Sophians: Kyiv to New York — 1891

The Sophian family lived in Kyiv (Russia at the time, Ukraine today). Morris and Delia Sophian had five children, Meyer, Jennie, Rosie, Harry, and Abraham. They lived an imperiled life in Tsarist Russia. Kyiv (Kiev). Along with Warsaw and Odessa, Kyiv was ground zero for the Tsar’s pogroms against the Jews. As the New York Daily News reported that the great wave of Jewish immigration was “instigated by Russian massacres, ‘plagues of sword and torch,’ that have smitten their race in Russia. The violence continued for decades and prompted a continuous stream of Jews migrating to the US to escape the death march.”

1891

The Sophian family decided to make the brave move to America in the early 1890’s. There is much we do not know about their emigration. Digitized US Citizenship records and US Census records, tell us about their early life in the US. Harry and Abraham traveled on the same ship, the SS Edam, of the Holland America Line, out of Rotterdam to the Port of New York, arriving on the 25th of June 1891. The SS Edam was sailed under the Nederlandsche-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij, the English version was Holland Amerika Lign, today it’s known as Holland America Line. Holland Amerika Lign had its American terminus on the west side of the Hudson River, Hoboken.

Harry and Abraham were young. Harry was almost 9 years old and Abraham was 7. The rest of the family were likely on the same ship, but we have yet to locate the Edam manifest that would show all of them together. We know of Harry and Abraham’s voyage from their petitions for citizenship.

Harry and Abraham’s Declaration of Intent to become a US citizen (1908 and 1909), required each to attest: “It is my bona fide intention to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, of which I am now a subject.” That declaration must have felt good.

Photos below: SS Edam, Holland America Line; Holland America dock in NYC (Hoboken); Steerage (emigrant) class accomodations (Library of Congress).

Holland America terminus New York (Hoboken)

Steerage (emigrant class) accomodations

SS Edam (Holland America line)

1900: Abject Squalor of their First NYC Home

Hester Street,

Lower East Side

Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library

The Sophians left the oppression of Russia and like the hordes of Jewish emigres of the time, the family found shelter in New York’s Lower East Side tenements.

1900

The 1900 Census documents that the Sophian family lived at 252 Henry Street. All of the family lived together at the time, Morris, Delia, Meyer, Jennie, Rosie, Harry, Abraham, and the smallest, their American-born sister, Gussie. New York City Municipal Birth Records note that Gussie was born on August 13, 1893, to Tillie Pergamentshich and Morris Sophion, both from Russia. From research to date, we believe that they lived in this neighborhood from arrival in 1891, and did not escape until sometime between 1900 and 1905.

[Side note: We all have heard tales of immigrants’ names being changed by immigration record keepers who did not understand their foreign names. Regarding our research, we found many of the records relating to the Sophian and Felix families have the same or similar spelling. It is clear, however, that Harry and Abraham’s mother’s name was nearly inscrutable to many English-speaking recorders—whether census takers, and the record-makers for birth, marriage, and death certificates. In the census records, her first name was variously recorded as Dora, Delia. But in birth, marriage, and death records that indicate maiden family names, she has been recorded as Tillie Bergamishczig, Tillie Pargomeschuk, Tillie Porganischik, and Matilda Peggermat.]

They found housing in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Jewish ghetto. It and other immigrant neighborhoods of lower Manhattan were legendary for their sordid, over-crowded, and disease-filled conditions. These apartments were so appalling, they spawned a cottage industry of social reformers who championed minimally healthful living conditions. The activists and government health workers found hundreds and thousands of apartments with no sanitary plumbing, no running water, soot-spewing coal stoves for cooking and heat that compromised breathing and blackened everything from walls to belongings, very long narrow apartments with little light or air ventilation excepting for narrow windows in the front room, and crowding so severe that as many as 12 adults shared sleeping space just 13 feet across. The conditions fostered disease, and produced an infant mortality rate of one in ten. It’s remarkable that Gussie was born and survived!

Jacob Riis in his seminal work, How the Other Half Lives, detailed the blight in the immigrant neighborhoods of Manhattan. Lillian Wald famously founded what is considered the first social service organization, Henry Street Settlement. She built the settlement house just a couple blocks from where the Sophians lived.

Photos from the turn of the century—housed at the, New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Library of Congress—document the conditions of the Lower East Side streets. The website, allthingsinteresting.com, has pages devoted to New-York-Immigrant-photos and to Tenement-New York-photos-facts. They provide a quick snapshot of the base poverty, dangerous and unhealthful living conditions.

Chicken Market, 55 Hester Street, Manhattan, February 11, 1937, Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991), Brooklyn Museum; Two women & man in front of outhouses; one woman getting water, Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library; Man in kitchen—bedroom with dishes, clothes, irons (1904), Irma and Paul Milstein Division, New York Public Library; Life on the Lower East Side, corner Pitt and Rivington Streets, North, New York City, ca. 1915, Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, Library of Congress.

