FAMILIES

SURNAME LIST

synagogue [established 1869], from 1880 to 1922. [Lowenstein, Steven, p. 106, 164]

Here is a newspaper article from 1917, clipped from the Oregon Daily Journal, courtesy of Paulo Abrahamsohn:

FEVES

by Wayne N. Burton, MD

FEVES FAMILY HISTORY

Left to Right:  Lou Feves, Issac Feves, Alius Feves, Michael “Iron Mike” Feves, Neche Feves, Hannah Feves, Pearl Feves, 
ca 1920,  Portland, Oregon. Courtesy of Wayne N. Burton, MD, used with permission.

The genealogy of a family, especially of one as large and complex as the Feves Family, must rely on a family historian---ours was my Aunt, Hannah Feves Cole. In addition, Pearl Feves wrote her autobiography when she was a high school student, and we have documents from many members of the Feves family.

Michael “Iron Mike" Feves was the patriarch of the Feves family, and subsequently, a number of his descendants were also named Michael or Mike. Three records from Lithuania show different birth information for Michael Feves. One states that he was born April 15, 1873 in Varniai, another states that he was born May 1, 1879 on the Polukst farm in Telsiai, Lithuania, and on his signed handwritten petition for naturalization, he entered March 15, 1874. His parents were Nachman and Tsira (or Cheerkah). They lived in Varniai, Lithuania on an estate called Chepaichiai in the Labardzhiai volost in 1915. They owned property on Gornaya Street in Siauliai, Lithuania between 1912-1916. Nachman’s father, Gershhon, lived in Laukuva in 1849 and in Paluksciai in 1877.

Naturalization papers for Mike Feves listed his  name as Michael Fivisch and his wife as Dora Scvescovich. One of their sons, Itzik Fywusch or Feivusch, changed his name to Louis Feves as part of his naturalization on December 8, 1937, when he became a citizen of the United States. The origin of the family name “Feves” was probably “Fajvish” or “Fajvush,” which were Jewish names typical of Lithuania. Regardless of the previous spellings, after coming to the United States, all of the members of the family would use Feves as their family name. [Fivish was a typical family name in Lithuania, according to Alexander Beider in his paper, “The Given Names in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” Avotaynu,1998.]

Michael married  Dora Sevechovitz (aka Scvescovich). Michael Feves’ wife, listed as Neche Dore Sevescovich, was born on April 16, 1878 in Kovna, Lithuania. They were married on January 21, 1903, according to their marriage certificate. Neche Dora Sevechovitz was 12 years old when her mother died. At some point, Dora lived in Berlin, the daughter of a wealthy family which lost all of their worldly goods in a pogrom. How Dora eventually moved to the little town of Vorna, in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania is unknown.  

Michael and Dora had seven children; two died very young.

Alius Feves, whose given name was Elias or Eliahu Gerson, was born on  February 4, 1908  in Lithuania, although he told relatives his birthdate was January 1, 1907. Al told me that he didn’t know his exact birth date, so he selected January 1 because it was easy to remember. However, we were able to find his birth records from Lithuania, and his birth date was recorded as February 4, 1908. There was a twin of Alius, named Aisik, whose birth was recorded with Alius/Elias', and was reportedly shot and killed in Lithuania.

Issac (“Ike”)  was born October 15, 1908 in Lithuania, according to his mother's Petition for Naturalization. Isaac lived until 1983 and died in Portland.

Itzik Fywash was born on March 1, 1910 in Lithuania. He changed his name to Louis Feves as part of his naturalization proceedings dated December 8, 1937. 

Hannah was born April 15, 1911 in Lithuania.  Hannah's family history stated that an earlier Hannah who died of smallpox at a young age.

Pearl was born April 9, 1915 in Portland, Oregon, about three years after Iron Mike and Dora arrived in the United States.

The actual birth dates of Jewish children born in Lithuania were the number of days after a Jewish holiday in a given year. Many Jews who immigrated to the United States took an easy-to-remember date such as “July 4th” which was also symbolic of their new-found freedom in the United States.

Our patriarch, Mike Feves, traveled from Hamburg Germany to Philadelphia on March 30, 1911 on the steamer Prinz Oskar. He traveled 3rd cabin and landed in Philadelphia on April 13, 1911. Mike’s voyage to the United States was probably very scenic since there is a listing [http://researchers.imd.nrc.ca, accessed December 18, 2005] that on April 8, 1911, only nine days after departing Hamburg, the Prinz Oscar, sailing from Hamburg to Philadelphia, passed a large iceberg!

Mike Feves' residence on the Preliminary Petition for Naturalization (undated) was 430 1/2 First Street with a post office address of 283 First Street in Portland, Oregon. This was the Jewish section of Portland at that time and for decades to follow. The person in the United States that he was going to stay with or his sponsor was Sam Goldstein in Portland Oregon, who was the purchaser of his ticket. Sam Goldstein was Dora Feves’ brother. Dora came with her four children later, arriving in Philadelphia about May 28,1912. Hannah had been born about eight months before the trip, which is why the family couldn’t travel together earlier.

Feves Family: The Early Years in Lithuania

This description of Neche Dora's and Michael's life in Lithuania is from Pearl's Autobiography, written in 1931, based on her parents' own histories as told to her. Pearl's entire Autobiography is added at the end of this story.

