Thalia Godfeld Meranski - Sophie's
mother p 37-930 {F}
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Probably born 1869 or
l870 Brody in Lemberg province then Austrian Galicia later in Poland, Russia
and now Ukraine.She was friendly with the Meisselman and Witkower families
of Hartford, also believed to originate from Brody. Her youngest daughter
Rebekah Geetter stated her mother traveled though Hamburg Germany. She was
married to Daivd Meranski in Hartford August 8, l890. A younger brother
Jacob had some sort of speech or hearing problem - was unmarried - worked as
tailor.Many neighbors whose mothers had died lived with the Meranski family
including Julius Aronson and his brother. Both parents spoke many languages
including German, Yiddish, and Polish, and Pa Meranski spoke Russian. At
home Sophie often used an Austrian German dialect with her mother and took
German at Hartford Public High School and three years of college German at
Mount Holyoke reading Goethe and Schiller with Professor Grace Bacon after
World War I, when enrollment in German-l;anguage courses was low. Babe
recounted that when three sons got Army draft notices in l9l8, her mother
was so nervous she used salt instead of sugar by mistake in jelly she was
making.Her gallstones became cancerous when improperly diatgnosed. He had an
operation in l925 - was well enough to attend Sophie's Mount Holyoke
grandaution May l923 but died September 8, l925 aged about 55 years. Her
sonBen furnished "Abel and Bertha Goldfeld" as names of her parents. A
family named Goldfield were neighbors of the Meranskis on Portalnd St.
Hartford l909 - possibly relatives? [draft 01A:]#01A- Date: Mon, 18 May 1998
17:16:31 PDT #01A Thalia Goldfeld Meranski- To the best of my knowledge my
mother Tahlia Meranski came to Hartford Connecticut from Vienna Austria with
her younger brother Jacob, when she was a girl.I understood that she and my
father were married in Germania Hall at the corner of Main and Morgan Street
in HartfordAugust 8, l890. My first memory of my mother finds her standing
in the living room, holding my infant sister Babe in her arms on Pleasant
Street when I was five years old, iin l906. Babe was her eighth and last
child - all healthy.I was her sixth born in a family of four boys and four
girls. My mother was of average height, slender, black=haired and black-eyed.She
was a good cook, but I never saw her sew or mend even though my father was
an excellent tailor who enjoyed his work until his eyesight was strained by
the use of fineneedles and dark thread on dark blue overcoats and black
velvet collars. Apparently around l909-l9l0 as he got into his mid-forties,
it became difficult to adjust to the close work.In l906 owing to a financial
Panic my father found it very difficult to support his large family of ten
in Hartford, where very few customers if any could afford a custom made
overcoat. Through a friend Samuel Schlimbaum he found work as a tailor in
New York for a time in l907. He located a cheap tenement at Twenty=-Seventh
Street near Third Avenue and wrote my mother to bring the family.Less than a
year old my sister Babe was an infant in arms suffering from the measles
when my mother gathered her brood in a horse=drawn carriage and took us to
the railroad station. My sister Esther remembers my mother keeping Babe's
face covered with a blanket asd we rode in the coach train to New York
city.My three older brothers slept on the floor at 27th Street, and one
night Ben stepped on Al's hand, which was sore for weeks afterward.I was too
young togo to school, though my sister Bertha did attend New York schools
forsome time. I spent most of my time looking out the window, as mymother
had two very young children to care for. Although I was lessthan six years
old, my mother would give me ten or twenty cents everynoon, and I would go
to the store to buy the baloney.We had no bathroom of our own and had to
share the toilet out in the front hallwith the other tenants on that second
floor.To supplement our diet, wehad a corn popper and popped corn on the
coal stove nearly every night.My brothers would take a coal hod down to the
railroad tracksand spend long hours trying to fill their hods with coal that
mighthave fallen from the coal trains. Wood was difficult to get, but
mybrothers searched endlessly for kindling wood. One evening my
father'sfriends the Schlimbaums had the ten of us for supper. We went to
their flat by streetcar, and I can remember my disbelief at the number of
courses and quantity of food on the table. At Halloween, looking out the
window I saw some mean tricks as teenage boys would hit passersby with long
socks with a heavy brick inside. One morning I was standing in the front
room when myt father unexppectedly came home. My mother without a word
followed him from the entrance down in the kitchen to the front room and
watched the poor man put his scissors and his tape measure on the table.
When she questioned him with her expressive eyes, he told her that there was
not enough work, and as the last man hired, he had been fired.We returned to
Hardford and lived on Portland Street.There are Portland Street neighbors
named Goldfield listed nearby in directories, but we have not been able to
find out if they were relatives of my mother. In Boston in the l970's we
spoke with a widow Celia Goldfield of Milton, whose husband had come from
Rovno in eastern Poland, on the same railroad line as Brody, where my mother
came from.The name probably dates back to an Austrian taxation plan of the
later eighteenth century.My mother had a family photo album. We believe her
parents named Abel and Bertha were deceased in Austria before 1890.Ellis
Island opened in l892, and immigration records from New York from the 1880's
are said to have burned. e her parents named Abel and Bertha were deceased
in Austria before 1890.Ellis Island opened in l892, and immigration records
from New York from the 1880's are said to have burned |