Goldfoot Genealogy

A man of our grandfather's day

The town of Telsiai is so old that it dates back to the chronicles of a Crusader Order in 1320.  In 1495, there were Jews living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno totaling 10,000. From 1495 up to 1502, Jews were excluded from Lithuania so were expelled.    By 1529 they received a charter guaranteeing freedom of movement and employment and soon were monopolizing foreign trade and tax-farming.  

Then in 1566 to 1572, the Jewish badge was introduced and Jews were disqualified in courts from giving evidence, always a 2nd class citizen.   

Jews entered this town in the 1600s.  From 1623 to 1764 the "Va'ad Medinath Lita" was established and the Telz community was a subject of the "Kahal" of the Keidan district. They followed the Kahal or 4 kingdoms.   The "four lands" were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Galicia (with Podolia) and Volhynia. The earliest form of the Council was organized in 1514 by Sigismund I the Old and Abraham of Bohemia was put in charge of it.

In 1648 to 1656, 100,000 Jews were murdered in the Chemielnicki massacres next door in Poland and Ukraine.  The Khmelnytsky Uprising, also known as the Cossack-Polish War, the Chmielnicki Uprising, the Khmelnytsky massacre or the Khmelnytsky insurrection, was a Cossack rebellion that took place between 1648 and 1657 in the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the creation of a Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine. Under the command of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, allied with the Crimean Tatars and local Ukrainian peasantry, fought against Polish domination and Commonwealth forces. The insurgency was accompanied by mass atrocities committed by Cossacks against the civilian population, especially against the Roman Catholic clergy and the Jews. Why the Jews?  They're the scapegoats of every situation.      This uprising was led by Chmielnicki (Khmelnitsky) Bogdan (1593-1657) the Cossackleader.  744 communities were wiped out.  The Ukrainians regarded Chmielnicki as anational hero.  

 Swedes had invaded Telz in 1710.  At that time, 2/3 of the population died from epidemics.  By about 1750, the people had established a court in Telz, the start of development and growth the town.

Then in 1758, Telz Jews suffered from "Blood Libels."  A 2nd libel happened in 1827.  In both cases,, the "accused" were released by the court, but as a result, the Jewish population suffered through a period of fear.  They had realized  people were anti-Semitic.  

In 1825, the nobles asked the Tsar to expel the Jews because they....spread diseases....and threatened to rob and to steal....lies describing the opposite of what the Jews were like.  Actually, what was going on was that plots were told by estate owners who saw the Jews as competitors in producing and selling alcohol.  From the records I have found, our great grandfather, Movsha Goldfus (1836-1878) was a distiller, a person or company that manufactures liquor."barrels that the master distiller deems to be of superior quality."  

 His father, Iosel "Josel" Symka ben Yankel Goldfus (1798-1878)  was a 3rd guild merchant. 

By 1791, Telz was granted the Magdeburg  rights of self rule by King Stanislaw-August.  Until the 3rd partition of 1795, Telz was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom.  This was a time when the 3rd division of Poland by the 3 superpowers of Russia, Prussia and Austria had caused Lithuania to become partly Russian and partly Prussian, sort of like Ukraine is today between Ukraine and Russia.  

By 1797, 2,500 people were living in Telz and 1,650 of them were Jews.  It was a town where 66% of the people were Jewish.  

On January 1, 1800 a municipal council was formed in Telz which included 3 Jewish delegates, but by 1804 the Jews were removed from the municipality at the request of the Christian delegates.

Telz fell under Czarist Russian rule in 1802 as part of the Vilna Province (Gubernia) as a district administrative center. Alexander I (Russian:  12 December] 1777 – 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1825) was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first King of Congress Poland from 1815, and the Grand Duke of Finland from 1809 to his death.

 By 1843 it was part of the Kovno Province.  

In 1812, Napoleon's retreating army passed through Telz, leaving their big gun which sat in their park.  

In 1831 the town was damaged during the Polish rebellions and damaged again by more rebellions by 1863. 

