THE 2004 GUELFF GENEALOGICAL EXPEDITION: GREAT UNCLE MIKE'S ACCOUNT

Not too long after sifting through Mom's shoebox, I realized that her notes and her sketch were based, at least in part, on recollections of Great Uncle Mike Guelff.  These were published in the Dawson County Ranger-Review under the heading of "As I Remember ...".  Later, they were reprinted in a book entitled "As I Remember ... Stories of Eastern Montana's Pioneers" as told to Mrs. Morris (Gladys Mullet) Kauffman, Sweetgrass Books (2006).  A shorter version appeared in a 1989 Montana Centennial yearbook "Our Times Our Lives" published by the Dawson County Tree Branches in Glendive Montana.    Great Uncle Mike's daughter, Marguerite (Guelff) Reed wrote the Dawson County piece.

The entry, appearing at pages 555 and 556 is entitled "Anna and Michael Guelff and Peter and Marie Russ."  The account follows, with my notes inserted in brackets.  In future postings, most of the questions raised in the notes will be resolved.

"Sometime in the 1870s, my grandparents, Anna Grein and Michael Guelff left Luxembourg, Belgium. [Luxembourg and Belgium are two different countries and had different boundaries in the 19th Century than they do today.] Their parents, along with relatives and friends came to this country in a sailboat. They were on the ocean three months. [Three months to cross the Atlantic in 1870 is a long time, even if they came in a sailboat.]  The Guelffs were from the village of Guelff, and the Greins were from Habergy. [Both Habergy and Guelff are within the present boundaries of Belgium, but are near Luxembourg.] They settled in Minnesota where they had relatives. [Indicates that some relatives had preceded the Greins to Minnesota. Who were they and where did they settle?]

"In 1889, my grandmother, Marie Hafele, and her brother Alois left Stuttgart, Germany, to join relatives in Brewster, Minnesota. [Stuttgart is in the Wuertemburg region of present day Germany. Very good emigration records and church records were kept from the 17th Century.  Point of departure, point of destination and Catholic ancestors should make research on the Hafele line relatively easy.] Their parents and sister stayed behind in Germany.

My grandfather Peter Russ was from Woodhall, Wisconsin. [NOTE: Russ is not said to be on the same ship with Anna and Mike.] He met and married Marie Hafele in Minnesota. [NOTE: Where in Minnesota? How did they meet?] They had one daughter, Florence. [One census record indicates that Florence was adopted.]

Michael Guelff and Anna Grein were married in Minnesota. [Where? When?] They had 14 children, of whom my father, Michael, was eighth in order of birth. Both families settled near Eden Valley, Minnesota, and became good friends.

In 1905, after the death of her husband, Anna Guelff and Pete Russ came to Montana and filed on adjoining homesteads near Yates, Montana. [NOTE: Mom's sketch placed Yates in North Dakota. Montana is the correct state.] Pete stayed out west and built homestead shacks for the two families. [Implies that Anna returned immediately to Eden Valley.] He also built a store in Beach, North Dakota. [Who owned and operated the store? Russ? Anna? Both?]

April 6, 1906, Mrs. Russ, Florence, and the Guelff children arrived in Beach, North Dakota. Young Michael rode alone in the immigrant car. He was only 12 years old. Mrs. Guelff stayed in Eden Valley until she had all her affairs settled. Pete Russ farmed on the homestead, and Mrs. Russ and Florence took care of the store in Beach. [Appears that the families decided to leave Eden Valley almost immediately after Michael Guelff's death.]

Because they were leaving for the West, Michael and Florence had been allowed to make their first Holy Communion ahead of their class. Mrs. Guelff said she had seen this happen only once before in Luxembourg. [Check Catholic Church records in Eden Valley for communions.]

Michael and Florence Guelff were married in 1912 in Wibaux, Montana. Wibaux was in Dawson County at that time. [Check Dawson County marriage register for date.]

In 1912, Mr. and Mrs. Russ moved to a farm near Glendive. It was across the road from Alois Hafele and his family, who had moved to Montana in 1909. Their farms were on the north Pleasant View Road.

Anna Guelff eventually married Fred Grote, who came west for his health. [NOTE: No family?] He homesteaded near Brockway, Montana. The thing I remember about that place was the sod house. It had wooden floors, and I think it had two rooms. My aunts said it was always cool in summer and warm in winter. They lived at Brockway until they decided to go back to Underwood, Iowa, where Mr. Grote was from. [Was he also a Luxembourger, the term used for immigrants from both Belgium and Luxembourg in the area near France? Many settled in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.]"

The longer account in "As I Remember...", as told to Mrs. Morris (Gladys Mullet) Kauffman first appeared in the September 1966 Ranger-Review when Uncle Mike was still alive. Some parts of the Ranger-Review account shed additional light on the shorter Centennial account. Those excepts from Vol. I, 328-334 follow.

"In the fall of 1905 Mrs. Guelff and a neighbor, Mr. Russ, had made the trip West to file on homesteads, then the next spring they loaded immigrant cars and made the move. Mr. Russ loaded two immigrant cars and made the move. Mr. Russ loaded two imigrant cars, Guelffs one, and the 'men' started for the new land." From this it appears that Great Uncle Mike did not make the trip alone at the age of twelve.

"The homestead was located in Montana, but they unloaded their cars at Beach, the nearest railroad station. They arrived there at night May 20, 1906, and when daylight came so they couldlook out, they saw about twenty immigrant cars unloading along the tracks.

