Arrival in America
Our story begins upon their arrival in America, and even then we don't really know for certain the circumstances of how or when some of our ancestors made the voyage across the Atlantic.
But even before arriving, their story now seems to be unraveling: Family lore always had it that Samuel Liroff, the man who started our line in America, lost his first wife to an early death after bearing him 3 children; he then married again and his second wife bore him 7 more children. I've now come to the conclusion that the story of the first wife's death was most likely a lie, possibly because divorce was considered to be shameful in the Victorian era, but also possibly something else: The ship's manifest of Samuel's & David's arrival shows a question that I originally overlooked but which has considerable gravity: "Is the passenger a polygamist?" If Samuel & his first wife had divorced, chances are it was a Jewish divorce but whether or not it was also a civil (legal) divorce is unknown; if they didn't have a legal document attesting to their divorce they may have feared being denied permission to enter and stay in America if they were believed to be bigamist or polygamist so it might have been easier simply to agree to lie and tell the authorities that their first spouse had died.
So, even though Samuel had already fathered 7 children with his second wife by the time he arrived at Ellis Island in 1899, he and his first wife and children from their marriage were in close contact with one another, based on recently analyzed records. On his ship's manifest he is listed by his Yiddish name "Schepsel" and he declared his destination to be: "2 sons A. Liroff & daughter (at) 188 Forsyth, NY". His two sons were named Adolph & Abraham so that would explain the reference to "2 sons A. Liroff". I compared that address to the address listed by Adolph & Abraham on the 1900 Census and it was also "188 Forsyth", so it is apparent that Samuel had been in contact with his first family prior to arrival and everyone had agreed to lie about their marriage having ended due to death rather than divorce because also indicated in that census was the head of household calling herself "Gussie Liroff", and she declared herself to be a widow. It's still only a theory but I believe that a very-much-alive first wife arrived 6 years before Samuel did, together with two of their three children: Ellis Island records indicate that a woman named Kume Liroff, age 46, arrived on August 8, 1893 on the SS California from Glasgow, Scotland. Accompanying her were her daughter, Frume, age 18, and her son, Abram, age 11. However, we don't have a record of the arrival of their middle child, Adolph, though I have a theory about how & when he arrived; more about that later.
Samuel's real first name was "Schepsel" but he Americanized it to "Samuel" sometime after arrival. Kume probably adopted the name "Gussie" and their daughter Frume probably became "Fannie".
So, where was Samuel in 1893 at the time his first wife and 2 of their children came to America? I think he was still back in Europe somewhere with his second wife, Malka, and their 7 children. We only have records of Samuel's and his son David's arrival in 1899, on the vessel SS Rotterdam, which had sailed from the port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. How he and David made their way to Rotterdam, a considerable distance from the Pale, we may never know. What hardships they encountered along the way we can only imagine. One can only wonder how long Samuel and David were on the road from the Pale to Rotterdam: Weeks? Months? Years? And, why did it take Samuel so many years after the violent pogrom of 1881 to get out? Did they leave promptly and spend the intervening 18 years making their way ever westward while saving every penny to afford the cost of a ticket on a steamship? Did it take them that long to save the money?
The SS Rotterdam, the ship on which Schepsel & David arrived in 1899
Where were Malka and the 6 other kids in 1899 at the time Samuel & David were arriving in America? Still back in Yelisavetgrad? In the Netherlands? How did they get to America, and when? I couldn’t find records of their arrival but David Cantor, whose grandmother was Anna Liroff Kornbleet & Samuel's daughter from his second marriage, provided the info: They were listed as “Lerof”, and they came in via Canada, not Ellis Island. They sailed from Liverpool on July 18, 1901 and arrived about a month later. The ship they sailed on was RMS Lake Ontario and the ship's manifest shows Malke Lerof, (she changed it to Malka later on) arrived with Polly (nickname for Pauline), a male child named "Leib", age 12 (had to be either Harry or Louis, but probably Louis so how Harry came over is still a mystery), Fanny age 9 (this had to be Anna), Sara age 5, Solomon age 4. Malke indicated to the immigration official that she was going to live with her husband at 39 & 41 Suffolk St., New York, so Samuel & David seem to have gotten settled in the 2 years they'd been in America and had worked & saved to come up with the money to rent 2 apartments in anticipation of the arrival of the rest of the family. Interestingly, Heine & Israel Goldstein, directors of the "Independent Elizabethgrader Ladies Benevolent Association" coincidentally lived next door at 37 Suffolk St., so immigrants who'd escaped the pogroms of Elizabethgrad apparently had a support structure that helped them adjust to life in America. It must have been quite a hardship on everyone for Samuel to depart 2 years earlier with their oldest son, David, and leave Malke with 6 kids and then arrive with only 5. And the sad end to that story is that Malke only got to live for about a year in America before dying at only age 49 in 1902.
