The Question of Seidenberg & the Baden Connection .

 

This is an ad in Key West...

..La Rosa Espanola.

The Queen of Seidenberg cigars.

Jake as an older man at my mother's wedding.

He was the tallest person there...

..not saying a lot as most were short.

But tall than his younger brother Morris

This is a picture in many books on the History of Key West. There was a famous photographer who went to Key West in it's boom days when my family was there and had a little studio not far from their home on Whitehead Street. Jake is the taller of the three boys on the right. Morris, his younger brother is in the middle and a family friend on the left. They are seen in many photographs of early Key West but that photographer in the 1880s. 

Apparently Jake didn't always listen when you told him "stop chasing after that nice photographer" as he was intrigued by what this newcomer was doing. The photographer told his mother Ida that it's fine, that having subjects in a picture shows the size and scale of the buildings better. He's right, it gave the photo an interesting sort of hook to look deeper as well as the size and scale of the buildings. More Jake below on Duval Street in Key West in the1880s.

Another picture of Jake and Morris with Wolf.

On the infamous wharf in Key West.

My grandmother had a copy of this photo that I grew up looking at, this one is from a book on Key West History. Taller man my Great Grandfather, Jake in front of Morris in the back. Worth noting he is protectively holding the hand of his son Morris. 

The photo above was enhanced by My heritage.

Again the same grouping.

Wolf on the right.

Morris in the middle.

Jake on the left.

In the doorway would be Ida and Jenny.

Though it could be Ida and Annie.

Too vague.

100% the description my grandma had of Ida.

Long white sleeves.

Something on her head...scarf or hat.

Note she wore a "sheitel" in Key West.

A "wig" made for Orthodox Jewish Women.

More on that later.

I've seen pics of Jenny then she was dressed the same.

The little boy on the far left is in the previous picture.

What a picture in time.

Again the photographer took photos of businesses.

They were close friends with the owners.

They had obviously just bought new clothes for the boys..

...or dressed up for the occasion.

Usually they look like they are out of Huckleberry Finn.

Huckleberry Finn was written in 1884.

Three things to know about doing genealogy on families connected to the cigar industry in Key West in the 1880s is that much of what went on happened in New York City. The tobacco came from Cuba 90 miles away from Key West. The tobacco was manufactured in Key West by Cubans and Jews and probably Jewish Cubans as well as a few Portuguese who moved from .......get ready for it........ the St. Augustine area that had a large population of Portuguese ...some of whom may have been Jews that ran away during the Inquisition and others who set sail to the New World to seek their fortune or fame. The beautiful cigar boxes were often designed and made my German artists and some may have been Jewish, yet it was common for Jews from Germany to show their German heritage more than their Jewish. This case in point I learned when I was sitting for hours in Key West in the "Florida Room" with Tom Hambright a magical, funny, librarian that was the heart and soul of the collection explained this German collection. I said to him "well that makes sense" as I explained to him that several famous cigar makers were Jewish from Europe and he told me he always thought they were Texas. They identified as Texan but they originally came from Germany and were Jewish as well.

There was nothing more fun than sitting with Tom in the Library, across the table from him listening to his folksy wisdom and steel trap mind that could easily take on AI and win. If you mentioned a name, in my case Francisco Marrero, he'd say I have a present for you and jump up, disappear into his vault and come out with a photo and made a large size copy for me that I treasure. It's a long story, but the point is if Tom said something you could count it was true and that's how I learned the Cigar Boxes I love were originally designed and made in Germany. At some point the prints were used to make them in New York and the lower East Side of New York was the hub of the Cigar Industry.

1. Tobacco from Cuba

2. Financially run from NYC

3. German artists made the designs for the Cigar Boxes.

Obviously the cigars were made in Key West.

Why is this important?

My mother had this theory she would not let go of and she may have been right, though it's hard to nail down. She believed that her Grandmother Ida's first husband was originally a Seidenberg not a Seiden and that was how the family ended up in Key West. Her first husband died very young, soon after they were married and they had a son named Jacob who was "adopted" by her 2nd husband my great, grandfather Wolf Abrams. While first in America Jacob went by Jacob Abrams. As he approached adulthood he went by Jacob Seiden to honor his birth father. But in a 1895 census from Malaga, NJ  Jake is listed as Jacob Sidenberg. Somewhere in Tampa where the family moved their main headquarters to in Ybor City he started a Tobacco Company with the name Seiden.  Note he didn't spell it Seidenberg but Sidenberg but it's close enough to say my mother's theory definitely has legs.

Also worth noting there were over 20 years between by Grandma Mary the "baby" of the family and her older brother Jake. So he's more like a Great Great to me than a Great Uncle in the frame work of time and generations. Wolf was more like the average person's Great, Great Grandfather than the Great Grandfather. His grave his seen below. Jacob's grave marker is below, spelled SIEDEN another wrench in the hypothesis. Was that a clerical mistake or does it align with his spelling in NJ with the Sidenberg?

Let's compare a bit with Joseph Seidenberg.

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There is a long, factually written discussion on Joseph Seidenberg, explaining how he got into the cigar industry while in Key West doing other things. Note, it also says the first cigars he sold in Key West were manufactured in German, later he opened up one of the largest, best run factories on the island. 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/100041122/joseph-seidenberg 

Worth mentioning here that a profession genealogist asked me if he could look at my chart some and suggested to me that many roads lead to Baden a city in Germany that was never on the family list. I was a bit skeptical but it's true that German Jews spread out across Europe looking for business endeavors ending up deep into Lithuania, Hungary and especially to America. Is Jake the missing link or does that go to my Chitrik/Rosen ancestors who connect somehow with the Carlebach family from Germany. Still not sure.

Worth noting Joseph's son was named

William James Seidenberg 

James usually aligns with Jacob in Hebrew.

Most Jack's I know are Yaakov.

Yaakov is James.

According to AI

Joseph and his brother Samuel...

..both used Jacob for a middle name for their sons.

My Uncle Jake listed two different places on his records. His naturalization papers showed a town in Lithuania named Ledvayners, Russia which genealogist friends have told me would be known as  Liudvinavas  a town that many countries owned in Lithuania, but at the time was part of Russia.

