie/Zusi? If Susie had a son, perhaps she had other descendants as well. But what was her son’s name? When was he born?

reverse of death certificate

Using the address on the death certificate, I worked backwards to see if I could find Susie on the 1930 census, since I assumed she had not moved between the 1930 census and the time of her death in March, 1931. This took some doing, as you have to scan through all the pages within a specific enumeration district to find the address; there is no index by address. I finally found her address, and then I found her listing: she was living at the same address, listing herself as Susan Mintz, 42 years old, a dressmaker, and as married. Married? She was living with a boarder named Hannah Kassel, an older woman who was a widow. When I looked at the form more closely, I realized that the M for married also could be a W for widowed. I think the indexers read it incorrectly, and that Susie was in fact still a widow in 1930, as she was in 1900 and at her death.

Susan Mintz 1930 census

From the 1930 census, I then went to see if she had been at that address ten years earlier for the 1920 census. After more scanning and searching, I found her once again at the same address, but now using the name Celie, or at least that is how the census taker recorded it. She was listed as a widow, a dressmaker, and 42 years old (I guess she did not want to admit being any older ten years later in 1930). Zusi/Susie/Celie was living alone at that time.

Celie Mintz 1920 census

Next came the 1915 New York State census—could I find her again at that address? I searched for Celie Mintz this time, and without having to scan the census, I found her on the next block at 522 East 139^th Street in the Bronx, working at a cloak and suit factory, and living with her son, Nathan. Her son! I had found a record for her son.

Celie and Nathan Mintz 1915 NYS census

I could not find either of them on the 1910 census or the 1905 New York State census, at least not yet, but now I had her son’s name and could search for him.

I checked the New York City birth index for a birth certificate for a baby named Nathan Mintz and found one dated December 6, 1897, exactly a year after Harry Mintz had married Zusi Rosenzweig. This certainly could be the right Nathan, but I now need to obtain that certificate to be sure.

I did find Nathan’s 1917 draft registration for World War I, listing his mother as Cecile Mintz living at 523 East 138th Street in the Bronx, the same address where she was living from 1920 until her death. Cecile is closer to Zusi and Susie than Celie, and looking at the 1915 census it does look more like Ceci than Celie. The fact that Nathan’s address in 1917 was the same as that on Susie Mintz’s death certificate confirms that Susie and Cecile and Celie and Susan were all the same woman.

Nathan Mintz draft registration 1917

I then found a Nathan Mintz who married Gertrude Friedman in 1930. I need to order that certificate as well, but I suspect that this is the correct Nathan because on the 1940 census, Nathan and Gertrude have an eight year old daughter, born then in 1932, named Susanne. If this is the right Nathan, it makes perfect sense that he would name his first born child after his mother Susie one year after her death.

Nathan, Gertrude and Susanne Mintz 1940 census

But there are obviously many unanswered questions. I can’t find a death certificate for Harry—did he really die, or did he just disappear? Who are Jacob and Rachel Reitman? How, if it all, were they related to Zusi? And where was Nathan living if that was Zusi living with the Reitmans in 1900? Zusi was the one who met my grandfather at Ellis Island in 1904, but he was living alone in 1905. Where was Zusi living in 1905? 1910? She was not living with either of her sisters in 1910, so where did she go? And where was Nathan in those years and between 1917 when he registered for the draft and 1930 when he married Gertrude?

Yes, there are a lot of holes and a lot of questions, but I remain fairly certain that Zusi Rosenzweig Mintz was my great-grandmother’s sister and thus my great-great aunt and that Nathan Mintz was therefore a first cousin to Isadore, David and Betty Goldschlager and to all the Strolowitz children. Did they know him? And, of course, if Susanne Mintz was Nathan’s daughter, then she would have been my mother’s second cousin. And if Susanne had children, then they would be my third cousins.

So stay tuned—more to come once I receive more information.

The Sisters Rosensweig[1]

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Amy

One of the things that confused me about the ship manifest for David Goldschlager, before I knew that it was really my grandfather Isadore on the ship using his brother’s name, was that David did not list his brother Isadore as the person meeting him in New York. Instead, he listed an uncle whose name appeared to be Morishe (?) Mintz. I had no idea who this was, and I could not turn up anyone on any document who might have been this mysterious uncle. Also, if Isadore had arrived first, why wasn’t he meeting his brother David?