As a result of Neche Dora’s mother’s death, Neche reared her four brothers, Sam, Ben, Hymie and Lazer (Louis) and a baby sister in Lithuania. Neche’s father remarried and her stepmother added another infant to the family. Neche’s stepmother was described as truly “wicked." Neche was in her teens when she had to raise a family, milk six cows daily, cook meals, help with her father’s grain mill and clean the house, while her stepmother lay idle.  It was no easy life for Neche, and her health was “easily broken down”.

The marriage between Neche Dora Sevechovitz and Michael Fywusch (Feves) was pre-arranged by a shadchen, with his usual fee and the usual dowry as was the custom of the day. Michael had a wheat mill and plenty of geese. Both Neche and Michael were of Orthodox Jewish families. At the time, Lithuania was part of Russia, a country filled with unhappy Jews who shuddered at the cruel tyranny of the Russian Czar.

Mike’s father was one of the poorest but the best tailors in the village.  He had one large room in his shop in which there were seats arranged as in a school room. There were six promising young tailors working away, including Michael. Mike’s father was a teacher of tailoring and he had two assistants. All of the work was done by hand, and if it was not satisfactory, it had to be done over. As each aspiring tailor advanced in skill he was promoted to the position of assistant, after which he would have to make his own living. Mike did not work long with his father; he choose mill work instead. While working at the mill he met Necha Dora, his future wife. She was glad to marry Mike, because he took her away from the unhappy life that she was leading. With the passing of time in Vorna, Mike bought his own little mill and was also selling geese. 

Michael and Necha Dora Feves had six of their seven children in Lithuania. One child, the first Hannah, died of smallpox in Lithuania. There was also a seventh child who was shot in front of their parents in Lithuania. This son was Aisik, the twin brother of Alius (“Al”) /Elias Gershon Faivus (Feves) according to Aisik's death certificate from Lithuania and Lithuanian records. Alius' middle name, Gershon, was from his grandfather.

Mike was bored with the monotony of working and slaving for the little he was making in Lithuania. He received a letter from his brother-in-law, Sam J. Goldstein, who lived in Portland Oregon, full of encouragement to travel to the United States. By 1911 Necha Dora and Mike had three living children, all sons. In March, 1911, with a steamship ticket from Sam J. Goldstein, he kissed his family good-bye and left for the Promised Land, vowing to send for his family as soon as he could. A few months after his departure, their second daughter, Hannah, was born, named after the Hannah who had had died of smallpox.

Feves Family:  Life in Portland, Oregon, USA:

Mike Feves traveled from Hamburg, Germany to Philadelphia on March 30, 1911 on the steamer Prinz Oscar, found in the Morton Allen Directory of European Passenger Steamship Arrivals (www.ancestry.com). Michael Feves traveled “3rd cabin”  (third class)  and landed in Philadelphia from Hamburg Germany  on April 13, 1911. Necha Dora came about a year later, arriving in Philadelphia about June 21, 1912, with her three sons, Alius, Louis, and Isaac and daughter, Hannah. The residence on Mike's Preliminary Form for Petition for Naturalization (undated) is 430 1/2 First St. with post office address of 283 First Street, Portland, Oregon.  The person in the United States that he was going to stay with or his sponsor was Sam Goldstein in Portland, Oregon. Sam also purchased his ticket. Sam Goldstein was Mike's brither-in-law, Necha Dora's brother. Evidently, Sam Sevechovitz had changed his last name to Goldstein.

It was not easy for a foreigner to find employment in the United States, but Mike worked hard as a tailor for Meier and Frank Company*, and sent part of his money to his family. After buying his own tailor shop, he sent for his family. The streets of  America were not paved with gold, but conditions were better than in Lithuania. The family lived on the east side of Portland, Oregon, in two rooms of a little house. The front room of the house, located at 831 Alberta Street, was occupied by a barber shop. It was in one of the back rooms of this house that Pearl Feves (Burton) was born on April 9, 1915.

[*Meier and Frank Department store would be purchased by other companies and the name would be changed to Macy’s in 2006.]

Mike and Dora Feves eventually owned several buildings on First Avenue, including his tailor shop, apartment buildings and a secondhand store owned by Al Feves.  The important intersection at First and Caruthers had Louis Leveton’s drugstore on one corner for many years. When Leveton died, Korsun’s grocery moved into the same space. Across the street was the grocery run by Mrs. Maccoby, whose husband, Moses, taught at the Hebrew school. Next to it were the well-known Solomon Apartments, built by Jacob Solomon. Barney Finkelstein and his family had a house at 308 Caruthers in the 1920s.

Mr. Mosler’s bakery was also located on First near Caruthers, and he produced what many would swear were the best bagels they ever tasted. As a young boy, I recall my father driving my brother and me to “South Portland” to Mosler’s Bakery on Sunday morning to get a dozen bagels and a rye bread. Across the street we would get corned beef at Korsun’s grocery for lunch. Mr. Mosler was was rather short and bald, and not particularly friendly. One day he gave my brother and me a bagel. I pointed out to my father how nice Mr. Mosler was that day. My father told me that the bagels were just part of the dozen that he paid for! Nevertheless, there was nothing like a warm fresh bagel from Mosler’s, because the next day they would be hard as a rock---

Mike Feves' buildings along First Avenue were inherited by his five children and owned jointly, until the City of Portland bought them for urban renewal. The area in the 1950s and 1960s had become home of the poor. This property included “Iron Mike’s” secondhand clothing store, a bar, a transient hotel, a barber shop, and a secondhand store run by his son, Al Feves.

