Frank Fenning, ca 1925

My great-great-grandfather Frank was a dapper little man who was thrifty, hard-working and good at suing people, and  the more I learn about him the more colorful he becomes.  Reconstituting the facts of someone’s life — the dates, names, and places — is one thing, but rediscovering and reconstituting the stories that fill out that life is quite another.  It’s one thing to know that my great-great-grandfather was a tailor, but it’s quite another to know that he lived just around the corner from his shop and that he was the boss, employing six men in making clothing for the larger retail trade.  And it’s quite another thing from there to know that in 1897 — before he changed his last name from Fenig to Fenning — Frank lost the $60 with which he was going to pay his tailors, which caused a minor riot and the intervention of Newark’s boys in blue.

Of course I believe that Frank must have really lost that money, because I am very loyal.  But I am glad that the tailors thought he was lying, that the Newark Evening News ran this story, and that the New York Herald picked it up because they thought it was funny.

 I will never know Frank Fenning, but these small pieces of his life make him just a bit more real as a person who lived in a complex world.  Every story that I hear or gather about him (about anyone) is a gift, giving me back something that our family once must have known but have now forgotten.

My cousins often wonder how it is that I know so many of the stories that my grandfather tells, how I know so many stories that no one tells anymore.  The answer really isn’t very difficult at all: these stories are everywhere.  Sometimes it takes a little bit of legwork to find them (or a lot), but sometimes all you have to do is listen.

Frank Fenning (ca 1865-1936)

Frank and Jacob, the older brothers of Anna and Celia, rocking here in a souvenir picture of some kind, illustrate the notion that sartorial know-how and snappy dressing run in the family. Though Jacob (the younger brother, on the right) was relatively well-off in his career as a real estate man, Frank, my great-great-grandfather, did not find the same prosperity as a tailor and presumably was not always able to dress quite this well. His children sacrificed education to get out into the world and work to help support the family — my great-grandfather was a telegraph boy, his brother William won money as a prize-fighter, sister Sophie worked as a milliner. However, when Frank’s sons grew up and became successful, they helped to support him — something that they would have been doing at the time this picture was taken. My grandfather, son of the above telegraph boy, remembers quite well Frank’s always dapper figure walking down the streets of Newark, reading a different section of The Forward at each newsstand and candy shop along his route, so that by the time he arrived back home, he’d have read the whole paper for free — a thrifty streak that I see traces of every time my sister and I get excited over the clearance racks at Macy’s.

Frank Fenning (ca 1865-1936) and Jacob Fenning (ca 1869-1940)