The First Jews to Find Grinnell

Four years ago I posted a story about the Daniel Berman family who were, I thought, the first Jews to live in Grinnell. It turns out, however, that I was wrong about that. Thanks to a note from a reader of that post, I learned about two more Jewish families who found Grinnell a few years before Daniel Berman did. When I carried the investigation further into the late nineteenth century, I learned about yet another Jewish family that took up residence in Grinnell as early as 1900. Today's post considers these pioneering Jewish families and their history in early Grinnell.

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Few if any of the 3000 or so people living in late nineteenth-century Grinnell knew a Jew; certainly there were no Jews then living in Grinnell. Of course, the overwhelmingly Christian population of town, schooled in the Christian scriptures, knew about Jews and the Jewish world into which their Jesus had come, but all that had happened almost two thousand years earlier; Jews in the contemporary world were largely unknown. By the 1880s, however, more than forty Iowa towns had welcomed Jewish immigrants (Michael J. Bell, "'True Israelites of America': The Story of the Jews in Iowa," Annals of Iowa 53 [Spring 1994]:96). The most important of these for Grinnell was Muscatine, Iowa.

Later made one of the Midwest destinations for immigrants who passed through the hands of the Industrial Removal Office, Muscatine before 1900 had already attracted a small group of Eastern European Jews (Simon Glaser, The Jews of Iowa [Des Moines, 1904], 311-312). Most of the early arrivals hailed from Leckava, a small town in Kovno gubernia of the late Russian Empire. The 1897 Russian census reported that Leckava had a population of about 1100, some 800 of whom were Jews. Some of Leckava's Jews reached Muscatine in the 1880s, hard on the heels of the pogroms that flared up in the early 1880s in Russia's Pale of Settlement. How Muscatine attracted immigrants from Leckava is unknown. But the first arrivals soon summoned relatives and neighbors, providing the Muscatine newcomers reminders of their previous home in Europe. As one report noted, "The village of Latskivoh [the Russian name for the village-DK] in the Kovno district of Lithuania seems to have had a direct pipeline to Muscatine, Iowa...." 

Google Map showing Distance Between Klaipeda and Leckava (about 80 miles)

Among the Leckava Jews who reached Muscatine were two brothers, Marcus Louis Urdangen (1873-1918) and Barney Urdangen (1864-1934). I did not find ship's manifest from either brother's immigration, but the two men later told census-takers that they had arrived in the US around 1890. Louis, as he generally called himself, is the first to appear in Poweshiek County records. Together with Ed Greenberg (1873-1936), his brother-in-law, Louis founded a dry goods business known as Urdangen and Greenberg. No later than November 1899 the partners had opened their doors in what newspapers called "The Fair building" in central Montezuma; they soon had outposts in several other south central Iowa towns (Grinnell Herald, November 28, 1899). 

Marcus Louis Urdangen (1873-1918)
Oscar Grossheim Photograph (ca. 1901)
(http://www.umvphotoarchive.org/digital/collection/muspl/id/7465/rec/1)

In May 1901 the duo appeared in Grinnell where they rented space on Main Street, planning to open a "general store" (Grinnell Herald, May 3, 1901). The Golden Eagle, as they named their new Grinnell business, offered "a complete line of Clothing, Gents' Furnishings and shoes" (ibid., May 28, 1901).

Advertisement from the Grinnell Herald, May 31, 1901

Almost from the beginning, however, the newcomers ran into trouble. When, early in their occupation of the Corrough Building at 4th and Main, they declined to assume the five-year lease of the previous tenant, despite the owner's understanding that they had so agreed, the owner took them to court. Urdangen and Greenberg lost the argument, and were obliged to find replacement space, promptly reopening their store in the 900 block of Main Street, just a few steps from their previous address. Here the Golden Eagle resumed its advertising, dangling sales and low prices before Grinnell consumers. Business must not have met expectations, however, because by mid-November the local newspaper reported that Urdangen and Greenberg,were transferring their stock to Albia, "because they cannot oversee their stores in so many towns" (ibid., November 19, 1901).

