My great-grandfather (after whom I’m named) and great-grandmother left Western Russia in 1905, possibly to escape pogroms that erupted that year. They came to America, and they had five daughters.
I come from
Fiddler on the Roof, evidently. With less singing and dancing, perhaps. Perhaps.
My grandmother and her four sisters were born in Brooklyn but spent most of their lives in The Bronx. Their families all lived within a couple of miles of their parents’ home, where they gathered most Sundays.
In their retirement years they all moved to Florida. This photo might be the last one of them all together. At least, I haven’t seen one since. I shot this with a Canon SLR on a visit in 1984 (there is a second one with a teenaged me in it; I’m rail-thin with a bushy head of hair and it depresses me). What I’m posting here is an iPhone photo of that print.
My grandmother is the youngest, but for all her adult life was the dominant figure in the family, You might get that feeling from how they arranged themselves for the photo.
