Forgetting Fathers

David Marshall

Description

In Forgetting Fathers, David Marshall weaves together the stories of his grandfather and great-grandfather with his own quest to solve the mystery of his family's past. Beginning as a search for his lost family name, Marshall attempts to understand the origins of his grandfather, who spent part of his childhood in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York. He also reconstructs the life and death of his great-grandfather, a Russian immigrant tailor who died at age thirty-six in a private sanitarium dedicated to the treatment of mental and nervous diseases. The narrative becomes a detective story that reflects on our ambivalence about origins, the relation between history and mourning, and the compulsion to search for life stories. Forgetting Fathers combines historical accounts based on records, reports, and public documents with autobiographical reflections and speculations. Included throughout are photographs, newspaper clippings, and facsimiles of original documents that provide a sense of both the texture of the times and the fabric of archival and genealogical research.
Note to the Reader
Preface

1. Presented to David Marshall

2. Finding Names

3. Inscribing Names

4. A Posthumous Child

5. Traces of the Father

6. Traces of the Tailor: Becoming a Contractor

7. Traces of the Tailor: On Strike

8. Special Circumstances of the Case

9. Reading the Death Certificate

10. Reading the Death Certificate: The Place of Death

11. Reading the Death Certificate: The Name of the Physician

12. Reading the Death Certificate: The Name of the Disease

13. The Case of H.W.

14. The Pavilion for the Insane

15. The Place of Burial: Machpelah

16. Saying Kaddish for a Ghost

17. Picturing a Future

18. Picturing a Past

19. A Ghost and a Memory

20. Searches and Signs

21. Returning to Machpelah

Notes

Sujets

• Ethnic studies
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438458939
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Forgetting Fathers
“ Forgetting Fathers is a truly remarkable piece of work. The pertinacity of Marshall as a reader, as a critic, as a theorist, impels him on his quest to learn all that he can about his past. The book is riveting.”
— Jonathan Freedman, coeditor of Jewish in America
“From the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the history of New York tailors, David Marshall weaves his Jewish family memoir with gripping details. An enlightening contribution to the growing body of research on the lives and institutions of twentieth-century Jewish immigrants.”
— Mikhal Dekel, author of The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment
Forgetting Fathers
Forgetting Fathers

Untold Stories from an Orphaned Past
David Marshall
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marshall, David, 1953 December 20– author.
Forgetting fathers : untold stories from an orphaned past / David Marshall.
pages cm
“Excelsior Editions.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5892-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5893-9 (e-book)
1. Marshall, David, 1953—Family. 2.Jews—New York (State)—New York— Biography. 3.Marshall family. 4.Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York. 5.Jewish orphanages—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 6.Jews, Belarusian—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 7.Death certificates—New York (State)—New York. 8.New York (N.Y.)—Biography.I. Title. F128.9.J5M36 2016 974.700492’4—dc23 2015001356
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Arthur K. Marshall
and
Daniel Waid Marshall

