I’ve written about Gertrude and her husband Sam before.  Here is a brief synopsis.

Sam Silver was 18 or 19 when he fought in the Spanish-American War.  When he left the army he went to New Orleans where he met the very young Gertrude Eliach.  Sam was about 23 and Gertrude 14 when they ran away to San Francisco and may have married.  At this point in the story my unromantic, pragmatic sensibilities say, “Gertrude, young, foolish, believing she was in love.”  And what of Sam?  My best-case scenario is youngish, equally foolish, maybe in love.  Worst-case scenario, hm, I’d rather not go there. This is not a story I expected to end well.  But here’s the thing, Sam and Gertrude stayed together for 22 years, until Sam’s death at the age of 41.  They had four children, only one of whom, Joseph, survived until adulthood.  Gertrude’s father died a few years after the marriage and by 1910 Gertrude’s mother was living with the couple.  She lived with them the rest of their married life.  Even the cynic in me has to say, “If that’s not love, what is?”

That’s what I knew until recently.  I put Gertrude and her son Joseph on the back burner and moved on to other genealogical challenges, but Gertrude was always on my mind. Her story seems so moving and so sad.  An elopement that seemed likely to end quickly turned out to be the story of a couple who lived, loved and struggled together through hard times and so much sadness until Sam’s early death.  I needed to know what became of Gertrude and Joseph.

Here’s what I learned.  Gertrude’s mother, Libby, died in 1935.  Gertrude and Joe buried her in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.

In 1934 Joseph married Beryl Reilinger. According to the 1940 census Joe and Beryl lived in a guesthouse run by Beryl’s parents.  Their block in Los Angeles seems to be a long row of boarding houses and guesthouses.  The couple had a son, Stanley, who was four years old in 1940.

Gertrude married again in 1966 at the age of 73.  She married Louis Philipson, also 73.  The California Marriage Index lists the marriage twice with Gertrude listed as Gertude Chertin and Gertrude Eliach, her maiden name.  There is an asterisk next to the last names. Was Gertrude married three times?

Lou and Gertrude had seven years together.  Lou died in 1973, leaving Gertrude a widow once more.  Gertrude died in 1980, she was 93. Sam must be gone by now too, but their son Stanley is likely still alive.  There are lots of avenues for me to explore, but I doubt they will answer my real question.

I want to know if Gertrude was happy.  No, I want to know that she was happy, but I suppose I can live with the answer no matter what it is.  I need to find Stanley Lee Silver or I need him to find me.  I need to hear about his grandparents.  I know Stanley was married for a few years.  Are there children, Sam and Gertrude’s great-grandchildren?

Stanley Silver was my father’s name too. Stanley, where are you?

When I was growing up in Philadelphia my parents belonged to many Jewish organizations, but the one that puts a smile on my face is Standard Lodge of the Judaic Union.  It makes me smile because it meant so much to my father.  He was always involved in the lodge and served in every capacity including that of President for many years.

In his later years I think the lodge served primarily as a place to get away from the women and have a few drinks and a schmooze with his buddies, but in earlier years he was involved in all sorts of activities.

I have found some of the photographs from his days with the lodge and I post them here both as a trip down memory lane and a source of information for any one who recognizes a name or a face.

This is the baseball team, Judaic League champions in  1921, 1922 and 1923.  Second from the right in the last row is my uncle Jack Kessler.

     The bowling team won a championship in 1940.

    Here is a photo of the past presidents taken in 1970.  My dad is in the middle row, second from the left. My brother is eighth from the left in the middle row.

     My dad kept this award in his office in the house where I grew up.

Standard Lodge and the Judaic Union ceases to exist sometime in the 1970′s due to a lack of interest from a younger generation of men and women who had become a part of our larger American society.  This pleases and saddens me at the same time.

]]> http://genealogygals.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=5326 0 http://genealogygals.com/blog/?p=5228 http://genealogygals.com/blog/?p=5228#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:20:30 +0000 Judy http://genealogygals.com/blog/?p=5228 The Genealogy Gals are taking a vacation (from blogging that is).  Thanksgiving and Christmas are rapidly approaching and we are both a bit overwhelmed.  We will be back in January on our regular weekly schedule, with new and entertaining family stories.  Please come back and see us then.  If we get inspired by something and can manage a quick post before then we will, but for sure in January. In the meantime please scroll though some of our earlier material.  Thanks for reading.

