The Triangle Factory Fire, 110 Years On

By Caitlin Hollander

Very rarely is a law enacted in anticipation of a disaster; they are almost always due to a tragedy that has already happened. Exit doors in the US legally must open outwards due to the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago, which claimed the lives of over 600 people- in part because they were trapped when the inward-swinging doors could not be opened due to the crush of the panicked crowd.

In 1911, the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building (now called the Brown Building) near Washington Park in Lower Manhattan were home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which mass produced the on-trend women’s garment. The shirtwaist, which had risen in popularity in the late 19th century, was the woman’s answer to a man’s dress shirt. Mass producing them meant that this fashion trend was accessible to the lower income New Yorker. And just like much of modern-day mass-produced fashion, the workers involved in the creation of the garments were treated poorly, working long hours for little pay in unsafe working conditions. At the Triangle, the mostly young, female, Jewish and Italian immigrant workers earned between $7 and $12 per 52-hour workweek (or about $165-$318 in today’s money, or about $3.17 to $6.11 an hour). This job was coveted for another reason- fires were common in the garment industry, and the Asch Building had been described as “fireproof” (echoing the tragedy of the “unsinkable” Titanic a year later).

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This article was posted at 4:40pm EST, on March 25, 2021; exactly 110 years ago to the minute from the moment that a fire broke out on the 8th story of the Asch Building. This fatal fire, which would take so many lives, would forever change the way that American laborers were treated.

Thirty-nine year old Catherine Maltese (born Caterina Camino) was there at work on March 25, 1911, with her daughters, twenty-year-old Lucia and Rosaria, who at only fourteen years old, was one of the youngest employees of the Triangle. They were living at 35 2nd Avenue in Manhattan with Catherine’s husband and Lucia and Rosaria’s father, Serafino, and Serafino and Catherine’s other two living children, Vito and Paolo. According to the 1910 census (which records Rosaria as Sara and Vito as Tom), Catherine and their children had arrived in America four years prior from Italy. The first tragedy occurred shortly after immigration; Catherine and the couple’s youngest daughter, a girl named Maria, were detained at Ellis Island due to illness. While Catherine survived, four-year-old Maria perished before ever getting past this gateway to America. In total, the couple had lost three children; far from uncommon for the era.

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The Maltese family on the 1910 US Census. Image via FamilySearch

According to the fire marshal’s report, the fire likely began in one of the scrap bins under the wooden tables of the factory. These bins held several months' worth of highly flammable scraps of fabric. Beyond the issue of flammable rags, conditions in the Triangle were far from safe. The owners had ordered the doors to one of the two external staircases (despite three being required by law, the city allowed the fire escape to count as a third) locked to prevent employees from stealing. That fire escape was narrow and poorly anchored, and could not bear the weight of too many people- something which would prove fatal.

In addition to the dangerous working conditions, the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were notorious for their anti-worker policies. When the garment workers union had ordered a strike in 1909, they paid off the police to arrest the striking workers. Upon the end of the strike, the Triangle refused to sign the union agreement. This would’ve guaranteed increased safety and worker protections. After the fire, the unions would have reason to strike again

At 4:45pm, the first alarm was sounded by a pedestrian passing by the building who noticed the smoke. The building had no fire alarms, and the 9th floor had no telephone; so when a bookkeeper working on the 8th floor saw the fire he was able to call up to the 10th to warn the employees there, but the employees on the 9th floor had no knowledge of the fire until it reached them. The employees there would make up the majority of those killed.

On February 5, 1911, six weeks and six days before the fire, a seventeen year old girl named Sarah Brenman arrived at Ellis Island. She was born in the town of Sharovka, now in Ukraine, and had come to America to live with her older brother, Morris (Moshe), who had come to America seven years earlier in 1904. Three other siblings had already come to America; another brother, Joseph, and two sisters, Rosie (Reizel) and Esther. Twenty-three year old Rosie or twenty-one year old Joseph most likely had gotten the job at the Triangle for their newly-arrived sister, as they were both employees of the Triangle and were both there that day.

