Mendel Letters 117 — Ellis Island
Dear Mendel,
You probably would consider it magic. On my personal computer, sitting at my desk in my home office, I can discover almost anything. My computer connects via airwaves to an international network of computers called the “Internet.” On these computers there are websites with information that I can search for. I can read newspapers “online” and meet with students on their computers using a program called “Zoom.”
Every once in a while I do “searches” for information about our family. On one website, FamilySearch, I discovered a “profile” of your parents. Some of the dates are different from those I had heard about from either you or Zayde.
Solomon (Zalmen) Singer was born on a Wednesday, October 25, 1882. His father was Ben-Tsion Prisant and his mother was Esther Singer. He had three brothers, Srulka, Marcus David, and Avrumtsha. Your father arrived at Ellis Island on the ship Kaiserin Auguste Victoria out of Hamburg, Germany on July 22, 1912 at age 30. I’m not clear why, but he was detained at Ellis Island for 6 days and then admitted to the United States on July 28. I found his military draft registration card during World War I dated September 12, 1918. It reports he had a medium build and medium height, blue eyes and brown hair, and lists his occupation as a presser. We know he worked in the ladies garment industry ironing cloths. He died on a Monday, April 29, 1975 aged 92.
Feige Steinfink was born in Podhyce in what was then Austria but is now Ukraine on Thursday, September 17, 1885. Her father was Israel Steinfink. She arrived in New York on the Nieuw Amsterdam on June 11, 1915, three years after Zayde, at age 29. The immigration report describes her as nearly blind and she is listed as 5 feet tall, but we know she was significantly shorter. She died on Sunday April 21, 1968 at age 83.
I couldn’t find any information about when Solomon and Feige were married, but probably around 1909. They had six children, but two daughters died in Europe before Feige arrived in New York. Their names are unknown. In the United States you had three siblings, Kayla, Abraham, and Baruch.
The same website has copies of the 1920, 1930 and 1940 manuscript federal census. In 1920, the family lived at 37 Pell Street in Manhattan Assembly District 4. This census lists Solomon’s country of origin as Galicia in Poland and his occupation as “cloak presser” in a factory. It includes wife Fanny and children Kate and Abraham. You and Baruch weren’t born yet. Neither Solomon nor Fanny are listed as able to read and write, but they are both checked off for being able to speak English, something your mother really could never do. In 1930, the family was living at 37 East 7th Street in Manhattan. This census mentions that the language spoken at home was Yiddish and that Solomon and Fanny were not yet citizens.
By 1940, the family was living at 210 East 166th Street in the Bronx and all four children were living at home. Kate was working as a stenographer, Abraham as a soda clerk, and you, now 19, in an office. Solomon and Fanny had become naturalized citizens.
Your son
Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.
