Latest / Stories That Live In Us / New Hampshire: Chosen Family, Jewish Roots (with Nancy Kotz and Lynne Snierson) | Episode 110

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New Hampshire: Chosen Family, Jewish Roots (with Nancy Kotz and Lynne Snierson) | Episode 110 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Lynne Snierson: And what he said was, you know, I would, um, because I I would lose my I would take a book to bed with me.
• 0:07
  Lynne Snierson: And I would lose myself in the book and so I could forget how hungry I was.
• 0:12
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah.
• 0:13
  Lynne Snierson: You know, and so, you know, people other other families would invite him over and feed him, and he never told his parents he ate in anybody else's house that wasn't kosher.
• 0:24
  Crista Cowan: Stories that live in us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:32
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:35
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:46
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:55
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: Do you have people in your family that only later you discovered weren't actually related to you?
• 1:10
  Crista Cowan: I have one of those.
• 1:12
  Crista Cowan: There's this woman that my dad grew up with.
• 1:14
  Crista Cowan: Her and her family, they were in the same congregation his whole life.
• 1:18
  Crista Cowan: And after my dad married my mom, she and my mom became best friends.
• 1:23
  Crista Cowan: And so I called her Aunt Valerie the whole time I was growing up.
• 1:29
  Crista Cowan: And I think I knew we weren't related, related, but she was still just my Aunt Val.
• 1:34
  Crista Cowan: And that is really fascinating to me.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: This concept of how a chosen family oftentimes comes from the communities that we live in.
• 1:46
  Crista Cowan: It certainly did in my family.
• 1:48
  Crista Cowan: Well, today we get to visit the state of New Hampshire, and my guests are two people who come from a community of chosen family.
• 1:59
  Crista Cowan: And yet it's so intertwined with their real families that sometimes it gets a little hard to tell it apart.
• 2:05
  Crista Cowan: Nancy Kotz is a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington, and she and I interacted at the Jewish Genealogy Conference last summer, where she told me this story about the oldest synagogue in the state of New Hampshire and its connection with her family.
• 2:26
  Crista Cowan: And I wanted to have her on the podcast to share that story.
• 2:30
  Crista Cowan: And she asked if she could invite her friend Lynn Sneirson.
• 2:34
  Crista Cowan: Now, Lynn is an award-winning journalist and she knows how to tell a story.
• 2:40
  Crista Cowan: And these two women, when you get them on camera together, you can tell that they are more than just friends.
• 2:47
  Crista Cowan: In fact, their families have been interconnected for generations.
• 2:52
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Nancy and Lynn.
• 2:56
  Crista Cowan: Well, ladies, thank you so much for joining me.
• 2:59
  Crista Cowan: Um, Nancy, I know who you are.
• 3:01
  Crista Cowan: Lynn, I don't think we've ever met, have we?
• 3:04
  Crista Cowan: I we have not.
• 3:05
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 3:06
  Crista Cowan: It's nice to meet you.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: Nice to meet you as well.
• 3:08
  Crista Cowan: So tell me how the two of you know one another.
• 3:12
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, um, we're we are um fan we are very close family without any actual DNA.
• 3:21
  Crista Cowan: Well, I'm gonna need you to tell me more than that.
• 3:24
  Lynne Snierson: Okay, all right.
• 3:25
  Lynne Snierson: So um my parents and uh Nancy's paternal grandparents were very dear friends.
• 3:33
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, I love that.
• 3:34
  Lynne Snierson: Okay, in fact, my father um met um Nancy's grandparents even way before he met my mother in the 1940s.
• 3:43
  Lynne Snierson: And I believe if this if I remember the story properly, my dad was an attorney and later a judge in Laconia, New Hampshire.
• 3:51
  Lynne Snierson: And um Morris and Ida Cohen um came to, they were involved in a chain of um discount department stores.
• 3:59
  Lynne Snierson: They were um part owners, they had a partner and they owned a chain.
• 4:03
  Lynne Snierson: And they came to open a store in my town, and apparently they were looking for a um an attorney.
• 4:11
  Lynne Snierson: And um when Nancy's grandfather and my father met each other, it was one of those um we were brothers in 47 other lifetimes.
• 4:20
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, it was just that immediate connection, and they were literally closer than brothers and stayed so um for as long as they were alive, as long as her grandfather was alive.
• 4:33
  Lynne Snierson: And then um Nancy's grandmother, Ida Cohen, um, and my mother decided that they were both going to get pregnant at the same time because um I had a brother and Nancy's father had a brother, and they both decided they wanted a little girl.
• 4:50
  Lynne Snierson: Well, my mom got pregnant.
• 4:52
  Lynne Snierson: Um, Ida Cohen did not get pregnant, so I was always the daughter um whom she never had, and plus the fact um that she and I were extraordinarily close um for her entire life, and I always considered her not only just um a second mother, but like my my dear beloved, adored aunt who I could talk to and tell anything to, and uh things I would never tell my own mother, I Ida and I would talk about.
• 5:23
  Crista Cowan: Oh, it's beautiful.
• 5:25
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah, when I couldn't go to my own mother with with um with anything, I I could always go to Ida.
• 5:30
  Lynne Snierson: I always knew that I was home with her.
• 5:33
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 5:33
  Crista Cowan: So, Nancy, you grew up with Ida or with Lynn almost like an aunt to you, yes?
• 5:38
  Nancy Kotz: Um, yeah, uh who was only uh not quite as old as my uncle was.
• 5:45
  Nancy Kotz: Um and uh Lynn's description of my grandmother is wonderful because she was the grandmother that I could talk to about anything.
• 5:55
  Nancy Kotz: Um we uh we always uh felt uh like she was such an open person.
• 6:02
  Nancy Kotz: And so I completely uh understand why Lynn would say that as well.
