Goldfoot Genealogy

According to Polina Olsen's book, The Immigrants' Children, the large group of Eastern European Jews into New York were creating overcrowded slum conditions and unemployment in the Lower East Side. People were concerned that this could cause an antisemitic problem, so the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) founded by trustees of the Baron de Hirsh Fund in 1900 relocated unemployed Jewish workers to Jewish communities in the USA. To do this they recruited local agents and these agents lent settlers money for train tickets. From 1905-1917, Ben Selling was Portland's IRO agent. Portland's Hebrew Benevolent Association helped this agent who located work and housing and then told New York that a spot was available. Many became junk peddlers with money for a horse and wagon lent by the Hebrew Benevolent Association. This must be how my grandfather, Nathan Goldfoot, got his horse and wagon. He and his wife Hattie/Ettie/Addie/ were first in Council, Idaho and married there and their first child, Charles, was born there. Then they moved to Portland, Oregon. His wife's siblings had already married Jewish men who were in Council, Idaho, and that was why she was there. This was largely a mining area. The railroad had just reached Council, and her siblings husbands were merchants there.