by Edith Felson
This is the story of the home life of my father and mother in Russia and their coming to America, as my father told it to me.
The Biography of My Father
copied from The Gleam, August 19, 1919
“I was born in the province of Vitebsk, Russia in 1873. My father’s occupations of Rabbi and teacher of Hebrew hardly bought his daily bread. My mother also taught Hebrew to the girls. Still we were as poor as we could be and had to live in two small, poorly furnished rooms. I alone was left of six children, the others having died because of miserable poverty.
My father started to teach me when I was not quite five years old. When only six I could understand the Hebrew language sufficiently to read it before a class of children, but my father all of a sudden became sick of pneumonia and died at the age of thirty-three.
My mother had to struggle bitterly for several years for our very existence. At last, however, she was compelled to marry an old widower who had four or five children, and promised to keep me. After she married, his promise was kept
for a very short time, and I was driven out when only eight or nine years old. This treatment caused my mother to die of grief, after she had brought a child to her second husband.
But the Jewish customs of not letting an orphan starve brought me to the so-called Yeshiva, a sort of higher synagogue school, where each member studied the Talmudic literature, and each of the members was supposed to support a child for one day of the week. But there were too many days that I had to do without food. I started to educate myself by reading books, and learning the Yiddish language, which was against the rules of the Yeshiva and for which I was turned out again to my fate.
I then went to a capmaker, to find out whether he would teach me his trade. After being there for several weeks, I realized that that trade was not as good as tailoring. As I had no chance there of getting a tailor to teach me the trade, and as my mother’s brother, who lived in a city about 56 miles away, was one, I walked to my uncle’s home and he accepted me as an apprentice, although he was very poor and had small children.
There I learned the trade sufficiently to get a place with another tailor at sixteen dollars for two years. Since my uncle lived in a province other then the one in which I was born, the city officials bothered me for not having a passport, without which no one can live in Russia, if he is not living in the city of his birth. Finally, I had to go back to the city where I was born.
As you know, the Jews had to do military service without getting any rights; for instance, no Jew could rise to a higher rank, even though he was the brightest soldier. Naturally, Jews did not like to go into military service, but they had to. When I came for my passport I was seventeen years old. A man, a relative of our family and the main bookkeeper in the city hall, recognized me as soon as I told him my name, and told me to keep away from the military officials. This I did until I was of age, twenty-one; then I appeared before the military service officials and found that my mother’s death had not been recorded, and on these grounds, I was freed.
By this time I was well read, and I was determined to reach a large city. I decided to go to Riga. After much trouble I arrived there, penniless, and started to look for a job. I got one, but soon there was another reason for wanting to leave Riga. This was because the city was out of the territory where the Jews were allowed, and for that reason I went to Warsaw, with a ticket which was given me by a friend whom I met accidently. After working there four or five years, I perfected myself in reading the Russian literature.
When I was twenty-seven I married. After living a year or two longer in Warsaw, where conditions of living were miserable, I decided to go to America. At that time I had a child and had to take my wife to her parents’ home. After selling all I possessed, I accumulated about sixty dollars. With this amount I started for the United States. I could not go directly because no one was allowed to leave, so I had to leave secretly. Riding and walking through woods and swamps for three days and three nights, several companions and I finally reached the Austrian border, where the train took us to Antwerp, Belgium. After being a week in Antwerp, I left Belgium on the Red Star Line for the United States. I could not go directly because no one was allowed to leave Russia.
I had little trouble in landing because every question I was asked I easily answered, and after establishing myself at my brother-in-law’s house on Suffolk Street in New York City, I went to look for a job. Out of my first eight dollars pay I paid three dollars board and sent the rest to my wife. And so I continued to do.
Thinking that I could do better in a smaller city, I decided to come to Cincinnati. Out of my pay I sent three dollars back to my home in Russia, three dollars I lived on, and the rest I saved until I was able to send for my wife, daughter, and son that I had never seen. They arrived safely, and we have lived here ever since.”
The Felson Family 