PIONEERS OF A DIFFERENT SORT:

PIONEERS OF A DIFFERENT SORT:

ANCESTORS OF SCOTT THOMAS FENTON

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Unfortunately, my husband's ancestors have proven to be a bit more elusive than mine! As a result, I have only been able to trace his lineage back as far as his great-grandparents, and even then, there was not much information available. What little I've been able to uncover so far (mostly provided by the few surviving older family members) is related below.

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OUR HISTORY BEGINS AT ELLIS ISLAND:

ESTHER AND ISRAEL FEIGENBAUM

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The Feigenbaum side of Scott's family came from a small village called Shendishiv, in Galicia, an area of Austria. Jews from Galicia were known as “Galitsianers” whereas Jews that came from Northern Russia and Poland were called Litvaks (Lithuanians). Most Feigenbaums were Galitsianers. Shendishiv was directly in the path of the warring armies in both World War I and World War II, and there were several Feigenbaums mentioned as part of “Schindler's List” (which took place in Krakow, Poland, very near Shendishiv). By the 1950s, when a family member visited the area, the village of Shendishiv still existed, but there were no Jews left there, the synagogue had been destroyed, and no records survived.

I have yet to find a ship passenger listing for Israel Feigenbaum, but his wife, Esther, left Galicia and came to America on the Steamship SCANDIA, via Hamburg, arriving through Ellis Island in May 1896. Traveling with her were their two children at the time, “Moses” (Scott's grandfather, later called Murray; listed as three years old on the passenger list) and “Jides” (later known as Yetta; “Jides” is the passenger list transcriber's attempt to spell “Yedis,” the Yiddish word for “Edith,” Yetta's birth name). Murray's son, Alan Fenton, describes his father's life in America:

“My father was a product of the Lower East Side [of New York City]. He had very little formal schooling, but I always considered him very learned and worldly. He graduated, as the saying goes, from the school of hard knocks. He went to work helping to deliver milk when all milk was delivered at 4 am or so. At 14 he went to work at Lord and Taylor when they had their store on 14^th Street. He was the first Jew hired there. He was a wrapper and they had to put him on a box to reach the counter. The Gentiles took a liking to him took him to the Polo Grounds and taught him to eat clams on the half shell (strictly forbidden to Jews). My father saw there was more to America than the Lower East Side and became very Americanized....Later, in the 1920s, he had a shoe store on Church Street in the financial district. He ran a bookmaking establishment in the back of the store. When the Wall Street guys would go to lunch, they liked to place a little bet on the horses! He became pretty well known and prosperous till the Crash. Then his customers went broke and he went broke. He went back to work as a shoe salesman. Those were very tough times for us and they lasted until the War.”

Israel and Esther had five other children besides Murray and Yetta -- Phillip, Irving, Tilda, Jacob, and Ben. Murray's brother Jacob (or “Jack”) became one of the organizers of the Retail Trade Union. Irving worked for a time as a chauffeur for the Bugsy Segal/Meyer Lansky Gang, mostly involved in gambling. In spite of the fact that they lived in a rough area and in a rough time, however, many of them managed to overcome these obstacles of circumstance. Most of the first generation of the family to be born here was college-educated, and some even became educators themselves. In many ways, the family is an example of the true American story.

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ESCAPE FROM RUSSIA:

NELLIE LINDENBLITH AND HARRIS (KVALAH) WALLACE

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Harris (Kvalah) Wallace apparently came to America as a matter of necessity, arriving sometime around the turn of the century (ca. 1900). He had been conscripted into the Russian Army, but life there wasn't easy for him, being Jewish. Then, as now, Russia was notoriously anti-Semitic. The family story goes that an officer was giving Harris a hard time, so he punched him, an act which, not surprisingly, did not go over very big with the officer. Thereafter, Harris started running, and didn't stop until he got to Jersey City. If the estimated immigration date is correct, Harris and his wife, Nellie Lindenblith, were not only married at the time this all took place, but they had several children as well, and so presumably, his family traveled with him (or perhaps followed him soon thereafter; from the close proximity of the children's birth dates, husband and wife could not have been separated for long).

