Shtetl Discovery

I have learned one of the first steps in seeking information about a Jewish ancestor from Eastern Europe is to determine the shtetl where they lived.  This was a new word for me.  So first, I needed to know what a shtetl is.  A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe prior to World War II and the Holocaust.

In the 19th century shtetls were mainly found in the areas which were known as the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania.  Since our family knows that Joseph stated Tauroggen as his birthplace in his naturalization papers, this placed his family in this area.

Further searching uncovered a description of life in the shtetl as noted in Chapter 15 of There Once was a World: a Nine-Hundred-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok by Yaffa Eliach.  Although I can't be sure if the descriptions paralleled Joseph's life, there were certain aspects that may have impacted both his childhood and the remainder of his life.  Specifically:

• The Household:  Often three generations lived under the same roof.  The pattern in Eastern Europe dating from at least the seventeenth century, was for young couples to establish their first household in the home of the wife's family. This made me wonder about the mention of Tilsit in connection with Joseph.  At one point it was thought that was his birthplace but this was corrected by finding his naturalization certificate and his US Army enlistment.  Now I wonder if perhaps that could be where his father was from and he came to Tauroggen where his wife's (Joseph's mother) family lived.  If you have any information that would shed light on this, please feel free to share.
       In addition, Joseph's mother passed away when he was a baby and his father remarried.  This meant he may have been part of another household.
• Sons-In-Law:  The treatment a son-in-law received in his new household may have differed greatly from what he experienced in his home prior to his marriage.  In the matriarchal society of homes, a son-in-law was often thought to be doing wrong much of the time unless he he was an aspiring scholar.
• The Jewish Matriarch:  In Eastern Europe of the seventeenth, eighteen, and nineteenth centuries, the home and its modest commercial enterprises were the woman's domain.  This makes it important to discover more about Joseph's mother and stepmother.  Could one of them have been the owner of the hotel/inn mentioned in Marrom family stories? 



Painting of Anatevka:  Everything I knew, or thought I knew, of Jewish life in Russia prior to the Russian Revolution came from the movie,
Fiddler on the Roof

• Step-Siblings and Orphan Relatives:  During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first two decades of the twentieth, perhaps as many as two-thirds of the marriages in the shtetl were second, third, and even fourth marriages.  This was the result of death rather than divorce.  Death also created a large number of orphans.  Many spouses brought with them the children from previous marriages where they were often considered a heavy burden and resented.  Could this have contributed to Joseph's immigration to the United States at such a young age?  Another factor may have been the anti-Semitic practice in Russia of impressing Jewish teenage boys into mandatory military service for as long as a 25 years.

Really interesting information, but it seems to have raised more questions than it resolved.  I have identified Joseph's shtetl based on his identifying Tauroggen as his birthplace.
     Stetl:  Taurage (Alternative Names/Spellings - Taurage/Lithuanian,
              Tovrik/Yiddish, Tauroggen/German, Taurogi/Polish,
              Taurage/Latvian,
              Taurogen, Tarogen, Tauragunay, Tauragnu, Tauragnay,
              Tauraginos, Tauraginai
     District (Uyezd):  Zarasai (I also found a reference to Raseiniai)
     Province (Guberniya):  Kaunas

Random boy in Lithuanian shtetl posted on Webshots.com by  itzko102

Introducing Mr. & Mrs. Hyman

The pictures included in this post were passed down from Kay Marrom. Unfortunately no stories that connect them to Joseph were included. It is thought perhaps this was the family he lived with while he was in New York.

All of the pictures were taken at studios in the New York area. These include:

• Wedding picture from A.Smith Studio on 43 Canal Street, New York


• Couple picture was made by D. Goodman "The American" Photographer located at 159 Rivington Street, New York


• Couple picture in overcoats was taken by a studio that appears to located on Broadway (studio information is quite faded)


• Hyman family portrait was made by Adelsohn's Studio located at 55 Belmont Avenue (Brooklyn, I think)

From Google searches, it would seem that A. Smith's studio and D. Goodman's studio are less than one mile apart. Not knowing the exact street address of the studio on Broadway, I am not certain of the location. If it were on East Broadway, it would be in the same vicinity of these other two studios.

In reviewing the maps further, it would appear this area had a high ethnic population. There are two synagogues in the close proximity, the Bialystoker Synagoge and the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Among the list of congregants shown on the Museum at Eldridge Street website, there are three Hymans shown in the 1880s; G. Hyman, H. Hyman and M.L. Hyman in the 1880s and 1920s.

Meet Joseph Samuel Marrom

This is a brief outline of what we know about Joseph.

• January 2, 1874 Joseph is born to Samuel and Esther Marrom. His birth has been reported as being in either Tilsit, East Prussia or Tauroggen, Russia. Tilsit is now Sovetsk, Russia and Tauroggen is now Taurage, Lithuania.
• Esther passes away while Joseph is still a baby. Samuel remarries and has several more children.
• Family stories say Samuel operated a hotel in Tilsit.
• About 1886 Joseph emigrates to the United States. Per family stories, Joseph lives with relatives in New York and Chicago. At this time, no information on relationship and names has been established.
• November 7, 1891 Joseph enlists in the U.S. Army at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He enlists as "Sam Marrom and states Taurrogen, Russia as his birthplace and salesman as his occupation.
• April 21, 1896 Joseph marries Anna (Annie) Selk in Paris, Idaho. Paris is near Bear Lake.
• 1912 - 1921 Joseph serves as city councilman and two-terms as mayor of Preston, Idaho.
• About 1930 Joseph moves to Salt Lake City.
• About October 1937 Joseph suffers a stroke and dies of pneumonia on December 1, 1937.