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Immigrants Speak
P A G E 3
“My mother, before she was married, was a seamstress; she sewed for people. She would find work with a family and work there for six months at a time making everything, including sheets, pillowslips, tablecloths, clothes for children, pajamas, things like that for the men of the house and the women.”
Rose Feldman Straus, oral history, 1977. Rose Feldman was born in what is now Latvia in 1902. Four years later her family arrived to Minot, North Dakota. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“My grandmother was small, fragile, and very devout. She wore a black silk dress
and sheitel, or wig, of straight black hair over which she wore a black wool shawl. She was a widow and made her living by running a little dry goods store. She arose before dawn every day of the week, put up the samovar with charcoal and water, and went to purchase fresh bagels and halvah, which she left on the dining room table. Before opening her store, she went to shul (synagogue) to pray... Three times a week my grandmother fasted. Also once a week she prepared a basket of food for some poor family who otherwise would have little with which to usher in the Sabbath. Her life was devoted to work, prayer, and charity.”
Sophie Turnoy Trupin, Dakota Diaspora, 1984. Sophie Turnoy came with her mother and brothers to the United States in 1908 to join her father on a farm near Wilton, North Dakota.
top photo: Dressmakers and seamstresses, about 1900. Courtesy of the YIVO Instute for Jewish Research, New York.
inset photo: Jennie Smith, courtesy of Arlene Appelbaum.
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