1910

By 1910, the Dubersteins had moved up -- and uptown, to the Bronx, where they resided at 408 E. 140th St. The census that year listed Morris as a "manufacturer, ice cream wafers" -- which fits nicely with the many family stories of his having invented the ice cream cone, or the ice cream sandwich, or something along those lines. Eldest daughter Anna B. (what did the B. stand for? I don't think I ever heard of her having a middle name...) was employed as an "operator, shirtwaists" while her sister Bertha ("Betsy" in the 1900 census and "Breine" on the ship manifest) was working as a milliner in a wholesale store. Jack was a bookkeeper in a coal yard, and Julius -- begininng a long history of family employment -- was keeping the books for his father. The younger children were still at home.

The 1910 census seems to settle the question of where Gerald, the youngest, had been born. In the 1900 census he was listed as having been born in the U.S., but that can't be right, if he was shown on the ship manifest when they came over from Minsk/Hamburg that year. Just another case of the government not quite getting it right ...

Early Days

The Dubersteins landed in NYC in May 1900. Less than a month later their presence was being recorded as part of the 12th decennial census of the United States. When the census takers came around, the 10 of them were living on the Lower East Side, at 203 Monroe St. (The address no longer exists: Monroe St. stops around 176 before running into one of New York's less attractive mid-century public projects just north of the Manhattan Bridge.)

Note that the records do not exactly jive; the census form gives Morris' date of immigration as 1899, not 1900 as implied by the ship's manifest. (But as we will see when we get to 1910, this may have been a one-time mistake.)

Moshe had by then become Morris; Mere (from the ship's manifest) had become Merry, and the children all had new American names. Unsurprisingly as well, they started started to work: Morris as a tailor, Merry as a "domestic" (does this mean she was employed as a housecleaner, or was she simply working at home?) Her youngest, Gerald, was only 4 months, but the older kids went up to 16 -- indeed, Annie, the eldest, was employed as a dressmaker already.