Isadore Goldschlager ship manifest (under David’s name)

Once I established that in fact Isadore was the one who had arrived on the Patricia in October, 1904, I went back to look more closely at the manifest and to search again for Uncle M. Mintz, with no luck. I did, however, find a separate document that I had not seen before relating to Isadore’s (“David’s”) arrival at Ellis Island, a Record of Detained Aliens, shown below.

Record of Detained Aliens
Isadore listed as David Goldschlager

I am familiar with this type of document now because I had seen the one issued for Gisella Goldschlager, who had listed her husband Moritz as the person meeting her. Because her husband had died, she was apparently detained and released to her son Isadore instead. It appears that the same type of occurrence detained my grandfather. On the document it says the cause of detention was “to uncle,” and then in the next column for “Disposition,” it says “Aunt Zusie (?) Mintz, 177 East 111^th Street, New York City.” From this I surmised that something prevented Uncle Mintz from meeting Isadore and that instead his wife Zusie had picked him up instead.

That led to a search for the aunt and uncle. I could not find any M Mintz on the 1900 census from Romania who could fit. I searched the NYC marriage index and also had no luck—until I searched for all men named Mintz who had married between 1880 and 1904. I checked every one of them to see what their bride’s names were and was excited when I found a bride named Zusia ROSENSWEIG married to a Harry Minz in 1896. Could this be a third Rosensweig sister?

If so, she would have been the youngest sister, about 14 years younger than Tillie, ten years younger than Ghitla/Gisella. Why would she have left Romania first and not her older sisters? Her sisters did not arrive until 1907 and 1910, respectively, when they were already married and had children. But Zusia was still single, and thus more able to pick up and leave earlier, as did her nephew Isadore at age sixteen.

Harry and Zusia were married in 1896, so I looked again on the 1900 census using the name Harry with a wife with a name that could be Zusia. No luck. I decided to look just for an S or Z Mintz and found a Sonsa Mintz, a widow, living with Jason and Rachel Reitman and their one year old daughter Clara. Sonsa was identified as a cousin of the head of household and as a widow. Assuming that this is the same woman who had married Harry Mintz, it means that her husband died less than four years after they were married. It obviously would explain why he was unable to meet Isadore/David at the boat in 1904. I have not located a death certificate for Harry, however, nor do I know for sure yet that Sonsa is the same person as Zusia or really the sister of Tillie and Gisella.

Unfortunately, I cannot find a Sonsa, Zusia, Susan, or Susie Mintz in any later census. I did find a reference for a Susie Mintz who died in the Bronx in 1931 and is buried in New Jersey, but I do not know if this is the same person. I will order the death certificate to see, but at the moment I have no other records for Sonsa Mintz after 1900. I assume she may have remarried, but I did not find a marriage record either.

The only other possible record relating to the third Rosensweig sister is a ship manifest listing an eighteen year old girl named Sural Rosensweig from Romania, arriving in New York on September 30, 1890. The age and name are close enough that it could be the same person, but I cannot know for sure. (On the 1900 census, Sonsa Rosensweig’s birthdate is April, 1874, and her arrival date is 1891, whereas on the manifest her birth year would have been 1872 and arrival year 1890.)

Although I’ve hit a wall so far with Sonsa and with Harry, her husband, I did look to see if I could figure out how Sonsa was a cousin to the Reitmans. Was it through Harry? Through Jacob or through his wife Rachel? Although I was able to find a number of records for the Reitmans, up through their great-grandchildren, I have not yet figured out the relationship. They, like Sonsa, were from Romania, but beyond that, I have no clues. I have sent an email to one of the great-grandchildren, but it seems quite unlikely that they would know anything about a woman named Sonsa Mintz who lived with their great-grandparents in 1900.

I will have to hope that the 1896 marriage certificate for Harry Mintz and the 1931 death certificate for Susie Mintz have some clues.

[1] With apologies to Wendy Wasserstein. No connection to her play is intended….

