Louis Bogage Family

Early Life in America

Those first years in America were challenging for all of the Eastern European immigrants, but for Louis Bogage it appears to have been especially difficult. Searching for a vocation, he traveled from Worcester to New York City to Trenton and back again. And as the last Boguslavsky sibling to arrive in the US and the only one to come without a spouse, he was also a young man in search of a mate.

By early 1915, he was living in New York City where he found work painting apartments in Harlem and discovered Annie Dobrin, a fellow immigrant from Vitebsk, Russia, who had arrived in the U.S. in 1912. They were married on August 7, 1915, at the Uptown Talmud Torah, and began their married life on East 110th Street. Their child, Benjamin, was born on September 29, 1916. (On Ben's birth certificate, his father's occupation is listed as "pickles" -- he sold pickles.) Annie died at Sydenham Hospital[11] on October 8 from complications of childbirth, termed labor pneumonia.

Without a wife to care for Ben, Lazer enlisted his sister Chaika and, at times, his sister-in-law Feige to help. At one point, he moved to Trenton and worked at the Trenton Watch Company with Yoine. While there he met and married Sarah Laden, daughter of Joseph and Golde Laden, at 10 pm on May 25, 1918, with "John Bogage" of 191 Locust Street as a witness.