• 6:07
  Nancy Kotz: Uh and Lynn's parents were like second grandparents to us.
• 6:11
  Nancy Kotz: Um my grandparents would spend uh the uh colder months in New York City, uh, where my grandfather had his office.
• 6:20
  Nancy Kotz: And then in the summer, they would go to Laconia.
• 6:24
  Nancy Kotz: And um, being the good genealogist that I am, I've been pouring over land records and city directories for the last couple of weeks uh in anticipation of our chat tonight, um, looking at all of those records.
• 6:38
  Nancy Kotz: Uh and um so whenever we would go to visit in the summer, um, we would always hang out with Lynn's parents as well, uh, especially when my grandparents moved into uh onto the street.
• 6:53
  Nancy Kotz: That was the last street they had property on in Laconia.
• 6:56
  Nancy Kotz: Lynn's parents lived just down the street.
• 6:59
  Nancy Kotz: Um, Lynn was off at college and doing all that stuff by then.
• 7:02
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but she and I actually went to the same summer camp in Center Harbor, New Hampshire.
• 7:09
  Crista Cowan: Okay, there you go.
• 7:10
  Crista Cowan: Well, Lynn, tell me tell me about your parents.
• 7:14
  Crista Cowan: What were their names and how did they end up in Laconia, New Hampshire of all places?
• 7:19
  Crista Cowan: That's not some place you think of as a settlement for for Jewish people.
• 7:24
  Lynne Snierson: No.
• 7:25
  Lynne Snierson: Um, so um my my father was Bernie, my mother was Muriel, uh, my mother was from uh a suburb of Boston.
• 7:35
  Lynne Snierson: Uh my father was born in Laconia in 1913, and he was the only child in his family who was born in America.
• 7:45
  Lynne Snierson: Um, his older brother, um, brothers and sister uh had emigrated with my paternal grandparents.
• 7:52
  Lynne Snierson: Uh they came from um the Kovno governate in Lithuania, which at that time was part of the Imperial Russian Empire.
• 8:01
  Lynne Snierson: And of course, being Jewish, you know, um they lived where where they were where Jews were allowed to live, which was literally that was beyond the pale.
• 8:10
  Lynne Snierson: Um so um I think everyone uh is aware or should be aware of the um just um pervasive and horrible anti-Semitism uh under the czar and at that time the Russian Orthodox Church.
• 8:25
  Lynne Snierson: And it was, if you've ever seen Fiddler on the Roof, that's my story on both my mother's um parents and my father's parents, that it just it became impossible to really survive and thrive uh under those conditions.
• 8:39
  Lynne Snierson: So um they, you know, they got on a boat and they came in steerage, and um, I'm not really sure how they ended up.
• 8:49
  Lynne Snierson: My grandparents ended up in Lakota.
• 8:51
  Lynne Snierson: It was 1902.
• 8:52
  Lynne Snierson: And um they got off the boat.
• 8:55
  Lynne Snierson: They did not land in Ellis Island, they landed in Boston, and they got on a train and they headed north because I think that my grandfather knew someone um or had some connection somehow to somebody in New Hampshire.
• 9:12
  Lynne Snierson: And perhaps when they got on the train going north, perhaps they were supposed to get off in Manchester, where there were Jews living already at that time.
• 9:21
  Lynne Snierson: Um, but they kept going.
• 9:23
  Lynne Snierson: And um, maybe because they didn't speak English, they didn't, you know, they were certainly not literate in English.
• 9:28
  Lynne Snierson: They spoke obviously um Yiddish.
• 9:31
  Lynne Snierson: Grandfather was being a rabbi was fluent in Hebrew, and of course they spoke some Russian, um, but not English.
• 9:37
  Lynne Snierson: So they might have missed the stop.
• 9:39
  Lynne Snierson: And uh maybe um the way the story goes, it the train came, uh stopped at the station in Laconia, New Hampshire, which is absolutely gorgeous.
• 9:48
  Lynne Snierson: It's in the lakes, beautiful lakes region of New Hampshire.
• 9:51
  Lynne Snierson: And maybe they thought, oh, it's it's pretty here, it's nice, let's just get off the train here.
• 9:55
  Lynne Snierson: And my grandparents um are recognized as the first Jews, not only in Laconia, but north of Concord, New Hampshire, when they arrived in 1902.
• 10:06
  Crista Cowan: Wow, what a legacy.
• 10:08
  Crista Cowan: I live in a western state where you know we drive three or four hours and we're still in the same state.
• 10:13
  Crista Cowan: But when you say they came into Boston and then went up to New Hampshire, like how far away is Laconia from Boston?
• 10:20
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, it's um maybe a hundred miles if um it's if you get in your car and head south on the end now, there's an interstate.
• 10:29
  Lynne Snierson: There wasn't when I grew up, but uh, you know, you head south, you can be in you can be in downtown Boston in two hours.
• 10:34
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 10:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so the distances are a little different.
• 10:36
  Crista Cowan: And so for them to take a train ride out of the city, it wasn't like they were crossing the country.
• 10:41
  Crista Cowan: No.
• 10:42
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 10:43
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 10:44
  Lynne Snierson: And they decided to settle there and make a life.
• 10:47
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah, um, it was not an easy life, as you can imagine.
• 10:51
  Lynne Snierson: Um, my grandfather was, as I said, he was a rabbi, um, which is pretty interesting when not having a congregation to minister to.
• 11:00
  Lynne Snierson: Um, but uh there have been um some um scholars uh from Yeshiva University and from some other um uh Shabbad and some other places who um have written a book and they've included my grandfather because evidently um he was um a religious man, a rabbi um really of quite some note.
• 11:21
  Lynne Snierson: He was a cousin of um the Lobovasharevi, uh Menachem Um Schneerson, who was considered to be the Messiah by the by Orthodox and Ultra Drive ultra-Orthodox Jews.
