Our Ancestors

My cousin Rick and I met over a meal. During the evening we tried to find new pieces of family history to share. We had learned the same family story: Friedman was a name chosen by our great grandfather, Max, taken from a cracker billboard when he stepped off the boat from Russia, our family name lost forever. Did I know that our grandfather, Henry, had been to Egypt?  I did, in fact, and we both had the same photo of our grandfather sitting on a camel with pyramids in the background. Did Rick know that our great grandfather had come to California in the 1870’s. Yes he did. And so the evening went.

The next day I decided it was high time to search for Friedmans and Newmans. I paid $14.95 and logged onto Ancestry.com. And this is what I found:

The Friedmans

Max Friedman, listed in the census as Marx Neal Friedman or Neal Marx Friedman, was born in 1851. He was from a town in the Russian Pale of Settlement, in what is now Poland. He arrived in the US in 1870, only nineteen years old. Two years later he wed Julia Shlomsky, also an immigrant from Russia. He was twenty-one and she seventeen.  

Julia and Max were blessed with eight children: Israel, Samuel, Henry (my grandfather), Abraham, Cella, Lillian, Henrietta, and Dorothy. He began as a store clerk in Troy, New York.  Marx traveled to San Francisco, where he became a businessman, starting the M. Friedman and Co. Furniture Co. 

His store was located in Union Square at 259 Post Street in San Francisco. The store began in the late nineteenth century, continuing until the late 1920’s.  Julia died in 1923 and was buried in Colma, California while Max survived his wife until his death in August of 1934.

Henry A Friedman (1878-1948), my grandfather, was the third child born to Max and Julia. He graduated from Stanford in 1901. Henry's 1908 passport lists his height as 5 foot 3 and ¾ inches, his eyes, hair, and complexion were all dark. This dark haired young man was about to meet and wed a red haired beauty nine years younger by the name of Helen Eisner.

The Eisners

Helen Eisner (1889-1963), “Nanny Helen,” as we used to call her, came from an old California family. Her father Milton Sidney Eisner (1860-1921) was born in 1860 in Folsom California. Milton’s parents were Daniel (1825-1870) and Mary (1831) Eisner, both immigrants from Bohemia  now a region in the modern day Czech Republic. They immigrated to Folsom during the Gold Rush in the 1850’s. They worked in retail, providing goods and services to the gold miners. 

Helen’s mom was Lena Rheinstein (1861-1924)  She was born in Visalia, in California’s  Central Valley. Her family, Oscar (1827-1906) and Hanna (1834)  Reinstein, were originally from Posen, Prussia. They also immigrated during the Gold Rush working as merchants. 

Lena would go on to be a kindergarten teacher, expert cook, and world traveler. The Reinstein and the Eisner families moved from the Central Valley to San Francisco during the 1860’s. Lena’s brother, Jacob Bert Reinstein (1854-1911), was in the very first UC Berkeley class of students, called the twelve apostles. He was appointed Regent of the University of California during the 1890’s, and  worked closely with Phoebe Hearst to help expand the UC campus.

The Eisners son, Milton Sidney Eisner (1860-1921) also attended Cal a decade later. Lena Reinstein and Milton Eisner married in 1884. They had two children, Milton Daniel and Helen.  Helen Eisner married Henry Friedman in 1910. They had four children: Margaret the oldest (1912-1993), Milton (1914-1991), and his two younger sisters, Virginia (1915-1980) and Beatrice (1919-1997). 

Milton Friedman

My father, Milton Friedman, was a San Francisco boy. He attended Galileo High School and went to Stanford during the 1930’s. In addition to competing in springboard diving, he served as an officer at the Encina Hall, participated in the Glee Club and senior year served as the Senior Class Secretary-Treasurer. 

The Stanford yearbooks confirmed what my mom had always told me about the young Milton Friedman; he was popular, athletic, and handsome. In the 1930’s Milton Friedman hadn’t changed his name to Milton Forrest, and he hadn’t met his future bride, San Francisco beauty, Frances Julia Newman.

The Newmans

While Milton’s father ran the M. Friedman Furniture Company, Frances’ father, Frank Newman, was the competition across town at the Redlick-Newman Co. The 1923 Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory listed his company as Newman’s Complete Home Furnishing selling props, furniture, and household goods on the SE corner of Mission and 17^th. An old photo shows the five-story building capped by a Redlick-Newman-Co Furniture sign. A little Internet research also reveals that the store put up a large metal sign reading “17 Reasons.” Apparently the idea for the sign came from Heinz 57 slogan for ketchup. In any event the sign became a landmark in San Francisco.

Grandma Fran’s dad, Frank Newman (1894-1978), was born in Hanford, California in 1894. His father’s name was Samuel J. Newman (1858-1918). According to the 1910 census Samuel Newman is listed as a Russian immigrant. In an interview I did with my grandfather in the 1970’s, he explained that his father was born in Mariajampole, a town in the Russian Pale of Settlement, now in modern day Poland. Rachael Newman (1837-1918) brought her boys, Samuel and Philip, to the US  in 1869.

Frank Newman’s mother was Julia Newman, originally Julia Caro (1867-1924) from Posen, Prussia. She immigrated in 1882. According to the 1900 census, Samuel and Julia were married in 1891. Julia and Samuel had four children: Frank Z., Violet (1896-1971), Genevieve (1901-1991) and Leslie (1904-1989). 

My sister Lisa recalls that Frank Newman, whom we called Baba, only had a grammar school education. As the story goes, he took the train from Hanford to San Francisco with his family before the 1906 earthquake. He was only ten when it struck, and his family had to live in a tent in Golden Gate Park in its aftermath.