In 1843, there were 25 Jewish artisans in Telz:  14 tailors, 10 shoemakers and 1 watchmaker.  Most Jews made their living from commerce, crafts and peddling.  There were also artisans from other communities who would wander, coming to Telz.  Until WWI, there was a strong organization of Jewish artisans, which helped its members with loans for buying raw materials and tools.  There were several who had big businesses of grains and flax and made a good living.  There were also several textile merchants who imported merchandise from Germany, one of the being Ya'akov Rabinovitz. 

"The Great Yeshivah" was a source of income of many families who supplied living quarters and food for hundreds of its students.  It was like being a college town.  Many families maintained gardens beside their houses as additional income.  In 1875 a group of young rabbis established the Telshe Yeshiva. The success of this yeshiva is related to a famous figure – a rabbi and rosh yeshiva Eliezer Gordon (1841-1910), who became the first Rosh of the yeshiva and adopted the modern methods of teaching: entrance examination system, after which students were divided into separate groups according to their level of knowledge. After his death, the rosh yeshiva became rabbi Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch, who managed to secure the fame and prestige of this yeshiva.

                                               Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736), chief rabbi of Prague, historical capital of Bohemia 1773. Artist: Balzer, Johann (1738-1799)-nephew of Samuel Oppenheimer, born in Worms, Germany.  Kept his huge amount of books in Hanover because of censorship in Prague.  Notice the movement of this Ashkenazi family of Oppenheim; from Jerusalem in 70 to Rome to Germany to Bohemia and Czech Republic and on up to Lithuania in 1854....

Zvi Yaakov Oppenheim (Hebrew: צבי יעקב אופנהיים; 1854-1926) was Chief Rabbi of Kelm, Lithuania, and one of the founders of the Telz Yeshiva.  We have several DNA matches with Oppenheim with 9 Oppenheim and Oppenheimer matching me as 3rd to 5th cousins on FTDNA.  Rabbi Oppenheim was born in 1854 in the small village of Yakubowe (now Jokūbavas, Kretinga district, Lithuania). He showed extraordinary talents from his earliest youth and at age nine could already study a page of Talmud with commentaries on his own. He was an orphan, and his relatives sent him to Trishik, where he studied with the local rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Lev Szpiro, a son of Rabbi Leibele Kovner.

From Trishik he traveled to the study group of Rabbi Yosef Rosin, who was then chief rabbi in Telz. He was already famous in Telz as a great scholar and while he was still a very young man, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv chose him as the head of his modern mussar yeshiva. After several years there, he returned to Telz and taught Talmud to the students in the group in which he himself had once studied.

In 1883, Rabbi Eliezer Gordon relinquished the Kelm rabbinate and after a short period in Slabodka, became the rabbi in Telz. Through Rabbi Gordons's intercession, the twenty-nine-year-old Rabbi Oppenheim became the new Rabbi of Kelm, not to be confused with Chelm which is in Poland.

Rabbi Oppenheim served as the rabbi in Kelm for forty-three years and died on Thursday, February 11 (27 of Shevat), 1926, at 72. He was succeeded as Rabbi of Kelm by his son in law, Rabbi Kalman Beineshovitz.

 By 1869, the town suffered a famine that lasted till 1872.  This was the time when Nathan was born.  The town had a Hebrew newspaper, "HaMagid" from 1872 to 1874 and they published lists of Jews who donated money for hunger victims in other Lithuanian towns.  

By 1870, Telz's population was 6,481 which included 4,399 Jews (68% of the population.  

In the 1880s, many Jewish families earned their living in Telz while living in the surrounding villages.  During the 1880s were persecutions and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and other places, so the self-confidence of Telz Jews was damaged.  They had to undergo conscription into the army for a period of 6 years which was reason enough for the young Jewish men to leave Telz and immigrate to America, Argentina and South Africa.  Nathan left sometime for America and a cousin wound up in South Africa that we know of. That's how we found Ian Goldfoot of South Africa who had immigrated to Texas.   This wave of immigration lasted till WWI.  So, the Jewish population of Telz decreased by 2,854 people.

