Love, Trains, and Miracles

 My Grandmother never really shared too many details about her childhood with me. Well actually nothing about her childhood at all. I know where she worked as a young teen and into young adulthood. I have seen pictures, a few, of her in those years with family.  I never knew how impoverished she and her family were. I only knew of the love story that brought her family to America. A story that I have learned through much research into Jewish genealogy could be true or could be lore.  Regardless, I find it fascinating.

The Love Story

My great-grandparents were born in Austria.  The town that they actually lived in no longer exists as it was back then. It was wiped out during World War II after they had already immigrated to New York via Ellis Island. But they did not come on their journey together. And the town is not the love story, although it makes for an intriguing scavenger hunt through time and history.

The two young people fell in love in their hometown in a time where status and family trade or profession would determine your future including who you could and could not court and marry. Ah young love.  The story is common, even still today.

Now I will get the backgrounds wrong but the gist is the same. One was beneath the other in the social system, although in my research I can't begin to believe that there was much delineation in today's terms. But alas, theier's was not a relationship that permitted to be.

Her father, my great-great-grandfather apparently paid for passage for her love so that he would leave and never be part of her life. My great grandfather accepted this gift of passage and left for America. 

As the story goes, he told my great-grandmother of the pay off to bid rid of him from her life and they hatched a plan together.  He was to embark for the US first, begin work and find sponsorship and funding for her to follow.  And this is what they did. 

Solomon & Jennie

My great-grandfather was Solomon, arrived in February,1904. Jennie, my great-grandmother,  followed almost two months later.  Her passenger listing shows her landing at Ellis Island late March, 1904. They were married a year and a half later in late 1905. They had very little and made harder decisions that I ever realized, until recently.

I Knew...

I knew that Jennie and Solomon had four kids, one of which was my grandmother.  I knew that Solomon was a shoemaker with a store in New York.  I knew that my grandmother was the third of the four and worked from a very young age. This was common for someone born to a working family in the early 1900's. I knew that one of her brothers became a jeweler and another a chemist for a beer company.  And I knew that like many immigrant families of that time, it was a tough go of it.  But nobody ever spoke of the details. There was no complaining, to me anyway, of what they did not have, what they had to endure, or the hardships they had to overcome.  So for me, they probably had a life kind of like mine. Just more like you would see in the movies of life in 1912 or during the 1920's.

I Learned...

Jennie arrived at Ellis Island technically alone in March of 1904, but not really. She gave birth to a son late August of the same year. Is that why her betrothed was sent away? Was she in fact cast off only a short time later when she could no longer conceal her son's existence? 

Imagine, if you can, living in a small village in Europe, where your religion led your community and the way of thinking.  In a time when certainly there were children whose parents were only married for the sake of their conception, like used to be the norm here.  You get pregnant, you get married. 

But what if in this case, they were not of the same social status?  What if there was some riff between the families where this match was forbidden? Is this what happened?  Was he cast off before knowing about her child and she found a way to go after him in America so he would know?  I may never know.

They lived in what was called the Manhattan 10th Ward.  This was known as "Little Israel" on New York City's Lower East Side.  This densely populated section of the city was home to Russian and other Eastern European Jews.  The Jewish Wards, including Ward 10, were the most densely populated areas of the city.  Multiple families often shared tenements which came to be known as slums. The Lower East Side, was also often called the American Jerusalem or the Jewish Ghetto. What I have read about the area in the time that they began their lives here does not sound like the promised land that I heard about in the stories of their journey and love. They were not a working family, they may not have had work or even a roof in the beginning.

But I really like the love story.  And ultimately, does it matter today how and why they ended up here and together?  Does it matter that they were destitute and living in such poverty? No.  Not to me.  Somehow, some way, they were together and created a family that would one day create me.  So for that I am fairly thankful. But for their first born.....it created an entirely different. life, and fortunately it sounds as if he had a much better life than that of the slums.

I Can't Fathom...

Unfortunately for most immigrants of the early 1900's, the streets of America were not paved with golden coins.  There was poverty, crime, and a life that many today would not be able to endure.  The unfairness of it all.  