Corrough Building, 901 Main Street (ca. 1905)
(Digital Grinnell)

So far as I could learn, neither Louis Urdangen nor his partner, Ed Greenberg, ever lived in Grinnell, even when operating the Golden Eagle in town. The 1900 US census reports that Louis Urdangen was then boarding at a Montezuma hotel and Greenberg, who in 1898 had married Urdangen's sister, Grace (Gute Freide) (1878-1946), was also resident in Montezuma. 

One member of the Urdangen family, however, was resident in 1900 Grinnell: Barney, the older brother to both Louis and Grace. The 1900 US Census found Barney, his wife Mollie (Malke; 1863-1952), and their five oldest children living at 511 Third Avenue, just south of the railroad tracks between Spring and Pearl Streets. Barney told the census official that he had arrived in the US in 1889, had later been naturalized (although I could not find this record), and was working as a "junk buyer" in Grinnell. The three oldest children—Libbie (Racha Liba) (1886-1940), Anna (Chana) (1888?- ), and Rebecca (Riwka) (1890?- )—had all been born in Russia. Golda (1895?-1918) was their first child born in America, followed by Louis J. (1898-1968). Esther (1901?-1933), Archie (1903-1964), Grace (1904- ), Harry (1906?- ), and Charlie (1909-1965) were all born in Grinnell. (Ethel [1910-1992] and an unnamed daughter [1913-1913] were later born in Muscatine.) Historical records reveal little about the children except that newspaper accounts of school honor-rolls regularly mentioned Golda and Esther in the years before 1910 when the family returned to Muscatine (see, for example, Grinnell Herald, June 16, 1908, when both girls were identified as honor students at Parker School). Whether any of the older girls attended Grinnell schools I could not learn.

Extract from 1911 Sanborn Insurance Map for Grinnell, Iowa, showing Third Avenue
(https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4154gm.g026731911/?sp=13&st=image)

Grinnell's newspaper at first had nothing to say about Barney Urdangen, even though Barney was then resident in town and operating a scrap metal business. It was brother Louis whose commercial enterprises attracted the newspaper's occasional attention.

Undated (ca. 1930?) Photograph of Barney Urdangen
(https://www.geni.com/people/Barney-Urdangen/6000000013903234386)

Beginning in 1902, however, Barney placed small ads in the Grinnell Herald, alerting readers to his interest in purchasing iron. Sellers could deliver their iron to the business premises "south of the Carriage Factory," referencing the Spaulding factory just north of the railroad and west of West Street. 

Grinnell Herald, April 22, 1902

Business seems to have prospered, because Urdangen began the 1903 calendar by advertising a new undertaking which he added to his scrap metal enterprise. Opening a "New and Second-hand Store" on Commercial Street, "Opp. Herald Office," Urdangen was still soliciting scrap for his yard on Third Avenue, but he also advertised "an entirely new line of goods: Men's Clothing and Furnishings, Boots and Shoes, Tinware, and most anything you want at prices that defy competition." At the same site Urdangen offered "second-hand goods," including "household goods, stoves and articles of all kinds" (Grinnell Herald, January 2, 1903). 

Extract of Page 6 of 1898 Sanborn Insurance Map of Grinnell, IA
(https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4154gm.g026731898/?sp=6&st=image)

About a month later he purchased the building on Commercial Street from which he ran his second-hand shop. The local newspaper reported that Urdangen planned to add a third story and rebuild the front, but the new owner seems never to have completed these improvements, as today's building still has just two stories (Grinnell Herald, May 15, 1903).

2015 Google Street view Photo of building that was formerly 806 Commercial,
home to Barney Urdangen's Second-Hand Store

An indication of Urdangen's success was the growing list of properties he purchased. In May 1904 he acquired title to the building across the street from his store, immediately renting it out to John Spencer, a local African American contractor (ibid., May 3, 1904; ibid., June 7, 1904). In early 1905 Urdangen bought the W. W. Stowe office building at the corner of Main and Commercial (ibid., February 24, 1905) and in May 1906 purchased the old Grinnell House at the corner of Main and Fourth, telling reporters that he intended to remodel the building to install a restaurant on the north side and use the south side for his second-hand store (ibid., May 8, 1906; ibid., June 12, 1906). This plan must have stimulated Urdangen to trade his original property on Commercial to John Hatcher of Brooklyn, giving Urdangen property in Malcom, too (ibid., January 26, 1906). Hatcher later complained about the deal, which apparently was reversed, because soon Urdangen's newspaper ads reported his business at the old address, "across from the Herald office."

