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| 1906 passenger list for Mendel Brainin |
Mendel Hertz Brainin, my great-great-grandfather, arrived at the port of New York on April 17, 1906 on the S.S. Gneisenau. He departed from Bremen on April 5. As I did with my great-great-grandfather Avigdor Gorodetsky, I will go through and analyze all of the information on his passenger list pages.
As I believe was the case for all of my immigrant Jewish relatives, he traveled in steerage. He appears on line 25 on the page above. Over the number 25 is a stamped word, "ADMITTED." (We'll talk about that soon.) His name was recorded only as Mendel Brainin; I know the middle name of Hertz from family information. He was 46 years old, suggesting a birth year of about 1859–1860. This is the earliest document I have for him; other documents extend the range for his year of birth to 1863. I do not have any documents for him from the Russian Empire.
He was male and married, and his occupation was shoemaker. If I can ever find any Russian documents for him, that's not a common trade, so it will be helpful information. He was able to read and write; I'm sure he could write in Hebrew, as he later worked as a rabbi. Maybe he could read and write in Russian also.
He was a citizen of Russia (well, maybe) and of the Hebrew race, meaning he was Jewish. Somewhat surprising to me, he seems to be the only Jewish person on this list, or certainly the only one designated as such. Half the people on the page are "Kovak" and from Hungary, but I don't know of an ethnicity by that name; Kovak to me is a blacksmith. Others are German, Magyar (Hungarian), Bohemian, Croatian, and Polish. Hmm, that Croatian is a little out of his native area.
Mendel's last residence was Kreuzburg, Russia, which is now Krustpils, Latvia. Everyone in this branch of my family said they were from Kreuzburg when they came here, but I still haven't found any documentation from the old country to substantiate it. Mendel's destination was New York. His ticket was for that destination, and it was paid for by his son.
He had $3 in his possession. He had never been to the United States before.
The person to whom he was going was his son Max Brainin at 236-34 (I think) 103 Street, New York. Max, whose Jewish name was Nachman, was the oldest son and the first family member to make the trip to the Goldene Medine, arriving in August 1904.
The next six columns are ditto marks for Mendel and for everyone on the page except the person on the first line, indicating that they have not been prisoners, in an almshouse, in an institution for the insane, or supported by charity; they're not polygamists; they're not anarchists; they're not coming due to some agreement to work in the United States; their mental and physical health is good; and they are not deformed or crippled. Hooray, everyone is in great shape!
And that's the end of the passenger list. Only one page in early 1906.
Now back to that stamped ADMITTED. That indicates that Mendel was held for some reason and potentially could have been deported, but that the authorities decided to admit him. If there's an ADMITTED, an X, or an SI next to someone's name, you want to look for a page about that detention. Usually I have found them after all the regular pages for the ship manifest, but sometimes they were microfilmed at the beginning.
I did find the page with Mendel on it. It is titled Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry. Sometimes you can find these online by searching in the index for the database, but sometimes the passenger's name is spelled differently on the two pages. If the index doesn't find your person, look at the top of the passenger list for a large, handwritten number. On this page, it's in the upper right and is called List, and it's number 1. Then find the detention pages and look through them manually for your person's name and that number, which will be under Group. (I do not know why it's called List on one page and Group on the other.) Sometimes not all of the detention pages survived, so on occasion you might not find your person at all.
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| 1906 Gneisenau Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry |
Below the page title it shows that this is for the S.S. Gneisenau (N.G.L.), which stands for North German Lloyd. (This Gneisenau is not any of the ones with pages on Wikipedia, but I did find information about it on GGArchives.com.) The official arrival date of the ship into New York was April 15, but this page shows the detainees' arrival as April 17. I have read that sometimes steerage passengers were deboarded later than other passengers. I don't know if they were held on the ship those extra two days or maybe somewhere else.
The columns on this page are different from the regular passenger list. The first column, which has no header, is the passenger's age and sex. For Mendel this is 46 and m. Next is the number of the passenger on this page, which for Mendel is 25. Then is the passenger's name: Brainin, Mendel.
The next three columns correspond to information from the main passenger list: Group number, line number, and number of people in the party. For Mendel these are 1, 25 again (a coincidence?), and 1.
The next column is the Cause of Detention, which is the same for every person on this page: LPC, or "Likely Public Charge." This means that when the passenger was being checked in, someone thought he wasn't going to be able to support himself and was going to end up being supported by the government. Single women, women with children, and young people without trades were routinely held as LPC.
Mendel wasn't very old and did have a trade, so it was a little surprising that he was listed with this reason. But some people have additional information in this field, and Mendel is one of those. The additional comment is "Dr. Cert." Maybe he looked frail or ill.
Next is the column for Inspector, and the name is Bechtel. I noticed that Bechtel was the inspector for the person two lines above Mendel, who also had a comment of "Dr. Cert." Maybe Bechtel was assigned to those specifically.
Next there are several columns under Actions of the Board of Special Inquiry. This section has three subheads: Dep. Excl. [Deportable Excludable], Rehearing, and Admitted. Each of these also has subheads. All three have Date, Page, and Sec'y [Secretary]. Admitted has a fourth, Time. Most people on the page were admitted, including Mendel. The only thing I can read for his line is the date, 4/24, which is written in the page column. The other writing there is too light for me to interpret.
The two sections after Actions are Departmental and Executive Orders, with subheads of Date, Record No., and Orders; and Deported, with subheads of Date, Ship, and Officer. Only one person on this page appears to have been deported. I'm glad it wasn't Mendel.
The last section is Meals, with subheads of Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper. The more meals, the longer the person was held. The arrival date on the page is April 17, and the date given for Mendel's hearing is April 24. His meal numbers are 7 breakfasts, 8 dinners, and 7 suppers. That almost adds up right. I wonder why or how he apparently had two dinners in one day.
Going through this form has made me realize that I have never requested a search for Mendel's Special Inquiry records. I have read many times that most Special Inquiry hearing files did not survive, but that means that some did (such as that of actress Lea Michele's great-grandmother, as discussed on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?). And if I don't ask, I'll never know if Mendel's is one of the surviving files. I think I need to add that to my (long) list of things to do.
As I wrote above, the Special Inquiry page indicates that Mendel arrived on April 17, 1906. Coincidentally, April 17 is the day now celebrated as Ellis Island Family History Day! That date was chosen because one year after Mendel came to this country, on April 17, 1907, the busiest day in the history of Ellis Island apparently took place, with 11,747 people passing through. The day has been celebrated since 2001, when Ellis Island launched online access to passenger lists of people going through the immigration station.