Photo of “Iron Mike” Feves' Tailor shop on corner of First Avenue, Portland, Oregon and other property that he owned. 
[ca  1960]  Taken by Wayne N. Burton, MD, used with permission.

Most Jewish children in old South Portland attended the Failing School, located between Hooker and Porter streets, just east of Front Avenue.  As many as half of the children at Failing School were Jewish during the first years of the century, and approximately 20% were Italian. Upon graduation from elementary school, most Jews went on to Lincoln High School, where many made their first real contact with the “outside” world.  Among the classmates at Lincoln High School was Mel Blanc, who as an adult became the voice of many of the Looney Tunes cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and numerous others, and voiced Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, including The Flintstones' Barney Rubble.


More about Alius G. “Al” Feves
Alius G. “Al” Feves was born on February 4, 1908 in Kovna, Lithuania and moved to Portland, Oregon with his family as a boy in 1911. He actually did not know his true birth date so selected January 1, 1907 because it was easy to remember.

The family first lived in a one-room apartment behind a barber shop on N.E. 26th and Alberta streets, while his father worked as a tailor and later ran a men’s secondhand apparel shop.  Al’s father would get up at 5:00 every morning and walk the five miles to his store. Al said, “We used to save our nickels so that we could ride the streetcar, but we didn’t have many rides in those days.” He became a “newsie” at age eight, selling newspapers on street corners and earning a few cents a day for his family.  That’s when he picked up the nickname “Hell Yes” because customers couldn’t pronounce Alius, his first name. He sold newspapers at northwest 30th and Alberta, then at Southwest Broadway and Washington. Later he also had a route along Southwest Sixth Avenue, from Washington Street to the Union Depot, then Portland’s red light district. “The girls there were always nice to me,” he said in a 1985 newspaper interview. “Sometimes they didn’t pay me for a week or even a month... But when they had the money, they paid me in a chunk. So I’d get two or three dollars---and that was a lot of money then."  Papers sold for a penny apiece.

Al’s family moved to the west side where he graduated from Lincoln High School in 1924. He attended Reed College for one year---”but I got into trouble with my chemistry professor, because I was so tired and sleepy in class.”  He worked at a garage every night as a "grease monkey” to earn money for school. The teacher was unmoved. He suggested that Al find another school. Al stayed out of school for a year to work and then tried two colleges and business school before he finally decided to study pharmacy at Oregon State University and become a pharmacist. He graduated in 1930. Al earned two baccalaureate degrees in chemistry and pharmacy from Oregon State. He also had attended North Pacific College, Reed college, Northwestern School of Commerce and the University of Oregon.

Medicine appealed to Al, and he enrolled in the University of Southern California and began studying anatomy. During his sophomore year, however, he was among six students asked to leave because the school’s quota had been met. By the time Al earned his degree in pharmacy “drug stores were closing one after another” due to the Depression. He worked for a time for McKesson Pacific Drug Company inventorying shelf stock in stores that were going out of business. That’s how he learned a drug store in McMinnville was for sale for $1500.

An older friend, whom he had helped set up another business, offered to put up the money to buy the store if Al would run it.  “My partner said, ‘As soon as I get my $1500 and a couple hundred in profit the rest is yours for free.' And he said, 'I hope you can do it in 30 days.'..So I put on a sale and got his money in 15 days, only then I didn’t have any stock left...” But that didn’t stop Al.  He talked a local drug wholesaler into giving him $1000 of stock on credit in return for Al’s promise of continued business. With fresh stock, he reopened the store and operated it from 1933 until he sold it in 1938.

He then bought Knight’s Drug Store on Southwest 11th and Washington in Portland. Because Al kept the store’s name, many customers assumed he was “Mr. Knight”. In fact, he says, some people called him by that name for many years later. In 1942 he traded Knight’s Drug Store for an apartment building when he was drafted at the beginning of World War II.

When Al talked about his years in the service, a big smile spreads across his face. “I had a hell of a good time,” he would say. Al loved to tell stories and he had many from his Army years. Most of his service time was spent at Fort Lewis, Washington. In typical Army fashion, the fact that he was a pharmacist was ignored until about nine months prior to his discharge, when he was finally asked to set up a pharmacy lab. Before that, he served as a postmaster, a warehouse man, a supply clerk, a drill sergeant and a chef.

“When I was a chef---that was the best part. I had 24 hours on duty and the next two days off. I didn’t even have to get up for reveille... later I worked 36 hours and then had six days off.”

Then with a grin he would tell the story about the guard who was usually at the gate when he would leave on a six-day pass.  His name was Sullivan and he often made comments about Al’s unusual duty schedule.  After his discharge, Al ran into Sullivan again, only this time Sullivan was a Portland policeman, and he gave Al a ticket for making a wrong turn. When Sullivan recognized Al, he laughed and told Al, "I’ll get you this time.” Al said. “Now those were the days when you could fix tickets, but I had a hell of a time with that ticket. I never could get it fixed.” 

Al said that he didn’t know what he wanted to do when he got out of the service in 1945, but then a friend of his father’s suggested that he find some properties for investment.  “Lawrence Rosellini came to me and said, ‘Here’s my checkbook...Buy something.”  Al explained that Rosellini was a long-time family friend from their old South Portland neighborhood----”a community of Italians and Jews where people could speak each other’s language.”  Rosellini who owned a cafe at Southwest Fifth and Taylor, often came by with a bottle of wine in the afternoon to visit his father at his secondhand shop on Southwest First and Jefferson. “They were friends. They would loan each other money...Our families were close-knit.”

