Our Ancestors

Our family story is a tale of two sisters. Rachael and Esther Rosenthal grew up over a century and a half ago in the city of Bialystok, then part of the Russian Empire. They left the old country in the 1860’s to make new lives in America. The two young women moved to Pittsburgh. More than fifty years after their journey to the US, Rachael’s grandson, Frank Z. Newman, would marry Esther’s granddaughter, Arline Stein. The newlyweds, our grandparents, would settle in San Francisco, establishing our west coast branch of the Newman-Stein family tree.

The parents of Rachael and Esther were Scharya Rosenthal and Frejda Kalwaryski. Rachael (Rocha) was born in 1835, the first of nine or more children. Esther arrived several years later in 1842. The Rosenthals also had a son, George, who also immigrated to the US. Our cousin Scott London says the birth records of the two Rosenthal girls indicate they were born and raised in the city of Bialystok. In the 18th century this city was part of the kingdom of Poland, but by 1807 it was absorbed into the Russian Empire. Bialystok was part of the Pale of Settlement, a place where Jews were allowed to live, but not to venture past the Pale’s boundaries into larger Russia.

Life in the Pale of Settlement

What was life like for the Rosenthal sisters as little girls? Bialystok was a bustling city, famous for its textile industry in the 19th century. Seventy five percent of its inhabitants were Jewish.1 While many Jews lived in small villages within the Pale called shtetls, the Rosenthal girls may have benefited from schools in this urban Jewish center. Our grandfather, Frank Z. Newman, said the two sisters, “while in Europe were fairly well educated. They were taught French and English, which was helpful to them when they came to America.”

As a young woman, Rachael married Nathan Newman (Nacham Naman), who was born in 1835. Our Newman ancestors are from Mariampole (Marijampolé), a town controlled by the Russian Empire in the 19th century and also in the Pale of Settlement. Today, Mariampole is in Lithuania. A family tree, created by Newman ancestors in the 1940’s, lists Nathan’s father as Ezra Naman (1813-1885) and his mother was Bashe Naman. It traces the Naman name back to Israel Ben Shlomo Naman (1760-1846), Nathan’s grandfather, who came from the nearby town of Prenai. Rachael and Nathan had two sons, Philip (1857-1919) and Samuel (1859 -1918). Sam Newman was Frank Z. Newman’s father, our great grandfather.

Mariampole was not a city like Bialystok, but a town with a population of 2,992 people, three quarters of whom were Jewish. Joseph Rosin tells us in his article, Mariampole, “ that the “Jews of Mariampole made their living in commerce and crafts. There were also Jewish farm owners who earned a living from agriculture.”3 According to Rosin, Jewish children attended a traditional elementary school called a “Cheder” where basic Judaism and Hebrew were taught, along with some Russian.

Sadly, Nathan Newman (1835-1857) died in his early 20’s. His death was the main reason that Rachael immigrated to the US to live with her sister, Esther, in Pittsburgh. Frank Z. Newman explained Nathan’s death meant “his wife was then a widow and was unable to properly provide for her two sons – Philip Newman and my father Samuel Newman.” We do know the widow Rachael remarried Moses Margolis (1839-1916) in 1863. Although, it is not clear whether Rachael came alone to the US to join her sister, Esther, or whether she traveled with her new husband on the journey.

The American story of Rachael’s two sons, Sam and Philip, we know from the interview with our Baba in 1976. Samuel Newman came as a little boy to live with an aunt in Chicago. He worked as a peddler at age fourteen to help support the family. His odyssey began in the Midwest with several unsuccessful businesses, including a store that burned down in North Dakota. He first landed in California in Long Beach, selling insurance. Samuel and his wife, Julia, and his brother Philip, tried establishing dry goods stores in the heat of Hanford, Stockton, and Napa, before building a successful furniture business in San Francisco after the Great Earthquake of 1906. The couple had four children, the oldest born in Hanford in 1894 was Frank Z. Newman, our grandfather.