The foreman with the key to the locked third staircase fled as soon as the flames began. The flames on the 8th floor made it impossible to descend the unlocked staircase, and so some employees used it to flee to the roof until it became blocked both ways. New York University students from neighboring buildings grabbed ladders and ropes; their efforts saved 50 of the trapped workers.

But now, the only staircase remaining that could be used to get out was the flimsy fire escape. The workers crowded it until it collapsed, sending about 20 people falling nine stories to their deaths.

The collapsed fire escape in a photo taken for the official report on the fire.

The only remaining way to escape was the elevators, operated by some of the factory’s few male employees- Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillaro. Even getting to the elevators was tricky, with the long, narrow corridor becoming easily crowded and the language barriers causing increasing confusion.

Joseph Zito, a twenty-seven year old new father had only been working at the Triangle for about six months. He braved the flames and extreme heat- heat which damaged Gaspar Mortillaro’s elevator so badly that it could no longer make the trip- to go twice to the tenth floor, loading his elevator with as many people as he could. When the fire became too great, he continued to go to the ninth floor, and then eventually just the eighth, each time overloading his elevator. On his last trip, he carried 40 people in an elevator with a capacity of 10. In desperation, people climbed on top of the car. The weight proved too great, and the cables snapped.

There was no way out. 62 people were witnessed jumping or falling to their deaths.

After the smoke cleared, the death toll began to mount. The circumstances of the fire made it hard to identify victims immediately; many were taken to Charities Pier by the East River for identification.

In total, 146 people, ranging in age from fourteen to forty-three were killed in the 18 minutes the fire raged. 

The bodies of Lucia and Rosaria Maltese were identified by their father the day after the fire. They had been found at the bottom of an elevator shaft in each others’ arms. But Serafino could not find Catherine, and kept returning again and again searching for her. 

Due to the state of Catherine’s body, she was not identified until June of 1911. She had, by then, been buried with the other unidentified victims. The Red Cross gave the family the money to have Catherine’s body moved, and she was buried with Lucia, Rosaria, and little Maria in Calvary Cemetery.

The Evening World, New York, New York, March 27, 1911.

The Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, March 27, 1911.

Sarah, Rosie, and Joseph Brenman were all employed by the Triangle and were all present on the day of the fire. Only twenty-one year old Joseph escaped. Sarah and Rosie’s bodies were so badly damaged that they both were identified by their teeth; Rosie, by her brother with the assistance of a dentist on March 29, and Sarah, by their sister Esther on April 1.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, March 30 1911. Image via Newspapers.com

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, April 2, 1911. Image via Newspapers.com

Nineteen year old Esther had a nervous breakdown after, according to the Red Cross, who sent money to the family both there as well as to their widowed father, Chiel, and two younger sisters in the Russian Empire. Eventually, the family would be reunited in New York, when Chiel and his youngest daughters arrived in 1922. The girls are buried together at Baron Hirsch Cemetery.

The Triangle Factory Fire and its avoidable death toll elicited outrage, especially from unions, who took to the streets to protest. After the official report was issued, stating that if the doors had been unlocked it was entirely possible that no one would have died, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, both Jewish immigrants themselves, were charged with manslaughter. They were acquitted of criminal charges, but lost a 1913 wrongful death suit and were forced to pay $75 per victim to the families. This may sound just, but they had a $60,000 insurance payout from the fire, so when all was paid they had actually earned approximately $336 per victim.

But Max Blanck’s lack of remorse is clear when, the same year as the wrongful death lawsuit, he was caught once again locking the doors of a factory he owned to keep workers inside. There was a national outcry when he was fined a mere $20 for the crime.

This fire instigated major changes in American workplace safety law. As a result of the fire and the many union protests after, New York founded the Factory Investigating Commission. From 1911–1913, 38 laws for workers’ rights were passed in New York State.