1905 — Sophians move north to Harlem

By 1905, the Sophian family moved to Harlem, just north of Central Park. Jeffrey Gurock, The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline and Revival of an Urban Jewish Community (2016), documented that Harlem had become the third largest Jewish settlement in the world, after the Lower East Side and Warsaw. At its peak in the 1920s, 175,000 Jews lived in Harlem.

The older Sophian children started to peel off to start their own paths. Harry and Gussie stayed with their parents and found a home at 26 East 109th Street. Meyer, started referring to himself as Michael, married Cecelia, had a son, Lawrence, and moved to 71 East 104th Street, about a six-minute walk from his parent’s place. Rosie married Morris Rabinowitz, and moved further north, to the Bronx. Jennie married Morris Berlin and moved to Brooklyn. Abraham started medical school.

It was in Harlem that Harry and Abraham likely met Jane and Estelle Felix, the women they eventually married. In another post, we describe the Felix family emigration, but they landed in Harlem in the same time period. The Sophian and Felix families moved regularly in the ensuing years, between Harlem and the Upper West Side. Over the years, the different siblings lived with the extended family, or as a boarder, or alone.

While conditions were better than the Lower East Side, quarters were still cramped.

Laundry lines, East 107th Street, circa 1900 (Library of Congress)

Two blocks from the Sophian’s apartment

Abraham became a physician, on the fast track:  Abraham Sophian won a scholarship (1902) to study and train at Cornell Medical College, directly, without an undergraduate degree. That was a lucky break for him, because by 1908, Cornell instituted a requirement of an undergraduate college degree or its equivalent to be considered for admission to medical school, just as Harvard and Johns Hopkins did. Abraham graduated in 1906. After graduation, he began a residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, founded by Jewish philanthropists when New York hospitals refused to grant privileges to Jewish physicians and kept Jewish patients out of their wards.

The hospital was first located on 28th Street. By 1904, it opened its third home on East 100th Street (where is stands today, albeit stretching many more blocks!). Its path matched the migration of the Jewish population from the Lower East Side to Harlem.

Mount Sinai Hospital

The Harlem heyday did not last long. The Jews that swelled Harlem, started to migrate to the up-and-coming neighborhood, of the Upper West Side. A new subway line was under development along the length of Manhattan on the west side. The Upper West Side saw the development of apartment building, sprouting one after the next at a startling rate. Harry and Abraham migrated to the Upper West Side as well and found a home together at 230 West 107th Street.

Harry’s early career in real estate

While Abraham was building a career as a physician, Harry started to build his career in real estate development. From that perch, Harry Sophian started his career in real estate on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Real estate transaction announcements in the New York Times, 1905 to 1912, included sales, mortgages, and rentals for multiple properties at West 107th Street to West 202nd Street. This is the time period where Harry’s sense of apartment living, posh and elegant, entirely different from the squalid tenements he once knew.

1907 and 1911 - two Sophian brothers, two Felix sisters, two marriages

The Felixes emigrate and move to Harlem

Jane and Estelle Felix emigrated with their parents and six siblings from Łódź, Poland about 1890.

The family—Arthur and Emily, the parents, and children Sara, Pauline, Eva, Josef, Flora, Estelle, Louis, and Jane—found a home in Harlem by 1900. Sometime in the next few years, the Sophians and Felixes met and became close—especially Harry with Jane and Abraham and Estelle. The brothers eventually would marry the sisters.

Harry and Jane

Harry courted Jane, which appears to have included a vacation on the Jersey shore. Their arrival at one of the Asbury Park hotels, The Park View, in July 1905 was announced in the papers—“Misses Felix, Joe Felix, and Harry Sophian” arrive.  

Harry and Jane married in 1907. They welcomed their daughter Lucille into the world, 1909. And Harry applied for citizenship the same year. During this period, Harry, Jane, and Lucille lived the Felix family apartment. The 1910 census records show that nearly all the Felixes were engaged in work. Estelle was a school teacher; Pauline, a milliner; Louis, a lawyer; Josef, a salesman; Jane, a merchant; and Harry in real estate.

Abraham and Estelle

Abraham finished his medical degree in 1906, started his residency at Mount Sinai, courted and married Jane’s older sister, Estelle in 1911. Their children, Emily and Bud (Abraham Jr.) were born in 1913 and 1915.

This was an exciting time for the Abraham and Estelle. As they started their family, Abraham’s career started blooming as well. He became renowned for his work in infectious diseases and was in great demand to consult on outbreaks and epidemics. He was beckoned to Dallas in 1911 when that city suffered a particularly severe epidemic of 185 cases of meningitis. His success there was celebrated widely.

Ketubah-Jewish Marriage Contract