I say “suspect,” because we’ve never been sure.
My grandfather’s sister taught her parakeet to speak Romanian, but she was generally considered by our family to be loony tunes, so that’s not necessarily proof. And the few records we have are conflicting.
We’re not even sure what his name was. We always thought it was George Eridon, but according to his registration at Ellis Island it was Gyorgy Iridon.
But then, Ellis Island was famous for messing up immigrants’ names.
You could leave Germany with the name Otto Schwartz, and by the time you reached Brooklyn, you would be Patrick Mulligan.
Whoever he was, according to another document, my grandfather arrived in 1910 on the steamship Finland, his ethnicity was listed as “Hungary/Roumanian” and his last place of residence was recorded as “Apold, Hungary.”
But the only Apold I could locate online is in Romania.
That doesn’t prove anything either, because borders in Europe back then changed on a regular basis, depending upon whose army was having a better week.
Besides, a later document said he came from Austria on the steamship Findland.
According to my late mother, the first thing that happened to her father when he arrived is that he was snared by a New York con man who informed him that, to become a citizen, he needed to buy a 20-volume set of books called “Messages and Papers of the Presidents.”
We still have that set somewhere, but I’m pretty sure no one in our family ever read any of them, even though there may be some very significant messages and papers in them. Or maybe it’s just stuff like Martha sending a note to George reminding him to pick up a pound of snuff on the way home from the revolution.
My mother also said her father spoke seven languages, but I can’t say for certain that Romanian was one of them because no one else in the family spoke it.
Except, I suppose for my batty great-aunt and her parakeet.
I probably need to do more research into my genealogy, but I’m really not that motivated.
I’m not nearly as interested in where my ancestors came from as I am in where my descendants are going.
Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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