MOTHERS DAY : A DAY TO SAY THANK YOU TO THOSE MOTHERLY PERSONS WHO NURTURED YOU

 

It's time to remember the motherly people in your life who raised you.

Ask her some questions about her own mother, your grandmother.

What stories have you never heard before?

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS DAY

NATIONAL TODAY - LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS DAY - HISTORY

The League of Women Voters was created on February 14, 1920, through a merger of two organizations: The National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Council of Wome Voters (N.C.W.V.).  In 1909, the women popularly known as 'the mother of women's suffrage" Emma Smith DeVoe, proposed that a separate organization be created from NAWSA to educate women on the election process and create awareness about women's issues.  Her proposal was ignored, and in 1911, she created the National Council of Women Voters.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 PROVIDED 160 ACRES OF LAND #1 THE HISTORY OF LAND GRANTS FOR HOMESTEADING

You've probably heard "40 acres and a mule" is an ideal family farmstead, but consider that 160 acres of land provided that the family might be able to divide that up as children grew to maturity and another generation or two could live there. But then what?  For a small filing fee, even a freed slave could apply to homestead land.  An immigrant who was not yet an American citizen could apply and get land.  And, though women's liberation (Feminism) was the cause of few, you could apply as a woman. If there's a chance that one of your American ancestors claimed land and that can be a very interesting thing to add to your family history research project.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT of 1862 REMAINED IN PLACE FOR THE NEXT 124 YEARS and 270 million acres were claimed and settled, which turns out to be about 10% of the United States. (You could still homestead in Alaska for another decade.)

Most of the land was "unsettled" such as in the prairie lands, though today we know that notions that "nobody" lived in these places is often not correct because Native American did live there.

New settlers had to live on the land they wanted for a continuous five years and improve it.  For some this was living off the land and living in an underground house until an above ground house could be built. Cutting down trees or tilling soil could be considered an improvement.

Today I think of the modern Tiny House movement because families back in the day often lived in a house that was basically one room. Today, we seriously question if displacing people so that gentrification can take place is socially responsible behavior.

HISTORY COM - Homestead Act Basics

NATIONAL ARCHIVES GOV - HOMESTEAD ACT including some documents

Next post I'll tell you how to find these documents.

This post is part of a series.  To pull up the series, click on the tag Help - Land Grants- AWG

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All Rights Reserved

image is from Graphics Fairy

HERE'S SOME FLOWERS FOR YOU MOM!

 

1950 CENSUS ENUMERATION DISTRICTS FOR 1950 CENSUS READY TO USE! NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES

CATALOG NATIONAL ARCHIVES ENUMERATION DISTRICTS 1950 CENSUS 

Follow this link! If you already know where the family lives, perhaps because you've got their address from the 1940 census or a collection of letters, you may be able to go to the ENUMERATION DISTRICT before there are indexes on databases. THE ENUMERATION DISTRICT (ED) WILL LIKELY BE A DIFFERENT NUMERICAL CODE THAN THE 1940 because of a surge in population! 

The concerns of the nation have changed since 1940 and there are some surprises.

This is the era in which people whose parents lived in immigrant ethnic ghettos are expanding out into the suburbs as they marry. Housing is actually affordable. Huge tracks of land are being turned into zones of single-family dwellings. Veterans can get low interest rates to buy homes on the GI bill. Women, many who worked in factories previously, are being encouraged to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. 

Question of when it will be indexed.  I'd give it about six months. ****

BABYBOOMERS!

More posts on this subject coming up!

Click on the tab Genealogy Help - 1950 Census to bring up the series!

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*** addition February 14, 2022

The NATIONAL ARCHIVES 1950 CENSUS PROJECT IS also using a form of non-human -technology to provide INDEXING and the public will be able to correct information they find for the pages that did not digitalize well due to their condition. This is similar to the FamilySearch site that also offers registered users the easy ability to change surnames that are misspelled and so on. Unfortunately, it also allows people to change correct information to incorrect information if they so desire.  

I BUST THROUGH A PERSONAL GENEALOGY MYSTERY - EUPHORIA!

EUPHORIA!

On the tail of my last post about genealogy screw ups, let me tell you that on Sunday December 12th, 2021, around noon, I had a long awaited and hunted breakthrough in my own personal genealogy.  In fact, I'm writing this post a couple hours later, while the elation I feel is at a high, for future posting.  OK, I'm congratulating myself on my endurance and patience as well as my know-how. I'm thinking this post will be a positive start for the new year, 2022 and maybe it will inspire you.

