A Unique Family Heirloom

 Below is a picture of a wishbone from a turkey.

A turkey my grandmother baked for her parents’ 50th Wedding Anniversary in 1962

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I think I can safely say the wishbone is at least 63 years old. 

I do not know the age of the turkey when it was slaughtered.

Some might question why I have it.

1) My mother only found the wishbone and note in her items a month or so ago. Obviously, she knew what to do with it. She called me.

2) If anything else was going to be done with the wishbone, it had to have been done 63 years ago. At this point, it would be a crime not to see how many more generations it can be passed down.

3) There have been discussions involving appropriate preservation and display options.

4) I did take a photograph. Just in case it mysteriously disappears.

Here is a photograph of my great grandparents - Herman and Annie (Blatt) Feinstein from May of 1962.

I know the date of the photograph due to a black and white version which appeared in their community newsletter congratulating them on their anniversary.

St. Louis's Lung Block - Carr Square

I wrote about the neighborhood my second great-grandfather Selig Feinstein lived in, which was known by several colorful names due to a reputation for criminal activity - Eighth Street Yard, Castle Thunder, and Wild Cat Chute.

He is not the only ancestor who lived in a locally well-known neighborhood. My second great grandparents Sam and Rose Newmark, and their family lived in the 1600 block of Wash Street in the 1910 census, and the 1500 block in 1920. (I have marked in blue where they lived.)

The 1908 Housing Report ended at 14th Street, on the other side of Carr Square, but I have a feeling their conditions may have only been slightly better, if at all. The neighborhood became known as The Lung Block. (A term possibly borrowed from New York City.)

From Rediscovering St. Louis's Lung Block

In early 1940s, well before the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex would be built and destroyed just a few blocks south-east, another North Central St. Louis neighborhood stood condemned. Carr Square was known by its nickname “the lung block” for its high rates of tuberculosis deaths, and had been designated a blighted neighborhood to be torn down in one of the first slum-clearing projects in St. Louis made possible by the federal New Deal.

The article states that the reputation for high levels of tuberculosis in the neighborhood date back to the early 1900s. The below WPA map from the article visually illustrates the concentration of tuberculosis deaths in the city in the early 1930s.

A Place of Many Names - Eighth Street Yard, Castle Thunder, Wild Cat Chute

When researching the neighborhoods your ancestors lived in, it's important to know all the names the area was known by. Sometimes there were many.

My second great-grandfather, Selig Feinstein, resided in the city of St. Louis, Missouri at 1122 North Eighth Street in 1900 with his family. (Including his mother, wife, and seven children). According to the census he was the owner of the building, and in addition to his 10-member family, 26 other individuals lived at the same address. Two of those 26 were Selig's sister, Rebecca, and her husband, Reuben Portnoy. The other 24 were, to my knowledge, unrelated, but all immigrated to America from Russia. They lived in the tenement district. The 1908 Civic League of St. Louis Report - Housing Conditions in St. Louis - provides a detailed description of the neighborhood.

A couple years ago I discovered that the block where the Feinstein family lived was also known as the Eighth Street Yard, and was well-known for criminal activity in the 1880s and 1890s. Newspaper stories about the address stop prior to 1900.

The Eighth Street Yard isn't the only term reporters used for the area. It took me a while to realize this, but the reporters occasionally wrote in the residents' dialect, so I found a few news stories by searching for "Ate Street Yard."

Another colorful phrase they used, as the article below points out, was "Wild Cat Chute."

De Ate Street Yard (8th Street Yard)

Article from Jul 31, 1892 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri)

The building next door, comprising 1124, 1126, and 1128 North Eighth Street, was known as Castle Thunder. (Named after a Confederate prison in Virginia.). The 1882 article below provides its entire history, from when it was built, and through a series of owners.