The last survivor of the fire, Rose Freedman (maiden name Rosenfeld) died in 2001 at the age of a hundred and seven. She had been only seventeen at the time of the fire.

Smaller monuments dot the cemeteries where the victims are buried, sponsored by unions and families, but, despite funds being designated for the purpose by the state of New York in 2015, there is still no other memorial to the 146 people who died that day 110 years ago.

May their memories be a blessing and their legacy never forgotten.

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Further reading

The elevator operator Joseph Zito, who survived, saved over 100 lives that day. For more information about him, please read this story from WNYC. https://www.wnyc.org/story/119910-family-keeps-memory-triangle-fire-elevator-operator-alive/

Cornell University’s Triangle Factory website is an absolutely invaluable resource for primary and secondary source documentation https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/index.html

The Red Cross’s full disclosure on the emergency relief after the fire can be found here: https://archive.org/details/emergencyreliefa00charrich/mode/2up?view=theater

OSHA has a page on the fire here, which links to a number of excellent resources: https://www.osha.gov/aboutosha/40-years/trianglefactoryfire

New Christians, the Inquisition, and Genealogy

by Michael Waas

1492.

It was the eve of the onset of modernity. The old elementary school ditty,

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”

belies the enormity of this date not only for the native peoples of the Americas as the beginning of their genocide at the hands of European Colonial powers, but also the end of open Jewish and Muslim life in Iberia as they knew.

For the parents and grandparents of surgeon Gregório Lopes, this date would also be one of life-changing consequences. This article tells the story of Gregório, his wife Catarina, and their two daughters Helena and Beatriz. Gregório, who was born around 1521 in the first or second generation after 1492, would be tried just over a century later in the Inquisition Court of Lisboa, along with both Helena and Beatriz. Catarina would be tried in the Inquisition Court of Evora (a photo of which is right below). But context and background are needed to fully understand their story.

So, I invite you to come along and join me for this journey into the past.

The building where the Court of the Inquisition sat in Evora, Portugal. Photo taken by the author in June 2018.

1492 is an easy date to assign as the beginning of the Inquisition and the terror of the auto-da-fé (burning at the stake for heresy) because it ties in nicely with Columbus departing on his journey to the New World and with the Expulsion from Spain, and leaves our tale nice and neat with a bow on top. Like most easy dates in history, this is not the case.

1492 marks the Alhambra Decree and the formal expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from the newly unified and created Spain. The Inquisition in Spain began 14 years before in 1478 to ensure doctrinal uniformity of a new Catholic Spanish national identity. 101 years prior to 1492, persecution of the Jews in Iberia began in earnest with increasing numbers of converso families, many of whom were forcibly converted under threat of death. These conversos were treated with suspicion by many as not true Catholics and hounded as heretics.

Plaza Mayor in Madrid, where many auto-da-fés were held. Photo taken by the author in August 2019.

Most of the Jewish population of Spain fled with the Expulsion in 1492. Some went to North Africa, some went to the Levant, some went to the rising Ottoman Empire, and some went to the city-states of the Italian Peninsula. However, many went across the border into Portugal. Gregório’s parents and grandparents likely may have been amongst these refugees, crossing the border from Spain into Portugal. 

The sea journey was dangerous and replete with rumors and news of pirates kidnapping Jewish refugees and holding them for a king’s ransom, or even selling them into slavery. Many of the Jews in newly unified Spain, instead, went to Portugal, believing that while times were difficult, the Alhambra Decree would soon be rescinded. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares in their authoritative work, Os Judeus em Portugal No Seculo XV (The Jews in Portugal in the 15th Century), estimates the number of Jews in Portugal in 1496 at a maximum of 30,000 people based on the sisão poll tax collected that year. This is where our story truly begins.