During Covid shutdowns I did a lot of personal research using archives in other countries and saw documents that HAVE NOT BEEN SOLD OR SHARED to any of the "big" database companies that so many have come to depend on too much.  I think these countries are right to keep possession of their archival documents and I want to honor their volunteers as well (although I caution you that some of them are not reading correctly and posting widow's married name rather than their maiden names on remarriages, which should be corrected.)

One of these countries is Poland though this line of my ancestors lived in Galicia which was Austria at the time. 

The cell phone I downloaded on became defunct since then but on it I had downloaded dozens of pages "of interest" because what I wanted and needed and looked all over for - page by page in some cases - hundreds of pages - was not coming up. I eliminated the possibilities of finding birth records and a marriage record where they "should" have been - and read a wide range of villages which appear to have their own churches as part of a larger parish system. Then I got busy and failed to review what I had downloaded in the spring and summer of 2021. Until the evening of December 11th and the morning of December 12th - the first day of Christmas.

If I had not, on a trip over 20 years ago, gone to see a relative and asked her a couple questions about my ancestor's maiden name and heritage - which she strained to remember. If my great grandmother had not reported a dream  - a visitation - she had to this same relative (a few months before she died) which caused her to reveal that she had an older half brother and that they shared a mother - I might not have realized what I was looking at.

What if my great-grandmother had not had the dream? 

What if she had not told my relative?  

What if I had not asked my relative while she was still alive?

So here is the story.  

My great-grandmother was an "orphan." Her children never met an aunt or uncle. When I asked my relative what had happened to great-grandma's parents, she said her mother reported that one of them was "killed on the road" and the other "burned up in a fire." She was repeating what my great-grandmother had told her in Polish, trying not to elaborate.  

From that day on, I was trying to find out what town fire - or maybe it was the home hearth - might have burned up my great grandmother's mother. I thought it made sense that the mother would burn up and the father would be killed on the road but I still do not know. I imaged my great grandfather as a merchant traveling through the Carpathian mountains into Hungary, perhaps being surprised by highway robbers who wanted his silver... I look forward to finding death records of these ancestors which might have some notes.

My mother (and her sibling) seemed not to know anything much about their own grandparents, whom they never met. They seemed satisfied with moving forward into their own lives as if no one else had ever made this possible. In fact my grandmother had told them not to look back.

I once rejected renting a wood house because when I got inside it, as the wind blew and it creaked, I thought, "This place is a fire hazard!  I once rejected living in a certain apartment because the big window looked over the roof and I thought "If there is a fire, how can one escape across a hot asphalted roof?"  Not that I think I was once the woman who burned up in another life, but knowing I had such an ancestor in my lineage scared me. I would not want to live in an all wood house.

The not knowing who your people were is not so unusual actually.  It's one of the things that has propelled so many to do genealogy in the first place, to solve mysteries and set the record straight.

My great-grandparent's immigration documents and naturalization documents repeated the names of a few locations. I looked at maps going way back, the districting of parishes. I was sure that my great-grandmother's wedding - that of an orphaned girl who was match-made by friends - had been the creation of a caring priest, because who might attend?

So of course I immediately went to those mentioned places, those records and documents, and around them, on guard for genealogy myopia, looking at the correct dates or a few days, months, or years either way, and NOTHING!  Would it be my luck, my fate, that the very pages I needed were somehow missing? I'm terrific at figuring out bad handwriting and misspellings - that was not it. Or had these people been too far up in the mountains to come down and have an actual baptism in a church?  (On some records the midwife is named as the person who baptised.)

In genealogy deductive reasoning is good so long as you detail your path.

On my immigration posts full of advice last year I mentioned you should GO TO THE ADDRESS THEY GAVE ON THE SHIP and see who is living there.  I did this years ago, using microfilm and now old fashioned methods of finding an enumeration district per census year.

To my amazement I found the half brother (or someone with his very same name) and two other men there with the same surname as my grandmother. However, these names were fairly common in the area they mentioned coming from. I concluded that my great-grandfather might simply have headed for a boarding house where other men he knew in the Old Country headed but I hoped they could be related or intermarried somehow.  