From his naturalization papers.

2nd page shows his birthplace.

Suwalk, Russia.

Jake owned tobacco farms in Quincy, FL

He traveled frequently to Havana.

Also I have been told Key West.

My mother said referencing her uncles.

My mother said they're always going back & forth

to Cuba for tobacco business.

Map shows both cities.

Baden is fairly far from Suwalk.

Baden is fairly far from Nezhin (Chitrik/Rosen)

I've learned people got around more than we think.

Especially if they had money or contacts.

Not everyone stayed in the Shtetl like Teyve...

My mother's hypothesis was that while Ida remarried they were still in touch with her husband who died young and perhaps his Uncle would have a proprietary interest in Jake and suggested or helped them move to Key West. 

That's not how the story goes from Grandma, but my mother was a writer and stories came to mind especially stories that would align with her interest. She grew roses and loved roses and loved that he put a rose on his cigar boxes. There is a street in Key West named Seidenberg after the famous factory that due to politics between the Cubans working there and the Spanish workers (long story) he picked up and followed his friend to Tampa and built a huge tobacco factory there.  It's worth noting my Great Grandparents packed up after almost dying from Malaria or whatever plague was going around and moved to Malaga NJ though they were in Philadelphia where they had relatives in 1900 according to the census. They still went to Key West for business and followed many others (not just Seidenberg) to Tampa where they started over. The reason being as my grandmother pointed out was that "Tampa had running water and her mother was tired of having to use mosquito infested water from the cisterns in Key West" and I'll add this was huge as my Grandma never stopped talking about the cisterns they had to have behind their home to get water from vs running water. 

I have tried to find information on the Joseph Seidenberg family, but not enough to get nail down the connection though I do believe it's there. Jake being a cigar dealer as was Joseph a fairly large smoking cigar. Time of being in Key West and the move to Tampa could be more than a coincidence.

I did find a DNA cousin named Jake Seidenberg but he went to Galveston and others. They all put down their old home as Odessa or other places in Mogilev in the Ukraine. But I will say there are repetitive names that are similar. I can't find that picture right now and have tarried with this blog way too long. Again the blog is notes for me to work off not great literature, I'm not even proofing today.

Definitely not Baden.

Love the wicker.

There are a lot of Seidenberg families that show up as distant relatives.

Also Jews often married other Jews that had similar backgrounds. A "Litvak" married another Litvak or it would be considered a mixed marriage. I know many list Odessa and supposedly my grandma's family lived in Odessa way back as well as England and other cities far from the Ukraine or Lithuania let alone Germany.

left

Women covering their hair in America in that time period usually meant they came from a very religious background or they were somewhat Orthodox and German. German's were very strict at both ends of the spectrum, very traditional or very secular. 

What can I say about Jake?

I met him when I was a small child, barely a toddler or maybe that was Morris. My grandma lived in Miami and her siblings lived in Tampa, we were not big travelers. Annie, her older and closest sister, stopped into Miami to see me on her way to San Juan on a trip as I was an infant. There's a picture of Jenny, her oldest sister, also in Miami visiting to see "the baby" and Morris I remember as a shadowy, but nice figure who moved to Miami after his other siblings were gone and left my Grandma his much loved, very vicious Chihuahua named Baby.

Jake was a traveler. 

Jake was restless and always in action. 

Jake made money and had a walking stick with a diamond on it when my mother was little.

Jake owned land in Quincy, he and Morris remained close to the Falk Brothers in the Tobacco world after their sister Annie got a divorce and moved back to Tampa with Morris.  

Jake had a beautiful house in Sarasota near the water.

Jake had 3 fiances but never married. That always hit me as interesting.

Jake had no children, or at least none we know of... 

Jake had a fiance in Chicago and traveled there often.

Jake had a fiance in New Orleans who lived in the Garden District who was part of the family, they never married. After my grandmother's mother passed away they sent her off to the fiance in New Orleans. Worth noting she lived close to Annie's daughter Bessie Ruth Falk's mother-in-law Jeanette Levy Falk. 

Not sure where the other fiance was but I have tried finding records in the society section of the Tampa papers and it doesn't show up though there's lots of articles on the family.

Jake is a bit of a mystery.

One of many.

I'll work on it later this week as I try to keep my mind busy in that time period after the Hurricane Seaosn is over and after football season ends.

No proofing. Just notes for me and that is what this blog is for... 

Jake and Morris came to Miami for my mother's wedding. Her father had died less than two years before and Morris walked her down the aisle. Neither Annie nor Jennie came in for the wedding. It was small affair at the Rabbi's house across the street from my family. They had a small reception at home.  She always would contrast that to the large synagogue wedding her older sister had when her father was still alive though that also had much to do with my Uncle's father being the President of Beth David and needing a larger hall than the smaller Beth El where my grandfather was a member. Times had definitely changed and my grandmother has a sort of sad look in her eyes and it hits me she's wishing her husband was here to see this wedding. 

Uncle Oscar Rappaport on the far left.

His wife my Aunt Ada.

My Grandma Mary next to Ada.

My mother the bride.

My father and his parents on his right.

Behind Grandma is Jake Seiden.

2 family friends ...

My father's Aunt Ida and Morris.

Lastly........

why is genealogy so difficult for me?
on my mother's side

Jake did not marry nor have children.

Morris did not marry nor have children.

Jenny had two daughters.

One daughter never married no children.

Other married with 2 daughters..

..only one married and had children.

Annie had Bessie Ruth.

Bessie Ruth had no children.

My Aunt had my cousin I grew up with...

My Mother had 3 children, go figure.

Very few 2nd cousins on her side.

Morris had a fiance who died in a fire...

..like the Triangle Shirt Waist one but not that.

He was heartbroken could never fall in love again.

(so sad)

I'm done.

Thanks for reading if you found this blog.

Again simply my scratch pad with notes.

To research......another day.

 

Jewish Geography. Philadelphia. Nezhin. Volzhin. Chernigov. Chernobyl. Moscow. Riga. Atlantic City. Tampa. Samovars.

 

Link to story below to this picture.

Being Russian on my mother's paternal side....

...my mother's "Bubby" Sarah Beila brought one...