With Mike Feves financial backing, Al began investing in apartments and houses.  He said that it paid off for Rosellini--- ”He got more money back than he had ever put in. He was happy.”  It also paid off for Al. It was the beginning of a property management and investment business which continued to grow until he retired in 1969. Al was a short, rounded man who weighed 250 pounds when he went into the Army.

Al usually wore a cap to cover his bald head and well-worn clothes. A newspaper article about him in 1985 stated, “Don’t be fooled by the second-hand facade. He is an educated man, a shrewd businessman."

Al went into the U.S. Army in 1942 and served three years in the medical corps, then returned to Portland and married Sadie in 1947. Rather than pharmacy, he pursued a 50-year career as a real estate investor in Portland, Oregon. At one time he had investments in about 20 apartment buildings. Al would work six days a week until his death at age 87.

Al was a leader in the Portland Jewish community and was honored by Israel with the Ben Gurion Award for his fund-raising efforts. He served as president in 1965-66 and secretary-treasurer of the Ex-Newsboys Association, which he was involved in for 35 years. The organization named him its Man of the Year in the mid-1960s.

Al reached the pinnacle of his life when he was Bar Mitzvahed at age 73. “I had missed this important date during my life. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do." He studied Hebrew and the Torah with Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, and then Cantor Mark Dinkin perfected his skills. He would be Bar Mitzvahed a second time at age 83. I had the opportunity to attend both events in Portland, Oregon.

One of the sources for this story is Pearl Feves Autobiography, which she wrote in 1931:

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY---   
Pearl Feves
November 20, 1931

For me an autobiography is like a diary;  it is something in which I can write what I think and nobody will care.  It has always been my desire to write an autobiography, just to remind myself, in later years, that I have perhaps grown older and wiser.

It has been thirty years since my parents were joined in matrimony in the little town of Vorna, State of Kovno, in Lithuania.  Both of my parents were of Orthodox Jewish families.  At the time Lithuania was a part of Russia, a country filled with unhappy Jews who shuddered at the cruel tyranny of the Russian Czar.

I do not know much of my grandmothers, only that my sister is the exact picture of Dad’s mother.  My other grandmother passed away when Mother was twelve years old.  This left her, as the oldest child, to raise the whole immediate family, which consisted of four brothers and a baby sister.  Her father increased the burden by re-marrying and later adding another infant to the family.  Her stepmother was like the ordinary mean stepmother of whom we know.  In her teens, Mother had to raise a family, milk six cows daily, cook meals, help care for the mill, and clean house while her stepmother lay idle.  It was no easy job, and her health was easily broken down.

Dad’s father was one of the poorest but best tailors in the village.  He had one large room in which there were seats arranged as in a schoolroom.  There were six promising young tailors working away, one of whom was Dad.  Grandfather was the teacher, and he had two assistants.  All the work was done by hand, and if it was not satisfactory, according to the word of the assistants, it had to be done over.  As each aspiring  tailor advanced in skill, he was promoted to position of assistant, after which he would have to make his own living.  My dad did not work long with his father.  He chose mill-work instead.  His employment at the mill where mother worked found him a wife.  I believe mother was glad to marry Dad, because he took her from the unhappy life she was leading.  With the passing of time in Vorna, Father had bought his own little mill and was selling geese, too.
By 1911, Mother and Dad had three sons. (Their first child, a daughter, had died). the oldest boy was about four years old, and another infant was on its way.

My father was bored with the monotony of working and slaving for the little he was getting.  Letters from his brother-in-law in Portland were full of encouragement; so in the forepart of 1911, with a passport from one of his brothers-in-law, he kissed his family good-bye and left for the Promised Land, vowing to send for his family as soon as he could.  A few months after his departure, my sister was born.  It was not easy for a foreigner to find employment in a new country, but Dad worked hard as a tailor and sent part of his money to his family.  A year later, after buying his own tailor shop, he sent for his family.  The streets of America were not filled with gold, but conditions here were better than at Lithuania, which by that time was a Republic.

The family lived on the East Side in two rooms of a little house.  The front room of that house was occupied by a barber shop.  It was in one of the back rooms, the 9th of April 1915, that I was born.
My birth was no different from the birth of my brothers and sister before me.  I know two things only, --that I was either hungry or uncomfortable, and I could yell as loudly as any infant in distress.  I cannot remember much of my early life, only that I used to lisp.  My sister, Hannah, spent hours a day trying to correct this fault which was apparently attractive to a child my age.  Hannah was the only fair one in the family.  She was red-haired, temperamental, peppy and somewhat of a tomboy.  Her freckles were as much a cause for her worry as my constant lisping, but she claimed a leopard could not change its spots.  It was not long before I stopped lisping.

My youngest brother, Lou, and my sister, Hannah, were inseparable. Lou had a knack of getting injured by automobiles. If Lou got hurt, Hannah was hurt. If  Lou had a bad cold, Hannah sneezed. Three times Lou was injured, and Hannah would yell for a long time if she weren’t hurt.

Isaac was a year and a half the senior of Lou. He, like myself, had big brown eyes, a calm disposition, and was extremely timid. He was a perfect gentleman and adored by all.

Al, the oldest of my brothers, was always hard to understand.  As a youngster, he was peculiar, but shrewd.  He would leave home early and return late in the evening with no explanations. He would never talk much and his teachers at Vernon School were puzzled sometimes.

