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Meeting the Neighbors
P A G E 6
“During those days many foreign people traded with us; Ukrainians, Bohemians, Russians, Germans, and Scandinavians... We listened to all the folks’ tales of their family problems, and sickness [and] became friends with our customers. In the back of the store we allotted a space for the farm trade to make and serve themselves with their own lunches. It was a help for them with all their babies.”
Bessie Halpern Schwartz, manuscript, 1956. Halpern tried homesteading, but could not stand the rigor nor the mice that ran through her sod hut. After she married Max Schwartz in 1908, they moved to Belfield, North Dakota, to open a general store. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“There was always a stir of interest when the Indian couples from the nearby Fort Berthold Reservation brought their families to town to purchase clothing before sending the older children off to government schools in distant places. The older generation often wore moccasins and many of the women were dressed in bright-colored blankets and carried their babies on their backs. They were quiet people and many of the residents of the community did not get to know them well, as they stayed to themselves. But some of them traded at our store and became friends with my parents. After getting acquainted, my parents found that they had many things in common about which they could converse, and many of the women confided their problems to my mother, who had great empathy.”
Toba Marcowitz Geller, manuscript, 1976. The Marcowitz family owned a general store in Halliday, North Dakota, for several decades, closing it in 1940. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
top photo: Hebron Cash Store, Hebron, North Dakota, 1912. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
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