As the records did not show up where they "should've" been, as volunteers in Poland continued to give of their time to create databases that did not yet have death records, I relied on marriages and births and I began to go page to page, reasoning that if these people had siblings, then probably siblings would show up somehow.  I ran into common names and dozens of candidates.

Using the information on the census of 1910 at the address in the United States my great-grandfather had headed, I took down the names, ages, and marital status of other men living there.  *** He was no longer there - having already moved to another city for work.

As it turned out this is the very thing that made all the difference.

I looked for all documents taken at the location in Poland where my great-grandmother listed herself as having been living with a "sister" before coming to America.  It turns out that someone from that very town actually ran a boarding house in the same area that my great-grandfather had gone to. My great-grandmother lived there while he took a train into another city for work!

Using all those saved documents held in Polish archives on the cell phone, I read one after another again, taking notes by hand. I FOUND THAT THE HALF BROTHER and one of the other men at that boarding house with my great-grandmother's maiden name as a surname DID INDEED HAVE THE SAME MOTHER. Using their marriage records rather than my great-grandmother's missing record, I determined her mother's maiden name.  These men's marriage records give their ages and also mention that the parents are deceased. They were the men at that boarding house in 1910 - the census ages and their ages on birth records match. Therefore, I learned they too were orphans at the time of their marriages and I now have the names of my great-grandmother's birth parents and my great great-grandparents on that line.

Additionally, by reading around and around records for the big parish church mentioned verbally as the place of their marriage - which has not been found - I have learned that my great-grandfather's surname was quite rare in that location, but there is ONE marriage of a person with that name and he is listed as in the military at his marriage. As a military man he probably wasn't living where he was born or his family lived. There is also a mention of a child being born who would be about two years older than my great-grandfather that has a mention of a village nearby - the village he listed as his birth place.  It may be a little soon to conclude on this line as well, but I have a sense that I may have found my great-grandfather's line.

In the many years prior to these databases being uploaded by volunteers in Poland, I could have written to archives in Poland and paid genealogists there, and if I'd had the money, I probably would have.  Although the archivist would be more familiar with the records, they would have looked at the records I'm looking at myself... gone to the dates and places given... found nothing... sent me a bill or asked me if I wanted to spend more...

THERE IS ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY MORE WILL BE FOUND THERE and that some things will only be available by special requests.  However, I now have so much more information to provide when I write.

By reading these records I noted that in towns where the Greek Catholic church prevailed, Roman Catholic children are recorded in the "big parish" nearest with a note of their village.  I have tripped over two curious listings that are not related to my family.  In one it is noted that a child has been born illegitimately - the woman is a convert and her Jewish father's name is listed.  In another, it is noted that a Jewish father, who did not marry another woman whose child is illegitimate, did show up for the baptism and want his name recorded. In these cases there is a strong story about changing times - Fiddler on the Roof times - in which there was forbidden love and lust.

A dozen lemon menthol cough drops later...  still overjoyed!

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THE VALUE OF USING OLD PHONE BOOKS FOR GENEALOGY

Recently a friend was telling me that her parents have had the same phone number and landline since 1950 when they moved to a new suburb and shared a party line!  These days some people change their cell phone number every year.  (And I know a lot of people who never answer their phone unless a friend first text messages them.)


So it may be difficult to understand the value of old telephone books with all the amazing technological changes in both phones and networks.  Concerns about long distance phone call charges have evaporated with Unlimited calling all around the country, but not so long ago it could cost a lot more to call a few miles away into another network. The cost of phone calling meant that people used the mail (as in snail mail) to write each other letters.


Recently I traveled to Los Angeles Public Library Central to look through a half dozen old phone books there in the stacks.  Oh they were really decaying so much so that I had to wonder if the particular city I pulled from the shelf to look at 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1960, and 1965 for certain surnames would disintegrate beneath my fingers.

Why would I do this, seeking what may be trivial information, when years ago I looked through the City Directories for the same surnames?

Well, let's remember that City Directories were often PRE-TELEPHONE or sometimes CO-EXISTED WITH TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES because City Directories had more in common with Yellow Pages or Business Directories than Residential Phone Books.


It cost to list yourself in most City Directories and so people did so to advertise the kind of work they were available to do or their business.  Sometimes a young woman would list herself so young men who might want to court her or marry her could find her, particularly if she was self supporting and had left home.