Contents
Note to the Reader
Preface
1. Presented to David Marshall
2. Finding Names
3. Inscribing Names
4. A Posthumous Child
5. Traces of the Father
6. Traces of the Tailor: Becoming a Contractor
7. Traces of the Tailor: On Strike
8. Special Circumstances of the Case
9. Reading the Death Certificate
10. Reading the Death Certificate: The Place of Death
11. Reading the Death Certificate: The Name of the Physician
12. Reading the Death Certificate: The Name of the Disease
13. The Case of H. W.
14. The Pavilion for the Insane
15. The Place of Burial: Machpelah
16. Saying Kaddish for a Ghost
17. Picturing a Future
18. Picturing a Past
19. A Ghost and a Memory
20. Searches and Signs
21. Returning to Machpelah
Notes
Note to the Reader
A lthough this book incorporates family history, it is not a genealogical work. I have not included a family tree. Nevertheless, a brief summary will help the reader keep track of the main family members who populate the narrative, many of whom were referred to by more than one name during their lifetimes.
Birth dates for relatives born outside the United States are approximate; birth dates for relatives born in the United States match birth certificates, which often contradict other records and personal accounts.
This story focuses on my father’s side of the family, especially his father’s family, and my grandfather’s parents, who were named Harris (or Aaron) and Lena. Harris’s father was named David. He married Dorah Garmize (or Debora Germaise), and they seem to have lived in Minsk, Russia. Their children included my great-grandfather Harris (Aaron) (b. 1865?) and his brother Jack (b. 1869?). Aaron, or Harris, seems to have immigrated to New York City between 1885 and 1888.
Lena’s parents were Meyer Ruderman (b. 1840?) and Anna (Hannah) Davidow (b. 1846?). They apparently came from Minsk or a nearby village called Gorodok (or Horodok). Meyer immigrated to New York City around 1884. Anna seems to have followed in 1888.
Their children included: Isaac (b.1867?), my great-grandmother Lena (b. 1870?), Abraham (b. 1877?), Fannie (b. 1881?), Bessie (b. 1882?), and Michael (b. 1883?), all of whom were born in Russia. Lena Ruderman probably immigrated around 1884. Most the Ruderman family seems to have immigrated around 1888. Meyer died in 1935, and Anna died in 1936.
My great-grandparents, Harris and Lena, were married in New York City in 1890. Their children were: Dora (Daisy) (b. 1890); my grandfather David (Dick) (b. 1891); Rubin (Reuben, Ruby) (b. 1893); Mella (Millie, Mildred) (b. 1894); Israel (Isadore, Isi, Irving) (b. 1895); and Harry (Harold) (b. 1901). Harris died in 1901. Lena died in 1960. Millie’s daughter, Adele, is my father’s first cousin.
My grandfather David, or Dick, married my grandmother Jeanette in 1922. Jeanette was born in 1902 to Louis Levitt (b. 1871?) and Hannah (Anna, Annie) Wolarsky (Waller) (b. 1876?), immigrants from Russia and Poland, who married in New York City in 1894. My grandparents had two children, my father Arthur (b. 1924) and his brother, Stephen (b. 1926). My grandfather died in 1952, and my grandmother died in 1994.
Arthur married Helene (b. 1929), my mother, in 1951. Her parents were Moe (Marcus) Horowitz (1894–1899?) and May (Manya) Alter (1894–1899?), who immigrated to New York City in the early 1920s from Poland. I was born in 1953, my sister Cindy was born in 1956, and my sister Karen was born in 1959. My father died in 2009.
The central figures in this story are my great-grandparents, Harris and Lena, and their eldest son, my grandfather David. I knew almost nothing about Harris and Lena or their families before I wrote this book.
Preface
I was named after my father’s father, David Marshall, who died the year before I was born. According to the family story, my grandfather changed the family name to Marshall. We had a Bible inscribed to David Marshall in 1906, on the occasion of his confirmation, from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York. Yet no one knew the original name; my father and grandmother said that they had never asked my grandfather about it. This book has its origins in my search to discover our lost family name.
As a child, I learned about “Ellis Island names”—names that were Americanized or Anglicized by either accident or design. Various relatives had changed their names, or had had their names changed for them. I knew that when my mother set out to become an actress before I was born, she used the name of her maternal grandfather (Alter) because it sounded less Jewish than the name of her father (Horowitz). I remember feeling some satisfaction when, planning to be an actor when I was eleven or twelve years old, a man with some professional experience pronounced “David Marshall” to be a “damn good stage name.” I never thought of my own name as a “stage name” (that is, not a “real” name), yet over the years I became increasingly curious about the original name, and especially curious that it was a mystery.
As family history and amateur genealogy started to find a home on the Internet, I made sporadic attempts to search for the family name. I first opened an Ancestry.com account in 2002. It was only after my father’s death in April of 2009 that my search became more determined. A casual conversation with my colleague Patricia Cline Cohen, an American historian who knows her way around genealogical search engines as well as archives, led to her taking a generous interest in my search. With her help, I had a breakthrough, and soon I became engaged in a project that combined elements of a hobby, a scholarly research project, and a personal obsession. Discovering the original name was only the beginning.
Over the years, friends and relatives were sometimes puzzled or amused by my pursuit. Many people encouraged and assisted me, and many made invaluable contributions to my research and writing. In a preface to a book about lost origins, missing names, and forgetful and forgotten fathers, I can provide only a partial acknowledgment of my debts. As I noted, Pat Cohen was a tutor and mentor throughout this project, an engaged interlocutor who commented on drafts, advised me about historical research, and even made a few beyond-the-call-of-duty forays into census, municipal, and real estate records. Mark Rose provided encouragement and editorial advice throughout this project, not only reading drafts but also allowing me to engage him in countless conversations about my latest discoveries over weekly Chinese lunches. An ideal reader, he understood my literary and personal investments.
My wife, Candace Waid, and our son, Daniel Waid Marshall, also gave me great encouragement, listening patiently and reading versions of the book as it took shape. Daniel and I both became history majors at around the same time, and I have been inspired by his interest in the meaning of historical memory (and forgetting). Candace, whose own family stories, memories, and even dreams go far back into the nineteenth century, has talked with me and taught me about history, narrative, and autobiography for more than thirty-five years. I benefited from her expertise on topics ranging from labor history to nineteenth-century wedding dresses. My sense of the narrated past was deepened by her grandmother, Harriet Jones, and her father, Donald Waid, master storytellers with deep reservoirs of both inherited and original stories.
My mother, Helene Marshall, and my sisters, Cindy Marshall and Karen Marshall, allowed me to draw upon their memories, knowledge, research, talents, and sympathies to enrich my understanding of our shared history and stories. The stories o