History of St. Louis's Castle Thunder

Article from Jul 20, 1882 St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri)

 The below article provides some sketches of the inside of "Castle Thunder," and some vivid descriptions. While the article is from 1884, a good fifteen years before my ancestors may have moved in, and the Castle Thunder building was next door to the one Selig Feinstein and his family lived in, from the 1908 Housing Report on the tenements, I suspect the conditions were similar.

Sketches and Description of Castle Thunder

Article from Dec 6, 1884 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri)

The 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map provides the layout of the block. I believe the pink buildings are made of stone or brick, while the yellow are wood frame. The map shows how 1124, 1126, and 1128 are all one building. That's Castle Thunder. The empty space between the tenements is the Eighth Street Yard. By the 1910 census my second great-grandfather is no longer living at 1122, however, his sister Shprintze (Sylvia) Babchick and her family is. 

I've written past posts on the conditions in the tenements. 

It's disturbing to think about the squalor my ancestors lived in. However, I am proud of and thankful for their ability to climb their way out of those conditions.

Community History Archives

Recently I learned about a new free archive website - Community History Archives

From their website:

The archives are across the United States and Canada. You can search or browse for communities, and then choose from one or more libraries nearby.

The number of participating libraries varies widely by location. Iowa has 247 libraries participating. Canada has 3. Texas has 57. Missouri has 2.

You are unable to do a sitewide search. You have to go to each community archive separately and search there. However, I have already found newspaper articles I had not found on other newspaper archive websites.

Including this little blurb by a newspaper's editor praising my great-grandfather's honey. 

It's also interesting to see that in 1905 there were already enough people choosing to have some food items shipped to them that the newspaper would address them.

The Hays County Time.
July 28, 1905

The finest honey on the market, so far as we have observed, is that shipped here by Mr M E Van Every, of Maxwell. Here is another pointer for those who would "live at home."

Barney Newmark's 1921 Oakland

Over the weekend St. Louis County Library shared a link to their Digital Archives on social media. It's been around since March, but I hadn't realized it.

Searching the archives, I found a reference to my great grandfather in the 1921 St. Louis City/County Auto Registrations Directory

Organized by registration number, these would be next to impossible to browse if they weren't digitized and made searchable. I knew Barney's address from city directories and census records.

Oakland, a division of General Motors, would later change its name to Pontiac. 

I've long had a photograph in my collection of my great grandfather, Barney, great grandmother Bertha, and their two sons, Melvin and Harold - standing in front of a car. There was no date on the photograph. Since there are multiple cars in the background, I surmised they were on a parking lot. But they could easily be on a sales lot as well. In 1921 Melvin would have been 9 and Harold 6. That seems about right for the photograph.

The directory only tells us the make, not the model. We don't see much of the car in the background. But assuming it's a 1921 Oakland, I have been able to find online images of a coupe, touring car, and a sedan. For a family of four, it's not difficult to guess which one they bought. 

There's no guarantee that the photograph is of them purchasing the car, but it seems likely. 

This doesn't add a lot of genealogical information, but it does provide a very likely year for a photograph. 

Amanuensis Monday: Biography of Martin Deutsch - 1963

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another. 

After a long hiatus, I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Below I transcribe an article found at Newspapers.com providing a nice biography of my maternal grandfather, late in his career.

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Martin Deutsch, bio

Article from Apr 18, 1963 The Crane Chronicle (Crane, Missouri)

Meanwhile, for the local postal dedication, the Postmaster announced that the principal speaker will be Mr. Martin J Deutsch, Director, Engineering and Facilities Division. St Louis Regional Office. 

Mr. Deutsch was raised in Chicago where he attended the public schools, including a technical High School and Junior College. He received a LLB from DePaul University and is a member of the Illinois Bar. He has been with the Postal Service during his entire adult life, starting out as a postal clerk in the Chicago Post Office in 1925. He was a Postal Inspector (St. Louis Division) for about 25 years, specializing in buildings and facilities in Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas. Subsequently, he was re-assigned as Real Estate Officer in the St. Louis Region. He has occupied his present position as Director Engineering and Facilities Division, St Louis Region, since establishment of the office in late 1962. 

