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.