My brothers all sold papers to help the financial problem in the family. By the time I was six, we were living on the West Side, and I was ready for school. The first thing I remember about school was a tall teacher. She was thin and straight-laced, kept her chin up in the air, and wore her hair in a knot on top of her head. That was enough. I believe I’ve been timid ever since being a pupil in her room. She loved to punish pupils, and it was a pleasure some of them afforded her often. I remember one little fellow in my class whom she did not like. No matter what went wrong, from the chimney smoking or the rain dropping, Norman was at fault. She was set in her ways—bad ways--and there was nothing I could do about it.

There are a great many things that are no use. One is talking about things nobody wants to know. That’s why I’m leaving out my earlier school days. When I reached the eight grade in grammar school, I had more confidence in myself. I had a few chosen schoolmates and the schoolwork was still interesting to me, only I did hate “history.”  Many times I hated it for keeping my name off the honor roll. I had no trouble getting along with anyone, because I could listen much better than I could talk.

Before I finished grammar school, however, I was a pupil at the Portland Hebrew School.  There were about one hundred and fifty Jewish boys and girls attending there. The lessons were in the Hebrew language, and each day we had assignments either written or oral. They were interesting, but many of us could have found more amusing things to do than to go to two schools.

Dad had progressed quite nicely by the time I was ready for high school in 1928. He had his own store and had bought some property, including our present home.

The thrill which belongs to every pupil starting high school eventually came to me.  I started at the High School of Commerce first, intending to follow in the footsteps of my sister. She had won eleven typing awards and a Remington typewriter for proficiency in typewriting, and was also the owner of two or three shorthand certificates. My sister, however, was dissatisfied. She regretted missing the experience of college life and unselfishly wanted me to go. I started my second term at high school, since Sis had convinced me of a more solid education at Lincoln High, from which school my three brothers had been graduated. I am not sorry I came to Lincoln. History is still the bane of my existence, but I enjoy school in general. I never did have much time for play because of the Hebrew School, but I was graduated from there in 1929. Some of my classmates are not perfect, but this world would not be interesting if there weren’t something wrong with it.

It seems funny to cover sixteen years in so few pages and come to the present time. Things have changed for my whole family. Education has been the paramount ambition of Mother for her children, and I believe she has been successful. Al is a graduate pharmacist with three degrees from Oregon State College. He is now a medical student at the University of Southern California. Isaac is a graduate of the University of Oregon and a medical student at the University of Oregon Medical School. Lou is a member of an honorary medical fraternity and also a student at the University of Oregon Medical School. My sister has changed from the temperamental  tomboy to a young lady with a responsible position. She is secretary to a court reporter in Circuit Judge Ekwall’s department. She is also my best adviser.

I have many things to keep me busy now, beside schoolwork. After school I help Dad at the store and then Mother and I go home and get dinner. When Sis does not work late, she and I help the boys with drawings or typing. I spend two evenings a week at gym and am very fond of tennis and swimming when the weather allows it.

If financial conditions will permit, and if all’s well, I hope to start college in a year or so. Five years ago I could not look into the future and find myself where I am. My sister says if you try to do things well, the future will take care of itself. Who knows?

Pearl was born at home in Portland, Oregon at 831 Alberta Street.  In a letter from Lou Feves, her brother, he noted that “within 24 hours after her birth my mother was up and about. My father took a couple of days off to help at home.”

Wayne N. Burton, MD
Hinsdale, Illinois
November 2020

RETURN TO SURNAME LIST

HIRSCH AND WEIS:  THE WHITE STAG COMPANY
The White Stag company's neon sign is still a famous part of Portland, Oregon.

          
Here is the story of the company and its founders.

Newspapers.com 12 September 2020.

Norden and Mansfield

This was suggested by Hazel Dakers, London, UK.
Hazel has a website:   https://hazeldakers.andrewdakers.com/hazeldakers/
Hazel gave permission to post on this page:
https://sites.google.com/site/hazeldakers/family-history-stories-and-articles-by-hazel-dakers/norden-and-mansfield-families-of-portland-oregon,
accessed on 12 December 2020.

Ovsovitz

Most of this information came from an article at https://kevarim.com/rabbi-avroham-yitzchok-ovsovitz/, supplemented by records in Ancestry.com.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ovsovitz was born in 1879, probably in Kovno. He arrived in New York in 1904. He was a Rabbi in Denver, Colorado,
where he married Riva or Rivka Kramer in 1908. For a few years, he was a Rabbi in Portland, Oregon.

In the 1910 Census, Rabbi Abraham and Mrs. Ovsovitz lived at 230 Sheridan in Portland, OR. The city directory for 1910 states
that he was the Rabbi at Congregation Shaarie Torah. [Ancestry.com]

Shaarie Torah was organized in 1902, as a strictly Orthodox
synagogue, the first one in the Northwest. It met in a building at First and Hall.
In 1905, the congregation purchased a church building, and moved it to its location at First and Hall.
Shaarie Torah became Portland's preeminent Orthodox synagogue, and was known as the "First Street shul."
[Lowenstein, Steven, p, 104-5]

The city directory for Denver, Colorado for 1906 lists Abraham I. Ovsovitz, Rev., Rabbi Congregation Kasher Ahavo, and he resided at 1555 Clay.
Haskell Ovsovitz, Rev, was a Rabbi at Congregation Zera Abraham, and also resided at 1555 Clay. [Ancestry.com]
Haskel was listed as a Rabbi in Denver from 1901 until 1912. This was Abraham's father. Yechezkel/Haskel Yehoshua Ovsovitz was born in 1848
in Kovno, and died in Denver 15 October 1913. He had recently applied for a passport on 27 May 1912. He stated he arrived in the USA in 1894,
and had lived in Trenton, New Jersey, then Fall River, Massachusetts and arrived in Denver, Colorado on 12 October 1900.
He signed his name "Hockel." He is in the Abromson Family Tree in Ancestry, owned by SABromsonLeeman. H. Ovsovitz
performed the marriage ceremony for Abraham and Riva.