There were no buildings where goods could be stored so each immigrant was allotted a 'spot' then length of the car to pile his goods. Mike's mother's sister [his aunt] was living near Beach. She had come to the Treasure Srare in 1904, and it was her influence that was responsible for Guelffs moving. After they unloaded the car they hauled their possessions out to her place until they could build a shack on their own homestead."

The Dawson Ranger-Review provides a vivid account of the first year in Montana which included unusually heavy rains in a region seldom getting more than 10 inches a year, most of it in the form of snowfall. Peter Russ owned the store in Beach, and the Russ family lived above the store. The nine Guelff children and Anna lived with her sister's family on their homestead until a shack could be built, a well dug and crops planted. "Getting the shack built turned out to be no overnight job. They were hardly in this dry country before they found that it can rain in Montana. It rained and kept on raining for almost six weeks. Mike's eighteen-year-old brother came to helpthem get a house buit, but progress was slow with the weather so uncooperative." [The older brother would have been Nicolas Lorenz Guelf (1886-1921).]

Both accounts reflect, matter of factly, an enormous amount of grit and tenacity in the face of troubles that might even have shaken the faith of Job. They also reflect the "social safety net" of the extended family first leaping the pond from Belgium to Eden Valley and then to frontier on Eastern, Montana. What made them take the first step? Would they have done it if there was not family already established in Minnesota? And would they have done it again without family already established in Eastern Montana?

Next: Letters from Belgium cousins.

THE 2004 GUELFF GENEALOGICAL EXPEDITION: CLUES AND QUESTIONS

THE 2004 GUELFF GENEALOGICAL EXPEDITION: CLUES AND QUESTIONS

You never really know what you will find out about your family when you start asking questions, or better yet, fact checking the answers that you get or the stories that you hear. You also just might find out something about yourself in the process. Such was the case in the 2004 Guelff Genealogical Expedition.

My grandmother’s notes, some family stories and a letter written by a distant relative pinpointed the village of Guelff near Habergy in Belgium as the European birthplace of Michael Guelff, my great grandfather. I also learned from my mother and some preliminary research she had done that Michael Guelff settled with his wife, Anne Grein, in Eden Valley, Minnesota before the family moved to eastern Montana in the first decade of the 20th century.

In 2003 – nearly a hundred years later -- I took up genealogy as a way of having a real conversation with my mother whose short term memory was rapidly fading after several strokes. She could, however, remember an amazing amount of detail from her childhood and early adulthood. She also did very well when prompted with familiar photographs from the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Before her first stroke in early 2000, she had written a brief family history. The part about the Guelffs provided a few clues: “Anna Grein came to Eden Valley, Minnesota in 1876 at the age of 16 [remember the age, it comes back to haunt]. She was born in Haberge, Belgium, 3 miles from France. Met Michael Guelff on the ship. Married _______. They had 14 children, 9 grew to adulthood – Nicholas, Marie, Elizabeth, Michael, Regina, twins Catherine & Anna, Alphonse & Antony. Michael was drowned in a lake near Eden Valley. Anna then married Pete? Grote and moved to Yates, Mont. in 1906, then homesteaded near Brockway a few years later.” [Probably written by Doris Bell Holzworth before 1990]

She wrote another version, probably after doing some research and talking to other relatives: “Anna Grein was born in Haberge, Belgium – 1860. In 1876 her family sailed to the U.S. with Peter & ____ Russ. They settled in Eden Valley, Minn. She met her husband Michael Guelff on the boat. They had a saloon & lived above it. There were 14 children born to them. Michael, Elizabeth & Gertrude dies in infancy. John died at age 10 or appendix rupture. Nicholas, Marie, Elizabeth, Regina, Michael, twins, Anna & Catherine, Alphonse & Anthony. After husband Michael died --- the family moved to Yates, N.D. Anna married Fred Grote. About 1910 they settled on a homestead near Brockway. Marie married Hal Corkery & lived on a ranch near Medora, N.D. They had two sons Fred & Jack. Nick married Eva – 4 children Irene, Eugenia, Evelyn & Larry. Regina (Gene) married George Hutchinson – one sone Richard – Cheyenne, Wyo. Anna married James Campbell – 2 children Lavonne & Max – Omaha, Neb. Catherine married James Cashman – 2 children Joyce & Russell who was kille din the Phillipines in W.W. 2. Michael married Florence Russ – 3 children, Marguerite, Robert & Keith – Glendice. Alphonse married Marvel Joubert – 5 children Donald, Shirley, Dianne & David & _______, Missoula. Anthony dies age 30 of typhoid fever.”

I knew that Mom had santized her account of the death of Great Grandfather Michael Guelff. A hundred years ago -- and probably even today – much goes unspoken and even more unasked. My mother once mentioned that Great Grandfather Michael Guelff had probably committed suicide, but never elaborated other than to say that, according to Grandmother Bell, “She drove him to it.” Mom also told me, without going into detail, that Grandma Bell and her mother did not get along very well. My guess: this had something to do with Grandma Bell marrying outside the Catholic Church and, accordingly, being ex-communicated. Perhaps it was also because Grandma Bell was the oldest surviving child at the time Great Grandpa Michael Guelff died in 1905. Nevertheless, Grandma Bell and her four young children lived in one of Grandma Grote’s houses after Grandpa Dudley Bell died in the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic. My mother had fond memories of Grandma Grote.

