Browse Items (42 total)

Anna Lavin came with her family from Russia to Philadelphia in 1896 aboard the S.S. Pennland and landed in the immigration station at the foot of Washington Avenue. It was South Philadelphia where her family settled and where Lavin started to work at…

John "Herb" Rudolph (b. 1901), worked at the Stetson factory in North Philadelphia for forty-nine years. In his 1982 oral history interview, Rudolph provided a first-hand account of the changing nature of factory work and of the American hat industry…

In this group interview conducted at the St. Anne’s Senior Center in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, women of Eastern European descent recall growing up in this immigrant neighborhood, recounting episodes from their childhoods,…

In this group interview conducted at the St. Anne’s Senior Center in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, women of Eastern European descent recall growing up in this immigrant neighborhood, recounting episodes from their childhoods,…

Anna Aleski (born circa 1902) emigrated from Poland to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania and eventually moved with her brother to Philadelphia. She recalls in this 1982 interview details from her work life as a teenager, her family life as she raised eight…

Born in 1908, Esther Davalos was born as a third generation American; her family came from Spain and settled in the part of Mexico that later became Texas. After the Mexican Revolution, which her father fought and died in, the family moved to…

Max Tannenbaum (b. 1905) was 7 when his father left Ukraine in 1912 for the United States. For the next decade, Tannenbaum worked to provide for his mother and younger brothers. Conscripted into the Red Army after the Bolsheviks took over Ukraine, he…

Conducted at the Marconi Center in South Philadelphia, this group interview recounts the childhood and adolescent years of three Italian-Americans who grew up in an Italian enclave in Philadelphia. They recall their first jobs, parents' lives in…

Gilda Cemi Cetrullo (b. 1903) was 20 when she left Abruzzi, Italy, to join her parents in Philadelphia, arriving in 1923. In her 1982 interview, Cetrullo talked about her life in Italy and the United States, including her long separation from her…

Born in Austria, Bertha (Sanford) Gruenberg (1888-1987) moved with her family to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1893 and then to Philadelphia in 1910. There, she and her husband volunteered at two settlement houses, joined the Philadelphia Ethical…