Grinnell Herald, May 20, 1910

The 1910 tax assessments for street paving provide a handy summary of Urdangen's holdings. According to the list, Barney Urdangen owned two properties on the west side of Main Street and one on the east side of Main, as well as land on the north side of Commercial and the north side of Fourth Avenue. "Barney Urdangen," the newspaper observed, "has recently become quite a large holder of Grinnell downtown property." His total assessment came to $1,483.85, one of the highest totals among local landowners (ibid., May 20, 1910).

Amid these successes Barney encountered occasional difficulties. In September 1902, little Esther—who was only about 18 months old—evidently wandered from the family home adjacent to the railroad tracks and was struck by a passenger train coming into town from the west. Observers initially feared that the little girl had been killed, but subsequent examination discovered only a broken arm and several broken ribs (ibid., September 19, 1902; see also Marshalltown Evening Times-Republican which reported the girl as dead [September 18, 1902]). She recovered, although her parents must have been badly shaken by the accident.

Other troubles concerned the business. When a fire on Main Street erupted in the middle of the night in April 1903, a burglar took advantage of the distraction to enter Urdangen's Commercial Street store where he stole "about two hundred dollars' worth of...watches, watch chains, jewelry, shoes, and some clothing" (Grinnell Herald, April 17, 1903). Early the next year an unidentified man tried to steal some razors, but Barney, emerging from the basement, caught him in the act (ibid., February 23, 1904). In May Urdangen reported that his horse, a "roan mare, about five years old, branded with the letter 'H,'" had "disappeared from Grinnell." Whether the horse had merely strayed or been stolen Urdangen did not say, offering a "liberal reward for her return" (ibid., May 5, 1905). Perhaps the worst news of 1905 was the bankruptcy of his brother Louis, first reported in early May (ibid.; see also ibid., October 27, 1905). 

Advertisement in Grinnell Herald, February 15, 1907

There was also occasional competition for Barney's scrap metal and second-hand business. At least twice over the decade that Urdangen operated in Grinnell Amos Thompson (1852-1921) opened a business that competed directly with Barney. Adam Dunlap (1841-1921) also briefly ran a store for "New and Second-Hand Goods" on Main Street, around the corner from Urdangen's shop (Grinnell Herald, April 10, 1908), but neither of these enterprises seems to have provoked conflict with Urdangen.

2021 Google Street view Photo of 800 E. Eighth Ave., Muscatine, IA

In the run-up to 1910, the Urdangens prepared to abandon Grinnell and return to Muscatine, a decision which must explain the disappearance of Urdangen's Grinnell newspaper advertisements and his concentration upon real estate. The 1910 US census, conducted in late April, has the Urdangens already living at 811 Fifth Street in Muscatine. Barney no longer mentioned his junk business, but told census officials that he lived off his "own income," probably a function of his property investments in Grinnell and Muscatine. For the 1915 Iowa census he described himself as working in "real estate." No later than 1915 the Urdangen family was residing in Muscatine at 800 E. Eighth Avenue, a large building that still stands.

Returning to Muscatine, the Urdangens, who for the previous ten years had lived in Grinnell without a synagogue or other Jews with whom to observe the rituals of Jewish worship, were able to rejoin Muscatine's lively Jewish community. The B'nai Moses Synagogue, first erected in 1893 to serve some thirty Jewish families, now empty and abandoned, remains to confirm the existence of a local Jewish community which provided a warm welcome for the Urdangens' return to Muscatine. Barney spent his last several years in Muscatine where he died in June 1934. Embraced by the local Jewish community, Barney Urdangen took his farewell from the synagogue to which he had contributed. He was laid to rest in Muscatine's Jewish cemetery (Muscatine Journal, June 14, 1934).