...from Russia to Philly.

It's been said the area of Philly known as 

"Strawberry Mansion" was filled with Russian Jews.

They'd take the samovars to the park...

..family and friends would sit around sipping tea.

Map from 1904

Going to start posting information on towns my Grandma Mary said our family came from...
...in no particular order and sure I am missing a few. I'm fairly sure she meant her side but her side intersects with my grandpa Ben as explained often in stories on how and where they met in Philiadelphia.

Volozhin
Riga
Zhlobin
Odessa
Minsk
Kremenchuk
Lithuania
Malarussia
(in no particular order)

Later after they begin their journeies.
Manchester
New York City but mostly Philadelphia
Malaga NJ and nearby areas where the family owned an Inn and land
Key West
Tampa
Miami

NOTE TODAYS POST is for my own research. Very little grammar. Thoughts, flow of mind writing and putting down things I want to circle back and do research on. Read at your own caution I'll proof it one day down the road, just a good source for me to print out and do more research on.....

Her husband "Benny" was born in Chernigov though his family moved there from Nezhin and they were from somewhere else before Nezhin. I know but not going into it now, the point is my family really moved around often and it's far from the story of people living in one little Shtetl for what seemed forever until they decided to move to America with the rest of the Shtetl.

Mind you she shot off a lot of names, many of which sounded the same, from "the Old Country" meaning before they lived in Key West in the 1800s and before they came from England and before they went to England. I can only remember some....other's I have learned about doing genealogy. As someone who loves Geography and studied it in intricate detail for my degree in International Relations (think Geopolitics) I am spending time on "where" vs "who" with the hope that this ties together the crazy quilt of my genetic gene pool into what seems a more cohesive map of my family.

Today in our morning Chassidus class with Rabbi Lisbon he told a story about someone who connects to my family tree in an attempt to remind and explain why Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok the previous Chabad Rebbe was named Yosef Yitzchok; something I learned but there's several angles on the story pointed out and I thought a bit on how little I know much about some of those towns mentioned by my mother and my grandmother. In my grandmother's case she was always vague on distant ancestors, though to be fair she was the baby of the family and her father was easily old enough to be her grandfather. She grew up in Florida in Tampa, but was always traveling back and forth to Quincy Florida in ended up living in Miami for what seems "most of her life" though I'm wondering which location she remembers most as she like me traveled around a bit. She did talk on "Atlantic City" often where she lived with my Grandfather Ben aka "Beryl" a nick name for Dov Ber ended up for a while working on construction during the boom time there while she ran a cigar store/ice cream shop by the Boardwalk. So hearing the story the way Rabbi Lisbon told the story, reminded me "oh right the Cherkas Rav" son of Mordechai of Chernobyl" my mother spoke on him. To be fair, she only really spoke on him and mentioned him when she sat on her pale blue French Provincial Sofa crying and dabbing at her eyes about the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Being a sassy young girl I said "Mother your father came from Chernigov not Chernobyl" and that's where she cried harder, dabbing her eyes harder and with passion said "they were cousins to my father" and when she said "MY FATHER" she said it louder and almost angry I would offer to suppose she was confused on her saintly father who died before I was born when she was in her twenties and anything semi connected to him seemed raised to a holy level.  I found out doing genealogy why that was so though there were other holy people in our family.

This is what it says in Wikipedia and easy source to find quickly with basic facts:

"Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (1822-1876) was a Rebbe in Ovruch. He was compelled to assume this position by his father-in-law, Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel of Cherkas (son of Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl and son-in-law of the Mitteler Rebbe) against his father’s wishes."

Above is the family tree so to speak...

...for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok.

His wife was Shterna Sara.

Her grandfather is the person in question.

Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel of Cherkas

But she is of course related otherwise.

And otherwise is the issue here.

Families "connected" to the Schneerson tree tend to be related to a half a dozen other people who have various connections to the Schneerson tree as well as various names used for them from nicknames (very popular in Chabad as it is the Deep South" and contractions of the name and names related to geographic locations. Rather than making genealogy easier it's actually harder. In a normal world when you pull on a loose string it takes you back to the  beginning, but in Chabad three strings appear and no matter which you pull you will usually end up at the Tzemach Tzedek or the Mittler Rebbe or in my case Rabbi Yisroel Noach who was the 

This is the list of names used for him.

So yeah Neizhin aka Nizhyn.

So many spellings on that too!

How does this relate to Grandma Mary? She was a colorful storyteller. Storytelling was apparently in her genes and you had to have patience, something I was not strong on when young. She either didn't know certain details on her family tree or she just did not really care. She loved music, gardening and playing the piano. She had candlesticks she lit on Shabbos on Friday evening before we sat down to a meal of chicken and a baked potato and whatever else was served with it. She didn't make a big deal about religion, but was just as fierce on her Jewish heritage as she was on her Southern history. This to me made total sense as the connection runs deep in Southern Jews who talk more about the South but are very proud of their Jewish heritage and I mean PROUD but not in a "shtetl" way nor in a way where people go long on all the sufferings of the Jewish people; just proud nuff said. Of course Jews are always waiting for Moshiach to come and old school Southerners are always waiting for the South to Rise Again! As a child I put that together in my head and it made me smile.

Grandma didn't know much on her husband Ben "Benny" about where he came from as much as what he did while in America after meeting her in Philly at some event in the Naziner Shul for single people (like a mixer on Saturday Night) and how good he was to her and how wonderful he was and pointing out his mother Sarah Beila came to show her "how to cook kosher food" which apparently really annoyed her as she would say with that tone in her voice and her eyes sort of narrowing together "I knew how to cook kosher food, my mother kept a kosher home and I knew how to keep kosher from her!" to which I'd nod quietly not wanting to go there or open up any can of worms asking questions that would take her deeper into her sadness on her mother's death too young when she was in her late teens. I suppose there was some tension between her and her mother-in-law though I'm sure she was polite to her and nodded and just ignored the assumption she needed to be "taught how to cook kosher" and when I did ask her what that meant she'd say with a strong punctuation point at the end "she taught me how to cook Russian, I knew how to cook Kosher" at which point I'd drop the subject and ask her to play me a song on the piano. That changed every conversation with her where she seemed either sad on the loss of her mother too young or her much beloved Ben who died when she was in her early 50s. The piano was timeless and better than a pill she took for her headaches a gene she obviously did pass down to me as I get headaches often.