My Grandfather’s 6^th grade education was in sharp contrast to the woman he fell in love with, the erudite Arline Stein (1898-1976). My grandmother was born in 1892 in Indiana. She moved to Pittsburgh, where she attended McDonald High School. Her father, George Stein (1870-1949), was a Polish immigrant, and her biolgical mother, Hattie Oppenheim (1872-1898), was born in Michigan. Her mom died from complications of childbirth, and her dad remarried Anna Silverman (1877-1953) in 1906. 

Arline was one of a very few women to go to college at that time, attending the University of Pittsbugh from 1916 until 1920. My grandmother must have fallen in love with the entrepreneurial spirit of Frank Newman, for they were wed in 1920 after my grandfather served in World War 1.

Frank and Arline,  or Mimi and Baba, as we called my grandparents, began their married life on 304 Euclid Avenue in San Francisco. The 1940 census shows them living at 361 Washington Street with their three daughters: Elaine (1921-2007), Shirley (1923-1997) and Frances (1925-1990). 

I can remember visiting my grandparent’s Washington Street three-story home as a little boy. Mimi kept hard candy in a drawer near the front entrance. This was my first stop. We usually found Baba on the second floor, seated in a big chair listening to a Giants game or reading the sports section of the newspaper. On his wall he had photos of baseball teams that his Redlick-Newman store sponsored. The third floor was a game room, complete with slot machines and card tables. However, my favorite was the basement where my cousins Skip, Alan and I played an elaborate game of whiffle ball baseball for hours on end.

Milton Friedman went into the Army-Airforce in April of 1941, several months before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. He served as a Captain in the Pacific Theater, working at a materials depot on a small island in the South Pacific. The US Department of Veterans indicates that he left the service in January of 1946, about six months after the end of World War II.

Frances Newman

During World War II my mother, Frances Julia Newman, finished her high school at Lowell. Following in the footsteps of her mother Arline, my mom also headed off to college. The 1945 Stanford Quad Yearbook shows Frances Newman as a beautiful co-ed. At that time Stanford’s student body only included about 10% women.  I once asked her how she felt being part of a small minority of women at a mostly male university; she coyly smiled, “ I loved it! You could always get a date on Saturday night.”

The romance between Milton Friedman and Frances Newman must have been a whirlwind one. Milton was almost eleven years older than Frances. He returned from the service in January of 1946 and asked Frances to marry him on her twenty-first birthday, March 9^th of the same year. The couple was married and moved to small home in Sausalito. My Dad took the Golden Gate Bridge, completed in 1937, from Marin to San Francisco where he worked as an insurance broker after the war. Soon, the newly married couple moved to Mill Valley.

It was also after World War II that Milton Friedman changed his name to Milton Forrest. My dad always told me that he had wanted to start out in business with his own name, and not rely on the name or coattails of his father, Henry Friedman. Perhaps he had a little of the old Max Friedman in him by deciding to abandon last name for a new, invented, one. He chose Forrest for his new name because of the connotation of the trees, although he spelled it differently. Some family members have speculated that my Dad wanted to separate himself from his Jewish roots by changing his name. Whatever his motivation, this was not his explanation.

The Forrests

Milton and Frances Forrest had three children: Carol (1951-1956), David (1954) and Lisa (1957.) The records indicate that my older sister, Carol Ann Forrest, was born December 8, 1951. She perished in the Mill Valley fire in August of 1956 at four and a half years old. My cousin, Rick, has fond memories of my parents in the 1950’s. He described his uncle as dashing and his aunt as beautiful and “so, so, kind.” He also remembered my older sister Carol, saying that she was a “beautiful child.”

So the Newmans were united with the Friedman-Forrests with the marriage of Frances Julia to Milton Anthony after World War II. My guess is that if you have read this far you were hoping to find out the long Russian name Max Friedman abandoned at the water’s edge when he stepped off the boat in America. 

The answer came in the 1980’s when Rick Dad, Milt Silverman, made a family tree with short biographies. He said that Max’s original old world name was Sacherwalski. However, documents show that Marx, his siblings and parents, all immigrated to the US as Friedmans. So, we may never know.

Our Immigrant Ancestors

Our immigrant ancestors were men and women seeking freedom in the New World. They were escaping a Europe of poverty and anti-Semitism for Jews. They sought opportunity and peace in the United States. Max and Julia Friedman and Samuel and Julia Newman traveled half way around the world to start again. Like so many immigrants, they left possessions, relatives, and in some cases, their names.They built prosperous businesses. They became quintessential Californians, settling in the Bay Area. We have lived in San Francisco, Marin and Sonoma, the Peninsula, and the South and East Bays for many generations.

More important than our surnames are the family traditions we established in our new home. Our clans sent their children to college, including their daughters. Our parents taught us to revere the mountains, oceans, and forests of the West Coast. We inherited our forefathers’ sense of adventure, their affection for travel. Each generation of Newmans and Friedman-Forrests has taught the next to love athletics, art, and reading. And although we don’t all practice the Judaism of our ancestors, we were all taught its great values of love and kindness.

More fun than a family tree with past relatives born and died, is to come across a photo of your dad in an old university yearbook. No pedigree chart could describe the husky, hilarious, laughter of my Aunt Shirley. No genealogy could compare with hearing my cousin talk about my long lost sister, or my incredibly kind mother.

Here then is a starting genealogy of our Friedmans and Newmans. I leave it to you to fix my errors, add to our ancestors' stories, and most importantly, to add your own.

DF - March 9, 2013 and Revision 2019