The Steins

Less well known to our west coast branch of the family is the lineage of the Steins, our grandmother’s family who settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rachael’s sister, Esther Minnie Rosenthal, married a young man named Charles Stein, from the town of Amdur. The JewishGen website indicates that Charles’ birth year was 1842 and he died in 1900. Amdur was an even smaller town than Mariampole, with a population of 1200 people according to the 1851 tax book of Jewish communities. Amdur was about 14 miles south of the larger town of Grodno, and 100 miles from Mariampole. In the 19th century Amdur was also part of the Russian Empire, although today it is called Indura and is in Belarus.

The Steins have a long history in Amdur. I found this out from a newly discovered Minneapolis cousin, Susan Berkson. We made contact on Ancestry.com and she wrote, “You will be amazed at the size of the Stein family. Charles’ father, Sender Stein, married twice and had two large families, so prepare yourself.” Susan was right. The family tree she shared showed Sender Stein (1825-1901) with ten children from his two marriages. His father and mother were Mendel and Vorka Stein born in 1804. Using Susan’s Ancestryt.com tree, I could trace the Stein name back to Sholom Stein born in 1780, when Amdur was still under Polish rule.

If Sender Stein was prolific, so was his son Charles, who married Esther Minnie Rosenthal. According to the 1900 census, Charles and Esther were married in 1860 and immigrated to the US in 1867. The Ancestry tree indicates that they had at least ten children including: Lou, Nathan, Sam, Mattie, Solomon, Sadie, George, Lurie, Abram, and Emanuel. In 1900 the census shows that Charles was living in Pittsburg with Esther, and his two younger sons Abram and Emanuel.

Of Esther and Charles’ progeny, we are particularly interested in George Stein, who was our great grandfather and Mimi’s father. According to the death index of 1940, George Stein was born on October 21, 1868. George married Hattie Oppenheim (1872-1899) in 1896. Hattie was born in Detroit, Michigan.  Our grandmother, Arline Stein was born in November of 1898. Sadly, Hattie died after the birth of Arline, one source indicates that it was due to complications from childbirth.

The 1900 census shows George Stein living in Elkhart, Indiana. He is listed as widowed. This conforms to what we know about our grandmother, who was born in nearby Goshen, Indiana in 1898 and lived there as a little girl until she moved to McDonald, close to Pittsburgh. George remarried Anna Silverman (1877-1953) in 1906. Anna was a Russian immigrant, who arrived in 1894.

What brought George from Pittsburgh to Goshen in the 1890’s as a young man? The answer lies once again with our newly found cousin, Susan Berkson. On her Ancestry.com tree of the Steins, she has attached audio files of an interview with Helen and Pauline Stein, George’s nieces, conducted by Jean Komaiko in 1975. The transcript is condensed into a document called, “How the Steins came to Indiana.” What emerges from the interview is that three of the Stein siblings moved to small towns in Indiana to start retail businesses. Mattie Stein went to Bluffton, to start a dry goods store with her husband Ezra. Sol Stein moved to Columbia City and “George was in Goshen, Indiana.”

We also learn from the interview of Mimi’s cousins in Columbia City what life was like at the turn of the century in these small Indiana towns, several hours from Chicago. “It was a very serene existence,” said Helen. “Remember we used to sing... skip rope and we played hopscotch.... and we used to shoot marbles...When we’d come home from school, we lived on a street where there were stores, my mother used to send us across the street for 25 cents worth of round steak and that was enough for the whole family.”

The interviewer, Jean Komaiko, also asks, “Was there a good feeling between the Jewish families and the other families?” “Yes,” stated Pauline, “ There were 13 Jewish families in a town of about 3000. All the Jewish families had stores. Strauss’ had a men’s clothing store; they still have it there too. The Daniels had a shoe store. Meyers had a butcher shop. The Steins had friends who were not Jewish.”