Again, this is my journal/diary of my search for how my broken branches connect. If it helps someone who wanders in and loves genealogy, history and can relate or help them then "fine and dandy" as Grandma Mary would say. 

My brain is layered in patterns and when I heard about the Rabbi from Chernobyl who was from Chabad through another marriage of some ancestor or related to someone who became Chabad who was an ancestor my mind wanders and either I want a Nespresso to bring it back to the topic or I go running off down another road and that is the town of Volozhyn and Grandma would often start there when throwing out names to me of places the family was from the way someone throws feed to the chickens in the backyard that need feeding. It was like being inside a Pin Ball Machine with balls whirling around everywhere and I was definitely hitting tilt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valozhyn

I'd ask "where's Volzhin" is and she'd tell me "well it's near Minsk" and all I could think of when she said Minsk was a Vaudeville theater of old. Sorry, being honest, this was before I studied the Geography and Demography of Russia in college. 

My mother, I will add here, knew facts and names from her father but not a lot of definitive details. She loved her father, respected her father and so all she knew his his family was cousins with the Chernobyl Rabbi in Chernobly where people were dying "possibly some of her cousins" from the nuclear meltdown which will always be connected in my head to my mother's meltdown on her much loved French Provincial Sofa covered in plastic to keep the baby blue satin clean. I'll add, once my baby brothers began ripping the plastic off (didn't last long) it was just the old, loved sofa she bought when she redecorated the house when I was young. The dining room was French Provincial too! Everything looked like a picture in Southern Living.

So Volzhin a town with many spellings as you can see below is a town in Minsk known as Valozhyn which seems obvious but not as easy to figure out as you'd think as when you Google them one reference says Minsk that's near Grodno. And yet another reference says 

"It is often referred to in historical, Jewish, and Eastern European contexts as Volozhin (Russian: Воложин)."

Famous people who were Jews.

Yeah, Solovetchik a Levite. 

Grandpa Ben was a Levite.

That's another story.

So what did I learn this week?

I learned I need to go back to the basics and geography and history has always been my basics. I need the map to make some sense. The cities of Europe are linked by rivers and in my own case marriages made my family that were often based on marrying into the same "kind" of Jewish person based on things I understand such as "they were landsman" which didn't mean exactly "from the old country" as much as they were Litvaks but in my case they davened Nusach Ari a style made famous by a Chassidic Rabbi from a Litvak background connected to Chabad. 

When Chabad first formed way back in White Russia (another term for a region) the old school Litvak Rabbis were not happy with innovations added by the Alter Rebbe (first Chabad Rebbe Schneur Zalman) and the daily siddur was "changed up a bit" with prayers in different orders and an emphasis on adding Chassidic thoughts into learning adding a new layer to the study of Torah. People are always afraid of new things. Grandma Mary's mother Chaya Etel was from Malarussia another name for "Little Russia" another name for the Ukraine which was always part of Russia when it was not part of the Ottoman Empire, but that's another story.  Old time Rabbi's would call Schneur Zalman "The Litvak" in a semi derisive way and I'm talking Litvak's as Chabad is the Chassidus of "White Russia" not the Carpathian Mountains known as Chagas Chassidus usually.

Ben was "kosher" in her mind even though he barely spoke English and she didn't speak Russian so they spoke on Yiddish. Ben apparently was one of the few people "up in Philly" who understood her Yiddish with a Southern accent or he was just as smitten with her from the start. Few understood her Yiddish except fellow Southerners as she sounded like Scarlet O'Hara asking the Tarleton Twins if they wanted to come inside and sit in the parlor a bit. Grandma Mary had a parlor growing up in Tampa, her older sister Annie was married to Myron Falk "of the Falk brothers from New Orleans" in the family parlor. 

God I loved Grandma Mary... 

Miriam Leah Bas (daughter of) Chaya Etel and Velvel Zev.

Grandma Mary who bobbed her hair one day in Atlantic City impulsively since she wanted to look Modern like Millie (IYKYK) and almost gave her old school Russian husband a heart attack as he loved her long, beautiful hair that would easily grow back. She had thick wavy hair with a small white streak left side of her head that you only saw when she hadn't been to the "parlor" recently. 

Maps below.

I'm done.

Gonna go get a Starbucks as I'm liking the new drink this week!

Need to get out, enjoy the beautiful weather and I'll think on this tomorrow or another day... 

Blue marker marks Volyzin

Easier is a map of the 3 cities in question.

Volzhyn (near Minsk)

now known as Belarus

Next, Nezhin in Chernigov region.

Nezhin the city, Chernigov the county so to speak

Chernobyl not that far from Nezhin.

Riga up at the top was a city she mentioned.

Yet she said Odessa also and that's another region.

Jewish Genealogy is not easy.

Jewish Geography is actually easier said...

...than pinpointing on a map in Russian

( I read Russian)

So

I found out this week that when Sarah Beila, my great great grandmother, went back to Europe to retrieve her daughter Esther who chose to stay with her brother Lev in Moscow when her mother went to join "check out" her sons Karl (Koppel) and Ben "Beryl" (Dovber) in Philly and got stuck there by World War 1 .... the building she stayed in with her son Lev and Esther was a famous building where artists lived in post Communist Russia which was divided up into apartments. Trotsky once lived in the building. Isadora Duncan lived in the "flat next door" while studying ballet in Moscow. There was a small Nusach Ari style shul about a mile or so away where representatives of Chabad (really spies) in the dark days of Stalin when religion was not allowed now was the actual revolutionary history so synagogues went the way of statues of Lenin. 

The mystery of my Great Uncle "Lev" short for Levi Yitzchok is a mystery for another day. But it's something to circle back to and it may explain some connections Sarah Beila had in the Bronx or it may just be an interesting point of trivia. 

