Embracing My Inner Jew: A Brief History of the Friedlanders

Mary (Frazier) Freeland and Albert Luke Freeland

I got back my DNA results from ancestry.com a few months ago. Ancestry performs a type of test called autosomal DNA. I'll be writing about DNA testing in another post. DNA testing for genealogy is really very new and exciting.

One of the things autosomal testing does pretty well is figure out your ancestral roots. My results were not too surprising. I'm more than 50% "Western European," and another 28% British/Irish. No Native American, but a dash of Greek/Italian and Middle Eastern, leavened with Caucasian (the region, not the race) and Scandinavian.

One fraction that came in right where I expected it: I am 1/8th Ashkenazi Jew. (Ashkenazi is the name of the Jews of Europe.) Both of my law partners have tested, and both were surprised to find that they too have some Ashkenazi Jewish blood. We now refer to one another as "our people" in the firm, unlike the goyim in the outfit. One of my partners found he also has a smidgen of Gypsy blood. He says, "I may steal your wallet, but I will invest the money wisely." We get to make jokes like that because we are Yiddishe.

But I digress.

Mary Frazier Freeland and Albert Luke Freeland

Friedlander -> Freelander -> Freeland

My most recent Jewish ancestor is my great-grandfather, Albert Freeland. Albert married Mary Frazier in 1902. Albert was born in 1865 in a village called Megyaszó, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Albert's last name at birth was Friedlander. He Anglicized the name to Freeland in two stages. At the time of his marriage (and, by family lore, at the request of his bride, Mary,) Albert changed his last name to Freelander (with the -er still on the end.) That is how the name was spelled when he got married to Mary. Here's their marriage record (look at marriage no. 1261.)

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Paul were both born with the last name Freelander. Sometime after Paul was born in 1906, the name changed to just Freeland. This was around the time Mary and Albert moved to Omena, which is where Uncle Paul was born.

Roots in Hungary 

There were two large Jewish families who lived around Megyaszó, the Liebmans and the Schwartzs. These names were later Anglicized to Loveman and Black.

Though the names are German, probably the first language for the children in these families was a language called Magyar, the native tongue of Hungary. If you want to hear what Magyar sounds like, go here and click on any of the files.

The Blacks were relatively well off, the Lovemans somewhat less so, but the families were good friends with one another and intermarried. The Blacks hired a tutor for their children and invited the Lovemans to attend. 

The tutor's name was Adolph Friedlander. 

Adolph fell in love with one of the girls in the Black family, Ernestine. They later married and had eight children. Their first child was a girl named Carrie (Caroline), born in 1850. Great-grandfather Albert was number six, born in 1865.

Carrie married a Loveman, and later had a daughter, May. (May and several other Lovemans are in the genealogy section of Aunt Ruth's book, Omena.) May had no children of her own, but had a niece and nephew, David and Ann. May wrote a lovely letter to David and Ann several decades ago which describes life in Hungary and many details of the immigration. Read it here. (Thanks to our cousin Phil Morehead for hosting the letter.) I like to read the letter with a slight Yiddish accent.

Immigration to America

Most of the Blacks, Lovemans, and Friedlanders immigrated to the United States during the mid- 

and late 19th century. The Blacks mostly went to Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio, and formed a very successful coat manufacturing company. The Friedlanders (including our branch of that family) mostly went to Chicago, Illinois. The Lovemans went to both places, and a few went south to Nashville.

The first immigrant of any of the families was Morris Black, who came over in about 1850 (thanks, Aunt Dianne!) Like many immigrant families, everyone didn't come over at once. They came in fits and starts, sometimes ones and twos, over a couple decades. 

I got very lucky the other day and found a record of what I believe may have been the first of our Friedlanders to come over. Here is a bit of the ship's manifest from the Bremen S.S. America which arrived in New York 9 Nov 1865:

Passenger no. 9 on this snippet is a Miss Caroline Friedlander, age 14. There were and are plenty of Caroline Friedlanders, of course, though this one seems to correspond with our Carrie's age at the time. 

The thing that I believe clinches that this is our Carrie is the name above hers - Lazar Schwartz. Lazar Schwartz was the father - the Papa - of the Schwartz/Black family, and is my 3rd ggrandfather. I think Lazar, 62, came to America with his granddaughter, Carrie, 14. Carrie was the first of the eight children of Adolph and Ernestine (Black) Friedlander. She came to America the same year my great-grandfather, Albert, was born.

Albert and many more of the family came over in 1876, America's centennial. Some of the family returned to Hungary again a few years later, and on the return exchanged their second-class tickets for steerage so they could afford to bring even more of our family over. This is all in Aunt May's letter.

Here's a photo of some of the Friedlander family. My guess is that this was taken in the 1890s or so.

Aunt Dianne has hazarded some guesses about some of the people in the photo, but has positively identified the older woman as Ernestine (Black) Friedlander, my 2nd ggmother.

Not all of our family made it out of Europe, and several were killed in the Holocaust. Thankfully, Great-grandpa Albert made it out long before the slaughter began. He lived a long life, and enjoyed his grandchildren very much. I know the feeling.

Our People
Rossie, Albert, Autumn, Cinda, Bob