What also emerges from the interview is that there were a lot of Steins traveling back and forth between the Indiana towns and Pittsburgh. Sometimes the reasons were business related because Pittsburgh had a larger market for dry goods. Sometimes it appears that Stein parents were looking for a larger pool of eligible Jewish bachelors for their daughters.

Lisa recalls our mom telling her that Mimi had fond memories of her childhood in Goshen, especially of her favorite flower, peonies, which grew in the humid climate. According to our mom, Mimi moved back to Pittsburgh after her mom died, and she adored her stepmother Anna Stein. The 1920 census shows George Stein living with his spouse is Anna D. Stein on 300 Jefferson Avenue, in McDonald, Washington, Pennsylvania. His native tongue is listed as Yiddish and his occupation entered as a proprietor of a dry goods store. Living with George and Anna is our grandmother, Arline Stein, aged 22.

The End of an Era, the Start of a New One

Rachael (Rosenthal/Newman/Margolis) died in 1916. She was 81. The first person listed in her Last Will and Testament was her “beloved sister, Esther M. Stein.” She also left part of her legacy to her “beloved grandchildren, Frank Z. Newman, Violet Newman, Genevieve Newman and Leslie Newman. “ In addition, she assigned an equal share of her inheritance to her two sons, “Philip E. Newman and Samuel J. Newman, of San Francisco.” She appointed Samuel to be the guardian of her estate. Sadly, Samuel Newman, our great grandfather, would only outlive his mother by two years, dying in 1918 at 59. Philip died the following year in 1919.

Frank Z. Newman’s grandmother, Rachael, and his father, Samuel, would not be present for the happy occasion of his marriage to Arline Stein in 1920. Our niece, Caity, located the newspaper announcement of our grandparent’s marriage in the McDonald, PA Outlook paper,” On Tuesday evening, January 20th at the Tree of Life Temple in Pittsburgh occurred the marriage of Miss Arline Stein, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Stein of Third Street, to Mr. Frank Newman of San Francisco, Cal.” The article included a little of our grandmother’s early biography, “Mrs. Newman was well known in McDonald. She graduated from the McDonald High school with the class of 1916 and later attended Pitt University.” The article also noted that, “They will make their home in San Francisco where Mr. Newman is employed in the furniture business.” The article adds, “The ceremony took place in the presence of immediate relatives.” Therefore, it seems likely that Arline’s grandmother, Esther Minnie Stein, attended her granddaughter’s big day.

Esther Stein would live one more year, passing away on December 26, 1921. She was buried in the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol-Beth Jacob cemetery, next to her husband Charles and near her sister Rachael. It was the end of the era of the two Rosenthal sisters, who traveled half way around the world to start new lives. 

Lucky for us they did. Tragically, most of the descendants of the Rosenthals, Newmans, and Steins, who stayed in the old country, did not survive the Holocaust. 50,000 Jews in Bialystok were confined to a ghetto when the Nazis took over in 1941. The Germans crushed the Bialystok Ghetto Uprising in 1943, and the remaining survivors were taken to the Treblinka death camp. Mariampole and Amdur, suffered similar fates. The Nazis took control of both towns in 1941. In Mariampol the Germans, along with their Lithuanians collaborators, killed over six thousand Jews in open-air murders. The Jewish residents of Amdur were transported to Treblinka, as well.

In the United States the descendants of Esther and Rachael thrived and multiplied. These amazing matriarchs from the old world were responsible for Newman and Stein families across our nation. According to the extensive Stein family tree provided by our cousin Susan Berkson, there are Stein relatives throughout the Midwest and East Coast. We live in cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Minneapolis. It appears that we are the western outpost of the Steins, the branch of the Stein-Newman tree that can trace our roots directly to the two Rosenthal sisters, Rachael and Esther, who started it all.

DF - March 9, 2015 and Revision 2019