Things I learned about my Grandma Mary's mother-in-law Sarah Beila:

Aunt Ada... She taught her how to pick vegetables in the market and only buy fresh onions without loose skins. She told my Aunt that you "prepare for Shabbos" on Thursday (food, baking, etc) because you have to clean the house for Shabbos on Friday because "you don't go into Shabbos with a dirty house" which explains why my mother only cleaned the house once a week on Friday (that's true but a joke she had an artist soul and doing art was more important that putting away the laundry) and my Aunt loved her "Bubby" very much.

My mother said "she dragged a samovar on ship"  "she shlepped a samovar on a ship all the way to America" which led me to feel defensive of this woman I had no real knowledge of saying always "well it was important to her" adding "maybe it belonged to someone in the family and was important to her" and in truth when she went to Philly to check on her sons she sent to her brother Boruch who was already living there she may have been bringing it to him or a parent as it's possible her mother also was already in America. I can make a case for it but there is no smoking gun or smoking samovar...

From Grandma Mary "she said she was teaching me to cook Kosher food, I knew how to cook kosher food MY MOTHER taught me, she was teaching me how to cook Russian food" later elaborating on how Ben liked his picked peppers. 

From Aunt Ada's scrapbook: I found a card from the Rosen (Rosin) family in Philadelphia that they sent when she got married and sadly it doesn't say Grandma's name just from the family and "Mother Rosen" but like everything it's a clue. I've checked the cemetery. Lots of clues.  The Rosen/Rosin family was in Nezhin during the time of Yisroel Noach whose connected to Sara Beila daughter of Liba/Lieba

Anyway.......

This is the puzzle of my genealogy. Lithuania. White Russia. Malarussia ("Little Russia") now Ukraine after Lenin who was trying to legitimize the new country USSR with various republics so he drew u a map around different "areas" such as "the Ukraine" and others showing they were a nation of Republics the way the USA is nation of "States" out with the old, in with the new. Life went on... 

If you click you can see ...

Vilna

White Russia (where Chabad comes from...)

Little Russia where farming colonies were set up.

Little Russia was like the Wild West.

Ukraine literally means the Borderlands.

"The word "Ukraine" (Ukrainian: Україна) is most commonly interpreted by historians and linguists to mean "borderland" or "frontier region" (from Slavic roots u + kraj), historically representing a territory on the edge of surrounding empires." from Google.

Little Russia was like the Wild West. Each river valley had it's own band of cossacks known by the name of the river and they were like the bandits of the old West in America. They'd come into town, drunk, with a purpose but rather than shooting up the settlers who came from somewhere else.... they'd use large scythes coming into a village on horseback slashing at any person in the way or possibly some they specifically didn't like and Jewish family histories are littered with stories of Pogroms and the Cossacks who as my Great Grandma Sarah Beila told my mother they had killed someone's grandfather while a family was trying to marry off their child. She only remembered this suddenly in the middle of watching Fiddler on the Roof at the Miami Dade County Auditorium when it came into town. I had never heard her mention a grandmother or Bubby as Grandma Mary's mother died before my mother was born. But when Aunt Ada, her sister, would talk on her Bubby I realized Aunt Ada remembered Sarah Beila whereas my mother only talked on her maternal grandfather Wolf (Velvel Zev) which kind of blew me away. However Aunt Ada was 5 years older than my mother and a different type of person and I'm guessing easier to take to the market than the little Annette (Chana) that her Russian father said as Anetka a nickname for Annette in Russian or just the Russian translation.

My Aunt Ada was named after Grandma Mary's mother Ida aka Chaya Etel.

It's logical to say my Grandpa Ben named her Annette calling her lovingly Anetka (heavy Russian y yeh accent) Ann-nyet-ka after a Chana in his family, maybe his grandmother who really know. That's not recreating history, my Grandma Mary told me that Ben let her name after HER first daughter after her much loved mother Chaya Etel (Ida) and well he would name the next child after his family. He died way before I was born, never met him, but could feel his presence always hovering around the home we lived in that he built. I had dreams when I was little a few times and saw a man walking around and when I woke up I was off center not sure where I was and when I saw pictures of him when I was way older the man looked like the man I saw in the unnerving dreams. They were unnerving because I didn't know who he was and suddenly he was gone. 

That's it.

Chores for the day:

Make a list of priorities.

Blog on weather.

Clean out the other room and use that desk to work on in a more organized way.

Try to stay away from the nebulous Schneerson family tree that is useful, interesting and invades my messy mind as really I was hoping to find myself a li'l bit Scottish or French or even Irish (never British) or even a bit of Gypsy (old joke) yet of course Yisroel Noach in Nezhin is totally logical in ways. I have a bit of Mizrachi Persian that seems to be traced to the Naftalin side on my father's maternal line as a relative moved to Bagdad for business on the more modern leg of the Silk Road and his wife Esther went with him and raised money for the people suffering in the famine there and well that kind of blew my mind the other night. My grandmother, my father's mother, was named Esther and I knew she had an ancestor on the Naftalin/Naftolin/Neftalin side that have given large amounts of money to the Persian Relief Family from JewishGen and even there it's noted there it was a rare for the donation to come from a woman and the only donation from that part of Plunge/Kovno. It was always a mystery and I always wondered if my Grandma Esther was named after that ancestor of hers (logical) but now I know a lot more to the rest of the story. Supposedly some of her children in Persia were married into other families which would give me "cousins" from Persia even though there was the Lithuanian Ashkenazi connection. So leaving a note here to Bobbi vs Bracha lol 

Do more research on Reb Yitzchok and his wife Esther on their life in Bagdad and parts of Persia.

More research on my father's mother Esther Bas Menechem Mendel who went by Mendel as noted in archives from Plunge Lithuania/Kovno in JewishGen a site with so much awesome info but not a fan as it's worse that falling down the rabbit hole Alice fell down in a fairy tale I have always disliked immensely.

1. Levi Chitrik spelled Hitrik often who lived in Moscow and took responsibility for his baby sister Esther (yes I have Esther on both sides of the family) and where Sarah Beila was living for a while before taking Esther back to America where some of her other children and her siblings were living in Philly. Esther's naturalization papers use the name Esphir which was used in Russia.

Esther's naturalization papers......yes I did see that IYKYK.

2. Esther Naftalin info.... 

Naftalin family lived in Plunge and parts of Kovno but was originally from Telz.

