Escape to Kentucky in the 1940s

If you aren’t yet familiar with the novel, A Far Piece to Canaan, by Sam Halpern, you’re in for an unforgettable reading experience.

Used by permission of
Harper Collins and author

 This book, although a novel, reads like a memoir. The first-person narrative keeps you riveted to the page.

You can read Canaan on many levels. First, there is the pure joy of being immersed in rural Kentucky of the 1940s. For anyone with an interest in family history, this is a visit to a by-gone time and place that you won’t want to miss.

When you read Canaan, you get a glimpse of daily life seventy years ago in a small farming community where everyone (except the few landlords) is trying to eke out a living by sharecropping. Although extreme poverty hangs over the community, this seems to help bring people together. We watch neighbors come together at revival meetings, during plantings and harvests when someone is injured or falls sick, and when their stock

Sheep grazing on farm of Russell Spears near Lexington, Kentucky, 

Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer, 

[1940 Sept.?], LC-USF33-031128-M1, 

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division 

Washington, DC 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

 is threatened by an unknown peril.

The main character is Samuel Zelinsky, who at the outset is the twelve-year old son of a Jewish couple, Morris and Liz Zelinsky. Morris is a sharecropper, and the novel begins when the family moves to an area “fifteen miles south of Lexington, Kentucky” to begin three years of cropping on Mr. Berman’s farm. You can read Canaan as a “coming of age” story. Halpern weaves an interlocking tale of a group of young boys who have fun doing things that kids today often miss out on as they build friendships. But the group also finds out that life can put you into situations where you are torn between loyalty and doing what’s right.

Halpern appeals to all of our senses as he paints a picture of Kentucky:

“March and early April crept by in their wet, cool, blustery, miserable way, and real spring come on with its bee-buzzing sounds and warm-wind feeling. 

http://www.forestwander.com/2009/02
/blooming-tree-apple-spring/

ForestWander Nature Photography, Wikimedia.

The brown hills turned dark green and the apple trees busted out in pink-white. The creek in the hollow below the tobacco barn

Field of Burley tobacco on farm of Russell Spears, 

drying and curing barn

 in the background, vicinity of Lexington, Ky., 

Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990,

 photographer, 1940 Sept.,  

LC-DIG-fsac-1a34368, Library of Congress

 Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540

 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

 settled back inside its banks and it was a great feeling to belly down beside it and listen to its sounds and let the sun beat down on my back and smell the grass and warm, black, soft, moist ground.” p. 21

Canaan is also a testament to the American Dream of owning your own piece of land. Genealogists who study early America from the mid-1600s through the early 1900s are familiar with the hunger for land that resulted in people spreading across this continent. I believe this “land rush” lasted longer and had more effect on the making of America than almost any other phenomenon.

By the time Samuel Zelinsky’s family came to Kentucky, the time of land patents, homestead acts, land rushes and military bounty land warrants was long gone. You had to have resources to buy land in the 1940s and after the Great Depression of the past decade, many people had very few. 

Canaan gives us a chance to see the scourges of this poverty up-front as the families in this story are all barely making it from season to season. They often see their profits eaten up by what the landlord claims and by what bad weather does to their crops. But what keeps them going is the hope that sometime in the future, with lots of hard work and luck, they might be able to save some dollars for a down payment on their own few acres.

Willie Nall, 11 years old; Raymond Jones, 10 years old; Denver Jones, 

5 years old; plowing on farm, …Elizabethtown vicinity,

 Kentucky; Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer; 

1916 May 5, LC-DIG-nclc-00399, Library of Congress Prints

 and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

For those genealogists who wonder, and I think that includes all of us, how childhood circumstances affected our ancestors in their adult lives, Canaan lets us look over Samuel Zelinsky’s shoulder as he interacts with his peers on neighboring farms. We learn about the values that Samuel internalizes from his day-to-day socialization, some from his parents but mostly from the boys who become his friends. And Canaan’s author gives us the opportunity to see how this early part of Samuel’s life plays a part in his efforts in later life to fit in in college and the workplace.

The book also touches on the themes of immigration and religious persecution. The Zelinsky family is Jewish, and Morris was sent to America from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s to escape pogroms. But he found that even in America, the land of immigrants from so many cultures and religions, anti-semitism was present. When his mother worries about Samuel’s friends, Morris assures her that the boys are good for Samuel:

“…there’s nothing wrong with those boys. They’re good kids and they treat him like one of their own. They don’t hold it against him that he’s a Jew. They don’t look up to him or down at him, just across, and that’s what I want for Samuel.” p. 34

As you watch the adventures that Samuel and his friends have and how they treat each other, you can judge whether or not Morris was right.

You can read Canaan on many different levels: a sociological study of mid-twentieth century rural America, a psychological profile of a man whose relationship challenges in adulthood have their roots in his childhood, a rip-roaring saga of the everyday doings of young boys in the days when after the work was done, you could get lost all day in the woods and never see an adult.

document types

Writing an Outstanding Family Story

Many family historians begin their search for ancestors in the same way. We start with names and dates of birth and death, relationship to us, and finally countries of origin. But most of us are not satisfied to stop with just the facts. A common trait of genealogists is the hunger for knowledge. We want to know what kind of lives our ancestors had in their countries of birth. Why did some decide to emigrate and others didn’t? What were their lives like in their new countries?

Royall Tyler Collection's original manuscript by John Adams (1735–1826), Wikimedia.

For some of us, these questions can be answered by family stories, diaries and journals, letters, bibles, and published histories.

Letter to Abigail Adams, wife of former President John Adams,
 written by Jefferson at Monticello...15 May 1817.
The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series 1, General Correspondence,
The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., Wikimedia

 But for many, our forebears were struggling to survive and may not have been able to read or write. Their individual stories have been lost to the progression of generations who followed them. However, for some families a combination of an auspicious historical time period, a wealth of letter-writing members, and some living relations with excellent memories come together, just waiting for a modern-day scribe to weave a history.

