Jewish Settlers continued

I posted in February 2015 information about Jewish settlers in Cupar. I had very little information at the time. This fall (2016) I received a comment from a G. Paulin which I am including here. I am repeating also the post not including the newspaper ads. Since then a relative of G. Paulin visited our museum in Cupar spending a couple of hours photographing maps etc. Mr. Drabinsky also visited the Jewish cemetery outside of Lipton. I contacted him and he didn't think he would be able to get back this way. Then I gave him contact numbers for the Dysart museum. Now he decided he might make another trip after all. We are all very excited that Mr. Drabinsky is researching Jewish settlers in the Cupar, Dysart and Lipton area and hope he will share what he finds with our museums. I unfortunately have only what I can find in the old Cupar Heralds, sometimes an ad or a reference to an event.

The Cupar Historical Committee made a valiant effort when accumulating information for the Cupar History book to contact Jewish settlers in the Cupar area. Unfortunately the results are minimal, but what they could find was included on page 509.

Since then the internet has come into being and there is information on Jewish settlers around Cupar, Dysart and especially Lipton, but in the future much more needs to be done. Today we are also able to access for free census records of this time.

Small town newspapers can be a wonderful resource, but too often they are overlooked. It requires time. They may contain only a kernel of information, a possible hint, that can lead to something bigger elsewhere. I was not looking for Jewish settlers in Cupar when I found some. They need to be included as part of our 110 years of history.

Sadly there is reference to a news article from 2 March 1910 which attests to the harsh conditions of an isolated farm life, especially for a woman.

I found in the 1911 and 1916 Cupar census a number of Jewish settlers in Cupar who were businessmen. I have included only 4 because I have ads or other information for their businesses. I do not know when they left. Also the census records are rather hard to read. According to the Cupar History book Mr. Nadler was a councillor 1913, and W. Pechet mayor 1921.

From the 1911 and 1916 census records I found the following:

Max Baratz: Roumanian, immigrated to Canada 1902, Hebrew, watchmaker.

William Pechet: Roumanian, immigrated to Canada 1902, Hebrew, merchant.

(for a time Max and William would be in business together)

Leon Nadler: Roumanian, immigrated to Canada 1902, Hebrew, taylor.

(I wondered did these 3 men know each other in the old country)

Samuel Freedman: Russia, immigrated to Canada 1906, Hebrew, liveryman.

Sadly the Pechet and Baratz store would succumb to fire in 1911, and Pechet's store would be destroyed by fire in 1921

We Have No Space

 

 How often have we heard from small museums “we have no space”?

 Maybe its true or we need to rethink the space we have.

 We are fortunate to have a large storage space we rent to people to house their RVs for the winter.

 However there is an used section that contains questionable shelving and wood that is basically beyond useable.
Time to sort through this, and that is exactly what a number of our volunteers have been doing this summer.
 We should have the first phase of our demolition complete before fall.
 Then we have the winter to rethink and plan how we can best utilize the “new found space”

Cupar Cemetery Mapping

Thank you to Linda Nameth for her many hours, actually more like months in her efforts to map and identify names and dates of people in the Cupar Cemetery. She intents to update this map and book once a year as our cemetery continues to have active burials. Thanks to her walkers, Linda and Jim Adam, and Lucille Ermel, who wandered the cemetery trying to identify and record headstones. Our town staff should also be thanked for supplies and computer access.

You can find the cemetery map on the Town of Cupar website.

A kiosk with map and book listing names location in cemetery and birth-death dates, when possible whether cremated or in casket and next of kin is located in the cemetery.

I have spent hours wandering through the cemetery looking for early settlers, finding their headstones and then losing track of where they were the next time I went out. So we now have a vital tool for family members and researchers.

Canada Summer Jobs

We are pleased to once again have received money from Canada Summer Jobs to hire a student for 8 weeks. Our last student Tenashia was with us for 2 summers and this year has been hired by The Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina as a summer student. We welcome this year Shelby who has just finished grade 11. We have kept her busy learning new skills: cataloguing new artifacts, including proper cleaning and storage. She has been scanning our latest collection book, scanning booklets and original photographs, assisting in rearranging displays and helping with our senior's tour. I can not believe 2 weeks has past. 

There are still more assignments to come.

 As we all know, as volunteers, there are quite a few things we always mean to get around to yet never have the time for. For me as a baby boomer I have enjoyed learning and exchanging ideas with a millennial. Hopefully Shelby and I will have time for a computer workshop . She will show me things on Windows 10 and I will show her how Mac functions.