We hope that our friends who live directly on the shoreline and who have already evacuated will return on Wednesday to find their homes intact.  I hope that this is not the storm when I lose the perennial argument with my spouse about taking down my favorite backyard tree.  He sees it as a menace to health and safety and I see it as the beautiful, iconic sheltering maple that everyone wishes they had in their backyards.

Our little town is already 25% out of power.  We are tiny and have no industry or healthcare facilities, so we are always the first to lose power and the last to be restored.  I am hoping to get this up today, if not you will see it next week.

Of course, all this makes me think of the weather events our ancestors survived without benefit of three days of constant updates from the weather channel.

In Sprague, Washington the Costellos and their kin survived the flood of 1909.

Our Martin relatives first survived the storm that sank their Great lakes schooner, the Jessie Martin, and then the 1894 flooding of the Willamette River in their new home of Portland, OR.

This from  the Oregan History Project,    “In late May and early June of 1894, the Willamette River rose well above 30 feet, flooding the central business district of Portland.  The water remained for days, inspiring some Portlanders to accept the situation with the humor as displayed in this shot of “hunters” taking aim at decoys floating down the street. ”

My Silver relatives got through the blizzard of 1914 in Philadelphia , not to mention the more recent “snowmageddon”.

We do our best to create a safe environment.  Architecture, communication, and law have greatly reduced the loss of life from weather events, but mother nature still decides to do massive damage every once in a while.  I’m sure we will get through this year’s hurricane.  I mourn the loss of lives in Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, and hope everyone on the East Coast has heeded the warnings and reached a safe place.  See you after the storm.

One of her stories was about her cousin Nathan Stein.  I never knew my grandmother or most of the Stein family, so I filed the picture and the story and pursued other genealogical interests.

A recent response to my post, Too Many Steins, made me go back and look at some of my notes.  I found this photo of Nathan Stein and my mother’s story about him.

Mom said that Nathan was her Uncle Joseph’s son and that he played in the Marine Band in Haiti.  She also said that Nathan had a picture of my mother painted by someone in Haiti.  I didn’t place much stock in this story.  As I’ve said before, my Russian Jewish immigrant family was not enthusiastic about military service.  As always, I should have listened to my mother.

My recent contact piqued my curiosity and I started to look for Nathan’s military records.  To my absolute delight Ancestry.com had the Marine muster rolls for 1798-1958.  If you had a relative in the Marines these muster rolls are pure gold.

Nathan enlisted in the Marines on June 3, 1924. I believe he was born in 1905, so he would have been 19 years old.  The muster roll for Battalion D of the Marine Barracks Training Station at Parris Island, South Carolina tells me that Nathan joined the Marines by enlisting at Parris Island.  This 19-year-old young man took himself 800 miles from Philadelphia to South Carolina to enlist. I assume there was a long train trip involved.

By August of 1924 Nathan had finished his training, qualified as a marksman and been transferred to the United States Marine Scoring Detachment in Quantico, Virginia. He remained in Quantico with brief detachments to Camp Perry in Ohio and on board the USS Dobbin until June of 1925.

In June 1925 Nathan was still at Quantico, but listed as “under instruction post band school.”  I wonder what the training involved.  I assume he already played an instrument, so he probably was learning to play it while marching. Although he remained with the band Nathan spent a few days in September of 1925 “under instruction Rifle Range” where he qualified as a sharpshooter. Apparently Nathan was handy with both a musical instrument and a rifle.

On October 19, 1925 Nathan boarded the USS Henderson.  He arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on October 24.  Why Haiti?  The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.

USS Henderson 1925

If you want to know more about the U.S. involvement there you can read about in Wikipedia.

This is a photo of the marine Band in Haiti in 1915, a bit earlier than Nathan’s time.