More from Mom’s family sketch: “Elizabeth Guelff was born May 6, 1892 in Eden Valley, Minn. Moved to Yates N.D. in 1906. She helped her sister Marie at the Don Short ranch and Tom Mix of movie fame worked there. She married Dudly H. Bell on Dec. __, 1913 and they homesteaded near Brockway, Mt. Four children were born. Kenneth, Nov. 21, 1914 – Lucille, Jan. 18, 1916 – Gerald, Sept, 19, 1917 & Doris Jan. 30, 1919. Dudley died Nov. 11, 1918 while taking a load of wheat to Terry, MT This was when the influenza was so rampant. Her sister in law _______, Charles Bells wife, also died that same winter of flue. Doris [Mom] was born at Michael’s homestead at Pleasant View near Glendive. Elizabeth mover to her mother’s [Grandma Grote’s] house at 217 E. Hughes in Glendive that spring. She spent 8 months at Galen T.B. [Tuberculosis] Hospital near Butte that year [1920] while Grandmother Grote took care of the children. She lived there 16 years with a widows pension & taking in washing & cleaning for others. All the children graduated from High School & Gerald from U. of Montana. Kenneth & Gerald both were in the army during W.W.2. In 1948 she started working at Yellowstone Cleaners and doing alterations of clothing for several years.”

This paragraph also omits the real reason that Grandma Bell spent 8 months at Galen. Following Dudley’s death and Mom’s birth, she had a nervous breakdown.

The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds by Jonathan Rosen

Taking my lead from the title, I downloaded this book from the Internet and read it on my Kindle. Spark-like thoughts shot out from the "e-ink screen which reads like real paper and boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images." So says Amazon.com.

The author deftly weaves the very old and the very new with reflections on his relation to religion and his Jewish identity. He views the Talmud (2000 years of rabbinic commentary on the Torah) as a sort of Internet chat room of indefinite duration and scope. As Rosen points out, rabbinic scholars speak of "the sea of the Talmud" to convey the organic size and neural connectivity of the work, which can be entered at almost any point in time and on any topic along the vast shoreline of its ocean.

Most unusual to the uninitiated (and perhaps most intriguing), the Talmud like the Internet reflects and refracts an overwhelming array of views, often directly contradictory, even on matters that are settled confessions of faith in most other variations of occidental monotheism. Possibly (plausibly) this seeming chaos of uncertainty emerged from the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in the second century of the Common Era and ensuing Diaspora. Judaism, to survive and even sometimes thrive, evolved into a "grass roots" organization in which each Jewish household, wherever it existed geographically, became a functional equivalent of that temple, at least in some important respects. Thus, Judaism in exile became a portable religion of the book and never-ending commentary on the book, a sort of evolving collective covenant of memory that bound a people. The Talmud bundled culture, customs and practices into a portable abstract world of the word that was realized in the here and now wherever it was studied, revered and shared.

Rosen raises the provocative possibility that the Internet may (has) become the collective enduring consciousness of this century and, like the Talmud and the Torah before it, both memorializes and retroactively reshapes the past. Being of a literary bent, Rosen feels no discomfort by the evident and heavy pen applied with equally heavy moral judgments and consequences (real or imagined) by those priestly and later rabbinic scribes and commentators to those familiar and oft re-interpreted stories from the Tanahk (roughly what is also known as the Old Testament). Unlike the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, Russians, Nazis and other lesser known enemies and oppressors, Jews have survived and controlled the telling and re-telling of the past.

Rosen does not reflect on the Orwellian aspects of the enterprise. In the slogan words of Big Brother: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Rather, Rosen explores more deeply the importance of remembering in order to establish identity and in order to defeat attempts to erase memory (in fact, to erase any remembrance that Jews or Judaism existed). He does this by reflecting on the two lines of his ancestors, one escaping from the Shoah to spend the duration of WWII in a camp for Jewish children on the estate of Lord Balfour and the other having arrived and becoming established in the United States before the great calamities of the 20th Century claimed the lives of a third of the world's Jewish population.

One cannot read The Talmud and the Internet without being inspired to follow the path of Rosen's reflections. In 2000, when the book was first published, Wikipedia had not yet taken off. Wikipedia's own history of Wikipedia states that the Wikipedia was not formally launched until January 15, 2001, quickly became a large global project that today includes over 14 million freely usable articles in hundreds of languages worldwide, and content from millions of contributors. Some of them even rabbis.

In a partial recounting of what Jews faced from several centuries in Europe, Rosen mentioned a particularly loathsome tract penned by Martin Luther later in his life, "The Jews and Their Lies." Luther had, at the beginning of the Protestant break from the Catholic Church, been sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. The sympathy evaporated when it became apparent that Jews could not be converted to Luther's vision of Christianity. This should not have surprised Luther since his theological concept of redemption by faith alone is the perfect antithesis of the Judaic emphasis on the hard work of achieving by practice and conduct what is promised in the covenant. Judaic deed versus Lutheran creed or otherwise put in the disputation between Erasmus and Luther, works versus faith.

A significantly large number of Lutherans in the late 18th Century, the Pietists, also essentially rejected the central Lutheran doctrine, some of my forefathers among them. Because the establishment Lutheran church began to assume the outward trappings of Catholicism, the Pietists started to meet in household conclaves, dress simply and work hard on conforming personal practice to ethical ideals. The established church viewed them as trouble makers, even though generally they were widely regarded as conforming their behavior to a higher standard of moral conduct. 