• 11:34
  Lynne Snierson: And um he was uh recognized as a um, he had an honorific title as a man who is um in a prime Talmudic scholar.
• 11:45
  Lynne Snierson: Um he was quite well known and uh apparently quite highly regarded.
• 11:50
  Lynne Snierson: I unfortunately did not know him because um he died when I was two.
• 11:55
  Crista Cowan: But your father then is their only child born in the United States and raised there in Laconia.
• 12:02
  Crista Cowan: How did your parents meet?
• 12:05
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, this is great.
• 12:06
  Lynne Snierson: So um my my father was the obviously the baby born here.
• 12:11
  Lynne Snierson: Um all of his brothers and his sister um became uh very well learned.
• 12:17
  Lynne Snierson: Everyone uh my uncle High was uh a doctor and a surgeon and a chief of staff um in a hospital.
• 12:24
  Lynne Snierson: Uh great war hero, my uncle High, um, when he was fighting uh in World War II for um with in Patton's army.
• 12:33
  Lynne Snierson: He was part of the Normandy invasion being a surgeon.
• 12:36
  Lynne Snierson: He established, he was with the handful of doctors who established the first ever MASH unit.
• 12:42
  Lynne Snierson: Wow.
• 12:43
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah, he set up a sterile field in the heat of battle and was operating on the wounded um during the Normandy invasion, the highly, highly decorated as colonel.
• 12:53
  Lynne Snierson: Um, and anyway, so um, and then you know, everybody was very accomplished.
• 12:58
  Lynne Snierson: As I said, my father was a lawyer, but you know, a lot of Ivy League in the family.
• 13:02
  Lynne Snierson: Um anyway, my aunt Dorothy, his his older sister, left Laconia um after she got her degrees, and she ended up teaching English, which is kind of interesting for someone who grew up with English as a second language or you know, third third or fourth language, um, in the Waltham, Massachusetts school system.
• 13:23
  Lynne Snierson: Okay.
• 13:23
  Lynne Snierson: That's where my mother and her family lived.
• 13:27
  Lynne Snierson: So my Aunt Dorothy had um my Uncle Newell, my Aunt Bernice, and my mother as her students in seventh for seventh and eighth grade English.
• 13:37
  Lynne Snierson: Okay.
• 13:38
  Lynne Snierson: Now, um, my my maternal grandparents um were quite generous, and my Aunt Dorothy was what was in those days called a um a spinster, or you know, um, you know, not you couldn't be the cool bachelorette with the rose.
• 13:56
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, you were a spinster, and she was living alone in, you know, in an apartment.
• 14:00
  Lynne Snierson: So my grand my grandparents would have her come to their home for dinner all the time.
• 14:05
  Lynne Snierson: They would come for Friday, Friday night Shabbat dinner.
• 14:08
  Lynne Snierson: Um, she would stay with my grandparents on school vacations, and she would um spend those.
• 14:15
  Lynne Snierson: My grandparents had a had a summer place um on the ocean.
• 14:20
  Lynne Snierson: And um when my grandfather was working with in the store, my grandmother was there with her children.
• 14:25
  Lynne Snierson: Aunt Dorothy always went and was a guest and would spend the summers at the beach, and she would say to my mother, um, one day I'm um she says, I have a very handsome, very charming, very brilliant, very adorable brother.
• 14:40
  Lynne Snierson: And someday when you're ready, I'm going to introduce you to him.
• 14:44
  Lynne Snierson: Okay.
• 14:45
  Lynne Snierson: Okay, so fast forward, um, it's now in the um during World War II or just after World War II.
• 14:53
  Lynne Snierson: My mother now is a young divorcee with a baby who moved home, left her husband, took my brother, moved home, and moved back in with my grandparents.
• 15:03
  Lynne Snierson: And um and when my dad got home from the war, they were introduced.
• 15:09
  Lynne Snierson: There you go.
• 15:12
  Crista Cowan: Well, that's a delightful story.
• 15:14
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing that.
• 15:16
  Crista Cowan: Nancy, I would love to hear about how your family, uh, like where they came from and how they made their way to Laconia.
• 15:25
  Nancy Kotz: Okay, well, uh, my grandfather and his family also came from the Pale of Settlement uh in a small shtetl called Nobla near Pinsk.
• 15:35
  Nancy Kotz: Uh, and they also arrived at Boston Harbor in 1903.
• 15:40
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and they had family in Vermont, in Virgins, Vermont, which is up near Rutland.
• 15:48
  Nancy Kotz: Uh, so that's where they ended up going.
• 15:50
  Nancy Kotz: Um, unfortunately, one of my grandfather's sisters was sent back to Russia because she was deemed uh feeble-minded.
• 15:59
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and my big genealogy research project right now is to try and figure out how she ended up surviving living in France during World War II.
• 16:10
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but that's a whole nother story.
• 16:13
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but um my grandfather uh had uh many siblings.
• 16:20
  Nancy Kotz: Um he had two sisters and a whole bunch of brothers.
• 16:24
  Nancy Kotz: And uh two of his brothers, his brother Bill and his brother Sam, both had aspirations of going into the medical field.
• 16:33
  Nancy Kotz: Uh, Bill became an internist and Sam became a dentist.
• 16:37
  Nancy Kotz: We called him Uncle Doc.
• 16:39
  Nancy Kotz: Um and um so my grandfather was the one who went to work to help uh them afford their advanced education.
• 16:49
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and I was rereading last night, Lynn, your father's wonderful eulogy when my grandfather died.
• 16:56
  Nancy Kotz: I was only 12, so I don't think I was paying attention to the eulogy then, but I have several copies of it.
• 17:02
  Nancy Kotz: And one of the things that Lynn's father wrote about my grandfather was that even though he didn't have a formal education, he loved learning and did a lot on his own to learn and went into the business world.