And then the telephone came to cities, towns, villages, suburbs at different times and places and not everyone wanted one or could afford one.  I once met a woman who discovered a secret in her family. 
A father in the family was so angered that one of his daughters would want to WORK and be a TELEPHONE OPERATOR and had responded to signs posted up around town for workers that he beat her and she rolled down the stairs and died.  Everyone knew he was a violent abusive man and in that time and place he wasn't the only class conscious man who thought "No woman in my family is going to WORK!",but he wasn't tried.  That he'd killed his daughter because she wanted to be a liberated woman was the dark family secret.

This leads into the value of using the old phone books.

They can put people at an address between census.  They can let you know that the same people lived at the same address for a short or long time.  Sometimes if the address is the same but a different person is listed, say the son or daughter, it can indicate that the father or breadwinner has died or left the home and that a child is now paying the bills.

Sometimes you can cross reference the address with the City Directory. Sometimes you can cross reference it with a census.  Sometimes you can cross reference it with a Social Security Application.  Or a ship manifest.

Sometimes you know where the family was living from a census but they simply do not yet have a phone.  (The 1940 census would be most revealing because by 1940 most places - especially the larger cities and suburbs surrounding them, have phone service for those who wanted it.  1935 there are phones but not as many of them. The books get fatter and fatter as they years go by and then with the onset of cell phones begin to skinny down.)


By looking for the surnames in the old phone books that I did, I stumbled upon one bit of information that is of special interest to me. That the wife of a man who divorced her some time after he returned from World War II does have her own phone, is listing herself as Mrs. and so by 1950 he must be living separate.  Because in 1950 it was rare for a couple to list their phone under the woman's name unless she was widowed or divorced.


Which brings us to the use of the phone book to possibly narrow down the years we must look for divorce or marriage records or death records.



Some of the phone books have the month and year date on them which is helpful but unlike a census this is the date of publication not the date of a census taker's visit.
Depending on the city and the location of the old paper books, you may find the old names, addresses, and phone numbers, with their now quaint "exchange names" very interesting!


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DEFINING ORPHAN : IT'S LIKELY THAT SOME OF YOUR ANCESTORS WERE!

BE AWARE THAT IN THE 19th century and before, an ORPHAN was defined as a child without a father (to support the family) and if you hear that a child was orphaned in your family, their mother or a step-mother may still have been living, and also under pressure to remarry quickly and pragmatically.  Disease didn't respect class.  Women died in childbirth or because of child-bearing, especially while malnourished by today's standards.

Coming up ... Some interesting articles I found on the internet about ORPHANS. 

While you're reading, please consider how many children are living today homeless, malnourished, and impoverished.  Can we hope that their families will prevail as some of us who come from orphan heritage have?

Have your child-bearing ancestors died too young to raise their own children to adulthood?

Think about this question too when you think about who you will help ELECT by VOTING in the elections here in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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TUPPERWEAR - THE DVD - ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY DVD REVIEW

 



 TUPPERWARE is the story of how the plastic food storage bowls with tight fitting lids that were invented by Earl Silas Tupper in the 1950's and marketed to and by housewives to other housewives by a self-taught marketing wiz named Brownie Wise, began and expanded, leading to what is now considered a global business.  Sadly, there is evidence that after Brownie managed to break through obstacles for women to earn money and work, talking to husbands so that they would "allow" their wives to earn, not "bread and butter" but "cake,"  holding contests and fun jamborees for her mostly female sales force, came the day when Earl  Silas Tupper decided that she needed to be - disappeared.

 

The end of Brownie Wise's reign is a bit of a mystery with hints of a falling out, serious undiagnosed illness that was probably exhaustion (though sometimes I wonder about hyperactivity when I hear of people who never seem to be without energy), or some other medical malady that prevented her from working.  Her name was no longer referenced at the company and it was as if she had never existed.  (Shameful!)

 

She tried, however, to start up her own make-up empire that also used the chain sales and party plan technique that she had been so successful with for Tupperware, and failed.  The Tupperware people stayed with that company for many reasons, including their efforts to get where they had gone, and perhaps the saddest, but most predictable thing for the era in which is was standard operating procedure for women employs to be paid less than men just because they were women and assumed to be less deserving, is that for all her work she did not retire rich.

 

Brownie knew that a woman could not approach a bank for a loan and that some of her most successful sales women would have husbands who would get with the program.  In some interviews of senior women who began with the company early, we learn of men who quit those "bread and butter" jobs for the speculation of greater wealth.

