Thread by @lifesafeast

THIS is what Twitter is all about.

Thousands coming together to tell the wildest, most amazing stories of ancestors.

So here are a couple of mine...

👇

https://twitter.com/lifesafeast/status/1387117957550071813

My great-grandpa Kalman was a wealthy miller in the small town of Zeludok. He owned a flour mill & a schnapps distillery. He would travel from town to town to bring the grains & mill the flour for them. He had the reputation of being rather a Lothario.

After a long, childless

marriage, his first wife passed away. During one of his trips to the town my great-grandma Tsivia lived in with her family, he spotted her and, taken by her beauty asked to marry her. He was 32 years her senior. She agreed, seeing a wealthy man as her way out & up.

They had 4

children, my grandpa & 3 daughters. They were wealthy enough to educate their children and their daughters could speak AND read both Yiddish & Russian which, for girls, was rare back then. In 1903, 2 things happened. Russia made a law that said that Jews could no longer be in any

business that involved grains so his mill & distillery were taken from him. In order to feed her children, Tsivia ended up opening up a small bar. Also in 1903 rumors of a war with Japan started circulating and as Jewish men were the first to be drafted, they sent my grandpa to

the US. Kalman then died apparently from a throat disease. Legend has it that he drank boiling tea all day every day and the scarring sealed his throat. Ugh. Tsivia succeeded in sending her daughters one by one to the US, the youngest, Mary, when she was 16. She got safely to

Rotterdam where there was a 2-week wait for the boat to the US so passengers, including Mary, alone age 16, had to make sure their money lasted 2 weeks + enough for passage to NY. Many passengers spent all their money and couldn't continue the trip. She did.

Tsivia ended up

getting stuck in Russia during the revolution and not being able to join her children, parents, siblings in the US until 1922.