Abraham and Rivka/Celia's children shortened their surname to Ovson. [Ancestry.com]

In the 1910 Census, Rivka was called Rachel. Abraham was 29; Rachel was 23. They had no children. Rachel's brother, age 20, lived with them.
[Ancestry.com]

The Cristil Family Tree in Ancestry, owned by rhiller137, has Abraham and Rivka. Their children were Sarah, born and died in 1912, Deborah
1913-1997, and Joshua Jess 1914-2004. The tree states that Abraham's father was Yechezkel Yehoshva "Joshua" Ovsovitz,
and mother was Chana Dina Crystal.

In September 1918, Abraham registered for the WWI Draft. They lived at 1332 N. 7th St., Philadelphia.
Abraham died on 16 December 1918, from Spanish Influenza, after helping a congregant who was ill. [per family history].
Rivka/Celia lived with her parents in Philadelphia; she was called "Sallie" on the 1920 Census. Rivka/Celia remarried
Chaim Jehudah Simon in Philadelphia in 1924. Celia died in 1952. [Ancestry.com]

[Kevarim link and Ancestry.com accessed on 12 December, 2020]

RETURN TO  SURNAME LIST

Robert Gray Middle School Project REACH (Respecting our Ethnic and Cultural Heritage)

My Great Grandfather’s Immigration to America from Vilna, Lithuania

Jennifer Subotnick, March 15, 2001, with permission

Chaim Udel Kalmonichus was born July 14, 1891, in Vilna, Lithuania.  He and his family came to America for a better life.  They were one family among hundreds of thousands who immigrated during this period of restrictions for Jews in Russia.  Chaim was my Great Grandfather. 

Chaim’s father, Jonah Kamonichus, was born in 1852.

Jonah was raised in Vilna, Lithuania, which bordered the Baltic Sea.  Vilna was the Lithuanian center of Jewish study.  Jews were forced to live in one area, called the Pale of Settlement.  Most towns (shtetls) that Jews lived in those days were small.  Jews would work as butchers, bakers, cobblers or seamstresses.  Jonah was a furrier; he made fur coats.  He did not earn a lot of money and often worked 14 to 16 hours a day.  This was a tiring regime.  Children in these shtetls studies religion, Hebrew, Torah and the Jewish law.  Jonah himself was well versed in Torah and Talmud, and he was also orthodox.  Because Jonah was an only child, he was exempt from being conscripted into the Czar’s army.

Jonah married his wife, Nachama Leah Glaser in 1874, when he was 22 and she was 19.  They had seven sons and three daughters in Lithuania.  Chaim was the tenth child, and he was born eleven months before the family left for America.  Their last child, Elinore, was born in America.  Jonah and Nachama realized that they could never provide for their ten children adequately in Vilna.  Jews in Vilna were second-class citizens and the Czarist anti-Jewish laws were oppressive.  Education was expensive and hard to get.  As soon as boys were old enough to work for the family, they quit school and got a job.  Girls helped their mothers around the house.  Rumors of looting, pillaging and killing were well known to Jonah and Nachama, and often Jews lived in constant fear.  Jonah and Nachama wanted tranquility, economic opportunity and protection, and they realized they could not get this in Vilna.(4)

In late 1891, Jonah journey to America with his two oldest children, Rebecca and Harris.  They lived in a few rooms in a tenement and decided that the rest of the family should join them.  Less than a year later, Nachama and the remaining eight children began their journey.  They boarded a train in Vilna and traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where they boarded the S.S. Gellert.  The passage to America over the Atlantic took about two weeks.  Up to 2,000 people could be crammed into steerage, and it was not pleasant.  The air would become rank with the smell of food, seasickness and people.  There was almost no privacy, and the lack of adequate toilet facilities did not make the trip fun.  If you were lucky, the ship would provide kosher food, but most steamship lines did not (9).  The S.S. Gellert reached New York harbor June 3, 1892.  Once the family arrived at the mainland, they were immediately ushered onto an open-air ferry to go to Ellis Island.  The harbors at Ellis Island were always full and perhaps the Kalmonichus family had to wait for hours standing in the ferry before they got to Ellis Island.

As they looked about the Registry Hall, they saw people of all religions and heard languages from many different countries.  There were Russian Jews, Irish farmers, Greeks, Italians, Cossacks, English and Arabs—all these people flocked to this great country to seek their fortune.  The nine members of the Kalmonichus family were among 81,511 immigrants from Russia to America in 1892 (11).  Most people were allowed in America, but about two percent were excluded for various reasons, often up to 1,000 people a month (7).  The immigrants were given numbered tags showing the manifest page and the line number on which their names appeared.  Doctors would look at the immigrants for signs of illness as they walked into the Registry Room.  The primary diseases that the doctors looked for were cholera, favus (a scalp and nail fungus), insanity and mental impairments (7).  Chalk marks were created to distinguish what illness each passenger might suffer from.  From these chalk marks, doctors would know if further medical examination was necessary.  Sometimes intelligence tests were used.  The Registry Hall was huge and confusing.  The immigrants were asked their age, occupation, if they were married or not, and their goals and morals.  After inspection, people would go down the Stairs of Separation, and this marked the parting of many families and friends from the old country (7).