In 1496, in order to marry the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, King Manuel I of Portugal had to extend the Alhambra Decree to his domain as part of the dowry agreement. King Manuel, of course, was not interested in expelling a large part of his population. Instead, he enacted the decree but forcibly baptized all of his Jewish subjects in 1496 and 1497 to Catholicism and thus, as new converts to the faith, they were not allowed to leave Portugal. In Spain, the Inquisition had already been active for almost 20 years, but a grace period had been instituted – no Inquisition was established for these new converts, now called the Cristãos Novos (the New Christians). This only formally ended with the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, 40 years later.

Because there wasn’t a formal Inquisition, there was no formal mechanism for prosecuting heretics and ensuring adherence to Catholicism. As a result, a distinct and enduring Crypto-Judaism developed among the New Christians. Furthermore, even though the forced baptism was meant to assimilate the New Christians by making them indistinguishable from the Old Christians in name, discrimination by Old Christians and preferences among New Christians to stay within trusted networks led to lasting divisions between the two communities.

In Spain and Portugal, in order to enter into society for powerful positions, usually one had to prove that one was of “Pure, undirtied Iberian blood” (Christian). The so-called limpieza de sangre (in Spanish)/limpeza de sangue (in Portuguese), required the person to testify as to their genealogy through their grandparents and show that they were neither of Muslim nor Jewish blood. These genealogies, while often true, could just as easily be falsified. In many cases, these genealogical examinations could go even deeper.

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Letter testifying about Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier.

Here are two examples of these documents, one from Portugal and one from Spain. 

The first one, from 1653, involves a Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier, testifying about his clean blood in order to join the military order, the Order of Christ. The Order of Christ was the surviving order of this little known group, you may have heard of, the Knights Templar (see Mesa da Consciência e Ordens, Habilitações para a Ordem de Cristo, Letra G, mç. 6, n.º 152 from Torre do Tombo, Portugal).

The second is a register of powers to members of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares to carry out the Limpieza de Sangre examination and also notes on the examinees from 1601-1608 (see Archivo Histórico Nacional, Universidades, L.706). This page includes two such examinations and their listed genealogies. The genealogies have “Father….Mother…Paternal Grandparents…Maternal Grandparents...” and the applicant testifying to their “untainted” blood.

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Folios 72v, 73r of this register from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares of Limpieza de Sangre examinations.

However, this article is not about Old Christians and Blood Purity – it’s about the fact that genealogy was not only used as a tool of entrance into high society and opportunities, but as a tool to persecute “to the ends of the Earth”. While everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition, did you know that it was, in fact, the Portuguese Inquisition that was the most brutal and targeted the Jews/New Christians the most? 

As part of an Inquisitorial prosecution, most defendants had to testify to their genealogy to the best of their knowledge. And so we return to the surgeon Gregório Lopes, his wife Catarina Lopes and their two daughters, Helena Lopes and Beatriz Lopes da Silveira. All four were imprisoned by the Inquisition, Catarina (in 1587 in the court of Evora, where she died in prison), Gregório (1594-1597 in the court of Lisboa), Helena (1593-1597 in court of Lisboa), and Beatriz (1594-1597 in court of Lisboa). Each of the files except for Catarina’s are available for full reading. 

Folio 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes. See the end of this article for an example transcription of this page.

Gregório was born in the first or second generation after the forced conversion in Portugal. According to his processo, he was born in Beja around 1521 to Manuel Afonso “o Grande” and Helena Lopes, both New Christians. At the age of 10, with a brother Henrique Lopes, he began to study to become a surgeon. At 15, together with Henrique and a Martim Rebello, they went to Lisboa to continue their studies. By the age of 19 he obtained the office of surgeon and moved to Evora and at 25, he left Evora for Beja. This is a family of surgeons; his daughters Helena and Beatriz both married surgeons. The processos of all three mentioned relatives who also are surgeons, but were unclear how they fit on the basis of reading just the genealogy section of the processo. In addition, in the typical naming pattern of Portuguese and Sephardic Jews, the daughters of Gregório and Catarina are named first for each of their mothers.

