Jacob (Podjazd) Marcus, (1871-1951)

My great grandfather Jacob Marcus was born a Podjazd sometime between 1870 and 1874 (over the years, his age was recorded variously based on that range, but he was probably born in 1871 or 1872). Unfortunately, the JRI-Poland index of records from the Polish State Archives does not include his birth. We know he's a Podjazd and he's from Ciechanow from knowledge passed down in the family.

His father's name was Majer. Or it might have been Leyzer.  This is unresolved but key to my goal of tracing our paternal family line. Hopefully, some existing (or not yet identified) documentation will clear it up.

Jacob emigrated to the U.S. sometime between 1890 and 1892. On census forms, he had indicated it was 1890 or 1893, but due to the record of his marriage in Chicago in 1892, we can assume it was closer to the beginning of the decade. There are passenger/immigration records of people with his name in 1885, 1892 and 1893, but on the surface they don't appear to be him. Obviously, not all records survive.

Jacob married Bella Ernstein, also known as Bertha in some records (but not by my dad), in Chicago in 1892.

According to the 1940 census, Jacob had worked (as a tailor) 48 hours per week, 52 weeks of the year in 1939 at the age of 68. It says he had a sixth grade education, which means he had likely been working full time since he was 12 years old. He was living with his wife Bella, who did not work outside the home, and his son Abe, aged 35, who worked 40 hours a week (52 weeks a year) as a truck driver for a cleaning company. After 50 years in the U.S., Jacob was still renting his home and apparently not able to retire at the tail end of the Great Depression. At that time, he was living at 17 S. Central Ave. in the South Austin neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. The apartment cost him $45 per month in rent, which looked to be about average or a little high compared to his immediate neighbors, i.e., those on the same census sheet whose monthly rents ranged from $25 to $58 (the Illinois median rent at the time was $33). He would live there until his death eleven years later.

There's more to be said about Jacob, who for me is the cornerstone of all Podjazds -- will update later.