3. Research the infamous charity giver who felt it important to give to the Persian Relief fund, more than others in Plunge. 

4. Research on the connection between the Hitrik family in Riga Latvia with the family in Chernigov and or originally Nezhin. Ancestry shows them as cousins and they share many of the same names (Levi Yitzchok for example) though some of them died sadly in the holocaust. One married a Dvorkin that went by Davidson, she was very pretty. 

5. Keep better track of the Levites as they relate to my Grandfather Ben.

Chow for now as I used to say which bugged the hell out of a good friend... well my spelling not my usage of saying Ciao!   Also did Grandma Sarah Beila come to America for the first time via Genoa for a specific family reason or because it was the easiest, fastest way out of Chernigov where she originally came the first time before Moscow the second time. Who owned the Samovar originally I wonder?

Link to the story about the Samovar at the top of this post.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/tea-time-in-americahttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/tea-time-in-america

Bobbi

ps if anyone actually reads this I'll proof it later, this is my note pad online, my diary, my journal and my way of keeping track of info so I can print it out and study it'... it's not great literature, it's not for a book and it's not to be used in a screenplay but I've given up worrying on that one because IYKYK!!!

Sunday Morning Memories in Miami. The Sunday Edition of the Miami Herald vs Scrolling Thru X Online. Is There a News Gene?

 

I haven't written in a while. I plan on doing that soon, so that I can update the blog with more information and keep it a little, better organized so I can use it better. I often enjoy just typing, writing until my brain is emptied and then I can breathe again. Secrets from a writer with mild ADD  who enjoys learning and ADD never bothered my academic skills, just staying on track and finishing things.

How things have changed is my theme today.

Sunday Morning Memories in Miami indeed was always linked with getting the Sunday Paper.

My childhood, my life with my parents growing up is a part of genealogy. It's the story behind the facts and figures of when someone was born and when someone got married and had kids and eventually died. I look through Ancestry and MyHeritage scrolling for data and it occurs to me over and over that I'm getting bullet style data and little about their actual lives. How they lived and what we did growing up and how it lingered in our memories is more than the date we were born in a certain place, who we married and when we died. Some trees are what are called Telephone Pole trees obviously written by self-absorbed people or ones that don't talk to siblings or relatives. They fail to mention when their siblings were born, they fail to mention if their parents had siblings or if there grandparents had siblings. Just the basic facts and I'll add that's better than those who take a test to make a "crazy uncle" happy and have no information and dont' respond to letters on Ancestry.

A life is more than just the facts.

When I was little my father would go out and get a Sunday Paper for my mother. The only real "news" section he read was the Sports Section and it is possible he was curious which dogs or Jai Alai players had won the night before, but the Sunday paper was more than just some news. It was a real, live breathing thing that made noises when you turned the pages and was a buffet of information that satisfied our many interests. We were allowed to read the Comic Section, if my mother was done looking at it though to be honest my father enjoyed the Comics more. You could hear him laughing through the bathroom door many times. I was inquisitive, asking questions always. Lord, I must have been so annoying. 

"Daddy, what are you laughing at?" I'd ask my father through the door as if some how he was seriously going to die from laughter on the bathroom toilet. He'd yell back "I'm reading the Comics, what do you think I'm reading" and I'd roll my eyes and go back to my room safe in the knowledge he was fine and as a child who was never really much of a child I'd think how silly it was to read the Comics. Though I did always look at Peanuts. My husband reads the Comics. Did I marry my father? I digress.... which is what you do with ADD and yet it makes life richer, more real and is honestly the way life flows in real time.

When I was older we lived on Miami Beach, my father would go out late on a Saturday Night in search of a Sunday Paper for  my mother. If I was good and he was in the mood for my incessant questions and some company he'd take me a long for the ride. After a while he'd figured out the best place to get an Early Edition that was not "Sold Out" was in fact in front of the Miami Herald building where they had a row of machines filled with the Sunday Paper that came out on Saturday Night. I can remember driving quietly across "the beach" as Miami Beach natives call Miami Beach, eventually he'd go across the causeway and the twinkling lights of ships out on the water were more wonderful than going to a museum. They took on shape, form and the night light bent the lights into magical points of light like diamonds glittering on the water. Sometimes, there would be people "shrimping" near the Miami Herald Building and if you don't know what that means, Google it but it was a thing back then. Little boats bobbing in the water under a Full Moon all doing strange things with nets. 

We'd get the paper, peek through it as she liked it new, pristine and untouched; my ex-husband ironically was like that too. My father would just ruffle through it for the Sports section after she carefully took it apart and placed it across her bed. The sound of rustling newspaper pages is a memory stuck in my brain. We'd sit around as if the Sunday Paper was something huge, larger than life watching this weekly scene a new every week. In the Morning I usually got leftovers of crumbled pages as I surfed through it, reading articles that were interesting with a cup of coffee.  As I got older I'd walk over to 41st Street aka Arthur Godfrey Drive and get a New York Times from the Juice stand that also had coffee, if you asked, near the machine that made tourists fresh Orange Juice and obviously sold them their coveted New York Times.

I'd race home to our house a block or so away and rip open the paper, searching for the New York Times Book Review Section. This was very exciting to me as a young child that wrote long and saw myself as a poet ... a writer I really needed to know what books made the Top Ten List. Then I'd look savagely through the Arts section to see what was playing on Broadway, who was peforming in what play, what musical and read which theater it was being performed in and I enjoyed doing that immensely. It made me feel excited, connected and I suppose good about myself that I cared about what books were on the Best Seller's List that week and which play was performing at which theater even though I was in college and not going to make it to a show on Broadway any time soon. But, hey I knew... I was aware!

Note I did see shows on Broadway on trips to New York to visit my father's family. And while I didn't study acting the way I thought I would, I did live in Brooklyn for a while in Seminary and my best friend and I would go into "the City" and wander around enjoying being young in NYC. So in ways I did make it there. After Seminary I went back to Miami and finished college with degrees in Englisn and International Relations.

