My great-great-grandparents Daniel and Fanny got married, at least in part, because Fanny’s twin sister was a good cook. I’ve written about this story before, but to refresh your memory, Fanny was apparently very bad in the kitchen, while her twin sister, whose name I don’t know, was considerably more gifted culinarily-speaking. When prospective suitor Daniel was invited to their family home for dinner, the nameless twin cooked up a delicious meal and Daniel was left to believe his future bride had cooked it herself. It isn’t hard to believe that they might resort to such tricks, because Daniel was probably quite a catch. I don’t know if he had much to offer in the way of money or material goods (probably not), but he was tall, strong (the story goes that he could pick up a chair with his teeth), and very good-looking (at least if the pictures of him as an older man are anything to go by). Fanny was 5 years older than Daniel, definitely not tall, and possibly not as good looking, though the only photographs I have ever seen of her were taken after she bore 11 children over a span of 20 years, which would make a wreck of anyone’s looks.

Above, they sit surrounded by their children and grandchildren on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. This was probably in the early part of 1927, as my great-grandfather Charlie is pictured without my great-grandmother Rona (they married in November 1927). Daniel and Fanny’s two oldest sons had already died by this time, but it seems that nearly everyone else is pictured (except for, I think, one daughter and her family).

When they started in a rural Polish village 50 years before, I doubt that they ever imagined they would find themselves at a black tie wedding anniversary party in Cleveland, Ohio. They came a very long way, and I hope they were proud of what they were able to accomplish.

Daniel Harris Rosenstein (1860-1938) and Fanny Zitofsky Rosenstein (1855-1932)

Camp Humphries, Va., December 21, 1918

When my great-grandfather Charlie was a boy, he really wanted a pony. Owning a horse wasn’t within his family’s means, because they were quite poor. Indeed, all the brothers and sisters except for Sidney, the youngest, didn’t get much past junior high school because they needed to get to work. But Charlie loved horses and he still wished he had a horse of his own, even though the likelihood of him getting one was slim to nil – at least until he was an adult and could afford one himself.

What Charlie did have, if he didn’t have a pony or a family who could afford one, was some brothers who were more or less big bullies who liked to pull pranks, particularly his brother Lou. He also had a family that was quite Jewish, but still put out stockings on Christmas Eve. One year in particular, perhaps one where Charlie fervently expressed the wish he’d get a pony for Christmas, he woke up to find his stocking very full.  Full of horse crap, which had been put there by his brothers.  Now, I don’t know how old Charlie was when this happened, but I suspect he was probably relatively little and probably pretty upset. I also don’t know what happened to his brothers for doing this, but I hope that they got in really big trouble with their parents.

Later, when Charlie grew up, he would serve in the Army where he would pose for this photograph astride a horse. I doubt this picture was specially taken to commemorate his being in uniform – I think it probably was taken on a day when a photographer made a visit to Camp Humphreys, Virginia and made many pictures of soldiers, both on and off of horses, which were sold to the men as picture postcards, probably to send back home to their families.  Even later, Charlie realized his dream of truly owning his own pony – many of them in fact. He invested in racehorses for a time and there are scrapbooks of clippings about his horses, pictures of them racing or posed in the winner’s circle. I’d like to say that just as Charlie got to own ponies, his brothers got their just desserts for picking on him, but they didn’t really. That would be a little too perfect of an ending – even though it would make me feel even better for that little Jewish boy with a Christmas stocking full of horse poop.

Charles Harold Rose (1894-1964)

Yesterday, I was working with someone else on organizing his family photographs and I was slightly jealous, seeing the sheer number of photos this family had taken and posed for on their myriad travels around the world. I’m not completely sure why I was jealous, because it isn’t as though I come from a family of stay-at-home, unadventurous and untraveled people. I suppose it had something to do with this other family’s somewhat meticulous photo-arrangement, organization and labeling. It had to do with how well-preserved those Kodacolor images of fashionably dressed Americans in front of the Trevi fountain were. It had to do, too, with my own lust for travel and my jealousy for where these very very well-traveled people had been.

But then I come home, look at my own collection of familial memories and don’t feel quite so jealous. They may not have been kept organized in albums and labeled with dates, but that doesn’t matter. The fact that they are my people on their long ago (or relatively recent) travels is what makes the difference.

Rona Brown Rose Richman (1906-1992) and Charles Harold Rose (1894-1964) in Agua Caliente, Mexico.

Daniel & Fanny Rosenstein with some of their children and grandchildren, ca 1923?

Happy Thanksgiving!

]]> http://www.senseofface.com/testsite/2007/11/22/the-rosenstein-family-ca-1923/feed/ 1 http://www.senseofface.com/testsite/2007/11/01/charlie-1920s/ http://www.senseofface.com/testsite/2007/11/01/charlie-1920s/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:37:34 +0000 rebeccafm http://www.senseofface.com/testsite/?p=259

My great-grandfather Charlie met my great-grandmother Rona because of business. He and his brothers, in business as the Cleveland Wrecking Company (based in Minneapolis, not Cleveland, at the time) bought paint or otherwise had dealings with the Armstrong Paint Company, a business in which Sam Brown, Rona’s father, was an important person, though I am not exactly sure what it was he did there. Charlie’s older brother, Lou (who was, according to sources, not a very nice person), and Sam were friendly and Rona found a short-term job giving elocution lessons to Lou’s children upon her gradation from the School of Expression in Chicago. I am not sure how long she was in Minneapolis – at least a couple of weeks, I guess – and in the course of her visit met Charlie. When it the time came for her to return back home to Chicago, Charlie took her to the train station, boarded the train with her, stayed on after it left the station and proposed marriage. Rona was, at the time, engaged to someone else whose name no one seems to remember, poor guy. No one remembers his name, of course, because Rona broke her engagement with him and married Charlie instead.

This is one of the only pictures I have of Charlie as a young man where he isn’t formally posed or looking slightly awkward, and I like it because it’s casual and so human and familiar. Unlike my Dad and my cousin John and many other tall relations who look quite a bit like Charlie, Charlie didn’t attend school past the age of 11 or 12 because his family needed the income generated from his doing jobs like selling newspapers. Like his brothers, like my other paternal great-grandfather Harry and his brothers, a lack of formal education didn’t matter because his native intelligence and close-knit family business saw him grow up into a successful adult. This lack of schooling didn’t hamper him in other places either: he had beautiful penmanship that showed itself perhaps to best effect in the wonderfully lovely love letters he wrote to Rona in their not overly frequent time apart.

Charles Harold Rose (1894-1964)