Jennie arrived with nothing but her child.  A child that she was too poor to keep. 

Wealthy citizens within the US determined that the best thing to do with the poor and homeless problem within the big cities was to help reduce that population.  Beginning in 1854, The Children's Aid Society began a movement that would come to be known as the Orphan Train.  Between 1854 and 1929 it is estimated that 250000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children were transported from overcrowded, impoverished slums in big cities in the north east to rural communities throughout the country.  The hope was that these children would be offered a better life. One of those children belonged to my great grandmother and we never knew until this year when his children's families found us after decades if searching.

I Wonder...

Was Jennie homeless when she had her child, maybe not yet having found Solomon?  Had she and Solomon reconnected and known that they could not care for a child when they could barely care for themselves? How exactly did their child become one of those on the riders? Is this the reason there are no photos of Jennie smiling and stories of her sober and unhappy demeanor? Did she ever know what became of her first born?

Orphan Trains

There is much controversy surrounding Orphan Trains. Many complained that the children on these trains were of poor character or poor health coming from families of vagabonds and criminals. Some thought that New York was simply shuttling their "problems" to the South and West so they could wipe their hands clean of the nuisance.

While the Orphan Train movement had these and an abundance of other issues, there were many positives that transpired from its initiatives.  Reforms in child labor laws, adoption reform and the establishment of a foster care system. Now while all of these are not perfect solutions, they were a huge step forward for the time.

My question for this and for my own family was how children were selected, if not abandoned.  Some of these children were simply living in poor homes that the socialites considered squalor.  And the mastermind of the movement, Charles Brace, considered these people of the "dangerous classes."  He further believed that the city was the place for desperately poor children.  Rather than institutionalize these children, as was the norm for the time, he charged forward with his belief.

So were children of the poor and possibly homeless taken or were they solicited for a "better future" for your child since you can't give them a proper life type of deal?  I have read that with money donated by New York's wealthiest families,  Brace and other organizers began gathering children for these trains calling it the "Emigration to cure pauperism." The idea was that rural farming families needed all the hands they could get, so why not give them some poor kids!

My Orphan Train Relative

My long-lost great-uncle rode the train to Louisiana were he was adopted by a loving family.  He grew, married, and had a family of his own that has grown and thrived.  While he rode the train as an infant, he always knew that he came from another family.  His records did not include the names of his birth parents and sought to find them for many years.  His son took over that search and recently died.  

Through current DNA registries, he and his family found a connection through my mother's cousin.  Unfortunately, he passed shortly after they connected, but his children are still sharing details of both his and his father's lives so we can try to connect the dots.

So What?

I am not sure that any of this matters to anyone but me and that is ok. I find it fascinating  and I also find it sad.  I can't imagine being so poor that I had to give up my first born.  I also can't imagine living at the turn of the century in the slums of NYC. 

However I am sure that they, the "dangerous classes,"could have ever dreamed of the life that I have only a few generations removed. It was the dream, the hope, the desire: to come to this country and create a better life for your family and its generations to come.  But just how many of them were able to do this?  And how many of them were just lost, whether on the trains, in the slums, or within the poor conditions of the factories? How many of them sent of their children and never knew if that dream would actually pan out?

For me, I call it a miracle.  Sure, each generation had to overcome obstacles, sometimes those that seemed insurmountable, just for me to have made it to where I am today.  Sure I have had a lot to do with where I am in my life.  But ultimately, one young man and one young woman took a huge risk, gave up one of God's greatest gifts, and struggled for most of their lives to establish half of my family here in America.

Ultimately, whatever your family history, it is all pretty miraculous.  So today, as I am preparing for this holiday season, I want to invite you to not only celebrate the miracles of your faith, but to celebrate the miracle of your life, your history, and the legacy you want to leave behind for your family.

For me, my legacy is that of my kids and the foundation for their future.  Sure, there is more to me and my legacy, but that is the one that maybe someday, somewhere, some great-great grandchild might find as a miracle just the same.