Time went by. I graduated from college. I got married. My husband I would often take a drive across the Venetian Causeway and get an early edition of the Sunday Paper on Saturday night, though generally down the road we got the papers delivered to our door. My husband liked it pristine, clean like my mother did and he loved reading through the articles on science especially (I know he still does but now he reads online) and we'd sit with a cup of coffee, the baby crying for his bottle or wanting us to put him in his swing. 

This is real life. It's the memories and the world you don't necessarily see on the timeline on Ancestry when you click on a possible ancestor and it's often it's info that's partially true with little details such as where we lived the first year we were married or when we got divorced. Many times on Ancestry it'll say some Grandfather named  Joseph was born in "Russia" but often they were born in Lithuania or Poland or even Latvia. Many kids didn't listen to their grandparents, they didn't ask questions or their parents were somehow not sure and it didn't seem important. Russia can usually mean anything, but mostly it means they do not know as there is no town, no specific information. If they are from Germany, they can tell you the city and which part of Germany they come from and I know that as my first husband's family was from Germany and they were rich with details. Again, I am digressing but it's important but details are important.

I woke up this morning, later than usual as I was up late at a Selichos service at Chabad that began at Midnight, after an hour or so of a party like gathering where we all touched based, listened to stories and sang songs. Bourbon and chocolate chip cookies were involved as well as old school herring, crackers, dips and olives with jalapenos in them that I did not touch. I do like Herring. Details are important. Bourbon because I live in the South and my mother's family goes back very far in the South so I am Southern Jewish. My Grandma Mary always had, God Bless Her, little chocolate chip cookies wrapped up in a handkerchief for an emergency. My cousin snuck some some chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a hankerchief in a small bag velvet Crown Royal Bag into her casket when the woman watching to make sure no one would do anything like that said "do it quick" as he said with sad tear filling his eyes "you know she never went anywhere without a little bit of water and chocolate chip cookies" and I smiled, once again 5 years old getting in trouble together with him and said "that is true" and so Aunt Ada had some chocolate chip cookies for her next journey after life the way her mother Grandma Mary taught her.

I'm being honest here as honesty is what it is all about, not made up facts and figures. Grandma Mary's older sister Jenny often wrote on the census she was born in America, but that's not true because I know the details of the family's journey. And, Aunt Annie who was married to a Falk from New Orleans of Falk Brother's Tobacco Fame would tell the census worker that Aunt Annie was born in Germany. That's not true but it says much about how true every detail on a census is so remember that. One census worker wrote down that my Aunt Ada was born in Peru which rattled my younger brother who called me at Midnight to tell me this news and I told him "Ronnie, she probably said Philly" or someone scribbled Penn for Pennsylvania and they made a mistake. He thought on that for a minute and said "oh, okay, you're probably right" and hung up the phone. Or perhaps we were texting, now that I think on it.

I found out on Ancestry that Aunt Aunnie's daughter Bessie Ruth's mother-in-law Jeannette Falk was actually a relative, probably on my mother's side and she lived in New Orleans in the Garden District and her family before New Orleans was from a part of France actually. When my Grandma's Mother passed away when she was a young girl she lived in New Orleans in the Garden District with her older brother Jake's fiance's family. And, yet I have yet to find out who that fiance was that might open more interesting doors. But New Orleans does play a big part in our family's life as it has mine.

And that is the bottom line here in this journey through my families addiction with the News before CNN came on and then MSNBC and then FOX and then Apps came alone and Podcasts... way back when there was the town newspaper. Miami had an afternoon paper called the Miami News that was tossed on our lawn every day around 3 PM there by the time I got home from school. The Morning News was the Miami Herald. There was a paper called the guide that turned into Community News that my daughter-in-law's family owns. We do love news don't we.... we are very news obsessed!

My family always loved the news. My mother would park her chair in front of the Nightly News and watch every detail. In her old age she followed the story of the Women in White who were protesting for freedom in Cuba. Being from Miami, old school Miami, having lived in Little Havana before it was actually called Little Havana everyone grew up with Cubans and followed news in Cuba. My grandmother was raised not far from her father's office in Ybor City in Tampa, both she and my mother spoke some Spanish. My father watched the sports scores. My father loved sports. He loved baseball, football, basketball and Jai Alai, but he did not like golf. Family facts that someone may want to know.

Now I wake up, and there is no more paper delivered to our door. My current husband used to love getting it every morning and we'd go through it while sipping coffee and watching the birds by the bird feeder on the deck by our home in North Carolina. I'm still in the South, but as I said "Up North" in the South. He really loved the newspaper, even when we were getting most of our news on Cable TV or on the Internet. But alas the paper was getting smaller and smaller, thinner and thinner more filled with opinions than news and this was before Monjaro....it just began to fade away and as we are both online often we stopped paying for the local news in Raleigh. Kind of sad, but things change, times change and my younger kids won't remember the fun of getting the newspaper on the lawn or delivered by their grandfather to their grandmother to make her happy. Okay, eventually he was allowed to read the paper too ;)

There is something wonderfully tactile about opening up the newspaper, laying it out..holding it up or folding it to the section you want to read. It has a smell, a feel, a texture that promises exciting news, tidbits of information that would amuse you and offer you there's a One Day Sale MACYS that starts on Friday and ends on Monday and that should tell you all you need to know about not believing everything you see in the newspaper or on the news. 

I woke up this morning, tangled under the covers in my husband's arms and part of me really wanted to get up and see what was going on with the new area of convection off of Africa known as a Tropical Wave with a strong chance of development. I had peeked earlier when I woke up around 5 AM for a moment and saw it was elevated to 70% and fell back to sleep. It's a slow developer, nothing is happening fast I went back to bed. Finally awake I lay there thinking on how "back in the day" I'd get up and go check to see if the paper was here, put it on the table for him or bring it back to bed. It's something my kids won't ever remember. They have other memories. We all have memories. 

And, that is the point. We all have memories. But do we include those memories in our genealogy research. Then I also thought for a moment, why don't you blog on it. Then I remembered I have this blog also and I could literally type until I get it all out of my system while waiting to see what the NHC does at 2 PM when they update on the strong tropical wave with high aspirations.

What have your learned from this blog? No, it's not a test, it's a rhetorical question.

