Meet the Cohens

Lou, Dora and a 6-month old Marilyn Smith | NYC: 1927

Ostensibly, Dora Cohen's first paid gig was as a 14-year-old seamstress, seemingly a world apart from where she grew up at 682 Wythe Ave. in Brooklyn. Working in a factory, she may have sewn shirtwaists on a Singer she would later take to California as one of two prized possessions on the migration from New York (the other was a cedar chest, both of which are still around today).

We know today, from documentation at the time (which you can see below), that Dora Cohen was 4'11'', had brown hair and weighed 116 pounds on Sept. 11, 1920.

She was certified by the New York Board of Health that day - less than a month before she would turn 14 - to be "qualified for employment under the labor law," which prohibited those younger than 16 to work before 8 a.m., after 5 p.m., and not more than eight hours any one day or more than six days in one week.

(Incidentally, it wasn't until 1938 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which codified federal child labor laws New York already had in place.)

Born August 23, 1906, to Sara and Joseph, Dora had one brother, Milton. She had short brown hair that, when not matted down, bobbed above her shoulders. Before she married Louis Greene, Dora graduated high school in 1920, the same year women won the right to vote and a decade before she would move to California, family in tow.

It is unclear (to me, at least) when Dora and Lou married, but according to U.S. Census records, they were together as of 1930 and living with Joseph and Sarah at the time. In fact, Marilyn (or the person that seems to be Marilyn) was counted in the 1930 Census as "Marian,"  which I'll chalk up to human error on the census takers part.

There are more interesting tidbits from the Census records, including that Joseph and Sarah Cohen were each born in Russia (Joseph in 1881) and Lou Greene's parents may have emigrated from Austria. Lou and Dora were first generation Americans while the family spoke Yiddish in the home.

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The transition from hustle and bustle New York was made possible by the Great Depression, which rendered Lou and his father-in-law Joseph Cohen unemployed and the Greene family in search of promise. They heard from Harry Craft, Dora's uncle, that California was a warm, snowless wonderland, where opportunities fell from the sky and jobs abounded.

It was 1930 and a three-year-old Marilyn Greene was not yet a Smith. The families, in search of a new beginning, boarded a Greyhound bus and made the five-day journey to Los Angeles. The trip included Sara Cohen, Harry's sister (and my great great grandmother), her husband, Joseph, their daughter Dora, her husband Lou and their daughter Marilyn.

Dora and Lou were nearly vanquished of all material possessions, save her sewing machine and cedar chest (the former now sits in Hillary's garage, the latter in Marilyn's living room), each prized for their memories and usefulness.

But they had little money and moved into a tiny, two-bedroom apartment on City Terrace Drive in Boyle Heights, where the American Dream would soon take root...

Harry Craft

He was one of the earliest of the bunch to come to California, heralding the Cohen/Greene wings west from New York. Harry Craft, who may have changed his name to Henry to fit in and is said to have eschewed his Jewish roots, worked the Los Angeles Railway, as pictured above.

He's the one on the left, the shorter operator standing in front of Train No. 853, the West Adams/Lincoln Park line. Craft's route, which you can see here, included the core of Downtown and Sunset Boulevard.

For those keeping score, Harry Craft was Sarah Cohen's brother, whose kids (with Joseph Cohen), were Milton and Dora. Dora and Lou (Greene) gave birth to Marilyn and Barry, and I think you know the rest.

By way of background, the L.A. Railway began at the turn of last century and included, at its height, 20 streetcar lines and 1,250 trolleys, most running through what was at the time Los Angeles's core. It served Echo Park, Westlake, Hancock Park, Exposition Park, West Adams, the Crenshaw district, Vernon, Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.

Eventually, the rise of automobiles killed the railway. To put it into perspective, RailsWest tells us:

In 1895 approximately 850 electric car lines were running over 10,000 miles of track throughout the nation. By the late 1920's, more than 1,000 cities and towns had electric streetcar systems operating nearly 63,000 streetcars over about 40,000 miles of track. During World War II, the number of transit passengers peaked at an all-time high of over 23 billion in 1946.

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The Beginning

We started in Europe, that much is certain. We are Jewish, though not all of us practice(d) the same way. We fought in World War I, World War II and during Vietnam. We operated street cars in Los Angeles, sold fruit from outdoor markets in Boyle Heights; worked in Downtown L.A. factories, sewed shirtwaists in Manhattan and outlived the Great Depression.

We all seem to hail directly from New York, though ventured to California when the promise of a new life and year-round sunshine was too perfect an idea to pass up. Along the way, Louis Greene became the Mayor of Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights and Marine Corporal Len Smith was nearly shipped to WWII Japan years after a car he was driving crashed, leaving his soon-to-be wife Marilyn Greene with a broken nose and collarbone.

Below is our family tree, spanning four generations of Obersteins, Greenes, Smiths, and Cohens, though it also includes the Ausssies (Aldens) and Israelies (Ilans), each of whom deserve there own entries. If you haven't already, I invite you to visit geni.com to register and fill whatever gaps in our family's history that might remain. On this blog, I will attempt to tell some of the story with stories from those inclined to share and pictures when available.

I invite you to tell yours as well, whether it's first, second or third hand. If you would like to contribute, send Mitch an email and he will add you as an author.

Thanks...

Click on the tree to scroll around or click here to see the whole thing.