I wondered if there was any family information from Harry Levine’s side about the two of them meeting in London.\u00a0 I have always liked the story that Harry told Nathan to come to America and marry his sister Lena.\u00a0 But it has always been just that, a family story or myth that was at least once removed (heard from father-in-law Izzy who had been told the story by his father much later in life).<\/p>\n
Late last Sunday I found a message on my cell phone from cousin Mary.\u00a0 She has a wonderful ability to tell you 14 things in a single short message.\u00a0 The item I was most interested in was that she had talked, as promised, with cousin Sophie out in Michigan.\u00a0 And Sophie would be glad to talk with me, although she doesn’t know much about her father’s family.\u00a0 Mary warned me that Sophie had not thought much of her father.\u00a0 So now I have a phone number.\u00a0 Along with a lot of other family information that doesn’t fit this story.<\/p>\n
So on Monday afternoon late, with not a little trepidation (I hate to make cold calls!), I called the number.\u00a0 When Sophie answered she told me she was just on her way to dinner, and she asked if I could call back later in the evening.\u00a0 Of course I could.\u00a0 And did. \u00a0 And we talked for an hour and a half.\u00a0 I scribbled as fast as I could, trying to get the important things written, at least enough that I could remember the whole story, hoping I’d be able to read my handwriting and not wanting to miss a word of what Sophie was saying.\u00a0 Never occurred to me ahead of time to think about whether I could tape it.\u00a0 Not that I know how to do that over the phone.<\/p>\n What Sophie told me:\u00a0 That her father and mother had been married in the old country and had 2 children there.\u00a0 That her mother came from Bialystok and her father from a small village near there.\u00a0 That it had been an arranged marriage by her mother’s parents because she was in love with a young man they considered unsuitable.\u00a0 That at some point after the marriage Sophie’s father had left Russia and gone to England for a job, leaving his wife and 2 children in the small village.\u00a0 Harry was a cabinetmaker and carpenter.\u00a0 That he spent 5 years in London.\u00a0 And that he met Nathan there.\u00a0 Her father apparently never told the story of getting Nathan to come marry his sister Lena, but Sophie certainly heard about that family as she grew up.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Sophie didn’t know much about the rest of her father’s family.\u00a0 This is becoming the theme of all of the families on my husband’s side.\u00a0 She didn’t know how many brothers and sisters he had or what happened to them.\u00a0 It sounds like she knew about the two families who stayed in northern New York but not about the sister’s family who came a little later and stayed in New York City.\u00a0 There were also two other brothers and one of them had children who migrated to the U.S.<\/p>\n Sophie had been told the story, by her mother, about a brother of her father’s who was very good at carving.\u00a0 (This story was told with little variation by several branches of the family.)\u00a0 One day he was sitting by the roadside, working on a piece of stone and a Russian soldier came by.\u00a0 The soldier was very impressed by the work this brother was doing and told him to come to the city to be trained as an artist.\u00a0 The Levine parents would not let him go because Jews are not supposed to make graven images.\u00a0 The brother went crazy and died.<\/p>\n Sophie’s family had moved to the Detroit area when she was a small girl, to be closer to her mother’s family.\u00a0 Her mother had 3 sisters there and they were a close family.\u00a0 Harry doesn’t seem to have kept in very close touch with any of his family, although there were occasional postcards (picture to the left is one he sent).\u00a0 Harry was described by Sophie as not having any friends in Detroit, although my father-in-law said that Harry and Nathan were good friends as well as brothers-in-law.<\/p>\n Another connection Sophie remembers between the Nathan Greenbergs and her family was that around 1926-27, Lena’s daughter Freda who was a young teen, visited for a week.\u00a0 Sophie’s memory is that she herself was out of high school (she graduated at 15) and working, not yet in college, when this visit took place.\u00a0 It may have been around the time that Freda graduated from grammar school.<\/p>\n This was the summary of what Sophie remembered and could tell me.\u00a0 I may never learn anything more substantial about Harry and Nathan, but I’ve learned more about the Levines and about Sophie’s life.\u00a0 Now that I’ve told it several times, and thought about it, I have more questions for her.\u00a0 So I expect that I will be making another call soon.\u00a0 This one will be a little easier to initiate since I don’t feel like Sophie is a stranger anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Actually, it was two brothers and a sister.\u00a0 And they didn’t come together but at three different times to two different places.\u00a0 From about 1899 to 1905.\u00a0 And there was a friend who became a brother-in-law.\u00a0 They, like many immigrants …<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Lena-Nathan-Esther-Yellin-Killian-Louis-Levine-Harry-Levine-Rachel-Levine-Mary-Levine-Dworman-250x300.jpg\" "\\"B:")
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