![\"\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/map-300x131.jpg\" "\\"map\\"")
<\/a>It is approximately 1140 miles from his birthplace to London.\u00a0 He never told anyone where he was living when he fled to London or how old he was at the time. An estimate would be that he was between 16-18 years old at the time, which would have been between 1898 and 1900.\u00a0 [Update: Cousin Jean says that the only story she heard was that Nathan said he walked out of Russia when he was 15.] I can only imagine that it must have been a long and hazardous journey for a runaway youngster.\u00a0 He probably didn’t have much (if any) money, so it may have taken a very long time for him to get to London.\u00a0 And it isn’t clear whether that was his original destination or it was happenstance that he ended up there.\u00a0 There would have been trains and animal-drawn vehicles, but cars were not yet common, and without money he may have had to walk or hitch rides when he could.<\/p>\n
In later years, Nathan told his son that he had lived in the Whitechapel area of London, which was a Jewish area,\u00a0 and worked as a cabinetmaker.\u00a0 It was while in London that he met Choneh (Harry) Levine, who was also a cabinetmaker.\u00a0 Both young men were politically radical and probably active, at least to the extent of belonging to groups or attending speeches and rallies.<\/p>\n
Nathan and Harry became very good friend over time.\u00a0 Harry persuaded Nathan that he should plan to go to America with him and meet his sister Lena.\u00a0 Harry thought the two of them would be a good match.\u00a0 Since we know that Lena was politically radical later in life, it is likely that she also was as a young woman.\u00a0 This may have been the reason Harry thought that they’d be a good couple.\u00a0 For non-religious Jews, in particular, politics and political groups were often a source of friendships and a community.\u00a0 At any rate, Nathan did sail to New York, on the SS Pennsylvania from Boulogne on June 5 1904.\u00a0 He arrived in New York on June 16th.<\/p>\n On the passenger list Nathan was said to have last resided in Liverpool, to have paid his own passage, and to have $10.\u00a0 He could not read or write, and his occupation was given as cabinetmaker.\u00a0 His last name was spelled Grinberg (rather than the Greenberg used the rest of his life in the US).\u00a0 It is difficult to decipher his intended final destination; one in Montreal seems to have been erased and another in New York written more clearly.\u00a0 It may be that the person named as his contact was actually Harry’s brother Sam.<\/p>\n Sometime in late 1905 or early 1906, Harry and his family, and Nathan, and probably Sam and his family all moved to Syracuse in upstate New York.\u00a0 Lena was either already there or went with them (I haven’t yet found out when she came to America).\u00a0 How and when Nathan and Lena met is unknown.\u00a0 Meet they did, however, and on November 4, 1906 they married in Syracuse.<\/p>\n They lived in a number of places around Syracuse over the next 15 years or so.<\/p>\n In 1907 Nathan filed a Declaration of Intent to naturalize.\u00a0 In 1907, too, Nathan and Lena’s first child, my father-in-law, was born.\u00a0 In 1910 the family appeared on the federal population census\u00a0 living on South State Street in Syracuse and a city directory shows that Nathan had a furniture store at the same address.\u00a0 Presumably the family lived in an apartment above the store.<\/p>\n In 1912 their second child, a daughter, was born.\u00a0 And in 1914 Nathan’s Petition for Naturalization was finalized and he and Lena became naturalized citizens.\u00a0 So far I have not found any World War I registration for Nathan.\u00a0 The family continued to live in Syracuse through 1920 (federal population census).\u00a0 At that point they were living in a multi-family house with Lena’s brother Sam and his family.\u00a0 Another of Lena’s cousin’s family lived in a little house in the backyard.\u00a0 <\/p>\n In about 1924 Nathan moved the family to Buffalo for an unknown reason.\u00a0 Based on my father-in-law’s memory, it was his senior year in high school and after the school year had started.\u00a0 According to the 1930 federal population census, as well as a city directory listing, Nathan worked (at least briefly) as an auctioneer for the Empire Outfitting company in Buffalo.\u00a0 This is a little confusing, since he had always worked as a cabinetmaker, carpenter, and furniture store owner, but I don’t yet know what kind of outfitting this company was selling.<\/p>\n The next mysterious fact about Nathan is that he applied for a Social Security number in 1940, giving a Syracuse address and employer, although the family was still living in Buffalo.\u00a0 Possibly he had found a job in Syracuse when he couldn’t find one in Buffalo.\u00a0 By this time he was 58 years old, and it is not clear how much longer he worked or at what kind of jobs.<\/p>\n His wife Lena died in 1959.\u00a0 It is not clear where Nathan was at this time.\u00a0 My father-in-law told a story about going to a Jewish undertaker and asked about having his mother buried in the Workmen’s Circle Cemetery, and having one of the Arbeiter Ring men speak at her funeral.\u00a0 Why Nathan didn’t handle this is unclear, but he may thought that my father-in-law,\u00a0 who was a lawyer would be better able to take care of the formalities.\u00a0 Shortly<\/span> after Lena died Nathan moved to Rochester to live with his daughter and her family, and he lived the rest of his life there.\u00a0 Nathan died in 1964 and his ashes were buried under a forsythia bush in the yard at the family home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a work in progress.\u00a0 My husband’s grandfather, Nathan is a man of mystery in a family of many mysteries.\u00a0 I have more questions than answers, but here is what I know so far. Nathan was born June 3, …<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/passenger-list-1904-300x60.jpg\" "\\"click")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/Marr-005a-300x219.jpg\" "\\"Marr")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/Nathan-in-front-of-his-store-233x300.jpg\" "\\"Nathan")
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