In the 18th Century, first Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great sent an invitation to prosperous farmers to resettle in the Ukraine near Odessa in land seized from the Ottoman Turks. My ancestors accepted and went in family groups known as "harmonies". They settled in self-governing colonies, guaranteed by the Czarist edicts (ukases) to be exempt from military service, taxation for a period of years, military service and complete freedom of religion. An added incentive to those, like my chiliastic forefathers, who fervently believed the world would end in the 1830's, was the proximity of Odessa to Israel. They were ex-communicated from the Lutheran church when they left as reflected in the large "X" through the church records of their family births, baptisms, marriages and deaths.

Many Jews from the same regions of German speaking Europe also accepted the invitation. For a time, the deal worked for both groups. The Jews generally worked in trades within the larger
population centers and the German farmers remained within the small walled villages. In the end, with the rise of Slavic nationalism, the promises of the ukase were rescinded. It turned out to be a deal with the devil.

Rosen's mention of the Luther tract startled me. The Lutheran environment in which I grew up was nearly devoid of Jews and completely devoid of anti-Semitism. My Lutheran heritage had been shaped more by the tripartite, internecine and fratricidal wars of Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics causing both maternal and paternal ancestors to flee Alsace and Weurtemberg. The maternal side came to colonial western Maryland where they found ways to cooperate even to the extent of sharing church structures and pastors with other Protestant denominations, an arrangement that never would have happened in Europe.

I was also struck by Rosen's reference to his father's involvement, like my own father's, in Masonic orders, which are open to all monotheistic faiths. My father repudiated the Lutheran church, which his step-father built and served as a deacon. See Pastor Poisons Girl Gets Life. The Masonic orders became an outlet for a deeply held, but rarely expressed spirituality.

It did not seem at all unusual to me that my father had as a close friend one of the handful of Jews who lived in Helena, Montana. Jerry Karasik owned and operated a cafe on Rodney Street called the Dutch Maid from 1955 until sometime in the 70's or 80's. Jerry's parents were "Bohemian Jews," according to census records recently located. Jerry was born in Canada. He came to the United States and eventually to Fort Harrison just outside Helena to train as a paratrooper in a Canadian-American commando unit that came to be known as the Devil's Brigade, 1st Special Service Force, organized in 1942. Helena's Memorial Park is dedicated to the unit, along with I-15 and its extension into Alberta, Canada all the way to Lethbridge. A couple of Hollywood action movies, notably "The Devil's Brigade", have been made about it, but certainly bear almost no relation to the reality of the training or what these men actually faced in combat.

Jerry liked Helena, and came back after the war. It must have seemed like a return to paradise. Jerry and my father got to know each other in the late fifties when my father was frequently in Helena to bid on state and federal highway contracts. My father consumed large amounts of beer and coffee, so I suspect the location the Dutch Maid near two of his favorite bars, Jesters and the Red Meadow, had a lot to do with the initial acquaintance. Also Dad's low/middle German shared vocabulary and idiomatic expressions with Yiddish, so they probably had that in common as well. For some reason, Jerry either never learned to drive a car or at least never owned one, so Dad got in the habit of driving him back and forth to grocery stores and other places. Later on, when Dad's company failed, Jerry reciprocated by providing a relatively unlimited supply of "Jewish road oil" (Dad's term for Jerry's coffee and his notion of friendly harassment) and odd jobs around the malt shop.

The friendship may also have had something to do with the Masons. At least one group of German Mason's openly repudiated the rampant anti-Semitism in Germany prior to and during the rise of Hitler, though others were not so righteous. See www.bessel.org/masjud.htm David Kaufmann, the author of the piece and a free mason, summarizes the intersection of the fraternal order and Judaism. Both subscribe and aspire to respect and support individual freedom, moral responsibility, the symbolic finding of "light" through moral practice, ridding oneself of all prejudices and a deep respect for learning. Of course, Masonry also borrows freely symbols that are central to Jewish liturgy, literature and practice, most especially the Temple of Solomon and light as the symbol of divinity. The place where I scattered my parents ashes on the crest of the continental divide hosts an open air Masonic structure commemorating the first Masonic meeting in Montana. The structure faces and points to Jerusalem, more specifically and symbolically the location of the Temple.

No doubt, because of the this notable influence, Free Masonry has often figured prominently in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Once again, from a Wikipedia article entitled "The Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy:"

The International-Communist-Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy, sometimes called
the international-marxist-masonic conspiracy, or simply the judaeo-masonic
conspiracy, is a conspiracy theory involving a secret coalition of Jews, Freemasons,
and communists. The coalition's dark aim, especially in the view of franquist pain,
would be world domination. The absence of evidence for such a world-spanning
is taken as further demonstration of the influence of the conspirators, who are
understood to be working to suppress evidence of their activity.

What else is there to say in the face of such logic?

THE CHOSEN AND 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Life is full of wonderful and sometimes luminating coincidences. One such has been reading, in succession, The Chosen by Chiam Potok and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, importantly subtitled "a work of fiction." The first I read at the recommendation of Rabbi SW, who is sponsoring my study of Judaism for the purpose of conversion. First published in the middle part of the last decade of the 20th Century (sounds ancient when put that way), The Chosen conveys to readers with minimal or no understanding of Judaism some insight into the practice of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism, very roughly the Christian equivalent of devout Roman Catholicism and Amish (see movie "The Witness") respectively. Set in the time frame of WWII and the postwar establishment of Israel as a secular Jewish state, the novel explores two divergent perspectives of what it means to be a Jew.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God, a work of fiction, is a "serious satire" of contemporary academia in the midst of the resurgent controversies over the relationship, if any, of science and religion. It is both a laugh out loud farcically funny lampoon and a brilliant and witty satire, replete with obscure and some not so obscure references to the western canon. All of the characters and objective co-relatives (pun intended) get skewered in one way or another, except for the Hasidic child prodigy, son of the charismatic Rebbe of the Valdeners. It is for the soul of this child (I think) that the fictional war of religion and science is fought. In that respect, the child prodigy closely resembles Danny Saunders, the intellectually gifted and chosen son of the Hasidic rebbe central to Chiam Potok's story.