 

Though this DVD doesn't get feminist,  I couldn't help but think of the issues of equality in the workplace and in education, and all the changes that have occurred to us as a nation since the 1950's, so that a stay at home wife and mother is today pretty rare, especially once the children are in school.  I've personally always been skeptical of party plan and chain sales companies since being invited to them to buy things like candles, lingerie, and so on has always felt like pressure to buy things in order to keep a friendship.

 

As a woman and as a genealogist, the absence of records for women is often an issue, a roadblock that must be gotten around.  In a sexist cultures women are simply not thought of as significant enough to be recorded.  Example: Baptismal records that only record the name of the father since he "owns" the child.  The many death records I've seen where the wife is listed as "Mrs. Jones" without a first name, or even references to her parents, as if the woman was an orphan, when she was not.  (How could her husband, the death certificate reporter not know this information?)

 

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SEXIST AND RACIST - OFFENSIVE VALENTINES THAT WE HAVE TO PUT INTO HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Today I've been looking for a VALENTINE to post on this blog, sorting through the offerings that come up in Google Images when I add the words "public domain" and "Vintage" or "Old." 

I've seen Valentines that, using the usual cartoonish or highly romantic art, depict, supposedly with humor, the beating of a woman so that she will finally be the Valentine of the man who gifted her with it.  Not funny.  Not loving.

But the idea that a card giver might batter or insult a woman to get her to like him rests in sexism and attitudes towards women that have not entirely changed, very sad to say. 

I, as a writer, reader, literature major, and dogged researcher,

found this one deeply personally offensive.

The idea was that a boy giving this Valentine to a girl

didn't really want an intelligent or educated woman.

 

(MANY OF US HAVE GRANDPARENTS WHO NEVER LEARNED TO READ AND WRITE, who made their mark of an X on legal documents with a witness there as a result and many of us have parents who dropped out of high school and had to get their G.E.D. or equivalent after they served in the armed forces or got through working at anything during the Great Depression.)

This one was probably considered rather risqué back in the day

but these days with the Kardashian sisters showing off

their booties on a regular basis, we've grown numb.

I also found a few Valentines - very few - that depicted cartoonish or romantic BLACK people.  Since most of these were pretty much in line with the Valentines that depicted cartoonish or romantic WHITE people, I decided that they were not offensive.

But these two, below, did seem to be.  I had to wonder if BLACK people had found it difficult to purchase Valentines and other cards that showed people who looked like them in the stores. 



Of course, the handmade Valentine, especially the ones made by children for their parents and siblings, grandparents, cousins, and friends, are probably most endearing and a way around the offensive.  Right now kids are making Valentines in their school classrooms and at special programs staged at libraries and I'm sure that many handmade Valentines have remained cherished with all those drawings, and all the glitter glue.

This morning I was talking to a stranger about Valentines.  I told her that a couple years ago, because Valentines used to be given to friends from friends, I gave a dozen people who were perhaps more acquaintances than friends, small fun cards with a piece of good chocolate each when we had lunch together about that time.  One of the men, though he was at the table when I distributed these to one and all, unexpectedly took this small offering as a come on by me.  Just what I didn't need.

But I do remember, even if perhaps a parent or a teacher thought that every child in class should receive a Valentine from every other child in the class, the excitement of being seven years old, having a kid crush on one particular boy, and how wonderful and special it felt when his Valentine was delivered to my desk.  I recall the fun of a decorated classroom and a specially wrapped Valentine box that served as a mail box and how it was considered an honor to be picked to be the mail carrier!

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Images are from Google Images - search for Public Domain and Vintage Valentines

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD - BEST - GIRLFRIEND - ESPECIALLY IN SENIORHOOD - KEEPING THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT

This morning I ran into "Bette" the best friend of "Ethel."  She was on her way to meet Ethel and accompany her to a doctor's appointment. 

Ethel is never married and childless, living in the family stead for the last 75 years,  with one brother on the east coast who comes out to visit once a year.  At this late stage in her life Ethel simply does not think she can adjust to life in a small new England town moved in or near her brother, especially because of the harsh weather there, and also feels, rightly so, that she would miss the many social advantages she has living on a fixed income here.