My mother loved the news and taught me to watch the news. Actually Aunt Ada her sister, who lived next door and was my "second mother" where I often hung out also watched the news. She'd get up, seriously walk over to the TV and put on the Nightly News watching carefully while telling me and my cousin to "eat our carrots they are good for your eyes" and you also know was my cousin growing up was my friend  "partner in crime" and life was good. Grandma Mary, whose husband died before I was born and before I could ever saw my grandfather lived with my Aunt Ada and was an integral part of my life. I'll explain in another blog on my Uncle Oscar, my mother's brother-in-law, and how I found out how I am distantly related to his family. But that's another story for another day. Miami back in the day was a bit of a Jewish Shtetl where I lived.

My grandmother Mary, the baby of the family, had an older sister Jenny that was born in Europe and came to America as a little girl. Jenny was actually about 16 years older than my Grandma Mary. Grandma's sister Annie was not born in Germany, but in America and raised in Tampa as was my Grandma Mary. 

My father, by the way, born Up North in the Bronx, followed sports. He did go to the Dogs and as a mathematician he enjoyed the calculating of which dog ran best on a wet track or a crowded track, but he really loved watching Jai Alai. He played it at an Amatuer Frontons for fun until his bursitis kicked in and he gave up it up but he kept the Jai Alai Cesta above his desk in his office. My father liked to read the Comics, he laughed a lot. And while my mother could be difficult at times, he'd try hard to make her happy because he said "when your mother is happy we are all happy" and we actually called him Daddy and her Mother. Think on it a bit...

We all were informed on the news. I have a degree in International Relations aka Geopolitics. Follow the cookie crumbs. I got my ADD from both my parents, it's useful as I'm good at doing ten things at once and usually I finish at least 7 or 8. But as one my kids, whose an academic genius, reminded me "our ADD isn't the kind that stops us from getting good grades in school or learning. Yes, he's right on that.  

Something I learned, sadly, in college studying the history of news and politics is that the New York Times, owned by a Jewish family, barely covered the Holocaust or what was going on behind the scenes in Europe vs the battles and generals and other parts of the story. Apparently they didn't want to look "too Jewish" and only cover news that impacted Jews and that's been verified and it was what it is or rather what it was but sort of sad they did not use their platform to reveal real news. But, I didn't know that growing up, all I knew was it had information on shows on Broadway and the NY Times Literary Section that I still sometimes read online. 

My Florida family lived where Cubans have lived for 4 generations as they lived in Key West in the 1880s, then they moved up to Tampa as many did in the Cigar Business and somehow ended up in Miami in the Roads Section that later became "Little Havana" and I sipped Cuban Coffee aka Nespresso as I typed this post. Alas, I type loud on my laptop and woke my husband up. He thanked me for the article I sent him in Gmail that I read online earlier I knew he'd like and he's rattling around in the kitchen getting coffee. Some of my grandchildren are part Cuban Jewish so I get to be an Abuelito and if you know you know that's a big honor!

We all drink coffee. The Miami Dolphins will play at 1 PM (I read it online) and the Carolina Panthers will play at 4 PM. It'll be a miracle if either of them win this week. 

Newspapers were really fun as you turned pages, made a mess of them while reading them in bed and they took you places you'd hope to go someday such as watching a play on Broadway. When my cousin and I were little we'd read advertisements for Yachts on sale and decide which one we wished we could buy. years later I'd peek at the Personals that were often boring, funny or poignant. Sometimes I'd read obituaries as they are often inspiring.  I grew up reading the paper. Now I catch my news online, on Youtube and occasionally on TV which generally runs in the background, sound off in case there's something I want to turn the sound up for and often it's the weather.

I have a thirst for knowledge. I ask a lot of questions. I had an Advanced Placement Teacher in History in highschool in an "AP" class that would joke that in most his classes he taught "history" but to our class we learn what Benjamin Franklin really ate for breakfast. Another teacher taught us AP European History in 12th grade and along with way too much info on the Thirty Year War in Europe she'd describe to us what the sunlight looks like as it bounces off the rooftops of Florence and if we ever go to Europe we need to see that as it's better than even Paris. I learned doing genealogy that my Grandma Mary's father Wolfe, who was raised in England, but born in Europe, had shared ancestors with the Abrams Sisters who were all the rage in the 1770s and that in the 1800s one of the sisters married a Trollope and had a home in Florence, Italy where she was famous for writing long essays on Italian Unification or let's call it the "Italian Revolution" so obviously the interest in both music and political science is in my genes. My mother was an Opera singer, she had the same birthday (month and day) as one of the Abrams Sisters who was also a soprano. I have a son who was in Italy and he enjoyed Florence the most. What is it about Florence I wonder as I have not yet been there but curious. What goes around seems to come around in life and there's more in our genes than whether we have red hair or blue eyes or brown eyes.

Family History is more than a parent, that seems to have no siblings listed and who their parents were, where they might have been from, when they got married, when they had kids and when they died. Well, to me it is..... as my mother installed in me a love of history and more so a curiosity on family history. My Aunt Ada, a very practical lady, would say to her "what difference does it make if someone once had money in the family, they're dead they aren't paying your light bill" and that's also true. We are all different, unique and that too is important when gathering facts on our family history. My mother is an artist who was also a singer. Several of my kids are artists and involved in music. What really is in your genes? Is it nature or nuture? I wonder........

Thanks for reading this if you got down to the end you must be curious too. Well, you could be a stalker but I digress and won't go there. Smiling. 

My youngest daughter gets her news from podcasts, my youngest son gets it on his phone on a multitude of APPs and of course everyone gets it on social media sites. I live on X I love news and weather. And, lastly I used to cut out the weather forecast sometimes, and paste it in my diary if it was important and relevant. Now I blog online. 

How is your family history unique, special and interesting? What will you tell your children or nieces and nephews if you have any .......will they be interested and remember the way we were enraptured by Grandma Mary's stories about life in Key West and growing up in Tampa. Loved her so much. 

At least I wrote, got it out of my head and can move on with my day. Might be delaying, as much as I love the Carolinas the thought of another Dolphin Debacle today is depressing. Love is forever ... 

Have a great day.

Tomorrow will be Monday, plan on enjoying this Sunday, but truth is I kind of love Mondays!