Although the muster rolls have lots of detail, one detail that is consistently missing is any mention of what instrument Nathan played.  I assume it was a horn or a drum of some kind, but it would be nice to know.

Nathan was discharged from the Marines on March 8, 1928 in Haiti ” at OWN convenience”. His home address is listed as his parent’s home at 2560 Corlis Street in Philadelphia.  His character was recognized as excellent.  I would have thought that Nathan would have headed for home at the Marine’s expense after his discharge, but apparently he remained in Haiti for another 8 months.  He is listed as a passenger on the SS Cristobal on Nov. 2, 1927, arriving in New York on November 7.

What was Nathan doing for those 8 months in Haiti?  Perhaps he was having a picture of my mother painted.  I would love to see it.

Yes, October 1 is really International Day of Older Persons, at least according to the United Nations and who am I to argue with the UN.

I was completely unaware of International Day of Older Persons until a desperate need to find a blog post for this week drove me to Google to search for things that happened on October 1.  Older Persons Day seemed suitable for a genealogy post, so I tried to learn something about it.

Here is a bit taken completely out of context from timeanddate.com:

“International Day of Older Persons is a special day for older persons or senior citizens all over the world. In many countries, politicians make speeches, particularly those responsible for government departments that focus on senior citizens, at this time of the year. Some radios, televisions or newspapers publish interviews with senior citizens on various issues such as achievements they made to create a better society.”

I am particularly fond of the bit about politicians making speeches.  We just don’t get enough of that, especially in this country at this time of year.

My personal plans for celebration include:

1.  Getting older

2.  Finishing this post before I become a Much Older Person and

3.  Perhaps a wee drop of a restorative cocktail.

Now back to the post.  Older Persons Day does make me think about the people in my family history.  I looked into my database to see which ancestors had the longest lives.  I am focusing on those who were Really Older Persons, which I have defined as 95 or older. This is far enough away from my current age to make me feel less like one of them.

Not surprisingly those who lived the longest are those who died in the last half of the 20th century.  Modern medicine has greatly increased life expectancy in the developed world.

Amy Martin

The longest-lived person in my database is Amy Martin, my spouse’s great-aunt.  She was born in 1881 and died in 1982 at the age of 101.   I have written about her several times.  You can read about her here and here.

Henrietta Silver

Marian Cole

The next two Really Older Persons are my mother,and mother-in-law.  They lived to be 99 and 95   We lost them both two years ago within six weeks of each other.  You can read about them here.

Pauline Silver

I have told my grandmother Pauline’ story several times.  She was a remarkable woman, the matriarch of the Silver clan and much beloved by all of us.She died in 1977 at the age of 99.   Read some of her story here, here, and here.

Elias Cady

Finally there is the surprisingly long-lived Elias Cady.  Elias may or may not have served in the Revolutionary War.  His birth date is not completely clear, but if you believe the oft-stated date of 1756 Elias lived to be 97, a remarkable age for someone born in the 18th century.  The details of his somewhat murky story can be found here.

There are a few others whose stories I haven’t told.  I will leave those for another day.

What will Pat and I be doing when we are Really Older Persons?  I expect we will be scratching the two hairs left on our ancient heads and trying to come up with another blog post from our cabin under the Martian dome.

Here we are 223 years later still trying to figure out how to do it right.

In that first election only 10-15% of the population was eligible to vote.  Male, white, property owners were the only ones to have that privilege. My husband has a few ancestors who were in the country by then and fit that description and a few that did not.

Francis Blood a revolutionary war general and prominent citizen of Temple New Hampshire probably exercised his franchise.  Ephraim Bate Bigelow a runaway from indentured servitude certainly did not.

By 1850 property ownership had been eliminated as a voting requirement.  Now many of our white, male relatives could vote if they had obtained citizenship. William Martin and Francis Blood, grandson of the revolutionary War general probably voted.

Francis Blood

But in 1855 Connecticut adopted the first literacy test, quickly followed by Massachusetts.  These literacy tests were designed to keep too many newly minted Irish-American citizens from voting.  They would later be used to discriminate against other groups, most notably African-Americans

The newly arrived Irishman John Costello would not have voted.