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Tree created by the author on the basis of Gregório’s, Beatriz’s, and Helena’s processos. The notation “xn/xv” (New Christian/Old Christian) was added to the spouses of known. In the processos, the wife of Diogo Manuel, Catarina Goncalves, was unclear whether she was Old or New Christian. Beatriz and Helena disagreed about which maternal aunt was married to Luis Mendes and which was unmarried. Duarte Dias em Beja and Manuel Lopes, sirgueiro, were mentioned as relatives but currently unable to tie them to the tree.

When researching Sephardic history and genealogy in the Inquisition Courts, these genealogical interrogations can be enlightening, helping to build out a fuller picture of the ways these families networked and, in some cases, can show varying levels of integration with Old Christian families. My own ancestry has examples of this, a da Veiga family from Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra, that was either wholly or mostly of Old Christian ancestry, that married with New Christians in the city of Viseu. In part 2 of this article, I will explore tracing one such family from various sources, using Inquisition, parish, notary, and Jewish communal archives to showcase what is possible with careful research.

Transcription of F. 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes

1: de a dizer. Perguntado he cuidou em

2: suas culpas como nesta mesa lhe foi mandado

3: e se as quer acabar de confessar pera com-

4: isso ser tratado com misericordia. Disse 

5: q[ue] si cuidou e q[ue] naõ he de mais lembrado 

6: e logue lhe forão feitas as perguntas

7: seguintes de sua genealogia perguntado

8: como a nome de q[ue] idade e nação he donde

9: natural e ao presente m[orad]or e as mais pergun-

10: tas gerais. Disse que elle se chama Grego-

11: rio Lopes de idade de setenta e quatro anos

12: naceo em Beja na rua davis freguesia

13: de Sancta Naria, e q[ue] morava agora na

14: granja termo desta cidade en casa de

15: Josea chanoca e ahi o prenderão e que 

16: não tem avos né avoos e q[ue] seu pai

17: se chamava Manoel Afonso o grande xrão

18: novo q[ue] fazia mantas e sua mai se

19: chamava Helena Lopes xrã nova q[ue]

20: morava na dita rua e freguesia ambos

21: defunctos e q[ue] não tem tios nem tias da 

22: parte de seu pai nem de sua mai e que

23: tem alguns parentes em Beja como he

24: Duarte Dias q[ue] tem irmaõs e alguns filhos

25: e Manoel Lopes cirgueiro, e q[ue] tem

Women From Nowhere

By Caitlin Hollander

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Rose Glickstein (born Rose Feldman)’s application to take the oath of allegiance

In April 1950, a Russian citizen named Rose Glickstein applied for American citizenship in the United State District Court located in Newark, New Jersey. She was 49 years old, a divorcee; her divorce having been finalized only four months prior. Her now ex-husband had naturalized in 1931, but as per the law at the time, her citizenship had not followed his and she remained a Russian citizen. This, however, had not been the case thirteen years prior when a then 17-year-old Rose Feldman married a Russian citizen named Charles (born Aron) Glickstein. In every way, the naturalization paperwork appears to be that of just another Russian Jewish immigrant. There is one glaring detail, however, that makes this situation unusual —  Rose Feldman was born a US citizen in Newark, New Jersey and this document exists as a relic of a little known era in which American women had no right to a nationality of their own. 

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Lucy Guarino (born Lucy De Falco)’s application to take the oath of allegiance. She was 13 years old at the time of the marriage that stripped her of her US citizenship.

The paperwork for these reclamations of citizenship — a process that began in 1936 — reveals an interesting demographical note. Most of these women are Italian or Jewish. Many of them are divorced from or widows of their foreign-born husband — some have even remarried American citizens. Most were born to immigrant parents, but some are second or even third generation American. Some were immigrants who had been naturalized as children through their fathers, lost citizenship upon marriage, and then regained it as adults. Some of the women were shockingly young at the time of the marriages that lost them their citizenship — Lucy Guarino was two months shy of her 14th birthday at the time of her marriage to an Italian citizen. She had also been born in Newark, and in December of 1950, petitioned the same court as Rose Glickstein in order to regain the citizenship that she had lost due to a decision made at only 13. 