To read either book, one might come away thinking that no one need apply for membership in this club unless first submitting a certified IQ test in the upper 99th percentile. The two main characters in The Chosen are, respectively, gifted in mathematics/symbolic logic (Ruben) and total recall on first reading of anything (Danny). The child prodigy in 36 Arguments combines both in one soul.

Somewhat deceptively, The Chosen begins with a baseball game in which Danny as a batter hits Ruben, the pitcher, and literally puts his lights out and lands him in the hospital. The rest of the book tracks the ensuing friendship and "enlightenment" of both characters and their relationship to Judaism.

In 36 Arguments, Cass Seltzer capitalizes on the science and religion controversies by the timely publication of his book The Varieties of Religious Illusion (conflating James and Freud), and becomes an "earner" as well as a "learner" through the popularizing of his work following a magazine article describing him as "an atheist with a soul." His book, like the book in which he is the character, has an appendix listing, along with a syllogistic refutation, 36 classic arguments for the existence of God. Each of the chapters also has a title styled as an "argument." Do not waste your time (as I did) trying to correlate the chapter headings with the appendix. Relax, read and laugh.

I enjoyed a reading from 36 Arguments by the author at our neighborhood bookstore, Politics and Prose. The author is a self-described secular humanist and probably closest in some ways to the mindset of the Cass Seltzer character, the "atheist with a soul." Certainly, she subscribes to a sort of ethical view that is the historical progeny of ethical monotheism apparent in Judaism and Christianity. She has a formidable training in analytic philosophy and symbolic logic. Perhaps, for that reason alone or in combination with her own experience with "the varieties of academic illusion," she has no expectation that anyone will, as a result of the 36 Arguments or the strenuous efforts of other professional pamphleteering atheists, change their beliefs or their behavior, and vice versa. Rather she offers the "novel approach" as a way of provoking thought and introspection. At this, she succeeds.

I was not aware, prior to the reading, that the author had some connection with another author who has had substantial influence on the contents of this website, Steven Pinker. The relationship is subtly revealed in a copyright mark under a picture of the author on the book's dust jacket. Another character in the book, Roz the anthropologist, probably knows that some aboriginal tribes will not permit photos to be taken under the belief that the photo also captures the soul. I am sure, based on reading most of Pinker's published work, that he knows this. I will need to check with the Patent and Trademark Office, however, to determine whether the copyright extends to facets of photo underlying the image.

ASKINGFOR HER FATHER'S BLESSING

ASKING FOR HER FATHER’S BLESSING Dec 24, 2009

My father-in-law, Willie, celebrates his birthday on December 24^th. Probably, that was the date of his birth in Ukraine in 1919. In any event, the ship manifest from his family’s arrival in Baltimore 10 months later corroborates the month, if not the exact date. We planned to see him in Baltimore on his 90^th birthday. So, how to break the news? How would he react?

As in the meeting with the rabbi, my wife once again offered copious precautionary advice, mostly focused on the appropriate answers to the inevitable questions of “Why?” and “Why now?” I listened carefully, but did not commit to a script. I said only that I would wait until that time in the course of the visit when he would predictably say “What else?” after we had gone through a list of things mundane and not so mundane.

After lunch, a game of cards, a recounting of his social calendar (he needs a social secretary) and the usual checklist of things working and not in his apartment, he said, “What else?” My wife and I sat across the table and my father-in-law at the head. Our eyes locked, we smiled and then I turned and said, “What else? Well, remember about ten years ago when we knocked on your door and we said to you and Sophie, ‘We have come to announce a simcha involving a chuppah.’ Well, this time we have come to announce a beth din involving a mikvah.”

On that prior occasion, I had spent the better part of the trip from DC to Baltimore wrapping my vocal cords around the unfamiliar sounds of simcha (literally “happiness”) and chuppah (literally a “canopy” or “covering”). Simcha as a Hebrew and Yiddish noun, means “festive occasion.” Any celebration is a happy occasion, especially a wedding, or engagement. The chuppah in a Jewish wedding ceremony is a covering stretched over four poles which symbolizes the home of the couple to be wed and under which the wedding ceremony is performed. To me, at the time, the words sounded more like a Mexican fast food dish with salsa.

Willie’s eyes welled up immediately on hearing beth din, a Jewish religious court consisting of a rabbi and two observant men which, among other things, presides over a conversion. A mikvah, is a ritual bath designed for one of its purposes to be used for the ritual immersion in Judaism in connection with a conversion. Without doubt, the Christian ritual of baptism can be traced to the mikvah. He glanced at me, and said wryly, “I assume that someone is thinking about a conversion.”

He seemed so relaxed and unsurprised that Sarah and I suspected that either the rabbi or his assistant had somehow tipped him off. This seemed more likely since the rabbi’s assistant, a close and longtime friend of Willie, had been over for a visit earlier the same day. But our suspicions were misplaced, evident by Willie’s reaction when he found out that she and the rabbi had been part of our little conspiracy.

