Who's (Almost) Who In Knickerbocker Village History: Irving Berlin

Even those of us of the Hebrew faith (as Myron Cohen used to say) love this. After all, a "landsmen" wrote it. BTW Irving Berlin lived supposedly at 330 Cherry Street, off of Monroe Street and he played in burlesque houses near Chinatown on the Bowery
from an Irving Berlin biography site:
"Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir," by his daughter Mary Ellin Barrett, reveals that his family came from Tolochin in Mogilev guberniya (province of Russian Empire). Her account coincides with a number of records from his brothers and sisters. That's why Irving's draft registration and several other records give his birthplace as Mogilev. Several of Irving's siblings were born in Tolochin but family left town after their house was burned down, possibly torched, according to Edward Jablonski (a biographer of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Harold Arlen) in his book "Irving Berlin: American Troubadour" Vol. 1.

But Irving, who was the youngest child in the family, is frequently said to have been born in Temun, usually identified as Tyumen in Siberia. Some family members believe his father, Moses, a cantor, had taken a temporary position there, but there are no records found. Tymen, located far from the Pale of Settlement, was not much easier a place of destination for a Jewish family than a foreign country. Being a cantor or shochet wasn't a cause for Russian administration to let his family move out of the Pale.

There are several possibilities concerning his birth city. It could be Tyumen or Tumen, any one of several villages in Belarus or Ukraine but not the city in Siberia. However Siberian Tyumen will come first if somebody searches for the location with such name. It also sounds more interesting than a village nobody knows about.

The Beilin family moved to America in 1893 leaving behind in Tolochin the eldest son and married daughter (who later joined them in NY). The father was then forty-one or so (all dates in the story of the Beilins are approximate and suspect) and his mother about thirty-nine. The eldest of children who moved with their parents was 19-year-old Sarah.

In America their passenger arrival list shows the family name was originally BEILIN . It was altered to BALINE in the United States, and eventually Americanized to BERLIN by some, but not all, branches. In Belarus, BEILIN was a common name in the city of Minsk, but not in Mogilev Gubernia. Possibly family roots from Irving's father spanned back to that region. Belarus Jewish genealogy researcher David Fox suggested that Tyumen could be misspelled Igumen, the town located halfway between Tolochin and Minsk.

The Beilins, with six children ranging in age from five to nineteen, and six pieces of luggage (including a featherbed and a samovar), boarded a train and crossed stealthily into Brody near the Austrian border of Galicia. They passed scrutiny in Brody, where Moses judiciously stated as his occupation "shomer " (i.e., "overseer" in a kosher butcher shop). From there, the train would proceed to Poland, then crossing Germany and arrive at their destination, Antwerp, Belgium to board the Rhynland for the 11-day journey to America where they arrived on September 13, 1893.

Having survived to face the ordeal at Ellis Island (where the name Beilin became Baline) they were led by a relative of Leah's, to an address on the Lower East Side on Monroe Street. Somehow, there was a three-room basement apartment waiting for them. When income permitted the family they moved to a slightly airier tenement around the corner on 330 Cherry Street. The Balines' exodus of several weeks or more was at last ended, and a new chapter in their lives was about to begin. From this point the life of Irving Berlin is better known.

At the age of eight, he took to the streets of the Lower East Side of New York City to help support his mother and family after his father had died. In the early 1900s he worked as a singing waiter in many restaurants and started writing songs. In 1907 he published his first song, Marie From Sunny Italy and by 1911 he had his first major international hit, Alexander's Ragtime Band.