The Kvalah/Wallace family were "city folk" in Russia, and fairly well off. Harris made his living in Jersey City as a fine paint contractor, doing gilt painting in churches and such.

The name change from "Kvalah" to Wallace took place at Ellis Island.

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OUR HISTORY BEGINS AT ELLIS ISLAND:

BELLA AND JACOB WEINSTEIN

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Unfortunately, very little is known about this branch of Scott's family. Few descendants of the Weinstein branch of the family are still living, and information has been hard to come by from outside sources.

One bit of information did surface recently however, and it may explain one of the “history mysteries” from that side of the family. Before Scott's parents married in the 1940s, Barbara Weinstein (his future mother) wanted Alan Feigenbaum (Scott's future father) to change his surname. The surname of “Fenton” was ultimately adopted, at Barbara's suggestion. No one seems to know now how she came up with that particular name, since it was not one belonging to any known “blood kin.” However, Barbara's grandfather was Jacob Weinstein, born in 1878 in Vilna, Russia. I recently found a “Jacob Weinstein,” age 12, on the passenger list for the SS KANSAS, arriving in Boston in 1890, via Liverpool. Traveling with Jacob were (presumably) four siblings. The transcriber could not decipher all of the names on the passenger list, so the first names are only partially listed, along with their occupations (if applicable) and ages at the time of the voyage. The other Weinsteins on the manifest were Esther (female; age 23; occupation listed as “spinster” -- a pretty harsh assignation for one so young!), “Schlen?” (male; age 14; occupation listed as “labourer”), “?chif??” (male; age 9), and Joseph (male; age 7).

Most interesting about this particular passenger list, however, is that the ship captain's name was Alexander Fenton! Often these captains were regarded practically as gods by their passengers, since they delivered them from whatever hardships and horrors they had experienced in their homelands, to their new lives in America, the land of peace and prosperity. I wonder if perhaps this Captain Alexander Fenton's name did not become part of the “family folklore” of Barbara's childhood, and that was how she happened to come up with that surname as a replacement for Feigenbaum, even if she didn't herself realize it at the time. If nothing else, it is certainly a strange coincidence!

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AN EDUCATED WOMAN:

ELIZABETH GURANOWSKY AND ISAAC LITOWICH

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Scott's grandmother, Sylvia Litowich Weinstein, was the only child of Elizabeth (“Ellie”) Guranowsky and Isaac Litowich. Ellie was reportedly the first woman in the family to have a formal education. Her picture, taken ca. 1915, is displayed in the Family Photos section of this book, against the backdrop of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York.

Ellie’s father was Abraham Guranowsky, a rabbi and Talmudic scholar educated in Berlin. Abraham (sometimes called “Adolph”) came here with his parents, his wife, and at least some of his siblings on the Caledonia, which sailed into New York harbor in 1870. They had started their journey in Wloclawek, near Warsaw (which was then considered to be in Russia, but now is, of course, in Poland). Ellie and her two sisters, Rose Anna and Esther, were all born in New York. Esther died young; Rose Anna married as her third husband, Jacob Weinstein, from the other side of Scott’s family (she and Jacob did not have any children together however). Abraham Guranowsky helped to found a synagogue and a hospital, both in New York City, before he died in 1912.

It’s not now known how Ellie met her husband, Isaac Litowich, but he appears in the 1890 city directory for Troy, New York, with his occupation listed as "dry goods." Also listed in that 1890 directory are others in the dry goods business with the surname "Litowich," all living on River Street in Troy – Abraham M. Litowich, Moses Litowich, and Simon Litowich. A dry goods business called "Litowich and Lewis" is also listed in that directory, located on River Street, with "Sarah Lewis, widow of Reuben" listed as one proprietor. One can assume that all of these people (along with a Jacob E. Litowich, law student, also living on River Street) are related in some way, but we are left to guess how. Perhaps Isaac, Abraham, Moses and Simon Litowich and Sarah Lewis were all siblings, with the brothers being in business with Reuben Lewis (deceased in 1890), the husband of their sister. Perhaps Jacob was either a younger sibling of the others, or a son of one of the brothers. This is all speculative however, and it remains to be seen if further information can be found to support or refute these assumptions about the Litowich family.

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