Berliand Family Arrival at Ellis Island, 1922
(Courtesy of Allan Berlind)
2004
Dear cousins et al.,
After several unsuccessful attempts over the years to locate the arrival records of our elders at Ellis Island, I was finally able to find them last week. The Finland was not a phantom ship, and it arrived in New York, having sailed from Antwerp, exactly when my father said it did, January 4, 1922. There are many things of interest in the records.
In the Ellis Island family-finder, the last name is spelled BERLLAND. That double L no doubt threw off some of the earlier searches, but it is simply a mistake in transcription. The ship manifest itself clearly shows the name as BERLIAND, as dad and Mollie have said it was pronounced.
The first names given in the family-finder are, for zeyde, VOLKO, which comes from the Russian word “volk” for Wolf. I would have expected the Yiddish or Hebrew version (Zev, the Hebrew for wolf, is the name that appears on my parents’ ketubah). Grandma is CHANA. The children are CHAIM, BEILA, MENACHA, CHAIM (sic), and MANIA. The translation of Eve’s name is of course another error. All of the other names on the ship manifest are typewritten, but Eve’s is overwritten in script, with CHAVA in bad handwriting. She is correctly designated as a young female.
The ages that are given for the children are Hy- 15, Bella- 13, dad- 11, Eve-7, and Mollie-5. This is two years younger for each of them than we know them to have been in 1922. Aunt Mollie says that this was done deliberately by the Berllands, to get all of the children in at a cheaper child’s rate. This is supported by one of the columns in the ship manifest titled “head tax status”, which has the notation “under 16” for each of the children. Mollie says that they were all sufficiently small, due to undernourishment, to pass as younger than they actually were.
The manifest column titled “Occupation or Calling’ says the following: Volko was a merchant; Chana a housewife; Hy, Bella and dad were listed as “scholar”; Eve and Mollie as “child”. The parents and three older children were all listed as able to read and write Hebrew.
The place of birth (Borshchagovka), last place of residence (Brussels), nationality (Russian) and race or people (Hebrew) are all predictable.
There is a column on the manifest titled “Whether in possession of $50, and if not, how much”. This indicates that Volko was coming in with either $235 or $2.35. It’s hard to be sure.
Several of the other columns on the manifest either have no entries, or they were too faint to read. We will therefore never know, alas, “whether a polygamist”; “whether an anarchist”; “whether ever in prison, an almshouse, an [institution] for the insane, or whether ever supported by charity”; “whether believes in or advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or violence”; “whether ever deported”; “condition of health, physical and mental”; or “whether deformed or crippled”. Heights are given for four members of the family, but some of them appear to be in the wrong rows. Heights of 5’6” are given for Volko and Chana, and the rows for Hy and Bella show 4’8” and 3’11”. I’d have to think that the last two should have been for dad or Eve, and little Mania.
My new look at the family finder was triggered by an e-mail from one Ben Zitomer, who had seen my name on a Jewish Genealogy website as someone who had researched the Berlind family from Borshchagovka. He thought we were related, and we are. His great aunt Chana (Tante Chana) Zitomer married Wolf’s older brother Moische, so she is our great aunt as well. We have been corresponding trying to get more information about Moische and Chana, who helped provide money for our family to come over and with whom our family lived for the first couple of months they were here. This has raised an interesting question for me. Moische and Chana lived into at least the early 1950’s in Brooklyn. But neither Binnie nor I have any memory of ever having met them. Do any of the rest of you older cousins (particularly those of you who lived in Brooklyn) have any such memory. If not, do you have any idea why not??
Allan
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