Nachama and the children were met by Jonah, Becky and Harris in the immigration offices.  There was a wonderful reunion.  After all the legal ends were tied up, the family of twelve got an uptown horse-drawn trolley in Manhattan’s Battery Park area.  They then went to settle into a walk-up tenement on East Broadway.  This was a popular section for Jewish immigrants to live.  By 1895 there were 3,000 Jews living in New York (11).  Many Jews lived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side—in 1910 more than half a million Jews lived there (11).  Synagogues, cafes, theaters, bars and apartments fought for space in Manhattan’s busy streets.  The immigrants spoke Yiddish and their native languages while learning English as quickly as they could. 

Jonah and Nachama started out in a small apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  Gradually the family saved enough money to move into a large, roomy house!  Around 1900, they bought a two-story Victorian that was at 262 Stockton Street, Brooklyn.  Jonah converted two rooms in his house into a small synagogue and library/study.  Neighbors often came over to attend services.

Kalmonichus was long and hard to spell, so Jonah changed their name to Cohen. 

Jonah was a furrier and a rabbi.  There were many jobs available for hard-working men.  Jonah’s sons had a variety of jobs.  David worked in a clothes factory.  Conditions in these factories were awful.  David probably had to work in a hot, stuffy, badly lit room.  Wages were low:  In 1914 workers earned only 35 cents an hour (11). 

Samuel became a dentist; he did fillings, extracted teeth and made false teeth.  He often took care of the dental needs of the family. 

Louis became a high school teacher. 

Barnett, called Barney, wanted to be a Civil Engineer, but died from consumption before his graduation.

Chaim arrived in America when he was eleven months old.  He changed his name from Chaim Udel to Julius Harris, because he did not like his nickname, Hymie.  He was raised in a strictly Jewish home.  They kept Kosher and the family followed all the rules of Shabbot.  Once on a Sabbath afternoon, Julius and Jonah were walking and Jonah spotted a coin lying in the street.  Since it was Shabbot, Julius could not pick the coin up.  Jonah told Julius to push the money closer to the curb, so it would not be easily spotted by passers-by.  Julius later retrieved the coin, a whole half dollar, no small sum in those days.

Julius left school when he was 14 and probably got a job in a store.  Julius was not a morning person, so, to get up early, he died a string to his foot that led from his room to the kitchen several rooms below.  His mother would tug on the string, ensuring that Julius would get to work on time.  Julius wanted to be an actor in the Yiddish theater, but was struck by stage fright.

Julius met his wife when he was 18.  He had gone to the store on his bike where he saw a 14-year-old girl who was crying.  He soon found out that the girl had tried to buy something, but the storekeeper did not have change for a 20-dollar bill.  The girl had then given her money to a stranger to get change, and the stranger had taken the money and had not come back.  Julius walked the girl to his house and introduced her to his family.  Yetta Rife soon became good friends with Julius and his entire family.  They were married a few years later in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  Together they had three sons:  Abner Benedict, born October 6, 1914, Sanford Milton, my grandfather, born April 22, 1919, and their youngest, Jerome, born June 12, 1924.  To support his growing family, Julius cut cloth in a factory and became a dress designer.  Later he worked as a trolley car conductor and then as a cab driver.  He also held jobs as an inventory technician and clerk in a hardware store. 

Many years later, after his wife Yetta died in 1969, his son Jerome got him a job in an Arts and Crafts store.  Julius also made craft items—he sewed aprons, baby bibs and potholders, and he made tile trivets, which he either sold or gave as presents.  He retired when he was 80 years old from the Arts and Crafts store.

Abner retired in 1980 after a career as a graphic designer in the private sector and government service.  He later returned to the University of Maryland to get a B.A. in Studio Art and a Masters in Fiction Writing.  My Uncle Abner is still writing and is active in various projects.

Both Sanford and Jerome were World War II veterans.  Sanford was in the mopping-up operation across Europe in 1944-1945.  He was a postal clerk and retired from the U.S. Postal Service.  He died from cancer in 1994. 

Jerome was in the Allied D-Day operation across the English Channel in France, and he earned a Purple Heart.  Jerome went to Indiana University and became a Cost Accountant; he retired from the federal government and died from cancer February 20, 1999. 

Chaim Udel Kalmonichus left Vilna, Lithuania as an infant eleven months old. He died in Silver Springs, Maryland at the age of 96 on October 12, 1987.  When he died, he was the grandfather of seven children and the great grandfather of 14.  As Julius Harris Cohen, he had a long, successful life in America—he fulfilled his parents’ dreams of living the good life in America, the land of freedom and opportunity.  His life was rich in the love of his family and he was free to practice his religion and work in any job he chose.  He and his wife raised three sons who were also successful and good American citizens.  His story shows how the journey to America from Europe gave Julius the opportunity to have a better life than he would have had in Czarist Lithuania—like millions of other immigrants to America.

Bibliography

Cohen, Abner.  Personal Interview.  February 28, 2001.

