Art Walk

Goat

I had always been fascinated by this rather bizarre photo of my mother with her father and brother, taken around 1922 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In 2009 while visiting her home town, I visited the Minnesota Historical Center.

There was a slideshow going on in the lobby, and as I passed by, to my astonishment I saw pop up a faded photo of another family in a similar contraption.

After a bit of research I came to realize that this was no coincidence.

In pre-"selfie" days, it was a common novelty for children to be photographed by itinerant goatherd shutterbugs! So common that there's now more than one Pinterest page for it!



Though I can't promise more goatcards per se, check out this week's Sepia Saturday for more memories of times past.

More Great-Aunts

This week I present a rather oblique tie-in with the current Sepia Saturday theme ... with a long-lost (to me, anyway) photo of two of my great-aunts "at table."

I was recently lucky enough to be sent some photos of my Nettie and Ida Singer, sisters of my maternal grandfather Art Singer.

Nettie was born in 1878, reportedly in Odessa, Russia. She immigrated to the U.S. with her siblings Annie and Sophie and mother Molly in 1887, to join her father Isaac Singer in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Back in Russia their surname had been Yarmolinski, or Jermelensky, a common Ukrainian name. From immigration records, I have reached the conclusion that the daughters' names before becoming Americanized were Scheine (Sophie), Chane (Nettie), and Tulke.

Ida was born in Saint Paul in 1981, followed by the only boy out of five to survive, Arthur, in 1894. After bearing twelve children (only seven of whom survived), Molly (originally named Taube, I believe) expired of appendicitis in 1903.

Nettie and sister Ida in the dining room, c. 1909, just prior to Ida's marriage

The Binders' 50th; Nettie passed away in 1950 at 72

Nettie married James Binder in 1895. 

Jim and Nettie Binder - look at that curl!

Nettie all gussied up - satin and velvet?

Nettie's granddaughter reminisces: "I remember [Nettie] telling me that she was about 8 years old when she came [to America], but she did not tell about her life in Russia and, unfortunately, we kids didn't ask. Back then, the future was important and the past more or less forgotten... She was a character, but in a good way: peppy, outgoing, smart, and ahead of her time. ...for a short time she delivered smoked fish to stores for [her brother-in-law]. Also, she loved to play bingo...

"In the summers... she and [her husband, Jim] stayed at their cottage at a lake about an hour away from St. Paul/Minneapolis... [She] would fish, have her friends at the lake for mahjong games, and entertain family and friends there most every week-end. She loved people and they loved her."

Nettie and sister Sophie at poker in that dining room, brother Art second from right, c.1919

Three sisters, 1930s - perhaps at the lake cabin.

"The view from Nettie's place"

Nettie seems to grown more staid in later years...

The elder Nettie Binder

Nettie and niece Edith Feinberg

Armistice

In keeping with this week's Sepia Saturday theme of Peace, the following is a brief excerpt from my great-grandfather David Blumenfeld's long-lost memoir, written in South St. Paul, Minnesota.

Sunday, November 10th 1918 was a grand day, [my eldest son] Albert’s wedding day. ...The honeymoon of their marriage passed in a glow of warmth and joyous discovery beyond any power of words to set down. There was never in the glittering realm a sound of joy like this.

[Meanwhile, Albert had, against his parents' wishes, enlisted in the Army and was about to leave for the European front.]

Albert Blumenfeld in uniform

On the very next day, Monday, November 11th, before dawn, wireless messages announced to the world [that] an Armistice was signed in the presence of General Pershing, Marshal Foch, and many other notables and military dignitaries. ...There was celebration all over America. Factory whistles screeched, church bells tolled; at 8 a.m. the Swift and Company ... stockyards employees laid down their tools and began celebrating.

The stockyards

... The mobbing, the pelting of roses, the kisses from suppressed, hot-lipped women who were perfectly respectable. The little flasks of whisky and cognac from many good-natured men’s pockets. Wavy lines of factory girls arm in arm, some of them half drunk, swayed along amidst the crowd, jostling men and squealing pert coquetries. There hovered about sundry lecherous looking males, much attracted by this throwing down of the outer earthworks of sex. Arms were thrown around strange necks in tight embraces. Girls shrieked endearments or words of immodesty or abuse like cats at their amorous cries on roofs. Men fanned their erotic fires with jests and buffoonery.

Minneapolis, Armistice Day 1918

An unmanageable excitement took over the nation. With uplifted arms all began to shout, “The war is over! The war is over!” while thousands laughed and wept. A combination of tumults. What joy or heartbreak was in their cry, God only knew. People were shouting that “the boys got the Kaiser” and crowds laughed, for a man moved into the light carrying a scarecrow on a long stick and yelling, “Here, here, we got the Kaiser.” The war was ended as suddenly as it [had begun].

...Two days after Albert’s wedding David received a telegram from his youngest daughter Helen [who was visiting] in Trenton, New Jersey, stating that she was married to Arthur Singer and that Moshe Rosen acted as best man and witness for them.

