In February, all I knew was that my great-great-great grandfather had come to the United States in 1889, but not what became of him after his arrival.  I didn’t know if he stayed in America, if he went home, how long he lived, when he died.  Now, in May, I know that he stayed here, lived here and died here — and he is buried here in a grave I have seen.

He went by several different names, but I think the truest to his real name (by which I mean original birth name) is likely Mechel Fenig, which is what appears on his tombstone.  Mechel lived in New York City for 11 years after his arrival in on the Hammonia and when he died of cancer on April 24, 1900 in his son Jacob‘s apartment at 211 Stanton Street, he missed being enumerated in the 1900 federal census by mere days.  A day later, on April 25th, Mechel was buried in Brooklyn’s Washington Cemetery and I visited him there 112 years (and 4 days) after he was laid to rest.

He was buried with the First Gorlitzer Rudnicker Chevra Mach Emes, the burial society of a landsmanshaft (or Jewish mutual aid society) of immigrants from Gorlice, Poland, a town not far from Nowy Zmigrod – the spot his son (my great-great-grandfather) Frank listed as his birthplace when he became a US citizen.  The Gorlitzers were easy enough to find, but Mechel’s place in row 4, grave 3 was not.  Not wanting to admit I’d come for nothing, I walked to the very back of the plot where the graves were the oldest, still finding nothing.  Then, finally, serendipitously, I looked down at the gravestone near my husband’s feet and realized we had found Mechel.

 Time seems thinner in New York than it does here at home in California.  There, it is impossible for me to forget that my ancestors walked the same exact streets that I am walking, lived in the same exact buildings that I pass by.  Sitting in the cemetery with Mechel as the F train whizzed by on its elevated tracks over us, I felt time compress a little, too.  His gravestone is old, toppled over on its back, but I was there remembering him in the same place that my great-great-grandfather might have visited, placing a stone in the same place that Tante Czippe might have.  It is likely that I am the only Fenning (or Fenig, I guess) to have visited Mechel since his last surviving child died in 1940, but it made me feel closer to all of them being there.

Mechel Fenig (Yechial Mechel ben Zvi) (ca 1839-1900)

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.