Anna/Chaje Fenning Blaustein, unknown baby Blaustein and Celia/Czippe Fenning Buxbaum, ca 1890s

In late summer 1889, my great-great-great grandfather Michael Pfenig and his youngest daughter Chaje made the trip from their small shtetl of Zmigrod (in what is now Poland) to New York City. They sailed via Hamburg on a ship called the SS Hammonia and arrived at Castle Garden (in what is now Battery Park) on September 1st. Michael was 50 years old; Chaje was 22.

The first time I found the ship records of their journey — there is a German ship manifest written upon departure from Hamburg, and an American one written upon arrival at Castle Garden — it gave me the chills. I had never suspected that Michael had come to the United States; I thought my great-great-grandfather and his siblings were the first generation of Fennings (then Pfenigs or Fenigs) to live and die on the North American continent. It perhaps seems like a silly thing to get so excited about, but knowing this fact somehow made history feel shorter. It made me feel like my roots were closer than I had thought.

I don’t know anything about Michael, apart from the fact that he was born around 1840 and is listed as a “dealer” in the ship manifests. He and his wife Esther Rassler (or Raphel – it isn’t clear what her maiden name was) had at least 5 children who came to the United States as young adults. My great-great-grandfather Frank Fenning — who went on to be dapper, adorable and somewhat litigious — was one of them. Michael’s legacy lived on in the “M” names and middle names given to his children and grandchildren, but I have never heard any stories about him, which is a little bit strange for the erstwhile Pfenigs who are big tellers of stories.

I have been unable to find a death record or any other mention of Michael after September 1, 1889. It’s possible his life in America took more turns than I can even imagine — after all, I never would have imagined him in New York in the first place — and I hope one day I can find the documentation that marks his path.

Michael Pfenig (ca. 1840-)
and Anna Fenning (ca. 1867-1932)

* Pfenig entries, lines 56-57, SS. Hammonia, passenger manifest, 1 September 1889; Ancestry.com, accessed 3 February 2012.

* Pfenig entries, lines 45-46, SS Hammonia, passenger manifest, arriving in New York 12 September 1889; Ancestry.com, accessed 3 February 2012.

Chaje/Anna Fenning Blaustein, unknown Blaustein baby and Czippe/Celia Fenning Buxbaum, ca. 1900

At his grandfather Frank‘s funeral in 1936, my grandfather Bill remembers waiting for the hired cars to take him, his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins from the memorial service to the cemetery (I don’t remember if this is actually part of the story, but I imagine it raining. I don’t know why.)  When the cars arrive, a little old woman pushes her way in front of everyone and gets into one of the cars before anyone else.  My grandfather’s Aunt Ruth (who once sat in a topless bar with my grandparents and my great-grandmother, discussing the nipples of the dancers, and is one of those relatives I really wish I had known) confronted her, asked who she was to be pushing in front of the mourning family like that.

“What?” the old lady said.  “You don’t know your Tante Czippe?”

I actually don’t know the rest of what happened – I assume some kind of vague embarrassment and recollection that yes, now that the old lady mentioned it, they did know their Tante Czippe, who (they guessed) had a right to ride in the hired cars to her older brother’s burial.

(Caveat: this story is much funnier said aloud, when you can hear my grandfather’s old Yiddish lady voice.)

Tante Czippe – or Aunt Celia – was one of my great-great-grandfather Frank’s 3 sisters.  She was married to a butcher named Jacob Buxbaum who died relatively young, after which she lived with her sister Anna (Tante Chaje) and brother-in-law, Sam (Uncle Blaustein), who was a grocer.  There was also a sister named Rosa, who was married to a chiropodist named Joseph and died before my grandfather was born, except I don’t know any stories about her.

These people and their stories live at a double remove from me: apart from my grandfather’s story about Tante Czippe, the cutter-in-line, these are not people he (or his cousins) really knew, but people they heard talked about.  This is the reason why he knows the name Tante Chaje, but nothing about her.  Or the reason why our cousin Alan remembers Uncle Blaustein living with them for a short time, but wasn’t sure how Uncle Blaustein was his uncle.  They are names that largely circulate in memories of childhood, of overhearing stories while sitting on the floor of the screened-in porch with cousin Bobby in summertime, while the adults talked.

This picture of Tante Chaje, a baby, and Tante Czippe is one that my second cousin Alan emailed me several years ago.  Before he got in touch with me, he wasn’t really sure who these ladies or this baby were, despite their names underneath.  He remembered there being an Uncle Blaustein in his young childhood but didn’t know how they were related, and Tante Czippe and Tante Chaje were names he didn’t know, stories he hadn’t heard – just as my grandfather remembers the aunts but not the Uncle Blaustein.  Now, knowing the family structure the stories and the photographs emerge from, childhood memories of vaguely related people and funny names begin to make sense.

The baby in this picture is still one face that doesn’t have an anchor in that structure I build behind the scenes.  I don’t know which sisters’ baby she was – I assume Anna’s – but I do know that she must have died very young – probably not too long after this photograph.  She was born in between federal censuses and lived so short a life that neither sister ever told the census taker that they had once had a child that died (which is a question those census takers used to ask you, in the days when the government sent people in person and not just forms in the mail).

My grandfather told me last night that it’s too bad I wasn’t there with him and cousin Bobby, sitting on the floor in the screened-in porch, listening to the adults tell stories in the summertime, and I have to say: he’s right.

Anna (Chaje) Fenning Blaustein (1872-1932), baby cousin, and Celia (Czippe) Fenning Buxbaum (1870s-1939)