Helen and Arthur

Quilt

In 1931, when my mother Beth was 10, her mother Helen made an alphabet quilt for her. It was hand stitched, with appliqued scraps of old pajamas and other articles of clothes. As a child I saw this spectacular artifact on rare occasions, but it was usually kept well sequestered in an old trunk, thoroughly mothballed. When my daughter Piper was born in 1997, Beth passed the quilt on to her. It was always considered too precious to actually sleep under.

Alphabet Quilt

Now that my mother, now 92, is living with us, and much of the time is reliving her Midwest childhood memories, we brought out the quilt to show her. She broke into tears.

Windmill

Beth kept telling us the story of how Helen would take her into department stores, and find a dress they liked but were too poor to buy. Then she would buy some inexpensive fabric, and make the dress from memory. I began to wonder whether this quilt had come to be created through a similar process.

Sailboat

House

I Googled "alphabet quilt 1930s" and sure enough, soon discovered that our quilt was not a unique design but a pattern!

Baltimore Album Quilts has some good photos and provides this info: "The Alphabet Quilt was published in newspapers such as the Oregonian Newspaper in 1931 and the San Francisco Examiner in 1930. The patterns were designed by Florence La Ganke for Publishers Syndicate (1930). They were designed to appear in consecutive Sunday papers under the title of the Nancy Page Quilt Club."

This entry on the Anna Lena Land blog provides more information and photos of several similar quilts.

The Ruby Lane site offers a similar quilt for sale!

Read the pertinent excerpt from Wisconsin Quilts: History In The Stitches

If you want to make your own quilt, you can buy the pattern at Grandma's Attic or here!

Although this post doesn't hew to the Sepia Saturday theme of the week, do pop over to Sepia Saturday for more old photos, memorabilia, genealogy, and other musings....

The Human Face

In honor of this week's Sepia Saturday, for those of you familiar with my ongoing series about my great-grandfather's adventures...

Newly discovered: the earliest known photograph of my great-grandfather David Blumenfeld. My guess is that this is taken sometime after 1902 when he opened his haberdashery shop (at the age of 37) in South St. Paul, Minnesota. Only then did he begin to "make a go of it" financially, where he might be tempted to have a portrait taken. I wonder if his lapel pin indicates that he is a Mason...  Anyway, a good-looking fellow whose demeanor belies the throes he'd been through so far.

Here's one of the last photos taken of him, which appeared in his obituary in 1956.

Sepia Distaff Muddle

Today's Sepia Saturday starts with a group portrait and then briefly examines the cast of characters - those onstage and those mysteriously offstage.


Here is the Zalk family, circa 1900: Max (b. 1859 in Poland), his wife Gittel (aka Gertrude), and their children Sarah, Louis, and baby Eva. The person I'm especially interested in is Gittel, nee Lass.

The story I have heard is that she did not want to come to America; Max came over and had to convince her. She finally emigrated in 1888 with Sarah and Louis (age 3).

According to the 1910 census, Gittel was born Nov 1851 -- or in 1852, according to the 1930 MN census. Her daughter Eva’s birth certificate states that Gittel was born in 1860. Hmm. In addition to these discrepancies, I have spent considerable time winnowing conflicting stories and data in order to determine whether Gittel was the half-sister or the step-sister of my great-grandmother Lena Laser Blumenfeld. Step-sister is most probable.

One version of the relationship is that Lena Laser's father, Moses Laser, died; her mother, Leba Laser (nee Loss) (who was also sometimes referred to as Libshe or Lipse Loss!) , then married a widower with the last name of Lass -- one of whose children, Gittel, was much older than Lena (born in 1865).

But there are other theories as well. For one thing, the similar surnames (let alone the musical-chair given names) are enough to drive one batty. Lass, at least, appears to be solid, as there were other relatives in Minneapolis by that name.

Here is what purports to be a later photo of Gittel. Do you think, as I do, that she bears little resemblance to her earlier self?  She seems a good deal paler, for one thing.

Here is my forebear, her step-sister Lena Laser Blumenfeld, at a similar age, probably in the 1930s.

Compare this photo of Lena as a teenager in Kovno (now Kaunas) Lithuania. Not much resemblance there either, but at least her complexion is the same! (Victoria Carte refers to the format of the photo. If your browser can translate Lithuanian, there is some semi-intelligible information on this Kaunas University Library page.)

For the record, the following is the only known photo of Lena's mother Leba Libshe Lipse Loss Laser Lass...or whatever... taken sometime before her death at at 87 in Minneapolis in 1923. (She emigrated in 1912 to join her children in the States.)

Babushkas one and all! Eventually, at least.

Sepia Saturday: Finding Lost Treasure, Pt. 11

Continuing with excerpts from my great-grandfather David Blumenfeld's diary, which I discovered two years ago.

Looking north across the South St. Paul stockyards

On the advice of an acquaintance, in July 1902 David, still hunting elusive success, takes his wife Lena on the brief train ride from Minneapolis to the new community of South St. Paul to "look the place over." The main industry was the enormous stockyard for cattle en route to the butchers.