Then Sarah said to Willie, “Any questions?” To which Willie said, “I suppose the obvious one, ‘Why?’”

Sarah had that look she always gets when she knows that I am operating without a script over which she has editorial approval. Returning to the theme of the simcha and the chuppah, I said that we had been talking about our ten year anniversary and the possibility of renewing our wedding vows. That conversation and other things over the last several months had started me thinking about our life together, past, present and future. “But a lot of the decision had to do with my respect and admiration for you, Willie, and my desire to have you be part of the studies leading to conversion. Assuming, of course, that are you willing to play that role.”

At this point he surprised us both. “I had been thinking about this for a long time. I was wondering whether we could all be together. I used to cry about it; I really did. I was so worried that Sarah would be without you in the cemetery and we would not all be together.” Though our eyes were welled up with tears, we all then burst out laughing. So it was about the real estate after all!

MEET THE RABBI

MEET THE RABBI (Dec 23, 2009)

We set out for Potomac at 7:45 am, allowing extra time for weather and traffic. The record-breaking snowfall had not yet been completely cleared from many major road ways, and even the plowed routes had dangerous patches of black ice as well as an over abundance of twittering/cell-phoning drivers with little or no experience with these kind of weather conditions.

My wife, Sarah, had prepared a briefing folder the night before consisting of three of the Rabbi’s High Holiday sermons (downloaded from the synagogue website) and the directions from Map Quest. We made unusually good time, so stopped at the Potomac Village crossroads for coffee and a grain shovel (much better for heavy snow than a standard snow shovel). Even with the stopover, we arrived at the synagogue about fifteen minutes early.

We could see the rabbi in a large meeting room leading his Wednesday morning minion, so we wandered around the synagogue to get a feeling for the place. A fairly new structure nestled in a wooded neighbor hood, the buildings seemed to blend into the surroundings. We learned later that the architect was a member who lived not too far away.

Rabbi MW of my wife’s family’s “modern orthodox” synagogue in Baltimore recommended this place, even though Rabbi SW was conservative and had come to the conservative stance from a reform starting point. The rabbis knew each other well and for many years. Judaism offers, to the newcomer, a bewildering number of variations that, for most purposes, are lumped into three large “denominations”: orthodox, conservative, and reform. I suspect the Baltimore rabbi directed us toward a conservative synagogue primarily because of his close friendship with Rabbi SW but also because men and women do not sit together at orthodox services. That logistical fact would make it impossible to have Sarah’s guidance in many aspects of the service.

After looking into the sanctuary, the library, and reading the names on the tree of life, we found the rabbi’s office and checked in with his assistant. She had been extraordinarily friendly and helpful a few days before in providing information and background on the synagogue. We knew that the rabbi had built this congregation from scratch in 1988 into a politically and socially active group, and that he is highly regarded in the metropolitan area and beyond. We chatted amiably for a few minutes until the rabbi came in from the minion.

We were warmly greeted and welcomed into his study. Other than the referral from the rabbi in Baltimore, he knew nothing about us, so we spent ten minutes on general background – what we did, where we lived, how we met, children, family, our different religious backgrounds – before coming to the point. Why become a Jew? Why now?

Sarah was a little afraid (with probable cause) that I would respond to this question in a semi-humorous way, my usual entre to a more serious discussion, after the modus operandi of Socrates. When she first put the question to me a few days earlier, my deflections consisted of “It’s about the real estate,” referring to the unoccupied burial plots that her father held for the family in the Baltimore synagogue cemetery. This particular family joke owed its origin to a dear, and recently departed, Czech friend when I first met him at a dinner we hosted at our home soon after we married. “So,” he deadpanned while looking around the house, “You married her for the real estate.” It took me two beats to adjust to his very dry Czech sense of humor (two orders of magnitude beyond conditions in the Mojave Desert} before I said, “Sure. That’s it.”

We had, when our mothers passed away a year apart, discussed the fact that only Jews could be buried in a Jewish cemetery, so if we were to be together through eternity we needed to find a Christian cemetery immediately adjacent to a Jewish cemetery, and arrange for plots along the boundary, one on each side. Such places actually exist! Amazing how the marketplace solves problems of this sort.

The joke, of course, reflects a deeper purpose. We were married in Baltimore nine years ago in a ceremony performed by a reform rabbi and having all of the outward appearances of a Jewish ceremony, except for the critical words, “under the laws of Moses.” Another joke could be made at this point: “I wanted to make her an honest woman.” And it would also reflect a deeper purpose.

When my wife’s mother Sophie passed away, my wife assumed the ritual Sophie had long conducted of lighting the candles and saying the prayers with Willie, to begin the Sabbath at sundown on Friday. The observance took place in Baltimore and Washington, with the prayers said over the phone and sometimes, when we were traveling, at points around the world – Prague, Paris, Rome, Rapid City to name a few. I also gained a deep respect for Willie, who seemed to me to effortlessly “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” This had become my spiritual family.

Inspired by this simple act of honoring her father and the memory of her mother, I began something similar with my mother (at half time on a Super Bowl Sunday), which I called “telephone church.” Starting with Genesis, I would pick a passage, read it along with her, then ask her some questions. This worked, even though she was having short-term memory problems at the time. Talking about things she had learned when young could lead to a current, real-time conversation.