Mr. Deutsch served in Africa and the Caribbean Area with the Air Transport Command during World War II. He has two married daughters _______, Pt Washington, New York, and _______ Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

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Notes

1) I continue my practice of leaving out the names of living relatives. However I will note that in both instances the individuals were residing in locations they were only in briefly, so it was a well-timed newspaper article.

2) I am fascinated by the detail the newspaper article went into the career and family of my grandfather when he was simply a speaker at a building dedication.

3) This does suggest he maintained his membership with the Illinois Bar Association even though he never practiced as a lawyer.

Solving the Blatyta Wajman (Blatt Wyman) Conundrum

I’ve written before about a conundrum between records uncovered and family lore in my Blatyta/Blatt line. I’ve uncovered a possible explanation behind the conundrum.

Family lore:

• Morris Blatt (Moshe son of Jacob) and Belle Wyman were married in Łosice, Poland.  
• They had two daughters: Blanche and Annie. 
• Belle died of a bee sting in Poland, but likely after Morris and Belle had separated/divorced. 
• Morris, Blanche, and Annie immigrated to America (St. Louis, Missouri). 
• Morris married Mollie Kellner in St. Louis, and they had two more children. 
• Blanche married Joe Wyman, and there were family jokes about whether she married a cousin.

Earlier Research:

Early in my research, I received well-cited research done by a cousin stating a Moshe (son of Yankiel) Blatyta married Chaia Beila Boksern in Losice. Yankiel is a common nickname for Jacob. When I uncovered the actual marriage record, it confirmed that this was the first marriage for both individuals.

How could Chaia Beila’s daughters be confused about their mother’s maiden name to the point that a family joke developed? Perhaps there were Wymans in her family tree, but there seemed to be some certainty that Belle was a Wyman herself. Could there be two Moshe sons of Jacob? We did not have birth records for Blanche or Anna. The records for their years of assumed birth do not appear to have survived. Even for years that records survived, the records are likely not complete.

Morris arrived in America in September 1889. In 1900 he, Blanche, Anna, his second wife, and their one son, are all living in St. Louis. (Morris and Mollie’s second child, a daughter, would be born in 1903.) Additional records uncovered there was a son of Morris and Molile who died as an infant in the intervening years.

Of course, there's an 11-year gap between 1889 and 1900. The missing 1890 census rears its ugly head.

Recent Research:

Recently I uncovered the immigration records for Blanche and Annie – in 1899. Ten years after their father. They were traveling under the Hebrew names of Breine and Chana, with Esther Winterman and her children, Yankel (Jacob), Abram, and Masche (Mary).

The manifest records them all as meeting a B. Winterman in St. Louis, with him identified as Esther’s husband, and the father of both the Winterman and Blatt children. In 1900 Esther and her children are living in St. Louis with Henry/Harry Winterman. (Confusion of first names isn’t impossible. Multiple names are common.)

We were familiar with the Winterman family. We knew them as some sort of Wyman cousins. We hadn’t yet identified how.

It’s possible if Morris and Belle really did separate as family lore suggests, the children remained with the mother. After Chaiia Bella died, it appears Blanche and Annie were raised by the Wintermans. So they could easily have viewed Esther as sort of a mother figure, even if they knew it wasn’t biological. 

According to her death certificate, Esther’s maiden name was Wyman. 

With the assistance of the cousin I mentioned in the first paragraph, we have uncovered Esther Wajman’s birth record in Polish archives, along with the birth records for two of her three children on the manifest. 

It isn’t difficult to hypothesize confusion – not on the maiden name of their mother – but a confusion of details between biological and adoptive mothers.

I still need to figure out how Esther Wyman Winterman and Chaia Beila Boksern Blatyta were related, if they were. But absent birth records for Blanche and Annie, I am more confident Chaia Beila was their mother. We may never be able to find those records, so we need to do the best we can with the records that have survived.