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."