Sale of 1122 North Eighth - 1895

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

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.

I've written before of the "Eighth Street Yard" - located at 1122 North Eighth Street in the City of St. Louis's third district. According to the 1900 census, my second great grandfather, Selig Feinstein, was the owner. I wondered when he purchased the building, and have finally located a newspaper article describing the sale. Written in 1895, the article is filled with racist language and purple prose that one would not find in today's papers.

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Sale of 1122 North Eighth to Selig Feinstein and Max Wieselman

Article from Jun 28, 1895 St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri)

 PASSING OF A CRIME CENTER. 

The "Eighth Street Yard" to Be Made the Home of Peace. 

Warfare and Wassail No Longer Prevail in the Place that Made the Third District Notorious -- "Little Jerusalem" Will Absorb It. 

"Ichabod" is written in dull, dead letters all over the "Eighth Street Yards," and their somber hues have spread over all the Third Police District, enveloping it in a haze of gloom. Silence and somnolence reign in the place of rum, ruin and riot, and the queen of Castle. Thunder, the Liliuokalani of North St. Louis, has been deposed. The vigilant guardian of the public peace now walks his beat in solitude, and hears not the sound of the growler as it moveth in the alley, and starts no more at the ripping sound of the knife as It plows its way through Ethiopian cuticle. The echo of the bulldog revolver has died away; the pickaninnies and their progenitors have gone hence. The Eighth Street Yards are deserted, and Capt. Peter Joyce and his vigilantes mourn because of their desolation and refuse to be comforted. Has not the "Bloody Third" become the abode of peace? There is nothing left but to mourn. 

The Eighth Street Yards, the scene of more bloodshed and crime than any other spot in St. Louis, have been notorious for a quarter of a century. They are located at 1116-1122 North Eighth street, extending back to the alley which runs through the square from Carr to Biddle street. The houses facing on Eighth street are located 10 feet above the level of the street, and are reached by means of winding steps. Between the street and the alley, bounded on the north and south by tenement houses, is a clear area about 40 feet square which has been soaked with human blood ten times over. The houses are all brick structures, scarcely fit for habitation by human beings, yet within their dingy walls for more than a score of years negro roustabouts and other offscourings of the race have met for revel and battle. Years ago the place became notorious, and did much toward winning for the district the sobriquet of the "Bloody Third." The yards are only half a square from the police station. Immediately at the north, in the alley between Seventh and Eighth and Biddle and O'Fallon streets, is the equally notorious "Wild-Cat Chute," while just east of the station, between Sixth and Seventh, Wash and Carr streets, is "Clabber Alley,' whose euphonious title has long: been familiar to the crime-reading public. This trio of rallying places for the infamous made life in the "Bloody Third" a hideous nightmare for many, and Capt. Peter Joyce, a graduate of West Point, a veteran of the civil war and a fighter of the redman, found it impossible to subdue their inmates, not being allowed the use of cavalry and cannon in his crusade against crime. 

But what the police failed to do a peaceful transaction has accomplished, and the Eighth Street Yards have gone "glimmering through the gleam of things that were." The houses have been sold to Max Wissellman and S. Feinstein, of 1108 North Eighth street, and they will be remodeled and refurnished and rented to Jewish families. The work of reconstruction has already commenced, and a boys' school is temporarily in operation in one of the rooms adjoining Castle Thunder. The "yards" will soon be an addition to "Little Jerusalem." 

The passing of the Eighth Street Yards recalls many tales which have long since become incorporated in the unwritten history of the place. The gleam of the razor, the echo of the revolver, the rattle of the patrol wagon, the shouts of hate and derision and the vigorous thump of the policeman's club all come back as plain as yesterday. In the background along with others who come. trooping at memory's call, is the herculean frame of "Big-Lip Lou," King of the Eighth Street Yards. Years ago he took up his abode in Castle Thunder, and his prowess in attempting to extend the power of his razor and his big right arm into the confines of Wild-Cat Chute and Clabber alley won for him the title of king. Lou was one of the biggest roustabouts that ever "run the river." His word was law to his scores of black subjects, and many a charge he led against the denizens of the two settlements which aspired to be more bloody than his own. For months and years he reigned with absolute tyranny, but dissensions finally arose in the midst of his bailiwick, and he went down before the hand of one of his own subjects. 

There, too, is "Beggie," the Bacchanalian Queen, whose dynasty perished with her. Beggie had two sons, both well-to-do, but she foreswore their love protection for that of John Barleycorn, and many a night she spent in his company in Castle Thunder, where she finally died amid the turbulency of her surroundings. The negroes regarded her with admiration, and the power which she wielded over them was second only to that of a cannibal queen. 

Capt. Joyce regards with apprehension the decline his domain, and Patrolmen Simcox, Knollhoff, Mader, and Taylor sigh disconsolately as they muse upon the fall of the empire which each of them invaded many times, and oft with results more than once deadly and disastrous. Patrolman Mader, now of the Fifth District, once went into the yards to arrest a negro, and was shot in the groin. The negro attempted to escape amid the confusion, but a bullet from the officer's revolver killed him instantly, and the policeman, who had gone in single-handed, was glad to escape with his life. Patrolman Simcox, they say, is more melancholy than all the others, and often twangs his club viciously on the sidewalk at the dead of night, as though all joy had been taken out of the police business and there were no further use of living. In the meantime the desk sergeant at the station smiles, the turnkey is happy, and at police headquarters there is a general feeling of relief.

Notes:

1) The article spells my ancestor's partner's name as Max Wisselman, but I know it is Max Wieselman, with whom he filed a patent in 1898. I was unaware he was a partner in the real estate purchase as well.

2) It appears the Jewish School at 1122 North Eighth in the 1909 Sanborn Maps was created in 1895, when my second great grandfather purchased the building, so it is likely my great grandfather attended the school.

Identifying Photographs

 It's a frustrating experience going through old photographs that aren't labeled on the back. Sometimes you can tell who people are from what else is in the picture, or who they are with. Sometimes you can make educated guesses, but those guesses can turn out wrong.

For example: There is a photograph from the wedding of my great-grandfather's brother, Harry Feinstein. 

Family identified the four men standing next to him as his brothers. However, I knew this couldn't be the case as the youngest brother would have been 7 at the time of the wedding. Ultimately I found a newspaper article listing all the groomsmen and bridesmaids. I still can't for certain identify which is which, but I have a list. The newspaper article didn't identify the flower girls.

So what do you do when you find an image of an alleged relative online? Do you trust that the photo was identified correctly? The two images below are identified as Andrew David Van Every (1795-1873) and his wife Nancy Lucinda Van Sellas Van Every (1803-1880). They were my third great-grandparents. They would be the only third great-grandparents I have photographs of. 

Photography existed in the 1860s and 1870s. And the photographs look contemporary to that era. I've contacted the individuals who posted these images online to see if they have more information - such as what year they were taken. But knowing how easy it is to misidentify a photograph, I hesitate adding these photographs to my collection with any certainty.

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.