• 17:17
  Nancy Kotz: Um when he was a very young man, he took a job at the Brandon Inn in Brandon, Vermont.
• 17:24
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and while he was working there, he affiliated himself with uh other uh gentlemen who were in sales and he became very interested in that.
• 17:34
  Nancy Kotz: Um so uh he went into the retail industry pretty soon uh after that, and he had store, he was working with stores throughout the Northeast.
• 17:46
  Nancy Kotz: And the story of how he and my grandmother met were that they were both invited to the same bar mitzvah in Saratoga Springs, where my grandfather happened to have a store.
• 17:58
  Nancy Kotz: Now, the irony is my mother went to college in Saratoga, and so did I.
• 18:05
  Nancy Kotz: So I've always been fascinated by our family history in Saratoga.
• 18:10
  Nancy Kotz: And when my parents were dating, my father would go from New York City, where he was at Columbia, up to Skidmore in Saratoga to spend the weekends with my mother.
• 18:20
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and my mother didn't stay in school.
• 18:23
  Nancy Kotz: She and my dad got married right after her sophomore year.
• 18:26
  Nancy Kotz: Um, my grandmother's family uh came before she was born.
• 18:32
  Nancy Kotz: Um, they came from uh Kishnav, uh, which is now uh China saw in Ukraine, and um they came before the big pogrom in Kishnav.
• 18:44
  Nancy Kotz: Um so they came in, I think, about 1901 or so, um, and they ended up at one of the uh Jewish farming colonies in southern New Jersey, one of the Barenda Hirsch communities.
• 18:58
  Nancy Kotz: Uh, and so that's where my grandmother was born.
• 19:00
  Nancy Kotz: Um, shortly after, well, a few years after she was born, uh, my her father took a job in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
• 19:08
  Nancy Kotz: But because he was so instrumental in helping found a synagogue in uh the town where they lived in New Jersey, he was buried back in New Jersey.
• 19:19
  Nancy Kotz: So my husband and I have actually taken the ferry from Cape May, from Lewis to Cape May and then driven to the cemetery where my great-grandfather uh is buried.
• 19:29
  Nancy Kotz: Um, my grandmother ended up going to nursing school.
• 19:33
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and uh she had a had a cousin who was in love with one of my grandfather's cousins, and they ended up at this mutual family bar mitzvah in Saratoga, and I actually have found their engagement announcement in the Saratogian newspaper.
• 19:54
  Nancy Kotz: So that's that was pretty cool.
• 19:57
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but that's the story of how they met and fell in love.
• 20:01
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 20:02
  Crista Cowan: And so then, um, at what point in their marriage did they end up in Laconia?
• 20:08
  Nancy Kotz: Well, um, Laconia happened to be one of the places where my grandfather and his business partner opened a store, as Lyd said.
• 20:16
  Nancy Kotz: And um, as a matter of fact, I was on the phone with my stepmom not long ago, and Gail and I were talking about she loves to talk about family history with me, especially my father's side of the family.
• 20:28
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and she mentioned to me that uh someone had ticked her off that the Laconia newspaper uh had a picture of the opening of the Landau's variety store in uh Laconia at Hanover and Maine, um from uh on the paper in their in their historical flashback column that they have.
• 20:54
  Nancy Kotz: Uh and so I, of course, quickly went on to the Laconia newspaper website to try and find it.
• 21:00
  Nancy Kotz: And I've actually been uh in email contact with the folks at the Laconia newspaper.
• 21:06
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but um that was only about a week or two ago, and I mentioned I was going to be joining you this evening, and she was all excited about it.
• 21:14
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but um Gail continues to stay uh involved and in communication with all of the members of my dad's side of the family, even though he's no longer with us.
• 21:25
  Crista Cowan: That's good for her.
• 21:26
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 21:28
  Crista Cowan: So you then spent, was it summers in Laconia with your grandparents?
• 21:33
  Nancy Kotz: Exactly.
• 21:34
  Nancy Kotz: So every summer we would spend at least a few weeks in New Hampshire.
• 21:39
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and uh even uh members of my maternal family would come and visit.
• 21:45
  Nancy Kotz: Um, my both of my sets of grandparents were very close with one another.
• 21:50
  Nancy Kotz: And uh my cousins on my mom's side even spent time there.
• 21:54
  Nancy Kotz: Um, one of the photos that uh the four of us cousins took on the balcony of.
• 21:59
  Nancy Kotz: The house that had this view, um, all are wearing uh overalls.
• 22:05
  Nancy Kotz: And my brother was the only male of that on that side of the family.
• 22:10
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and so it was the stair steps, my brother, myself, my cousin Pam, and my cousin Suzanne.
• 22:16
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and Pam actually went to that same summer camp in Center Harbor called Robindell one year with me.
• 22:23
  Nancy Kotz: And she actually we went together one year, and then she went by herself the next year because I went to a different camp down in North Carolina.
• 22:31
  Crista Cowan: Well, there you go.
• 22:32
  Crista Cowan: That just sounds like an idyllic place to spend a summer.
• 22:36
  Nancy Kotz: Well, one of the one of the other things I remember about our summers in Laconia was going out on Lynn's parents' boat out on the lake.
• 22:44
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and we would uh go out for the day and bring a change of clothes so we could go across the lake over to Wolfboro, which was another town on Lake Winnipesaki, and have dinner.
• 22:56
  Nancy Kotz: So we would literally spend the entire day on uh Lynn's dad's boat.
• 23:03
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and Lynn's dad and my grandfather loved to go out fishing together.
• 23:07
  Nancy Kotz: Uh and uh my brother, being the oldest male grandchild, even had his own little outboard.
• 23:14
  Nancy Kotz: Uh, his name is David, and he called it the King David.