Undated Photograph of Abandoned B'nai Moses Synagogue, Muscatine, Iowa
(https://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2014/06/usa-former-iowa-synagogue-up-for-sale.html)

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The departure from Grinnell of Barney Urdangen opened the door for the arrival of another immigrant Jewish family. Just as Barney was closing out his scrap metal business in 1908, Ozer Winer (1877-1955) and his family arrived in Grinnell. The documentary record that explains how Winer found Grinnell remains thin. His first name usually referenced in US documents by the initial H, Ozer told 1910 US census officials that he had immigrated in 1896; his 31-year-old wife, Rizza (Rachel Shpall), told officials that she had reached the United States in 1898, but I could find no record of either arrival. Besides that, the 1910 census reports that the Winers had been married nine years, meaning that they had married around 1901. Their oldest child, Lena, said to be four years old in 1910, was born in Russia, which means that the Winers must have married in Russia and were still resident in Russia in 1905 or 1906. The 1910 census also reports that Max, the family's second-oldest child, was then one year old and had been born in Iowa, meaning that the Winers must have been living in Iowa no later than 1909 or late 1908. 

Undated Photograph of Ozer Winer
(https://www.geni.com/people/Ozer-Winer/2242591)

Winer's name first appears in the Grinnell newspapers in November 1909, when Ozer advertised his junk business at 711 Spring Street, just a block or two away from the site of Barney Urdangen's scrap metal business. Similar ads appear in early 1910, but with a different address: 716 Spring Street, across the street. Sometime that spring Winer purchased a half-lot at 716 West Street, which is where the 1910 US Census officials found him and his family.

Advertisement from Grinnell Herald, November 19, 1909

Apparently other Winer relatives lived in or near Grinnell at the time. For example, Rachel Ozer's sister, Lena Shpall (1881-1965) in 1909 married a Marshalltown man by the name of Samuel Bernstein (1888-1967). According to an Iowa State Affidavit of Delayed Birth Registration, Lena gave birth in Grinnell the following August to a son, Harry Simeon Bernstein. Unfortunately, only these shards of evidence survive to confirm that the Bernsteins resided in Grinnell. No directory or census puts them in Grinnell and the Grinnell newspaper makes no reference to them whatsoever.

Iowa State Department of Health Affidavit for Delayed Birth Registration
December 18, 1941

Local records then fall silent on the Winers, too, who left Iowa no later than 1913 when their third child, Sarah, was born in Colorado. The 1920 US Census found the Winers in Saquache, Colorado where "Henry" was operating a general store. In this document the Winer parents report more credible dates for their immigration, telling census officials that Ozer had reached the United States in 1906 and "Rose," his wife, in 1907; they both reported having become naturalized citizens in 1917. A fourth child, Rebecca, had been born in Colorado in 1918. By this time, however, Grinnell remained but a distant memory for the Winers, who later moved to Louisiana, and then finally to Tel Aviv, Israel where Ozer died in 1955 and Rizza in 1957. The Bernsteins also moved to Colorado at about the same time as the Winers; the 1920 US Census found them living in Denver where Samuel bought hides and wool. Moreover, the census identified their son Aron (elsewhere in the records known as Harry) as having been born in Iowa in 1911, but their next son, Morris, was born in Colorado in 1913. Unlike the Winers, however, Samuel and Lena remained in Colorado where they both died and were buried in Lakewood's Golden Hill Cemetery. 

Advertisement for Greenbaum's Crown Junk Yard
(Grinnell Herald, October 21, 1910)

Overlapping with the Winers in Grinnell was another Jewish family. First identified in Grinnell sources in the spring of 1910 was the family of Sigmund Greenbaum (1884-1970). Sam Green (as he later called himself after legally changing his name) had been born in 1884 in Russian Poland, and had immigrated to the US in 1906 via Stockholm. In New York City he met Gussie Mintz, who had been born in 1882 in Odessa, then also part of the Russian Empire. The couple married in New York in August 1908, and their first child, Emanuel (Manny) arrived a year later. By April 1910, when US census-takers were in Grinnell, the Greenbaums were living at 720 West Street, just one door away from the Winers on the east side of the street. Like their fellow-immigrant neighbors, the Greenbaums operated a junk business, using space at the north end of the block, closest to the railroad tracks and beneath the shadow of a grain elevator.