Tillie’s Story

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Amy

Although I have no memory of meeting Aunt Tillie, I heard her name all the time when I was growing up. (I don’t know which spelling she preferred; sometimes it is Tilly, sometimes Tillie. I have used both spellings throughout the blog.) She was very close to my grandmother Gussie, and my mother and her sister and brother adored her. She was described to me as a lot of fun: vivacious, outgoing, funny and loving. It seems she was the one who provided a lot of the happy experiences for my mother and her siblings growing up.

Like my grandmother, she had a tough life. She was born in 1884 and came to the US with Bessie and Chaim when she was 6 or 7 (census reports are in conflict; some say 1890, some say 1891). In 1900 when she was sixteen, she was living on Ridge Street with her parents, her brother Hyman, and her two little sisters, Gussie, who was five, and Frieda, was three. When her father Joseph died a year later, my guess is that Tillie must have become a second parent to Gussie, Frieda and the infant Sam.

In 1905 when she was 22, Tillie married Aaron Ressler. At the time she was still living on Ridge Street with her mother and siblings. Aaron was 26 at the time and was also living in the Lower East Side. By 1910, Tillie and Aaron had three sons, Leo, Joseph, and Harry, all under five. They were living at 94 Broadway in Brooklyn, where they owned a grocery store at 100 Broadway. In addition, Gussie had moved in with them, choosing to live with Tillie instead of moving in with Bessie after she had married Phillip Moskowitz. (Bessie and Phillip were still living on the Lower East Side in 1910, so moving to Brooklyn must have been a big deal for twelve year old Gussie.) Gussie helped take care of the boys while Aaron and Tillie worked in the store. Family lore has it that my grandfather spotted my grandmother while she was sitting in the window of Tillie and Aaron’s store.

Life must have seemed pretty good for the Ressler family in 1910. By 1918, however, things had changed. On Aaron’s draft registration form of that year, he reported that he was not employed and was suffering from locomotor ataxia, a condition that causes pain and loss of muscle control and movements. The 1920 census did report that Aaron worked at a grocery store, although it also said he worked at home. They no longer lived on Broadway, but on Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn. Aaron died six years later in February, 1926, leaving behind Tillie and three sons aged 20, 19, and 17.

Tillie continued to run the grocery store for some time after Aaron died. I cannot find any record of Tillie and her two younger sons in the 1930 census, but in 1940 she was living on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx with Joe and Harry (Leo had married Mildred and moved to Connecticut by then). According to the census, she had also lived at this same address in 1935, so at some point Tillie had left Brooklyn as a widow with two almost grown sons and moved all the way to the Bronx. She never remarried and died at age 72 in 1956 after suffering from painful arthritis. My mother remembers that she was treated with cortisone, perhaps excessively, and ended up dying in a public hospital on Welfare Island in NYC, where my grandmother would go to see her every week.

I don’t know why she moved to the Bronx, perhaps to make a fresh start. My mother remembers that Aunt Tillie lived in a one bedroom apartment on the then-glamorous Grand Concourse with her two adult sons, Joe and Harry. I don’t know how she supported herself after Aaron died, but somehow she did. My mother was born after Aaron died, and so she only knew Tillie as a widow, yet she remembers Tillie as a happy, upbeat person who would bring my mother baked goods (and once a large easel) that she carried on the subway from the Bronx to Brooklyn on her weekly trips. Tillie was the one who held the family together—the one who encouraged my aunt Elaine to go stay with Leo and Mildred in Connecticut to broaden her horizons, who took my mother to baseball games, who could occasionally get my shy grandmother to socialize. When my sister was born in 1955, Tillie brought treats not only for my mother, but also for the other new mothers who were sharing the same hospital room. She was a woman who was born in Europe, but spoke English like an American, who brought up three sons, took care of her sisters and brothers, and was one of the most positive influences on my mother and her siblings. She was strong and positive despite all the hardships she had faced. I wish I had had a chance to know her.

The Lower East Side (brotmanblog.wordpress.com)

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: Bronx

Old Friends: Braided Forever

Leah Strolowitz Adler: An American Immigrant Success Story

And A New Branch for the Goldschlager Tree: The Third Rosenzweig Sister

The Sisters Rosensweig[1]

Tillie’s Story

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