• 23:18
  Nancy Kotz: Uh and one summer we filled my grandmother's freezer with white perch because we went out every morning to go fishing.
• 23:26
  Crista Cowan: Well, so fun.
• 23:28
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 23:29
  Crista Cowan: So, Lynn, um, you, your grandparents settled there, but were you also raised there?
• 23:35
  Crista Cowan: Did your father stay in Laconia?
• 23:37
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 23:38
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah.
• 23:39
  Lynne Snierson: Um, my my father, um, every like I said, they everybody lived there.
• 23:45
  Lynne Snierson: Um, my father was um, my father was movie star handsome and very charming and very athletic.
• 23:52
  Lynne Snierson: And um he was, I mean, he he was beloved.
• 23:56
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, my father died in 1988, and when people hear my last name, they still ask me if I'm related to him.
• 24:02
  Lynne Snierson: And then they will tell me stories of all the um magnificent, wonderful, compassionate, kind things he did for them.
• 24:09
  Lynne Snierson: And um, people will talk about how he practiced pro bono law for a lot of people before anybody knew what the term meant.
• 24:17
  Lynne Snierson: And people will say, you know, you kept um you kept us from being homeless because you know, the government had denied my father got killed in the war, and the government denied my mother her benefits, and your dad got them, you know, and so got um all the you know, everything that we were entitled to, and we could put food on the table and and and never we refused to ever take a dime, you know.
• 24:39
  Lynne Snierson: So I just hear these stories again and again and again.
• 24:42
  Lynne Snierson: So um, because he was a child of Lacone, as I said, he came up through the public school system.
• 24:49
  Lynne Snierson: Um he was um, you know, captain of the baseball team, captain of the debating team, class president, all these kinds of things.
• 24:57
  Lynne Snierson: And and people, you know, as I said, people just they just gravitated to him.
• 25:00
  Lynne Snierson: They loved him.
• 25:02
  Lynne Snierson: So um, in fact, when he was at Harvard Law School, and and I mean he was, I mean, my grandparents were desperately poor because my grandfather um lived to be a rabbi and lived to um study the Talmud, and he um, you know, he would um slaughter, you know, kosher slaughter meat for people and and do these things.
• 25:25
  Lynne Snierson: But he did he really didn't work.
• 25:27
  Lynne Snierson: Um, so my grandmother scrubbed floors and we get up at four o'clock in the morning uh to go pick blueberries to sell by the roadside, and um, you know, it was it was a very poor existence.
• 25:39
  Lynne Snierson: My dad said, you know, they grew up they didn't have electricity.
• 25:42
  Lynne Snierson: And um um I asked him once um where he developed his deep love of reading and academia, um, because years and years and years and years done.
• 25:52
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, he could still he could quote any soliloquy from Hamlet, you know, from Shakespeare, verb, I mean, verbatim.
• 25:58
  Lynne Snierson: And he was so incredibly smart and so well educated.
• 26:02
  Lynne Snierson: And what he said was, you know, I would um because I would lose my, I would take a book to bed with me, and I would lose myself in the book, and so I could forget how hungry I was.
• 26:15
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah.
• 26:16
  Lynne Snierson: You know, and so, you know, people other other families would invite him over and feed him, and he never told his parents he ate in anybody else's house that wasn't kosher, you know.
• 26:26
  Lynne Snierson: But um, so anyway, when he when he graduated from Harvard Law School, he had multiple opportunities to join the you know big law firms.
• 26:38
  Lynne Snierson: And my mother, um, even when she married him after he had his practice in New Hampshire, she wanted him to go to Boston.
• 26:46
  Lynne Snierson: You know, she was a city girl, she was a Boston girl, she never liked living in Laconia.
• 26:50
  Lynne Snierson: And my father wouldn't leave because I mean, it that was home for him, and it was where he was comfortable and frankly, you know, where people um adored him and he was able to stay there.
• 27:03
  Lynne Snierson: He he was a founder of the Lakes Region Scholarship Committee because he knew what it meant for poor kids not to have money to go to college, like really bright, really talented, really amazing kids who never got to go to school because they couldn't afford it.
• 27:17
  Lynne Snierson: He was so involved in and entrenched in and such a part of what Laconia is.
• 27:24
  Lynne Snierson: Um, if I may, um when he died, we had to have um we had to have the funeral, which we had um in in Boston, uh, because he's buried in the Jewish cemetery there with my mother's family.
• 27:36
  Lynne Snierson: Um so we had the big funeral in Boston.
• 27:38
  Lynne Snierson: We had then have two separate memorial services to accommodate all the people who wanted to come.
• 27:45
  Lynne Snierson: There just wasn't a place big enough to hold everybody who wanted to come.
• 27:49
  Lynne Snierson: We had to do it twice.
• 27:50
  Crista Cowan: Wow, he sounds like quite the man.
• 27:52
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 27:53
  Lynne Snierson: He really, yeah, he was, he was, yeah.
• 27:55
  Lynne Snierson: And and Nancy's grandfather was, I mean, as I said, they were they were soul, soul brothers.
• 28:00
  Lynne Snierson: Um, and you know, my dad, Ivy League, you know, Cornell undergrad, Harvard Law, et cetera, et cetera.
• 28:05
  Lynne Snierson: And Nancy's grandfather who didn't go, and my father always said that Morris Cohen is the smartest man I ever met in my life.
• 28:11
  Nancy Kotz: And Morris Cohen never went to college.
• 28:14
  Lynne Snierson: Right, exactly.
• 28:15
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and it's so interesting that they felt that affinity for one another because um academia, you know, like educated, uneducated, like that has a tendency sometimes to pull people apart.
• 28:27
  Crista Cowan: But the fact that they both overlooked that and forged such a deep bond and brotherhood is a really beautiful thing.
• 28:34
  Lynne Snierson: Yeah, I mean, we we ate dinners together um often.