An Enlargement of a Section of a 1916 Billy Robinson Photograph of Grinnell, Looking South and Showing Grain Elevator in Center; Greenbaum Junk Business Was Located Just to the West and South of the Grain Elevator
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A3291)

But soon the Greenbaums also deserted Grinnell, probably sometime late in 1910. The latest advertisement for Greenbaum's Crown Junk yard appeared in the October 21, 1910 issue of the Grinnell Herald, and in mid-February Mr. and Mrs. P. D. Barton, from whom Greenbaum had purchased the property on West Street, brought suit against him to cancel the arrangement "because of default in payments provided for in said contract..." (Grinnell Register, February 16, 1911). Greenbaums apparently returned to New York, where their second child, Bertha, was born in 1912, but by 1915 they were living in Los Angeles where Sam died in early January 1970.

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Consequently, when Daniel Berman reached Grinnell in 1912, he followed in the wake of several Jewish immigrants who had preceded him to Grinnell. The Urdangens, Winers, and Greenbaums lived and worked in Grinnell for the first decade of the twentieth century, but the record preserves little evidence of how Grinnell's gentile population regarded them. Still, if years later the Bermans heard people call them "kikes," it requires little imagination to suppose that earlier Grinnell residents had behaved similarly.

Even if there was not much overt hatred, family life for Grinnell's first Jewish immigrant families must have been difficult. Instead of the predominantly Jewish, Yiddish-speaking populations of their European home towns where the oldest among them had been born, they found in Grinnell no other Jews with whom to worship or socialize. There was no synagogue, no rabbi for important family events. Only once does the Grinnell newspaper provide some insight into this dilemma, reporting that Barney Urdangen had invited some of Grinnell's gentile movers and shakers to attend the circumcision of his son (unnamed, but probably Archie, who was born in 1903); in addition to the Cedar Rapids rabbi who performed the rite, Urdangen had Rev. E. M. Vittum of the Congregational Church, local physician P. E. Somers, and local banker G. H. Hamlin in attendance. What these men made of the occasion the record does not reveal, but the event certainly signals Urdangen's attempt to reach across the religious and cultural divide that separated him and his family from the rest of the town (Grinnell Herald, October 17, 1905). The news reports no similar event later, although at least two other Urdangen sons (Harry and Charlie) were born while the family was living in Grinnell. Likewise the birth of Max Winer in 1909 left no evidence of making his circumcision public, so perhaps the experiment of reaching out to the gentiles did not go well. 

The scant trace in the news of these first Jewish families in Grinnell is not surprising. If, as seems likely, gentile Grinnell looked on them with suspicion, the Urdangens, Winers, and Greenbaums may well have kept to themselves, as Isadore Berman reported some years later that his family had done:

We went about our own business and ignored the element that would make remarks. And as far as being active in other social functions, we didn't participate in many community functions...and so what we didn't know we didn't miss.

When Barney Urdangen died in 1934 in Muscatine, his obituary overlooked his place of birth (where he had spent more than 25 years) and minimized the decade he had spent in Grinnell. "Mr. Urdangen," the Muscatine Journal said, "came to Muscatine 45 years ago and with the exception of a short period of time spent at Grinnell, had lived all his life here..." (June 14, 1934). Those ten years in Grinnell accounted for almost a quarter of Barney's life in America, but perhaps, given the absence of other Jews in Grinnell, those ten years did seem unimportant and relatively trivial. We know less about how the Winers and Greenbaums thought of their much briefer sojourn in Grinnell, but the brevity of their lives here may be evidence of their dissatisfaction with living in the midst of an overtly Christian small town. But they, along with the Urdangens, had pioneered Jewish settlement in Grinnell, paving the way for the longer Grinnell residence of the Bermans and Bucksbaums who followed them.

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PS. Many thanks to Davida Wood who, on having read the original post about the Bermans and Bucksbaums, wrote to tell me about the Winers, Shpalls, and Bernsteins that I had mistakenly overlooked.