America: The Early Years

So, that's where I sent our Russian genealogist to look and that's where he found the Lipianskys, our forefathers.

But, back to Samuel and Malka: Malka died at age 49 in 1902. No one is certain of what she died but cancer is what her daughter Sara believed later in life. When she died Samuel was about 58 and apparently felt he couldn't manage the two youngest by himself, so Sara and Solomon were put in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum*. My father had told me that an older sibling had eventually gotten them out but Ellen Holtzman's mother Sara told her that Solomon ran away and enlisted in the armed services by lying about his age (he was only 16) and that Sara herself stayed at the orphanage until a young adult. Solomon drove an ambulance during the war and became a postman after the war. He married late in life and didn't have children. *(Thanks to Muriel Haber & Ellen Holtzman for fleshing out those details about which of the kids were put into the orphanage, plus the actual name of the orphanage)

When I first heard that my great-grandfather had put some of his children in an orphanage, I was a bit outraged that he could be so cold. I have since moderated that initial reaction, for who am I to judge? Those were very different times and despite his seemingly callous action, his children still honored him and let him live with them in his later years, so they apparently forgave him. Plus, who shelled out the money it cost to make those expensive and impressive gravestones? Only loving children who were grieving their loss would have bothered and gone to the expense, which is especially poignant when you consider all the poverty of that era. Samuel had been a tailor by trade, so he wasn't wealthy. He was living with Louis at the time of his death in 1914 at the age of 70, and Louis was just starting out, a young man himself and probably of limited financial means, so erecting such an elaborate gravestone is a testament to how Samuel's children felt about him, I think.

There has been discussion about some Liroffs changing how their name was spelled back in the day. Abraham Liroff, he of the first family, spelled his name “Laroff” in the 1910 US Census. Was it an error in how the census worker wrote down the name or was it Abraham’s intention to change the “i” to an “a”? We’ll probably never know. I tend to think it was in error because he didn’t spell it like that in other censuses or on other documents, as far as I can tell. Other errors in spelling occurred such as Rhoda Liroff’s birth certificate misspelling the name as “Lerof”, probably not by design, and most probably due to a clerk spelling it phonetically. She had to get it changed when she grew up. And, you’ll remember, Malke’s own entry into the US with her 5 kids in tow was written up also as “Lerof”, an understandable spelling error made by overworked, uninterested clerks. Other oddities were Seymour: His name was spelled “Seymore” in all the early documents so it might have been by design and was later changed to the English spelling just to fit in. I have just come to learn that my own father's name on his birth certificate was Julius (I had always been told it was Jerome but he went by "Jerry"), and he legally changed it to Jerry.

Samuel’s name of Schepsel or Shiposel or Sheftel seems to be rather unique and I tend to think it was just a phonetic misspelling rather than a unique name, but who knows? We have some rather strange names in our family tree. A few anomalies appear out of nowhere and are never seen again: For example, in the 1930 Census, an unheard of 39-year old Irving Liroff was unemployed and a bachelor living in a rooming house in NY. His name has never come up before or since so who knows? Could it have been an error? Might it have been Solomon who was living alone then? Solomon was the youngest son of the second marriage and as an orphan when WWI broke out he somehow managed to enlist in the armed forces at only age 16, probably by lying about his age (another thing we Liroffs were known to do back then – more about that later). After leaving the service he became a postman and is buried in a Veteran’s cemetery on Long Island. His grave is marked with a cross at the instruction of his wife who was not Jewish, much to his relatives’ disapproval (the cross, not the wife). But Solomon couldn’t be the 39-year-old Irving because Solomon would only have been around 33 in 1930, unless "Irving" lied about more than just his name. Maybe the fellow the census worker interviewed was named Irving but his last name might have been something close to Liroff, though an examination of the handwritten record shows it is very clearly “Liroff”. Who that Irving was we may never know.

Then there’s Pierre Liroff. He also only shows up once, on a ship’s manifest entering England. On the same ship at that time were Elliott and Evelyn, apparently on a cruise in the 1950’s. None of their children were onboard that ship so it was likely a clerical error and some kid named Pierre with a last name that started with an L got the wrong name shown on the manifest.

And then there's the enigma of Sussel. There's record of a 15-year-old Sussel Liroff arriving on the SS Rhynland into the Brooklyn Battery port on August 10, 1893. (view ship's manifest). Coincidentally, only 2 days before, on the 8^th, Kume and her brood arrived on another ship and via Ellis Island. Is it possible that the missing Adolph was known as Sussel before arriving into the States? Perhaps, but I can't imagine why he'd depart Antwerp on one ship and the rest of his family depart Glasgow on another, even if he's about the right age and the timing is very close, which could mean they were apart but in contact with one another (via the new and popular “Telegram” perhaps). The fact that we don't find another record for a Sussel and no immigration record for Adolph leads me to believe he and Sussel might have been the same person. Sussel was too old to have been either Harry or Louis as they were adolescents or pre-adolescents in 1901 whereas Sussel was already 15 in 1893. In any event, Sussel listed himself as a locksmith at age 15. People grew up fast and got to work early in those days. So, he was good with his hands and worked with metal objects, especially brass as locks and keys were made of brass back then, so it's not a stretch to think that Sussel might have become brass worker Adolph in his new homeland. Perhaps Sussel/Adolph lived with Samuel and his half-siblings and step-mother until 1893 when he boarded his ship to America out of Antwerp. We know that Samuel boarded his voyage 6 years later out of Rotterdam, not all that far away from Antwerp, and since it was clear that Samuel was in communication with his first family prior to arriving himself in America in 1899, there's a distinct possibility that Adolph might have actually been known as "Sussel" and that he lived with his father and that they coordinated his passage to America to coincide with Gussie's, Fannie's & Abraham's.

There are a number of names similar to Liroff but the details surrounding those names don’t fit our family’s heritage: For example, there’s a whole family of farmers named “Leroff” who emigrated to Illinois from Prussia in the mid-19^th century, probably unrelated to our line. Then there’s a Russian prince named Prince Georges Lroff, No, that’s not my typo: there isn’t a vowel between the L and the R. Strange.

More about how the early American Liroffs fibbed a little about how old they were: All the records I’ve seen tend to contradict one another when it comes to age. Samuel's immigration records indicate that he declared himself to be illiterate and unable to speak English. He might simply not have known exactly when he was born. It wasn't so uncommon back in those days: David Cantor recalls, "My grandmother (Anna Liroff) had no idea of her real birthday. Her son, my Uncle Leon, did some research and apparently found her listed on the ship's manifest coming in to Canada (must have been a great deal more difficult than it is now, with the Internet!). He worked out her approximate age based on that document, and she then arbitrarily picked a day to have as her 'birthday'".

Not only did they not keep track of their birthday, it seems that they would try to make themselves seem to be younger and healthier in hopes they wouldn’t be denied entrance and be sent back due to infirmity. The wealthier passengers who traveled in first and second class underwent a cursory inspection aboard ship; the theory being that if a person could afford to purchase a first or second class ticket, they were less likely to become a public charge in America due to medical or legal reasons. The Federal government felt that these more affluent passengers would not end up in institutions, hospitals or become a burden to the state. However, first and second class passengers were sent to Ellis Island for further inspection if they were sick or had legal problems. This scenario was far different for "steerage" or third class passengers. These immigrants traveled in crowded and often unsanitary conditions near the bottom of steamships with few amenities, often spending up to two weeks seasick in their bunks during rough Atlantic Ocean crossings. (Steerage picture below)