• 28:38
  Lynne Snierson: Um, like Nancy was talking about how you know even her mom's family, like I knew her grandparents, Sam and Mary Winterberg, really well.
• 28:46
  Lynne Snierson: Um, and at um at Ida and Morris's house, you know, right down the road on the lake, um, they had a big, huge dining room table.
• 28:55
  Lynne Snierson: And I remember so many nights we'd all be gathered there, you know, having dinner, and it would be a lobster bake.
• 29:02
  Lynne Snierson: And my brother and and Nancy's uncle would be out there, you know, digging the pit in the sand and you know, cooking the lobsters and the steamers and the corn and all that.
• 29:11
  Lynne Snierson: And then um her grandmother would make it like a 22-pound standing rib roast for people who didn't like lobster.
• 29:18
  Lynne Snierson: And, you know, and we'd just sit there and you know, we'd have these wonderful, wonderful dinners watching the sunset over the lake.
• 29:24
  Lynne Snierson: Um, but even when it was just um my parents and Nancy's grandparents, after dinner, um the the men would go and they would sit, you know, together in the living room, like in, you know, in even in the cold weather, it might be in front of the fireplace, and they would discuss philosophy and theater and art and politics and literature.
• 29:48
  Lynne Snierson: And I mean, they they were um they really were like if men can be soulmates, they were soulmates.
• 29:55
  Lynne Snierson: They had such a sympatico, and they also had such a deep respect for one another and a true love for each other.
• 30:02
  Lynne Snierson: Um yeah, I mean, my father was closer to her grandfather than he was to his own brothers, his own family.
• 30:08
  Lynne Snierson: Wow.
• 30:09
  Nancy Kotz: As a matter of fact, Lynn's parents were the ones to come get me at camp in 1974, and my brother went to a camp, the boys' camp close by, came and picked both of us up to drive us to Massachusetts when my grandfather died in 1974.
• 30:27
  Nancy Kotz: And what Lynn was saying about the interfamily relationships, that was the year that my cousin Pam, my maternal cousin, was with me at Robin Dell.
• 30:38
  Nancy Kotz: And she was very upset that nobody told her where I had gone.
• 30:43
  Nancy Kotz: Because they didn't think that, since it was my father's father, that she would have any relationship with him.
• 30:50
  Nancy Kotz: And to this day, even Pam talks about that whenever we're together.
• 30:55
  Crista Cowan: That's um that's amazing to grow up in that kind of a community, right?
• 31:00
  Crista Cowan: Because that's really what it is, is is this family and this extended family and this community of people that was created in that time in that space.
• 31:09
  Crista Cowan: That's I I wonder if it's an um something about a bygone era or if it's something particular to the the shared background that your families came from.
• 31:21
  Crista Cowan: Do you know?
• 31:22
  Lynne Snierson: Um, I don't know, but I I I do know that um my dad died very suddenly.
• 31:27
  Lynne Snierson: Um he he had a massive brain aneurysm.
• 31:30
  Lynne Snierson: So it was very instantaneous and completely unexpected, and um, you know, the whole thing.
• 31:36
  Lynne Snierson: So, of course, the first the first person that my mother called was Ida.
• 31:40
  Lynne Snierson: And Ida was living in Cleveland at the time.
• 31:42
  Lynne Snierson: She immediately got on a plane, like, I'm gonna be there, I'm on my way, you know, and she um took us, took us all through that.
• 31:49
  Lynne Snierson: And then when my mother died five years later, I remember we were sitting Shiva um at my mother's sister's house in Boston, and uh Ida pulled me aside and she said to me, I'm your mother now.
• 32:01
  Lynne Snierson: And she's and she put her arms around me both and she said, You may ask of me anything that you would ever ask of your mother.
• 32:12
  Crista Cowan: That is really beautiful.
• 32:14
  Nancy Kotz: You're gonna make me cry, Lynn.
• 32:15
  Nancy Kotz: I am crying.
• 32:18
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 32:18
  Crista Cowan: Um that that kind of depth of care for people within your community.
• 32:25
  Crista Cowan: Like, I just it's so rare to see that.
• 32:27
  Crista Cowan: And I think that's you're both so lucky to have had that.
• 32:31
  Crista Cowan: I think that's really beautiful.
• 32:32
  Crista Cowan: Um, as you think about your shared background, Lynn, you mentioned that your grandparents were the first Jews in Laconia.
• 32:40
  Crista Cowan: Um, but then Nancy, your family made their way there and this community starts to grow.
• 32:46
  Crista Cowan: Um, did your grandfather ever have uh a group of people to minister to?
• 32:52
  Lynne Snierson: Yes, um, there actually were.
• 32:54
  Lynne Snierson: He ministered to um really people in in the kind of north, you know, although kind of the northern central part of New Hampshire.
• 33:03
  Lynne Snierson: And um yeah, he was um there was a very small, he was the spiritual leader of a very small group of Jewish families.
• 33:11
  Lynne Snierson: He founded the synagogue Temple Bene Israel, that's still operating in Laconia, and uh he was its first rabbi.
• 33:19
  Lynne Snierson: So um apparently he taught Hebrew school for um everybody in sort of south uh central and north central uh part of the state.
• 33:30
  Lynne Snierson: Um it said he prepared the boys um for the entire region for their bar mitzvahs.
• 33:35
  Lynne Snierson: Um he um provided guidance on keeping kosher and um he he was the kosher kosher butcher.
• 33:45
  Lynne Snierson: Um he led the services and um when somebody would die he put together the minion, which uh is 12, but you have to do.
• 33:54
  Lynne Snierson: And um, you know, his leadership did, I'm told, extend far belong, um far beyond Laconia.
• 34:03
  Lynne Snierson: And he traveled to Jewish enclaves in the surrounding area um to, you know, uh he he would perform the briss for baby boys and um do all the special occasions, minister, you know, perform weddings, do funerals.