The Coles, the Silvers, and the Bublicks had yet to arrive in the United States.

The 15th amendment to the constitution was passed in 1870.  It gave all male citizens the right to vote, including former slaves.  It was the beginning of a long road to real voting rights for African-Americans.

I don’t think we have any African-American ancestors.  We certainly had some ancestors who could not pass a literacy test.

In the 1890′s poll taxes and literacy tests were adopted throughout the South.  The literacy test presented a problem as it excluded many white voters along with the African voters for whom it was intended, so grandfather clauses were adopted, allowing those who could vote before 1870 to continue to do so irrespective of literacy or tax qualifications. In 1915 the Supreme Court outlawed literacy tests.

At the turn of the twentieth century the Western states started granting women the right to vote in state and local elections.

And–ta-da– in 1920 the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed and women get the right to vote in national elections.   Lots of people in my family gained the right to vote in 1920.

Rosa Cole

Celia Mason

Pauline Silver

So now all U.S. citizens can vote, right?  Well, not quite. That would happen in 1924, when Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship including the right to vote in federal elections. Of course, residents of the nation’s capital couldn’t vote in presidential elections until the 23rd Amendment was passed in 1961.

This of course, doesn’t stop states from attempting to block some of the people from voting. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally put an end to the poll tax.  Somehow literacy tests had made their way back into law and were finally banned in 1970.

And finally in 1971 the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

The national argument over who can vote continues of course, with cases about voter ID requirements moving through the courts as I write this.  We all want our choice to win.  I think the best way to achieve this is not to stop others from voting, but to get off your behind, even if it’s raining, and get to the polls on November 6, 2012; unless you’re voting for the other guy, then you can stay home.

The people who made the Pullman railroad cars lived in a company town. They were paid by the Pullman Company, lived in company housing and had their rent automatically deducted from their paychecks. When the economy crashed in 1893 there were layoffs, and wage cuts, but no decrease in rents.

The workers walked out.  They were soon joined by railroad workers led by the young Socialist leader Eugene Debs. Train service was disrupted.  The mail could not get through. There was rioting and destruction of railroad equipment, sometimes by mobs of non-union workers. 80 million dollars of damage was done and thirty people died.

The strike became a national issue.  Unable to resolve the labor dispute President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and sent troops to disband the strike.

Pullman Strikers Confronting the National Guard

Eventually the workers were overpowered and forced to sign a pledge never to unionize again.  Eugene Debs, defended by Clarence Darrow, saw the charge of obstructing the mail dropped, but spent six months in prison for violating a federal injunction.  He continued to organize. When he ran for President in 1920 on a Socialist ticket he won a million votes.

Labor had long pressed Congress for a Labor Day holiday.  The bill was passed by both houses and hit Cleveland’s desk six days after the end of the strike.  The bill was signed into law as a means of appeasing the labor movement.   The new holiday was seen by labor not just as a holiday, but as a day for organizing.

Today we see Labor Day as the holiday that marks the end of summer.  Kids go back to school, parents breathe a sigh of relief, we grill things and try not to think about cold weather and heating bills.

Of course, genealogists think about their ancestors and I am no exception.  Here are some of our great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and their labors.

Samuel Bublick opened a candy store, what we might consider a convenience store in New York City.

Joseph Mason

Joseph Mason worked as a leather cutter making ladies handbags.  He was a wiry little man with arms of steel.

Morris Silverman was a capmaker in New York City.

Morris Silverman

His son Alex would organize for the capmakers union.

Alex Silver

Alex’s son, Stanley would work for the Signal Corp and then as a salesman.  He would be a union steward.

Stanley Silver

I am Stanley’s daughter.

John and Annie Costello homesteaded a farm in Sprague, Washington.

James and Sophie Cole

James and Sophie Cole homesteaded a farm in Primrose, Nebraska.

Edwin Cole

Their son Edwin would cook in a lumber camp, pour cement for the WPA and work as a janitor in a hotel.

Edwin’s son Merwin would become a union organizer, a carpenter and a contractor.

