How Donley Johnson (and Parents!) Arrived in Vermont in 2008

By Donley's mother, Abby Johnson:

Donley in the garden, summer 2011

Our family recently transplanted to the Northeast Kingdom. We are originally from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where Carl and I were living until the summer of 2008.

Carl has always loved Vermont, and had a chance to live here during the year 2005–2006 when he studied at the University of Vermont (UVM). He found a master’s program there that perfectly matched his interest in teaching the middle grades. He returned to Cleveland after that year of school and worked in the city at a charter school that closed at the end of the school year.

Donley and his mother Abby, making challah

We had dreamed of someday living in a more rural area and having a bit of land, so he started to search for jobs in rural districts, in both Ohio and Vermont. We figured we’d land wherever his job took us. I was pregnant with Donley and working full time in the arts and nonprofit sector. Although at first I thought I would want to return to that job, the closer we got to the due date, the more I wanted to stay home with the baby. So, that meant going where Carl’s job took us.

When Carl was offered a job in Gilman, Vermont, at a tiny middle school, we came for a visit to the area. We checked out the birth center at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) and loved how small and personal it was compared to the big hospitals in Cleveland. In St. Johnsbury, we visited Catamount Arts, and attended Shabbat services at Beth El Synagogue. It was truly amazing to me that this tiny synagogue existed, and that it had a multifaceted membership.  I liked that it was primarily lay-led and that there was a Hebrew School. St. Johnsbury seemed to have just enough to offer our soon-to-be growing family. So we took the leap and moved, a month before Donley was born.

The Johnson home, in autumn

We found a great community of other young families and felt quickly at home. Now we are in our fourth year here. I’ve been working for Beth El part-time as their administrative assistant for two and half years; the perfect job for a stay-at-home mom. The synagogue is a 10-minute drive from our house. We bought a fixer-upper on a beautiful piece of land outside of St. Johnsbury last year. We’ve got a few chickens and turkeys, a large garden, and hiking trails right outside our door. This is living the dream!

The Nurenbergs of the Northeast Kingdom

The history of Congregation Beth-El in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, mentions two men surnamed Nurenberg in the 1920 Census: Abraham, a furrier and junk dealer, and his boarder, Morris, also listed as a junk dealer. Whether the two were related is an open question -- the Census doesn't say they were, yet since they both came from "Russia" and were among the seven Jews in town at that time, it seems likely there was some connection.

Abraham was born in Kiev, Russia, as was his wife Bessie (Schaeffer), according to the birth record shown here for their fifth child, Solomon. I was able to find some other children of theirs in various records online: Edna, Israel, Miriam, Morris, Rebecca, Samuel, Sarah, and William. Was the Morris mentioned here the same one who was "boarding" with Abraham in 1920? Perhaps.

Here's the separate pool of data on Morris, who was called Moshe. Born on May 7, 1892, in Russia, he died in Lyndonville, Vermont, on March 4, 1980. His descendants in Maine seem to have known more about his wife Fannie Mary Schwey than about Morris -- the pair were married on Jan. 25, 1923, in Portland, Maine, which they left right away to live near Morris's family, on Broad Street in Lyndonville. [Fannie was the daughter of Isaac Schwey (1868-1944) and Katie G. Cotton (1866-1942), both born in Russia and immigrants to Portland, Maine, in 1907 -- apparently via Leeds, Kent, England, where Fannie was born on May 28, 1894. Fannie's siblings were Diana (1899-1986) (married Philip Paul Resnick and had three children), Sarah (1901-1973), and Janette (1908-1993).]

Dave is sure, although I haven't found documentation yet, that Morris (Moshe) was the father of Sidney Nurenberg, born in 1923 in St. Johnsbury and still living with his wife Ruth Margaret McCann in the area. This couple married in 1947. Sidney is included in an author-published book called "Soft Drink Bottlers of the United States, Volume 1, Vermont & New Hampshire," by Dennis G. Fewless and Christopher A. Wade.

Where was Sid's bottling plant? And when? I have information on one that preceded it -- in the 1920s, an "Orange Crush" bottling plant in St Johnsbury, at what is now 301 Cliff Street, and later on, a home-based soda company formed in town in 2011 for Kent's Soda. Here's a photo (from the 1950s or so) of the interior of a bottling plant in Burlington, to give an idea -- if anyone can contribute something on the Nurenburg bottling operation, that would be very helpful.

Because I'm watching for details of where Jewish families in the area came from and also where they "ended up," I want to also note that many members of the Nurenberg families went to Texas and California in their later years.

Quilting the Pieces: Jews and Slaughterhouses in Vermont

Paul Lane is visiting this evening. We had a good time looking at material about his family's businesses in Waterville, Maine, where he grew up. Check here for a long article on Levine's, the family business in Maine.

Shonyo family

Paul's father Melvin came to Lyndonville, Vermont, and bought a packinghouse (slaughter and meat business) owned by four men: Doug Gilmour, John Weston (a large Maine cattle dealer), James Wixstead, and Bruce McGregor. The ownership before this foursome was in the hands of brothers Howard and Louis Shonyo. Shonyo was an Americanized spelling of Chagnon; that family came from Canada and the Shonyo genealogy page is here. They certainly weren't Jewish -- but Paul's father was, and Paul is, and so the meat business as Lane's Slaughterhouse took root in a deep understanding of both meat and the values of life that involve humanely slaughtering an animal and making the most of using its meat.

George Solomon; photo from Duckshots

Any Jewish business in northern Vermont in the second half of the 20th century connected with George Solomon, who lived in the Burlington area and transported Kosher meat products -- as well as caskets.  George was the person you needed for a Jewish funeral. His death in 2010 was a loss for Jewish culture in the state, and also for the many people who came to know him over the years. Here's a nice piece from Lorin Duckman, a photographer and writing now in Greenfield, Mass. And here's another from author Ruth Horowitz, who traveled with George to Jewish Montreal. George's obituary is here.

So these are some quick pieces of the Lane family background. I'd like to find more. And I'll do the same for any other Jewish family in the Northeast Kingdom ... most Jewish-heritage residents of the NEK have only a generation or two in Vermont, with roots elsewhere. But you know what roots do, right? They nourish the rest of the plant. Let's get the roots written up.

Photos, too. Maine is WAY ahead of us in building a photo archive and family database for the state's Jewish residents. Vermont can get rolling, here.