• 34:17
  Lynne Snierson: Apparently he was he was the guy, apparently.
• 34:19
  Lynne Snierson: Sounds like it.
• 34:21
  Lynne Snierson: Wow.
• 34:22
  Crista Cowan: So Nancy, when I mentioned that I was doing a series on the 50 states for America 250, and we were talking about New Hampshire, you immediately brought up the Laconia Synagogue as something of significance for the state of New Hampshire.
• 34:37
  Crista Cowan: What does that community, that organization mean to you?
• 34:42
  Nancy Kotz: Well, honestly, I was never exposed to that synagogue or that community since I was just in Laconia in the summer.
• 34:50
  Nancy Kotz: Um, my dad and his brother both went to prep school in Massachusetts, so they would be in Laconia in the summer.
• 34:58
  Nancy Kotz: So um, if my dad and his brother were around, I would certainly be asking them lots of questions right now.
• 35:05
  Nancy Kotz: Um but um the interesting thing that I found, well, the the reason I ended up on the synagogue website was that there are memorial plaques for both of my grandparents in the synagogue.
• 35:19
  Nancy Kotz: And at first the two plaques were separated, they weren't together.
• 35:24
  Nancy Kotz: So my brother and my stepmom and I uh helped to uh encourage the synagogue to change the placement of the plaques.
• 35:33
  Nancy Kotz: So, of course, I got curious.
• 35:35
  Nancy Kotz: And being the research fanatic that I am, um, I started poking around the website for the synagogue, and I noticed that there was this genealogy there.
• 35:45
  Nancy Kotz: And of course, that's what sparked my interest, and that's why I mentioned it to you when we were at IAJGS this past year in Fort Wayne.
• 35:54
  Nancy Kotz: And I also sent the information to Ellen Coet, who does the uh USA SIG for Jewish gen, um, because I thought those were records that people would want to see.
• 36:05
  Nancy Kotz: And when I've gone through the records, of course, the first thing I saw was Lynn's grandfather, and I got all excited.
• 36:12
  Nancy Kotz: But then as I read through the families, I noticed the Selig family was also there.
• 36:18
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and this was a family that one of my grandmother's other very close friends, Peggy Selig, uh, married into.
• 36:26
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and so I feel like I've stayed in touch with all of these original Jewish families of Laconia, New Hampshire in uh a 21st century way.
• 36:38
  Crista Cowan: Lynn, as you think about that synagogue and that community in that town, um, you know, other than the connection to your grandfather, which is so foundational and critical, like what other role has that played in your life and the life of your family?
• 36:53
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, well, I grew, I grew up in, well, I grew up in that synagogue.
• 36:56
  Lynne Snierson: But I mean, you know, I was brought there, you know, from the time I was an infant.
• 36:59
  Lynne Snierson: My um, as I said, I have I have one brother who's um no longer with us, but he was bar mitzid there in 1957.
• 37:07
  Lynne Snierson: I was five years old.
• 37:09
  Lynne Snierson: Uh I don't remember it, but I of course had seen the pictures.
• 37:12
  Lynne Snierson: Um, I remember going to Sunday school there.
• 37:15
  Lynne Snierson: Um I remember going to Hebrew school there after regular school, which I absolutely hated, like all Jewish kids do.
• 37:24
  Lynne Snierson: Um and, you know, um going that, you know, sitting there for high, you know, the services on high holidays and Passover and Seders and all, you know, I I mean, like I said, I grew I grew up, I grew up in the synagogue.
• 37:38
  Lynne Snierson: Um, I did not go to, I went to um away to private boarding school instead of high school, so I kind of lost touch with it.
• 37:44
  Lynne Snierson: And then of course I was off, you know, doing college and doing doing my thing.
• 37:48
  Lynne Snierson: But interestingly enough, um two summers ago, um, through a uh confluence of of events, I ended up um being back in the synagogue for Friday night services.
• 38:00
  Lynne Snierson: And I had not been there in for Friday night service since I was a teenager.
• 38:06
  Lynne Snierson: Um and so got there a little early, and before everything started, um I snuck into the sanctuary um and I just took a walk through, and um, it's exactly the same.
• 38:19
  Lynne Snierson: And um I I was noticing on on the wooden pews, there is um there was the brass nameplate on the back of everyone in the congregation, and it was all the families.
• 38:32
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, those nameplates, the people have changed.
• 38:35
  Lynne Snierson: You know, people have died, have moved, have, you know, with all the social mobility and and physical geographical mobility.
• 38:42
  Lynne Snierson: I mean, there are new new families who belong in, but those nameplates from the originals are still there.
• 38:47
  Lynne Snierson: And I went through and I looked at everyone and I read every, you know, read everyone, went through every pew, and just flooded back with with these memories of what it was and who it was, and just remembering, you know, everybody I grew up with.
• 39:02
  Lynne Snierson: Because they weren't, you know, in our congregation when I grew up, it wasn't just Laconey, as I said, it was the whole county in outreach up further parts of New Hampshire.
• 39:12
  Lynne Snierson: And there were only 40 families.
• 39:14
  Lynne Snierson: You know, that so I mean we all knew each other.
• 39:17
  Lynne Snierson: When I when I went to um when I went to elementary school and junior high school, um, I was the only Jewish girl in my class.
• 39:25
  Lynne Snierson: Uh and of all the elementary schools in the city of Laconia citywide, I was the only Jewish girl.
• 39:30
  Lynne Snierson: And there were two little Jewish boys who were in my same school because we sort of all lived in the same neighborhood.
• 39:36
  Lynne Snierson: Um, but I mean, I was the only one.
• 39:38
  Lynne Snierson: And um, so you know, the girls who were like a year ahead of me in school or a year behind me in school, like we would play together and we'd be, you know, go to each other's houses.