She was curious to know why I was suddenly reading the Bible with her now. To keep her curious, I evaded answering the question for almost two months, when at last I explained to her the Sabbath ritual of Sarah and Willie. Her reaction, without any sense of irony: “I have always loved that Sarah. She will make a good Christian of you yet!” In my mother’s world, being a good Christian had very little to do with theology and everything to do with a nurturing kindness to everyone she knew and an unerring sense of doing the right thing in all circumstances.

I told this story to Rabbi SW, and also described a little of the family history, noting in particular that both of our families spent a century in Czarist Russia, a few hundred kilometers apart in Ukraine. Both families knew the horrors of the rise of Slavic nationalism and as a result, emigrated to the United States -- my father’s family from the Black Sea region near Odessa in the 1870 to 1880 time frame and my father-in-law from a village near Kiev in 1920. The family of Sarah’s godchildren emigrated at the same time as my father’s family from a nearby village outside Odessa to a village less than 10 miles away from where my great grandparents homesteaded in the Dakotas.

Apart from the historic and geographic connection, I was struck from the beginning at the shared values of hard work and high ethical standards that each of us received as our family heritage. In my case it was the natural by-product of at least seven generations of Pietist Lutheran observance and rigorous religious instruction. In Sarah’s case, innumerable generations of Orthodox Jewish observance. I was also struck by the fact, but did not mention, that most of the Yiddish expressions I had heard were variations of the German dialect and the idioms of the language that my grandparents and my father spoke.

The rabbi summed it up by saying, “Pretty much the same history, except for the anti-semitism.” I did not respond, though I could have recounted to him the horrors visited on the 1,000,000 or so Black Sea and Volga Germans whose lands were confiscated, whose woman were raped, whose families were exiled to slave labor camps in Siberia and literally worked to death, whose villages were pillaged and whose leaders were executed prior to and during World War I and World War II. See, The Great Terror by Robert Conquest. I could also have told the stories of those Black Sea Germans who took into their families and sheltered Jewish families from the even greater atrocities visited on them by the invading Germans, or the horrors that followed World War II when Black Sea Germans and Jews alike were forced to return to the miserable and hostile conditions in Russian controlled territories from which they had just fled. But, of course, nothing compares to, or should be compared to the incomprehensible evil of the mass genocide that was the Holocaust.

The rabbi then moved to the attention grabber of the meeting. “It is my duty as a rabbi to shun you, discourage you from converting, and to refuse you three times,” he said, “And then embrace you, if go ahead anyway.” I could not resist. “I have had experience with this, having proposed to Sarah three times, before she stopped objecting to the form of the question.” “Then you know what I mean,” he said, enjoying the joke.

First, he raised the issue that most deeply divides and defines the difference between Christianity and Judaism: the divinity of Jesus. The divinity of Jesus, as special and distinct from the divinity of all mankind as the children of God, had always perplexed me, so much so that it came close to derailing my confirmation when I raised the question with the wife of our Methodist minister in confirmation classes. I had noticed very different formulations among the four gospels, with Mark being the closest to what I perceive as a continuation of one strand of Jewish theology in the teaching of Jesus: namely, the recognition that, since all men are children of God, the love of your neighbor as yourself is essentially equivalent to the love of God. I told the story to the rabbi.

Second, he turned to the observances of Judaism, notable among them the attending services (Shabbat) and the ceremonial circumcision for men who are already circumcised (hatafte dam bit), and the purifying immersion in water (mikvah)-- the antecedant of Christian baptism.

Third, we discussed the logistics and the time required for completion of conversion classes and learning some rudimentary Hebrew, the involvement of the rabbi as my sponsor, working with my father-in-law on some of the material, and other practical aspects. We decided that Sarah would attend classes with me and that we would attend Shabbat services in Potomac, except when attending in Baltimore, with conversion classes taking place in conjunction with another synagogue in DC.

The rabbi gave us a list of books to get started with, and we were on our way in the next journey of our lives together.

IN SEARCH OF PETER BELL: THE SCOT HYPOTHESIS

IN SEARCH OF PETER BELL: THE SCOT HYPOTHESIS

A comment was recently posted on the piece Obama and the Bells:

Mark said...
I've noticed that you're a descendant of captain Peter Bell and was wondering if you could give me your take on what I've heard. I heard a few years ago that the brothers Peter and Anthony Bell were actually from Scotland and were only residing in Germany just before coming to Maryland. I haven't been able to verify this but it could be plausible if they were part of the thousands that left Scotland after "the '45". This was the last of the Jacobite rebellions and the one in which the movement was utterly crushed at the battle of Culloden, resulting in the exodus of tens of thousands out of Scotland and northern England. Most ended up in Europe and a lot ended up in Germany. A huge portion of these people had military experience and that could explain why Peter Bell became a captain in the revolution so quickly. I always thought it unusual that two not-so-young unmarried brothers would just pick up and leave Germany for America. Also the Bells have a very long history in Scotland. I hope to find some evidence of the history of these two brothers some day but am becoming very discouraged.
June 20, 2009 1:13 PM

As far as I have been able to tell, the first statement of what I call the “Scot hypothesis” was advanced by Colonel Fielder M.M. Beall in Colonial Families of the United States Descended from the Immigrants: Bell, Beal, Bale, Beale, Beall (1927). The putative genealogical basis for this claim involved, among other things, the undocumented assumptions that: (1) the father of Anthony and Peter Bell was also named Anthony; (2) they also had brothers Daniel and Joseph; (3) belonged to a family that had settled in Old Sommerset before 1700. Fielder Beall’s work in this and many other areas has been severely criticized by professional genealogists for the obvious reasons.

