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 mother to care for him, Ben lived alternately with Chaika in Worcester and Feige in Trenton. Sometime around 1917-1918, Lazer moved to Trenton and worked at the Trenton Watch Company with Yoine. While there he met and married Sarah Laden (originally, Sura Ladyzhinsky), daughter of Joseph and Golde Laden, at 10 pm on a Saturday night in May 1918, with "John Bogage" of 191 Locust Street as a witness.Talk:Early Life in America
By 1919, Lazer was back in Worcester where he was selling curtains door-to-door. Behind one of those doors was Rebecca Fishman, a forewoman in a waist (women's shirt) factory, and her family. Becky and her family (her widowed mother Ester and brothers Nathan and David) had immigrated in 1906, two years after her mother's younger sister Golda/Gussie had immigrated to New York with her husband. It's not clear why Ester brought her family to Worcester, but by 1930 she had moved them to the Bronx, not far from Golda and her family. Talk:Early Life in America
Lazer and Becky were married in Worcester on February 9, 1920, and by 1922, he had moved his small family (Becky and Ben) to Trenton.
Trenton
Caroline (Croyna, named after her father's mother) was born in 1924 followed by Joseph Solomon (named after both grandfathers) two years later. Marion Theresa, born in 1929, died three days after her birth.
The three decades in Trenton were challenging. Lazer worked in a number of different jobs, mostly as a collector and/or salesman. In 1926 his occupation was listed in the city directory as "ice cream parlor." Talk:Trenton On the 1930 census, his occupation was listed as a collector for a poultry store. In the 1940's, he worked for Kaplan's, a retail clothing store in Trenton. The tell-tale sign of their economic instability, however, was the fact that during this period, the family moved across the city, from one rental unit to another. Talk:Trenton