I’ve just finished reading Hasia R. Diner’s ROADS TAKEN, which is a thorough and excellent history of the importance of peddling to Jews who left the Pale of Settlement during the Great Migration, and the importance of those peddlers to the development of the communities to which they travelled. It’s a wonderful book but I found it shocking to learn that not just some, but the majority, of Great Migration Jewish immigrants in the US began their journeys with peddling of one sort of another, and most of those begin with pack peddling.
As Hiner notes, peddling was something the new immigrant did in order to build enough capital to do something less arduous and more settled. According to her research, most did so for only a few years, and very few for longer than a decade. They moved on to more settled trades, or became shop keepers or factory owners, often passing on their peddling route to a younger sibling whose emigration they also helped to finance. What I’d thought was a unique family history is, in fact, the history of the first great wave of Jewish migration to the US.
Do you have Jewish forebears who were pack peddlers when they first emigrated (to anywhere) from the Pale of Settlement? I’d love to interview you for my upcoming book. My email is sarah-einstein@utc.edu
I want to collect some of these stories of a collage essay that will be part of the collection. Think of this as an essay in paragraph-length “chapters,” with each chapter sharing an anecdote or piece of family history for a different Jewish family that began their American journey with peddling. I’ve already got a handful of interviews arranged, but I would really like far more… the beauty of this is, I think, it’s sharedness in history, and the more voices, the more that beauty is made apparent.
Do you have a family history of peddling and, if so, would you be willing to do a brief interview with me? Are you part of a Jewish community—in person, virtual, or both—in which you could share this call with others who might have stories to tell? If so, I’d be grateful for your stories and your help in gathering the stories of others for this project.
I don't have any Jewish peddlers in my family. However...
My mom is from the South. She is from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and was not Jewish. My father was descended from the Jews who came from the Pale of Settlement. (I mentioned this in another comment). Growing up, there was a man named Joseph Ney who had a department store in Harrisonburg. Her family shopped there when she was a kid. Years later, after she had moved up north and married my dad, we ended up attending a shul, and there was an old man there who happened to be Ney's nephew! Small world! But I think Ney was a German Jew, he didn't come from the Pale.
My Lewis grandfather came to this country from Lithuania, peddled carpets on his back, bought a donkey/mule and mined for silver (?) in Montana. I remember a picture of the mule. He made his way back to WV where he started a dry goods business with his cousin Sam Samson which somehow turned into Lewis Furniture Co. He made his fortune in real estate. Annette might be a better source for Grande's story.