Setting aside the faulty work of Fielder Beall, I think that the Scot hypothesis suffers from several major difficulties:

Religion: Peter and Anthony Bell are associated in every aspect of their documented history with the Evangelical Lutheran Church. They took communion as a condition of naturalization in that church. Peter Bell married the daughter of Johann Friederich Vogeler, one of the constitutional founders of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hagerstown, under which Peter Bell was buried. (The signature of a Johann Friederich Vogeler also appears earlier in 1747 as a founder of the Monocacy Evangelical Lutheran Church near Frederick, Maryland.) Anthony Bell and Peter’s oldest son Frederick were prominent contributors and officials within the Evangelical Lutheran Church founded in part from their contributions in Leitersburg. Frederick Bell also contributed to the establishment and maintenance of other Evangelical Lutheran Churches and even the churches of other dissident protestant sects, such as the Mennonites. It seems unlikely to me (though not impossible) that soldiers formerly fighting for a Catholic king would be so deeply immersed in the establishment of an evangelical protestant sect.

Language: The language of church, school and partly the business community of the Bell brothers and their descendants continued to be German until the mid-1800’s. The signatures of Anthony Bell, Johann Friederich Vogeler and Frederick Bell all follow German orthography. I have not yet found an exemplar for the signature of Peter Bell. We know that Frederick Bell had, for the time, a rather extensive library and subscribed to a German language bible.

Marriages: Anthony took to wife Maria Schneeberger (Snowhill), the German speaking Swiss daughter of Hans Schneeberger, described in Swiss records as a religious fanatic. As noted above, Peter was married to a Vogeler daughter, the other two Vogeler daughters being wed to Leiters, whose father had converted from the Mennonite sect to Evangelical Lutheran. In the next several generations, the offspring, male and female, made marriages within the German speaking community whose ancestors trace back to the Rhineland Palatinate and to the German speaking regions of Switzerland. As far as I have been able to research the other lines, very few marriages occur among the Scot, Irish or English population in the second, third and fourth generations. I would expect a different distribution if the Bell line originated in Scotland, Ireland or England.

Military Experience: Keeping in mind that captains of militia were elected and the ability to outfit and recruit followers often trumped military training, we should not feel compelled to find a military background in either of the Bell brothers. However, if such training existed, it might have come from a closer and more relevant conflict, the French and Indian War which ended almost exactly when the Bell Brothers first appear in colonial records. We know that the Swiss born British mercenary, Colonel Henry Bouquet, recruited his countrymen both at home and after arrival, and then trained and marched the assembled army through Virginia and the western parts of Maryland before engaging for the decisive battles in Pennsylvania. Another notable colonel, George Washington, was also involved in this action and came to have a fairly high estimation of the German speaking soldiers in the command, which carried over to the Revolutionary War. Another tantalizing possibility stems from the existence of a Bell family line descending from the 1709 Palatine migration to the Mohawk Valley in New York. Part of that group was also involved in the Canadian expedition of the French and Indian War. Some of the 1709 families eventually ended up among the Monocacy congregation near Frederick, Maryland, and were among the signers on the constitution of that church. Incidentally, several of those Mohawk Valley families were also involved in the Pennsylvania-Maryland border skirmishes that preceded the establishment of the Mason-Dixon line, which marks the northern boundary of the Bell brothers original homesteads. Perhaps they were part of the felling crew that created the vista through the woods in which they came to reside.

Land Purchase: The Bell brothers purchased their land from Peter Scheiss, another German speaking immigrant who preceded them. Where did they get the money? Anthony Bell may have had access to the proceeds of his wife's Landreit from Canton Bern. Peter Bell bought a larger tract for a larger sum of money. It is also clear from the inventory list of his probated estate that he was some kind of tradesmen and, perhaps, operated a mercantile establishment in addition to his farm, also located adjacent to a major trade/migration route for German speaking populations landing at Philadelphia and moving west and south through the Shenandoah Valley.

Family History: None of the documents contemporary to the Bell brothers hint of any non-Germanic origin or strong association with Scotland or Ireland. The muster rolls for Peter Bell’s and Anthony Bell’s companies are almost devoid of any names that are not clearly traceable to the Palatinate. Those militia companies were adjunct to and may have been subsumed in the German Regiment in the Battles of Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown in the year immediately preceding Captain Peter Bell's death, presumably because of the rigors of the campaign. Subsequent family history prior to 1900 by one descendant points to Alsace. The best overall (though sometimes mistaken) account by Herbert Bell in The History of the Leitersburg District refers to Peter Bell as coming from Germany as a young man and says that Anthony Bell learned his trade in Weisbaden, but neglects to mention the name of the trade.

Bell Pottery and Housing: Shenandoah red ware, a variation of which at least three of the Bells in the second generation significantly advanced, had its origin in the Palatinate. It seems doubtful to me, but not impossible, that Scot soldiers of fortune or exiles might have picked up the knack and become sufficiently skillful to advance and pass on the technology to the succeeding generations. More likely, given the similarity to pottery glazing techniques associated with the Strasbourg area, the craft was learned there at some level, and came with the Bell brothers to Maryland. As to the original home of Peter Bell, which still stands on Bell’s Choice just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, it embodies the classical German stone construction found in the Rhineland and throughout Maryland German settlements. The house was, according to Herbert Bell, begun by Peter and completed by oldest son Frederick.