• 39:48
  Lynne Snierson: And our parents always felt it was important for us to understand and to embrace our Jewish identity.
• 39:56
  Lynne Snierson: Um, you know, which is a little interesting at Christmas time back in those days.
• 40:01
  Lynne Snierson: It's like, yeah, you're the only one who's not of all my little friends.
• 40:04
  Lynne Snierson: It's cool.
• 40:05
  Lynne Snierson: I'm the only one who's not having Christmas.
• 40:07
  Lynne Snierson: Um but um, but no, it was it was profound.
• 40:11
  Lynne Snierson: It was it was profound.
• 40:12
  Crista Cowan: Well, that's kind of amazing when you think about it.
• 40:15
  Crista Cowan: But and then when you think about it over the sweep of history, right?
• 40:18
  Crista Cowan: Your families escaping the pale of the settlement because of anti-Semitism, because of the persecution that they endured, finding their way to the United States and seeking a place of refuge where they could practice their beliefs and live their lives and make their choices that they wanted to make about their families and their community.
• 40:38
  Crista Cowan: And it sounds like from both of you, both of your families did that successfully and beautifully, and still maintained that deep connection to community and to faith.
• 40:49
  Crista Cowan: And I think that's a really beautiful thing.
• 40:51
  Crista Cowan: Well, ladies, thank you so much for sharing New Hampshire with us, for sharing your community and your history.
• 40:57
  Crista Cowan: Nancy, I would just love to hear a little bit from you, like as you think about New Hampshire, your family's connection to Laconia, the summers you got to spend there.
• 41:07
  Crista Cowan: What is what does that connection to New Hampshire mean to you?
• 41:12
  Nancy Kotz: Well, I think for a kid who uh moved around a lot when I was young, it was stability.
• 41:20
  Nancy Kotz: Um I knew every summer I'd be with my grandparents at their house and this beautiful on this beautiful lake.
• 41:28
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and my brother and I really enjoyed taking our kids there back in 2011.
• 41:34
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and I was just I found this background photo when I was going through my photos from that trip.
• 41:41
  Nancy Kotz: Um, but my brother and I had so much joy taking our own children to all of the places we used to go when we went there in the summer, watching my daughter and my niece swimming in that lake, even though the duck isn't in the same place that it was when my grandparents had the house.
• 42:01
  Nancy Kotz: Um, going into the boathouse that still had the water skis and the rafters that smelled exactly the same.
• 42:09
  Nancy Kotz: Um, my brother and I were just lost in nostalgia uh in that June of 2011 for those few days that we were there.
• 42:17
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and we took the kids down to the Weirs, to Weirs Beach, where we used to go uh in the evenings and get cotton candy and go into the arcades.
• 42:30
  Nancy Kotz: And we took them to Keller House, which is this wonderful old store that has a make your own Sunday bar and a whole room with nothing but candy in it, and a whole room with nothing but stuffed animals in it, um, and a whole Christmas room, speaking of the good cross-religious holidays.
• 42:48
  Nancy Kotz: Um, and we took them for a hike in the White Mountains.
• 42:51
  Nancy Kotz: We drove them through Center Harbor and pointed to the road that went to our summer camps.
• 42:56
  Nancy Kotz: Um, so it's a connection for me, really.
• 42:59
  Nancy Kotz: Um, I didn't grow up there like Lynn did, but I feel like it's part of me, definitely.
• 43:04
  Crista Cowan: It sounds like it is for sure.
• 43:06
  Crista Cowan: And Lynn, as you think about, like, I mean, obviously you grew up in New Hampshire.
• 43:10
  Crista Cowan: You've got these, you know, summer kids coming for the summer to invade town.
• 43:16
  Crista Cowan: Um, but but that was your home.
• 43:19
  Crista Cowan: And what does it mean to you to say, I'm from New Hampshire?
• 43:22
  Crista Cowan: I still live here.
• 43:24
  Crista Cowan: You do?
• 43:24
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I am still here.
• 43:26
  Crista Cowan: I saw Duke University and I just assumed you were elsewhere.
• 43:29
  Lynne Snierson: Oh, no.
• 43:30
  Lynne Snierson: Well went up to school now.
• 43:31
  Lynne Snierson: No, I don't live in Laconia, um, but I I live in southern New Hampshire and ended up here um for a job.
• 43:39
  Lynne Snierson: And um people say to me all the time, well, why don't you like live in Boston or why don't you go to New York?
• 43:44
  Lynne Snierson: Why don't you, you know, um my niece and nephew, my um my own or my surrogate children, they're in Southern California and they're like, come move here, come be there.
• 43:53
  Lynne Snierson: But my New Hampshire roots run very, very, very deep.
• 43:57
  Lynne Snierson: And um, you're not gonna get me out.
• 43:59
  Lynne Snierson: Out of here.
• 44:00
  Lynne Snierson: I'm a part of New Hampshire.
• 44:04
  Lynne Snierson: New Hampshire's a part of me.
• 44:05
  Lynne Snierson: You know, and I still support the charities that my my father was helped to found.
• 44:11
  Lynne Snierson: And I'm still very tied to the community.
• 44:14
  Lynne Snierson: I believe in um very much in the um Jewish um, you know, to come along, you know, make the world better than when you came in.
• 44:22
  Lynne Snierson: So um, yeah, my roots are very, very, very deep.
• 44:27
  Crista Cowan: Well, thank you both.
• 44:28
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your connection to New Hampshire.
• 44:31
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your connection to one another, and thank you for sharing your connection to your families and your heritage.
• 44:37
  Crista Cowan: I appreciate it.
• 44:38
  Crista Cowan: Thank you very much.
• 44:39
  Nancy Kotz: Thank you for having Miss Krista.
• 44:41
  Nancy Kotz: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.