With our increasing population of unmarried, never married, and childless people, it is becoming more and more important for  people - especially seniors - to have best friend.  It's my suggestion that while friends are not part of your genealogy project, certainly a best friend is part of a family history, or personal history/memoir project. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO SEE THE MENTION OF BEST FRIENDS IN OBITUARIES.

It's often said that we do not choose our family and can't be blamed for our relatives, though some reincarnationists would disagree, and that's usually the case when it comes to bosses and coworkers too. 

But you choose your friends.

Bette and Ethel originally met a church that neither of them goes to any more, though they go to another. Bette has a disabled son who she has been the lone caregiver of for years and is still working part time while Ethel has been on disability income since midlife.  The two go here, there, and everywhere together - lunches at a senior center, local museums on free days, shopping, and doctor's appointments.  This morning Bette, bless her, told me that she calls Ethel every morning and every night.

In case you're wondering, neither woman is of lesbian nature.  But it could be said that they act as husband and wife, living separately, together.

So here is another, real story of women's friendship that is a little closer to my home.

Walking my dog I got to know several neighbors, including "Este."  She lives in a large old single apartment with one pit bull, one scruffy little dog, one enormous white cat, and until recently two roommates, a married couple.  She has lived in the same place for over 20 years and with rent control this is what she can afford in her retirement.  Of course the couple both work and are gone most of the day, and they are gone a lot socially too, but recently the wife went to live elsewhere.  That left Este and, we'll call him "Mickey" the motorcycling riding fifty-something man who works full time.

A few months back Este got pneumonia and had to go into the hospital and then a nursing facility.  Mickey showed up to visit and she wrote out rent and utility checks.  He was on his motorcycle on his way to the landlords to pay the rent with the check when he was in a bad accident.

Enter, "Sharon," Este's best friend.  Sharon visited Este at the hospital every other day and when Este wanted and needed some of her things from the apartment, like her own nightgowns, of course Sharon went with her key to pick things up.  That's when she saw eviction notices on the door.  The pets, sadly, had not eaten in days.  Now Este, as stated, had paid her rent on time for 20 years but this landlord was going to evict her anyway.  (You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.)  It was then that Sharon - and Este - realized something was wrong.  What had happened to the rent check and Mickey?

Sharon contacted the landlord, who wanted his money, money she could not come up with.  She explained that Este was in a nursing home temporarily and that she had written out the rent check and handed it to Mickey; she begged for time.  Sharon went on FACEBOOK and that way learned that Mickey was hospitalized and in need of prayers.  She went to the hospital to see him, where he lay in a coma.  She went to the place where his motorcycle was impounded, found the rent check and then delivered it to the landlord, who backed off the eviction- with only a day to spare!  In short, because of Sharon's devotion to her best friend she saved her from being a homeless senior citizen.  She now went to the apartment every day to walk and feed the animals.

I know that if you've read this far you want more of the story.  Este did return home well but with Mickey, who was now conscious, in the hospital and not working, she was still not sure that she could keep the place.  Mickey even told her that he wasn't sure if he would make it home or back to work in time.  Mickey's coworkers DONATED THEIR VACATION TIME to his recovery so that he would not loose his job.  He WAS able to make it back to work, not on his motorcycle, but in a van for the disabled, and keep his job.  Weeks into this physical therapy, he is still not able to ride it, but he wants to.  His best friend comes over on Sundays and they give it a try.

Bless Sharon!

Keeping the Holiday Spirit

Christine


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THE GOLDEN AGE SHTETL : BOOK REVIEW by ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

THE GOLDEN AGE SHTETL
A New History of Jewish Life in Eastern Europe
by Yohanan Petrovsky- Shtern
Princeton University Press C 2014 and is the Publisher

BOOK REVIEW by ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern did a great job of bringing the long gone Eastern European shtetl to vibrant life in this new and popular book.  It's valuable to genealogy researchers in that knowing what sort of life your ancestors lived realistically may move you to the right places to look for information or go on tour.  You may also consider things like that they traveled for work from town to town or along trade routes, may have been the result of a mixed marriage or conversion to another religion, or that they became more liberal about such things as they moved to a larger town.

80% of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 1790-1840 period that is this book's focus, lived in the three provinces covered.  (That area does not include Austrian run Galicia, but it's likely the lifestyle revealed also occurred in predominately Jewish small towns there too.)  The term shtetl is Yiddish for such a town, but as Jews moved to larger cities, the term sometimes was used with condensation.  This book reveals that when Russia took over the government, the area had a kind of Russian-Polish-Jewish, or make that Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish, atmosphere in which much had to be negotiated.  Over time Russia began to see patriotism as membership in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and both Catholics and Jews were expected to convert or were considered suspicious.