And where was Adolph, Samuel's son by Kume, his first wife? Still in Yelisavetgrad? Glasgow? I have a theory that Adolph was was living with Samuel somewhere in Europe with his half-siblings and step-mother, Malka which I will explain later. We may never know when anyone left The Pale and how they made their way to a European port city and were able to purchase passage aboard a trans-Atlantic steamship but we know they certainly did, because you, dear reader, are descended from 2 of those original 3 people, and from 1 of the 10 children they produced.
When Samuel left Russia, he went by the name “Schepsel” (or “Shebsel”, Yiddish for “sheep", the latter being the modern spelling and the former is what was written in Ellis Island records). A translation of his gravestone from the Hebrew spells it “Shiposel”. An alternative name might have been "Sheftel". Whatever his first name had been or however it was spelled, it became “Samuel” once he became an American resident. We think Kume became Gussie, Frume became Fannie, Abram became Abraham, Fanny became Anna, Leib probably became Louis, Lerof became Liroff, and Malke became Malka, but she went by Mollie.
Speaking of names, family lore has it that the surname Liroff was made up at Ellis Island, probably because the original Russian name was unpronounceable by immigration officials. A name that has been mentioned that might have been our “real” name is Lipiansky, but until June, 2010, I had trouble believing that because it certainly isn't a mouthful nor is it hard to phonetically spell, so I can't see how Lipiansky got streamlined to Liroff. A few years before he died in 2007, I asked Seymour Liroff, well into his 90's at the time, if his branch of the family also believed that family lore and he told me that he'd asked his father Adolph (remember him, the missing child in 1893?) back in the 1930's about that and was told by Adolph that it wasn't true. Adolph was one of the earliest of the Liroff siblings so one would have to believe he knew what he was talking about; and yet, the second family branch to this day continues to believe that our real name wasn't Liroff. My father believed that the name was created so where did he get that idea from if not from Louis, his own father? And Louis was close to Samuel: Samuel lived with Louis’s family in his last years so one has to give some credence to the Lipiansky story, nonetheless. However, I commissioned a Russian genealogist to research records in Ukraine and he discovered in June of 2010 that the family name was indeed Lipiansky, so family lore had it right and it is now confirmed with actual records.
I don't know the circumstances surrounding how Seymour came to hear of this lore about an alternate surname, but think I might have a clue: Seymour told me that he first met my father back in the 1930's when they were both students at, if I recall correctly, City College of New York. It seems that they didn't even know of each other's existence because the first family and second family really didn't commingle. Apparently, both Jerry, my dad, and Seymour were sitting near each other in the cafeteria when someone called, “Hey, Liroff!” and both of them turned around at the same time and noticed each other. So that's how they met and they became lifelong friends until my father's death in 1989. I'm guessing that they asked each other lots of questions about their respective families to compare notes and probably just out of curiosity & fascination that they had relatives they never even knew existed. And that's probably when Jerry told Seymour about Lipianksy and he went and asked his own father, Adolph, and Adolph shot the theory down. We now know the answer that has gone unanswered for over a century: We are all descendants of Lipiansky (ЛИПЯНСКИЙ), a Jewish Ukrainian name. Our researcher even found records that Schepsel was a lifelong member of the Zlatopol Jewish Society, meaning that he came from or resided in Zlatopol, a small suburb of Yelisavetgrad. Even more interesting, however, is the fact that only about 6 miles away from Zlatopol was the village of Lipianka, so it's likely that we got our family name from the village or the village was named after the Lipiansky clan, but we've pretty much narrowed them down to that region.Further research will need to be commissioned if we are to learn more about the origin of the Lipiansky clan. How & when the name changed from Lipiansky to Liroff is anyone's guess.
Much has been said about how immigration officials at Ellis Island and other ports would make up last names to replace the names that were harder to pronounce and spell that some immigrants arrived with. The fact of the matter is that the names that were given to Immigration were written down a month earlier at the port of embarkation in Europe, not upon arrival at the port of entry. The ships’ manifests at Glasgow or Rotterdam or Antwerp, for example, were what immigration officials worked off of and only when difficult names came up – perhaps those with Cyrillic characters used in Slavic languages – and complicated names with too many hard consonants and few vowels – were changes possibly made, but the die was cast when the passenger declared his or her name to the ship line at the time of booking passage, not when entering US immigration. So, if Malke was asked by a Canadian ship line official who only spoke English and French what her name was and she answered in her heavy Yiddish accent, Liroff might be spelled Lerof or any of the many misspellings we’ve encountered over the years.