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Sarah Shevak (born Weinberg)’s 1950 application to take the oath of allegiance — signed over a century after her grandparents had immigrated to America.

Both Lucy and Rose had been born to immigrant parents. Both women lost their American citizenship due to teenaged marriages to men substantially older than them — Rose Feldman was only 17 at the time of her marriage to 23-year-old Charles Glickstein, and Lucy DeFalco’s husband was 19, six years her senior. This was not the case with Sarah Shevak, nee Weinberg, who applied for United States citizenship in that same court in Newark. She was only two months younger than her husband Solomon, who had been born in what is now Belarus. Sarah had been born in Manhattan; her father, Isaac, had been born there as well, and her mother, Zillie, was born in Pennsylvania. And yet at 63 years of age, this second generation American was not technically a US citizen, despite her grandparents coming to the US over a century before her 1950 citizenship application. 

The law that stripped these women — most of whom who had never left the United States — of their citizenship had been enacted on March 2, 1907 as part of the Expatriation Act. As a result of their loss of citizenship, these women could be subject to deportation. Many were forced to register as enemy aliens during WWI and WWII. 12 years after this law was enacted, another implication was discovered — despite the nineteenth amendment granting women the right to vote, women like Sarah Shevak would not have been able to, despite being born in the United States. And even when the law was technically repealed in 1922 as a part of the Cable Act, women married to aliens “ineligible for citizenship” (typically used to refer to Asians but also to draft dodgers or those who had deserted the US military) still lost their American citizenship upon marriage, as did women who married a non-citizen and then lived abroad for two years. 

From the Chicago Eagle, Oct 28, 1922 — the story of Virginia Roth, who became effectively stateless due to this law.

At its core, the law was deeply sexist and xenophobic; similar to arguments against the female vote, arguments against women retaining their US citizenship upon marriage to a noncitizen husband centered around the idea that women could not have loyalties or opinions separate from the husbands. In fact, these laws took that idea one step further, tethering a woman’s identity to her husband’s. Even when the husband’s country of origin did not offer reciprocal citizenship to his wife upon marriage, she would lose her citizenship, rendering her stateless. Tying a woman’s citizenship to her husband’s also meant that if he did not wish to naturalize, she had no path to citizenship — a married woman could not file for citizenship on her own account. Even if she was estranged from her husband, the courts would require a divorce before she could pursue citizenship.

To further complicate the matter, divorce laws of the era were notoriously strict, and in some states, a non-citizen could not file for divorce — effectively holding non-citizen women hostage to their estranged husbands. Even though women’s citizenships became their own — in most cases — following the passage of the Cable Act in 1922, it was not until 1931 that no woman lost her citizenship upon marriage (even if her husband was ineligible for citizenship) and then finally only 1936 that these women were given a path to regain their citizenship — and even then, only if the marriage itself had ended either through death or divorce.

Finally, in 1940, Congress passed a law allowing even married women to regain their lost citizenships — 33 years after they had declared that women had no right to their own nationality independent of their husbands, 18 years after they had declared that only some women had that right depending on who they had married, 9 years after they had declared that all women would retain their citizenships upon marriages, and 4 years after they had declared that the women stripped of their citizenship could regain it regardless of their marital status. 

This era of American history — spanning 33 years from its inception to end — is rarely spoken about or taught today. It is little known, even in genealogical circles. And yet, these petitions for repatriation continued long into living memory. In December 1969, a 79 year old widow named Lillian Weber took her oath of citizenship. She was 5’3 and 130lbs with grey hair and brown eyes, the mother of two grown sons — and like Sarah, Rose, and Lucy had been born in America.  