The record of Jews forced into service in Russia and Poland were terrible.  Young boys were taken, and Jews were placed on the front lines, ill prepared.  They were fodder for the army.  Then they had to serve for many many years if they could live that long.  From what we see today, they are pulling the same acts with today's Russian civilians who are running away as fast as they can.  

In 1893 there was a cholera epidemic that took many victims, mostly the poor Jews because they were living in overcrowded conditions which caused bad hygiene.  The local rabbi, Eliezer Gordon, started the establishment of a committee which collected money from the rich in order to supply the sick with medicines, disinfectants and medical help.  Around this time, the Telz Jewish hospital was established.   

By 1897 the population dropped to 6,000  of which 3,088 were Jews (51%).  

After Nathan left, the town was burned down in 1907 that lasted for 2 days.  Wooden houses burnt very fast and that's what they were made of.  When they rebuilt, they used bricks instead.  

Nathan first went to England from Lithuania.  From there he moved to Londonderry, Ireland's port and lived in Dublin, Ireland in or with relatives there of Ian's Goldfoot line. Then he took a ship to Quebec, Canada and somehow wound up in Council, Idaho after that.  I found he marrying our grandmother in Boise, Idaho with the worst spelling on a marriage certificate--a wonder that I recognized who it was for.  The witnesses gave it away.  

Telz Jews suffered both from the rebels and from the Cossacks.  Monish "Menashe" Lukniker, Jewish, was accused of helping the rebels and was hanged by the Russian rulers.  

When the Telz authorities started to arm the population and to enlist men to fight the rebels, local Jews suggested to the authorities that they should not conscript Jews into the army, as they had no arms and also didn't know how to use them.  Instead, they offered to supply the army with steel, leather, gunowder, etc and so the authorities agreed to that and they all signed a document.  

Our grandfather, who would have called himself our Zaida, died on July 19, 1912 at about the age of 38-41.  He was given a horse and wagon to earn a living by a Jewish Aid group.  Jews had been steered away from New York as they already had many Jews there, and he wound up in Council, Idaho-a little mining town in the mountains where he had met the only other available Jewish woman, our grandmother or Bubbie, Zlata "Hattie" Jermulowski/e (1886-1950).  She was there with her siblings and had been born in Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania.  What a break for my grandfather !  They spoke the same kind of Yiddish and neither were literate in English.  They married and had their 1st son, Charles Goldfoot b: 1906.  Then the 3 moved to Portland, Oregon where there were Jews and synagogues.  

I'm sure that he was afraid of that horse, and had never used a horse before in Lithuania.  I know because my mother's father was also in the same business but had a team of 4 horses and a larger wagon and had met Nathan.  He was a farmer who had raised horses and was very  very familiar with them.  His father, Abiathar Smith Robinson, had been from Vermont, then moved to Illinois and he was a newcomer also to Portland. They had had horses and cattle.   

       Dad's brother Charles born 1906 and Dad in 1908

My father was then born in Portland in 1908.  He was 4 years old when Nathan was killed accidently while riding in his horse and wagon because the horse was spooked by a sound, maybe a honk, and Nathan was thrown out, hit his head, and never woke up.  All this happened on a Friday.  His wife, pregnant with my Aunt Anne, was frantic, knowing something horrible had happened.  Not to come home on a Friday afternoon?  By Evening? Shabbat was ready to start.   It's a wonder she didn't miscarry.  Anne was born on November 11, 1912.  Zlata was left with Charles 6, Moshe 4, Elsie 1, and a baby, Anne,  due within almost 4 more months.  She had lost their 3rd son, Abraham, when he was an infant of 5 months from crib death, no doubt being he was sleeping with his parents in their feather bed. He died January 25, 2010.  This was in the days when the USA had nothing to offer to help Zlata.  She was on her own with a brother, Louie Jermulowske an his wife, Dinah in Portland with her living within walking distance in South Portland.   

What our ancestors have gone through makes me realize how lucky I am to have been born. 

Resource;

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Book:  Preserving Our Litvak Heritage by Josef Rosin, jewishgen.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Four_Landshttps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zvi_Yaakov_Oppenheim

facts about Israel from Israel ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnytsky_Uprising