Lena felt very disheartened. It happened to be just after a warm rain. An east wind was blowing, the streets were muddy, and there was an awful stench from the cattle pens. It was terrible, she thought.

South St. Paul was a real frontier town with hitching posts all along in front of the saloons and the few business places. Cattlemen and cowpunchers were mostly on horseback, and farm wagons were drawn up along the main street, which consisted of one block on Concord Street. Horses hitched along the curb were flicking their tails in hopeless warfare against the summer pestilence of flies. On the shady side of the street sat a few farmers swapping politics.

It was hardly possible to walk in the mire and the roadway in most places was two feet below the sidewalk level.... A dingy packing plant with many windows and a tall chimney belching forth volumes of smoke darkened the air above and made filthy the earth beneath.

A bit closer in...the Cattlemens'Exchange building is the castle-like structure in the back

The unpaved street was almost impossible to cross from one side to the other. ...There were no real sidewalks, no sewer. Water was obtained mostly from pumps. Outhouses were located at the end of lots and there were stables in the backyards and odorous cesspools.

David and Lena observed the perplexing change in the atmosphere, the clouds curling along the Mississippi River, the stream in the distance, the sky pale as far as they could see, the sound of the animals. Into their disturbed consciousness sank the distant lowing of the animals, the noises of thousands of cattle and swine. Here and there through the alleys men were galloping on horseback, men booted and with long whips. They were calling to each other and driving cattle to the scales to be weighed. These men were mostly Western stock-raisers who came from Montana.

Near the Blumenfeld store (which was beyond the Exchange building seen in the background)

David decided to open shop [there] in August 1902. He began to do quite well and was able to support his family. The next spring David took his family [from Minneapolis] to South St. Paul to make their permanent home there. Lena felt a little improved in health but was very much discouraged with such country life.

Yet it was here the Blumenfelds finally settled. David lived there until his death in 1956 at the age of 91, outliving his wife by ten years. His daughter, my grandmother, raised her own children in nearby Saint Paul.

The Exchange, the only historic building now standing in South St.Paul

Some of these photos were borrowed from the following sites:

Chuckstoyland.com

www.mnhs.org


And find more fascinating posts at Sepia Saturday blog

Sepia Saturday: Finding Lost Treasure, Pt. 10

Calumet-Hecla Mine, Michigan

Continuing with excerpts from my great-grandfather David Blumenfeld's diary, which I discovered two years ago.

Travelling salesman

While working in St. Paul, Minnesota, David meets a travelling salesman, who tells him that the “Copper Country” is “a real paradise for tailoring trade to a willing worker.” David decides to rent an upstairs apartment in Calumet, in the Upper Michigan Peninsula, where the Calumet, Hecla, and Tomrak copper mines were then located.

Calumet

But he found [it hard] to make ends meet, as the inhabitants were mostly Italians and Finnish people and very clannish. He found the country overrun with solicitors [peddlers] from the larger cities in every kind of work, soliciting from house to house for the little that was there. Food was very costly, for nothing grew there. Everything had to be shipped in from the Twin Cities [Minneapolis/St. Paul].

Saloon in the mining community of Red Jacket, Calumet

David became disillusioned. The house-to-house begging [for tailoring work] and delivering work, the heavy cold, deep snowdrifts –- all these had put a crimp in his ambition.

One day a medical student from Bombay appears at the door and asks for room and board. He is selling maps in the area to pay his way. The family takes him in for a few weeks to add to their meager income. Despite the disappointing results of the last advice David took from a stranger, he is desperate enough to be convinced by the man to

[take] up the map selling business and ...set aside his tailoring ways. The Hindu then taught David the game for a few days, showed him how it worked, and departed.

The first three months things were fairly good. ...But after four months David came up against stiff competition as newspapers began to give away maps as subscription premiums. The driving and jumping about among the farmers in the rural section, the irregular meals, loss of sleep, and the like soon began to tell on David’s health and he came home sick physically and despondent mentally over the entire Copper Country venture. He said it seemed that luck had deserted him, that if he tried to sell coffins people would stop dying!

David continues to keep “networking” and casting about for new possibilities.

One morning in July, 1902, Mr. Charleston, a friend of David’s, told him that he had located in Hopkins, Minnesota, and advised him to go and try in South St. Paul, as it was only 18 miles distance from Minneapolis. [As the name implies, this town is south of the city of St. Paul proper, where they had settled not long before.] He suggested that David start there from the bottom up and grow along with the community, as that town had a good future, being in the early stage of development as a meat-packing town.

Hopkins, Minnesota, 1898

Ever doggedly optimistic, David and Lena decide to check out South St. Paul...

To be continued…

And find more fascinating posts at Sepia Saturday blog

Some of these photos were borrowed from the following sites:

booksgeology.com

whirledpeeks.blogspot.com

www.flickr.com/photos/nationaalarchief

grossmanproject.net