Cohen, Abner.  (1990, July 3).  The Sabbath Stroll. The Jonah and Nachama Kalmonichus Family: A Book of Reminiscences.  Silver Springs:  Abner Cohen Library.

Cohen, Ephraim.  (1992).  Centennial Anniversary. Family Newsletter, June, 1992 Volume 2, Number 5.

Cohen, Ephraim.  (1991). The Decision to Leave Russia--No Regrets. The  Jonah and Nachama Kalmonichus Family:  A Book of Reminiscences.  Silver Springs:  Abner Cohen Library.

Ellis Island website:

Ellis Island Experience

Ellis Island History 

Ellis Island Inspection  

Ellis Island Journey  

Ellis Island Passage  

Sagan, Miriam.  (1993).  Tracing Our Jewish Roots; Santa Fe;  John Muir Publications.

Samuel, Joseph.  (1914).  Jewish Immigration to the United States;  New York: Columbia University.

My Pioneers

by Joan Teller, with permission

When I was a little girl, my father always told me bedtime stories that were really the adventures of his mother and father along the Old Santa Fe Trail.  His father, Henry Mayer, had come out West as a young man in 1835, where he traveled by horseback to settlements and towns selling merchandise to general stores.  Later he led mule trains and guided settlers' wagons across the trails to New Mexico and Texas.  In Vicksburg, Mississippi, he met a young Jewish watchmaker, Bernhard Cohen, his wife, Rachel and their baby daughter, Rebecca.

In those days there many Jewish single men west of the Mississippi, but there were not many Jewish women.  Some of these men went back to Europe for Jewish wives.  Of course, there were quite a few who married out of their faith.

So when Henry saw baby Rebecca, and she seemed to take [a] fancy to him from the start, he promised to come back and marry her when she grew up.  The family story is that he once brought her the first doll she ever owned.  In those days, and in that section of the country, a large doll was a great novelty.

Rebecca's father, Bernhard Cohen, died in 1844 at the age of 33.  Rebecca had vivid memories of her mother, Rachel, trying to find a burial place for him, because there was no Jewish cemetery in Vicksburg at the time.  After Bernhard's death, Rachel took her two children to live with her parents in Cincinnati, Ohio.  They probably took a riverboat all the way.  Nevertheless, Henry managed to find them there, and, in 1852, Henry Mayer married Rebecca Cohen in a Jewish ceremony.  She was 15 years old; he was 35.

The newlyweds set off at once by riverboat for the "jump-off city" to the West:  Independence, Missouri.  Their ultimate destination was San Antonio, Texas.  Because Henry had made the trip many times before his marriage and knew the country well, he probably did not feel there was much danger taking his little wife on such a perilous overland journey.  In addition to knowing the terrain, he was an excellent communicator.  He spoke German, French and English, and had learned a lot of Spanish and some Indian languages, especially that of the Kiowa.

Rebecca kept a diary so that her mother and grandmother would know about the challenges she faced.  I had read that old diary many times, so when I crossed the same trail in 1946 via the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway on a train called the Super Chief, I realized that I was looking at the same vast landscape as my grandmother had in 1852, ninety-four years earlier.  But what different modes of travel we used!

Rebecca had had some experience with horses, and instead of walking or riding in the wagons as most other women did, she insisted on riding horseback.  There is even a family story of Henry objecting to her changing her long skirt for men's pants so she could ride more easily.  This was 1852!

Other family members traveled to join Rebecca and Henry Mayer in San Antonio.
Rebecca's mother, Rachel, had remarried, and Henry asked her new husband, Sigmund Fineberg, to come to San Antonio to help manage his three businesses.  Rebecca's grandmother, Rachel's mother, Eleanore Bomeisler Lorch, had lost her husband, Benedict to cholera in 1848.  Eleanore had married Benedict in Heidelberg, Germany, and they had come to Philadelphia together in 1815, where she already had family.  Now alone, she decided to follow her daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Rebecca, to San Antonio.

Eleanore would have gone by riverboat and stagecoach, which must have been a very difficult trip for a 72-year-old woman.  She apparently worried about her health, because she is said to have carried a shroud with her.  When she arrived in San Antonio, she was very upset that there was no Jewish cemetery.  No matter where Jews traveled, or how far they were from organized communities, when they had need for the rites of passage, they sought to be together.  At once, she contributed to the establishment of the first Jewish cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.  She must have sensed that her time was quickly approaching. because she was the first burial there, on September 11, 1855.

By the time the Mayers were settling in Texas, they became aware of other Jewish families; and, since Henry remembered his Hebrew, he started the first services and classes in their living room.  Henry had been a Bar Mitzvah in Oberingleheim, Germany in 1830.  This was the beginning of the Temple Beth-El, the first synagogue in San Antonio.

I often think of my courageous grandmother and how difficult it must have been to be a woman in the West in those days, about all her responsibilities as a Jewish pioneer woman, and how proud I am of her and my industrious, well-traveled grandfather, who inspired so many wild and wonderful bedtime stories.

Joan Teller was a member of the Board and secretary of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon.

Sources:

1. Seven Years in Central America by Julius Froebel published in 1859 (chronicles the 1852 trip of the Mayers)

2. Research by Frances Kallison of San Antonio, Texas

3. Memoirs of Henry Mayer (as told to Jenny Mayer)

4. Diary of Rebecca Mayer

5. Memoirs of Rebecca Mayer (written in her 80's)