Further reading: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturalization-1.html

On Sephardic Surnames

By Michael Waas

When Spain and Portugal approved their “Right of Return Citizenship” laws in 2015 for descendants of the Jews expelled in 1492 from Spain, who converted to Catholicism in the preceding century beginning with the persecutions in 1391, or who were forcibly baptized in 1496 and 1497 by rule of the Portuguese King Manuel I, interest in Sephardic genealogy grew. Many people, interested in the possibility of an EU passport, started to ask questions about if they were eligible or not by looking into their genealogies. Along came a list that purported to be an authoritative register of all Sephardic surnames, claiming that anyone who had a name on this list would be automatically eligible for Spanish citizenship through this pathway. 

Photo of the old town of Vinhais, Portugal, a place where many Sephardic Jews lived after being forcibly baptized. One of the famous Amsterdam, Livorno, and London families that came from there was the Lousada family and all of their branches. Photo taken by the author in June 2019.

Problem solved, right? “Was my ancestor Sephardic?” could be answered by this expert list, stating conclusively that your family’s surname had belonged to known Sephardic communities.

However, there was one slight issue: that list was fraudulent and a poor copy of indexing work done by the late Harry Stein, who didn’t claim that all of the surnames he indexed were belonging to Sephardic families; just that the books he consulted on Sephardic genealogy and history, had some kind of reference to the surname. Furthermore, not all of the surnames he indexed even belonged to Jews or were in exclusive use by Jews.

In genealogy, history, anthropology, and archaeology, it is always critical to ask questions of the sources you are reading, even if it is a primary source.

Unfortunately, because of lists like that, myths perpetuated by heritage tourism (“Jews forced to convert took the names of fruit trees, Catholic themes, and plants in order to ‘hide’” being one such popular legend routinely sold by tour guides and books in Spain and Portugal), and, quite frankly, inadequate teaching about the history of Sephardic Jewry, a lot of confusion exists today about Sephardic genealogy and history. With this series on Sephardic genealogy and history, I hope to shed some light and encourage people to ask questions about the past in order to better understand the present and future.

A Pear tree, which in Portuguese is “Pereira”. According to the legends, a sure sign of hidden Sephardic Jewish ancestry. In reality? Just a pear tree with hopefully delicious fruit. Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

So, what is a ‘Sephardic surname’? To put it simply, it is any surname used by someone in the Sephardic community. For the purposes of this series, I will be using the term Sephardic, exclusively meaning those with a genealogical tie to expulsees and conversos/New Christians, as well as those who joined later on. This does not necessarily include other Jewish populations who follow Sephardic traditions and approaches to Jewish law and identify as Sephardim/pan-Sephardim as well, who do not have a genealogical connection.

Unlike most other Jewish communities, surnames have a longstanding usage and tradition amongst Sephardic Jews. In the Iberian peninsula, surnames began being used in the 10th century CE, reaching popular usage by the 15th century. Jews in the Peninsula, like Catholics and Muslims, took to this new tradition readily and thus, the tradition of familial surnames predated the end of Iberian Jewry. Famous surnames like Abarbanel, Benveniste, Zacuto, ibn Yahya, and Palache could be found amongst Iberian Jews in the centuries preceding the persecutions, Expulsion, and forced conversion.

So, to return to the original question, “What is a Sephardic Surname?”