David Laskin is a best-selling author who turned his talents to writing the history of his Hakohen family line in his book, TheFamily: Three Journeys Into The Heartof The Twentieth Century.

Used by permission of publisher

Laskin explains that this surname has three different spellings depending upon the country that some family members were living in. In Russia, where the family story first starts, the name was “Kaganovich.” In America, where one branch of the family immigrated, the name is “Cohen.” In Israel, where another branch chose to live, the name in Hebrew is “Hakohen.”¹

Laskin begins his chronicle with Shimon Dov Hakohen and his wife Beyle Shapiro who were born in the mid-1800s in the Russian Pale of Settlement.

"Map of Western Russia Showing the Jewish Pale of Settlement,” 1905, Herman Rosenthal;
J.G. Lipman; Vasili Rosenthal; L. Wygodsky; M. Mysh; Abraham Galante (1905)
 "Russia" in The Jewish Encyclopedia: Vol. 10, Philipson–Samoscz,
 New York, N.Y.: Funk & Wagnalls, pp. 531, Wikimedia.

By 1900, six children, ranging in age from 17 to 38 were born, and several had children of their own. The family members lived in two small towns between Vilna  and Minsk. Most of Laskin’s story is about the lives of the children of Shimon and Beyle whose lives coincided with the twentieth century.

Like many family chroniclers, Laskin didn’t become interested in the story of his family as a young man. But when he did, he was very fortunate that several members of the family were still living who had knowledge of the past, from hearing first-hand accounts from relatives now passed away, and who were willing to share what they knew. Another very lucky break was the fact that much correspondence among family members, going back to the early 1900s, survived.

The first part of Laskin’s book tells about life for Shimon and Beyle Hakohen, their children and their grandchildren in the Pale. We learn of the conditions of daily life in a small village in the early years of the 1900s with Jewish and Christian neighbors living along side each other. We read about everyday family life, marriages, births, work and economic conditions.

Laskin also tells us of the pogroms that came with regularity and how these devastating periods of slaughter of Jews out of ethnic hatred impacted the younger generation of Hakohens. This history of institutionalized persecution along with bleak economic prospects propeled two branches of third-generation Russian Hakohens out of the Pale forever, illustrating the “push factor” in emigration.

http://www.presentable.es/filosofia-de-las-

presentaciones/presentaciones-push-presentaciones-pull/,

bing.com, free to share.

We know the reasons that pushed the young Hakohens to leave the Pale, but what were the “pull factors” or the motives behind where they chose to emigrate? Laskin gives an inspiring picture of Sonia and Chaim Kaganovich, grandchildren of Shimon Dov Hakohen and first cousins, who longed to be part of establishing a Jewish homeland.

Pioneers in Kibbutz Ein Harod , Settlements in Israel,

 between 1920 and 1925,

  PikiWiki - Israel free image collection project, Wikimedia.

In Chapters 11 and 12, we read of their separate journeys to Palestine, their individual beginnings in the land and their coming together in marriage. What a powerful window of history Laskin opens for us as we glimpse the struggles of Jews and Arabs to live in the same land.

British Mandate for Palestine, Seblini, 29 January 2012, Wikimedia.

 We watch the pioneering Jews as they tackle often harsh climate conditions to turn barren land into thriving farms. This is a genealogist’s dream: to see into their emigrant ancestors’ daily lives in their new countries.

So far Laskin has introduced us to two branches of the Kaganovich family: one that stayed in the Pale and one that made a foothold in Palestine. But there is a third branch. Itel Kaganovich, the oldest granddaughter, who was born in 1886, had a talent for sewing and for fighting injustice. In Chapter 3, Laskin describes Itel’s journey from seamstress to revolutionary. The younger generation of Jews in the Pale were organizing against the system that condoned the cycle of mayhem against their people. Itel became part of the movement to such a degree that her life was in danger. The man she loved had left for America to escape the death sentence of having to serve in the Tsar’s army as a Jew. After her family was warned that she would be jailed, Itel sailed for America where she would be known as “Ida” and would become a phenomenal success.

"The Steerage" 1907 photograph by Alfred Stieglitz,
public domain, Wikimedia.

Laskin allows us to see the day-by-day struggle of Ida from a near penniless young seamstress

“…a sweatshop inspection in Chicago, Illinois”,
1903, Chicago Historical Society, Wikimedia.

 looking for work on the Lower East Side of New York to the owner of Maidenform Bra Company. So many genealogists have stories of family members who came to America with nothing but hopes and worked hard so that their children could have life a little easier. But very few actually strike it rich and end up owning a world famous company. Laskin shows us just how Ida put together her creative talent, a risk-taking nature, hard work, and a head for business. We get to go on Ida’s unforgettable journey along with her.

As Laskin tells the story of his family, he gives us his theory on the types of immigrants:

“Some immigrants forever grieve for their “real’ homes, the predawn smell of baking bread, the glaze of rain on cobblestone, the echo of bells in the alley. Others step off the boat, fill their lungs with the raw unfamiliar air, and get to work. They never look back because they never have a moment to spare or an urge to regret.”² 

David Laskin’s book is an example of the best kind of family history. Readers not only get the personal history of the family, but these individual stories are woven into local, regional and world history. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Laskin taught a class in “How to write your Family Story” at a professional genealogy conference? While we wait for that to happen, pick up his book and read it for the exciting story that it is, but also study it as an example of excellent genealogy writing.

Notes

1David Laskin, The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century (New York, New York: Viking, Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2013), p. 1

² Ibid., p. 55

Categories: research terms