Marian and Merwin Cole

My husband is Merwin’s son

Stanley’s daughter and Merwin’s son got to go to college and now work at jobs that leave them trying to figure out how to get enough exercise. Wow!

Merwin’s son and Stanley’s daughter post exercise

The last piece I posted for this blog was about my husband’s family’s appearance in the 1940 census and a surprise it held.  I made the point that although we think we know everything about people with whom we lived or whom our parents knew well, there are always things we don’t know.

I got quite the surprise when I looked for my family.  My grandparents, my aunts and uncles and older cousins are all in the census, all living in Philadelphia, but there is an extra son in my Aunt Ethel’s family.  Anomalies in the census always raise the question is it real or is it a mistake of the census taker, is it a disinterested lie to get the census taker out the door or an intentional falsehood for who knows what reason.  .

Here are the lines from the census.

There are my aunt and uncle and the two sons I know well, my cousins Marvin and Dan, but between them is Morris who my aunt reported was her son.

Morris isn’t there in the 1930 census, just Marvin and Dan.  I checked with my older cousins, no one remembers another son.

I have spent a little time looking for Morris Kessler, but I haven’t found anyone who seems related to my family.  So, who is Morris?  Is he a real person who lived for some time with my aunt and uncle or was he just another kid hanging out in the house when the census taker arrived?

My husband’s grandfather worked for the WPA in 1940.  The WPA or Works Project Administration was founded in 1935 by the order of President Roosevelt to alleviate unemployment and start the country on the road to recovery from the Great Depression. At it’s peak in 1938 it provided jobs for 3,000, 000 people.  Edwin Cole was one of them.

In the 1940 census Edwin reports that he is working in “cement” and employed by the WPA.    My husband remembers being told that his grandfather traveled around Seattle pouring cement porches for people with an African-American partner.  Such a partnership would be unusual in the 30′s and 40′s, but maybe not if the WPA was involved.  The NAACP praised the WPA for providing African-Americans with real opportunity.  I would love to know if this partnership started with the WPA and continued on afterward.  There is so much rich history to be discovered in WPA records, but I haven’t scratched that surface yet.

Today, I am simply wondering what brought Edwin Cole to need the help of the WPA.

Edwin emigrated from Northern Ireland as an infant and lived with his parents in Nebraska and then Oregon.  In Oregon he met Rosa May Martin and married her in 1907. The marriage announcement states that Ed is “a prominent young businessman”..  By 1908 they were settled in Seattle.  A daughter was born and died in that year.  The 1909 city directory shows Edwin owning a grocery store at 2422 2nd Av.  Edwin and Rosa were living above the store.

The next city directory entry I can find is 1914.  By then Edwin and Rosa are living at 927 N. 87th St..  They owned that house and would live there for many years.  The grocery store is gone and through the years that followed until1929 Edwin worked at various jobs in a shipyard.  I expect there was work to be had in the shipyards prior to and during the First World War and Edwin seems to have found steady employment there.  By 1920 two sons had joined the family in the house on N 87th street.

Edwin Cole as chief janitor in the Arkade Bldg

After the stock market crash in 1929 America’s industries, including ship building, ground to a halt.  In the 1930 census Edwin is listed as a houseman in a hotel.  A houseman is a janitor in a hotel. I imagine Ed lost his job and counted himself lucky to be working as a janitor in 1930.  Although things must have been difficult Ed and Rosa were still able to deed two wood lots to their sons in 1934.

By 1935 things got worse.  Ed was unemployed and then in June Rosa died.  Ed couldn’t find full employment until the WPA provided a job for him.  I’m not sure when he started working for the WPA, only that he continued at least until 1940.  In 1938 he married Effie Kane and the two moved to a small house on Interlake Av. next door to Effie’s son. Ed made a total of $700 in 1939.  These were hard years in America and in the Cole household.  As America geared up for the Second World War the economy recovered and the austerity of the 30s eased.

I think Ed and Effie had a few good years until Effie’s death in 1945.  Ed continued for as long as he could and eventually moved in with my mother-in law and father-in-law.  He died in 1959.

As for me, I seem to need to continually relearn the classic genealogy lesson,  just when you think you’ve got it all figured out…