At the same time this area was known for the magnate owned town, the magnate being a Polish aristocrat who owned the town long before Russians took over, as if it were a business but who also ran it as nobility might, with an eye to patronage.  This was a kind of town unknown to Western Europe (I know such towns existed in Slovakia and Hungary) and Russia tried to buy them out or outright take the towns from their owners.  (After the 1830 rebellion, the Russian government confiscated the Potocki estate including the whole town and 44,000 gallons of vodka.)

There is a huge portion of this book devoted to the issue of trade in this political era, when Jews were considered to be rightfully employed in trade, and that included Jewish women, and the way that a Jewish house in a shtetl often became also a place of trade, smuggling when taxations occurred, the popularity of the Tavern as a place where people from all religious backgrounds - male people - could actually unwind, the vital and lively markets that drew both sellers and buyers, and the diverse number of goods available including things like Chinese Pekoe tea, tobacco and pipes, silk, apricots, and tons of other produce.

Perhaps more interesting to me, especially as a woman and feminist, was the issue of family life and the harmonious and conflicting relationships between Jews and Catholics in these towns.  The author is Jewish and his goal was to bust through mythologies about shtetl life that have been promoted by the literary fiction called Fiddler's Roof. He emphasized how important the preservation of family was for the individual as well as the community, the emphasis on preserving family, even if that meant not reporting rape and sexual harassment or getting justice. How did the rabbi handle it when a woman who traveled for business came home pregnant?  He states that an accusation of sexual offense was enough to destroy a competitor.  And yet, he also states that (and this is where I thought "wrong, now you're peddling the Jewish version of the situation) that Jews didn't think sex was sinful and wrong LIKE THE CATHOLICS.

This is where the author lost me.  He presents all these things a Jewish woman had to do, like be "ritually pure", to have sex with her husband, and for sex to be spiritual.  She had to go soak in a mikvah bath after her period.  She actually had to go ask a Rabbi if she wasn't sure, like if she had cramps but no bleeding.  Her privates and private life were open to inspection by these authorities. (By my standards, all of this is cringeworthy!)

First I heard that for Catholics sex in marriage was considered sinful and wrong.  (It's funny I think to hear some people tell it, though not this author, that Catholics are supposed to be overpopulating the word and yet married sex is sinful and wrong!) What about the dangers of childbirth that these women faced, not having access to modern, western, standards of medical care we take for granted today? Here he says the Jewish women had more children than Catholics, less death from childbirth, and so on, taking the hygiene rather than genetic or economic factors into consideration.


He also presents a scenario where a poor Catholic servant girl is involved in lying against someone for pay, and to do that she goes by the ritual bath and claims she is pregnant by a Jewish man.  In the end she tells the truth.  The author says that this is "no surprise" and that even the girl's mother would think that two cows would be good compensation for an illegitimate birth.  Maybe that mother, but this is NOT representing Catholic values correctly.
Not then.  Not now.

Some day I will trip upon my notes from years ago so that I can say where I read this, but there came a time when the Catholic Church's influence in parts of what was Poland but now taken over by Austria or Russia was such that no Catholic girl who went to be a servant in a Jewish home could stay there more than a year.  The reason for this was that so many servant girls were turning up at the church unmarried and pregnant by their employers and there were no social services to help them.  Of course the year's time is arbitrary.

Perhaps I should just back off and state that the author chose a few real life scenarios to present things that did happen but mention that news is the exceptional not the common.
I took lots of notes before returning this book to the library, and hope to read it again in the future.

SUNDAY JUNE 21st 2009 IS FATHERS DAY - TODAY!

In genealogy we often find much more information - documents - for the males than the females, and the fathers more than the mothers. Reading through microfilms of Catholic Church records for small towns in Hungary, for instance, I found that baptismal records (which usually closely followed births) did not always even mention the mother's name. When the surname is common, and the given names are repetitive, this represents a research block that can be impossible to get around. Jewish records for about the same time and place however not only gave the names of the parents but the midwife and the rabbi who circumcised the male child!

This emphasizes the importance of keeping family records NOW for generations in the future!