There are two main categories of surnames:

Pre-Expulsion Surnames

These surnames could be toponyms (names related to the place), Arabic names, occupations, Hebrew names, and more. Some pre-expulsion surnames include:

Abarbanel, Abensur, Aboab, Almosnino, Alsheikh, Altaras, Amarillo, Barzilay, Benaroya, Benatar, Benbassat, Bendalec, Ben Ghiat, Bensousan, Benveniste, Faraggi, Franco, Haleva, Herrera, Marcos, Nahmias, Palache, Pardo, Pesso, Policar, Saporta, Saltiel, Senior, Sion, Toledano, Valensi, Zacuto

A tax receipt from 1388 of Samuel Amarillo of Tudela from the archives of the Kingdom of Navarre (thanks to Maria Jose Surribas for sharing it). The Amarillo family after the Expulsion and forced conversion, mainly settled in Salonika, where they produced important rabbis and leaders of the community. The author is a descendant of a branch of this family, including the Hahamim Shelomo Amarillo, Moshe Hayim Amarillo, and Shem Tov Amarillo, all of whom were Chief Rabbis (Shelomo and his son Moshe Hayim in Salonika, Shem Tov in Korfu and Larissa, all today in Greece).

New Christian Surnames

These surnames were given to Jews who were forcibly baptized to become New Christians in Portugal, otherwise known as Conversos in Spain. The acquisition of surnames was simple: They were the baptismal surname of the Old Christian godparents of the Jews in 1496 and 1497. This was done in order to assimilate the New Christians and make them indistinguishable from the Old Christians. In practice, this was not really done at all, and through stigma and discrimination New Christians remained a community apart. Some examples of surnames include:

da Costa, da Fonseca, da Veiga, Delgado, Fernandes, Gomes, Henriques, Nunes, Lopes, Marques, Mendes, Pinto, Pereira, Rodrigues, Vaz…

From the Inquisition of Lisboa processo for Judaizing of Gaspar Fernandes o Gallego. In Portuguese it states “Disse que elle se chama Gaspar Frz gallego, mercador, e que christão novo de idade de sesenta e dois annos…” which means “[the Defendant"] stated that his name is Gaspar Fernandes Gallego, merchant and that he is a New Christian, aged 62 years old”. You can see the rest of his processo, here: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2312336

What’s important is that New Christian surnames are indistinguishable from non-Jewish, Old Christian surnames because they are the same. Furthermore, you can have innumerable combinations of names, including siblings with different surnames entirely, as long as the family names existed within the recent genealogy of the family. In my own research, I have a set of siblings born in Viseu, Portugal, and Bayonne and Bordeaux, France who moved to Amsterdam, London, Barbados, and possibly Newport, Rhode Island that have the surnames Mendes, Mendes Sereno/Serrano, and Nunes Mantensa. All the same generation!

Some examples of double surnames found among Portuguese Jews include:

Aboab da Fonseca, Franco da Costa, Franco Mendes, Gomes da Costa, Henriques Nunes, Lopes Pereira, Mendes da Costa, Mendes Seixas, Nunes Vaz, Rodrigues Pereira, Pardo Roques, Sarfaty Pina, Vaz Dias, Vaz Lopes, Vaz Nunes, Vaz Villareal

To sum it up, Sephardic surnames have a long and storied history. Many family names are ancient and have deep roots in Sephardic genealogy and history. Yet, the appearance of a surname in your genealogy that was used by a Sephardic family in the past and today is not an indication of an actual Sephardic genealogy and connection. Each case must be studied critically, understanding all of the data points including communities, oral histories, archives, and genetics. In my own family, we discovered that our surname’s origin lies not in a creation of Dutch Ashkenazim for the Napoleonic surname registration in 1811, but is actually a Dutchification of a Portuguese surname, Vaz, uncovering a previously forgotten and unknown history of a family that became Ashkenazi in the mid-18th century in Amsterdam. This story was only uncovered due to a deep study of YDNA and the archives of Amsterdam. 

If you think you have Sephardic heritage, please feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to provide a consult and develop a plan for researching your ancestral past. For an amazing further resource on Sephardic surnames, please see the excellent Dicionário sefaradi de sobrenomes by Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares, and Anna Rosa Campagnano, which gives an extensive list of documented surnames of Sephardic Jews and the communities they came from across the world, including archival sources. In the next blog in this series, I will discuss more on who the New Christians were, their genealogies, and their impact on Sephardic history.