Recently, I was contacted by Mrs. Susan Kovach Nemith Hinkle. Susan was an excellent student of this writer at Northampton High School. She discovered a treasure of letters and memoirs from her family’s history. They take us back to an era when immigrant families became an integral part of the American experience.

I requested she write down some of these cherished memories for our loyal readers. In the first column, Susan remembers her grandfather, Andrew Kovach, from memoirs written by his daughter, Madeline Kress Kovach. They are very interesting.

Susan:

Ondrej Kovac Dvarsky was born in 1880 in Hostisoviach, Czechoslovakia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He spoke Slovak and Hungarian when he arrived at Ellis Island in 1906 with a large trunk containing his belongings. His name was changed to Andrew Kovach during his immigration processing.

Lured to the United States by the promise of work by cement mill agents sent to Europe to find workers, Andrew left his wife, Zuzanna, and baby daughter behind until he could send for them. He knew of other Slovaks who found work in Pennsylvania and had friends here from his hometown in Czechoslovakia, so he headed to Siegfried on the railroad. Men from the Lawrence would meet the immigrants at the Siegfried station and sign them up for work as they left the train. Most could not write, and their “mark” was their signature. Andrew was the exception, as he had six years of education in Czechoslovakia and could read and write.

The Lawrence Cement plant started in 1899, was renamed the Dragon (1951-1961) and operated as Martin Marietta between 1961 and 1983.

After two years of solid work time, Andrew wrote to his wife to sell everything (since there was talk of war in Europe) and sail to Northampton. Nineteen-year-old Zuzanna and her 2-year-old daughter got on a ship with their trunks and headed west.

Andrew became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1946; Zuzanna and her children were naturalized in 1948. Being able to vote was a great privilege for them. They raised five girls and one boy in Northampton.

Madeline, their fifth child, survives, having turned 98 in December of 2015. She is still very active in her church, helping with sewing projects for baby quilts. In the past year, she started Tai Chi and yoga classes to stay limber. These are her memoirs.

Madeline:

Andrew, my father, worked hard in the cement quarries of Northampton, and my mother took in boarders to supplement their income. The men worked shifts in cement plants, and Mom would prepare their lunch kettles, cook meals, wash and iron their clothes. Once their family grew, Andrew and Zuzanna no longer took in boarders as they needed the room for their own growing family.

My earliest childhood recollection is living in a row house on Newport Avenue. These row houses were owned by a Russian family named Solan. Our neighborhood consisted of Slovaks, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Austrians, Germans and Hungarians.

A big social hall down the street is where people would congregate on weeknights and Saturdays to socialize, dance and drink beer.

On winter evenings we would go to Assad’s grocery store to sit and socialize. They had benches in the rear of the store with a coal stove for heat. The men and women would talk while we children played games. With no radios or televisions, the people would visit each other, without invitation, to socialize, exchange news, gossip and tell stories.

On summer evenings, we children would play street games and meet at Assad’s or Sharfman’s grocery store across the street. Whenever we got too rambunctious, Mr. Sharfman or Mr. Assad would chase us to the other side of the street. Mr. Assad was a Syrian who married a Slovak woman. Mr. Sharfman was Jewish and was the adviser to all his customers. Both families had children who were our best friends and classmates.

Our home life was simple. We had kerosene lamps and wood- and coal-burning stoves. The dining room had a potbellied stove. Mom would always have them polished and shining black. At Christmastime we would hang our stockings in back of the potbellied stove. We would get some nuts, hard candies, an apple with pennies stuck in it, an orange and maybe a doll or new shoes. We did not get much, but we were so happy with what we did receive. Weeks before the holiday, Mom would get a goose to fatten up for our much-anticipated holiday dinner.

Behind the row houses on Newport Avenue was a big outdoor oven where all the women would bake their breads. The smell of warm bread was enticing, and we children would anxiously wait for a piece of the fresh bread. We would sneak into a neighbor’s yard and take some onions to make a “cibulka” (onion) sandwich. Or, we would dip the bread into sugar for a sweet treat.

Mom did her laundry by hand on a scrub board. Water was heated on stoves as were the irons for ironing clothes. We had our Saturday night baths in the kitchen in a wooden tub. Our clothing was made by hand by Mom, who was a good seamstress.

In the fall, the big event was when the men in the neighborhood would make wine. The children helped pick the grapes off the stems and then washed their feet in order to stomp on the grapes. Some of the best wines were made on Newport Avenue.

Bread and meats were delivered and sold directly to the homes at the back door. When there were big snow falls, the delivery was by a horse-drawn sleigh.

We lived on Newport Avenue until I completed third grade in the Washington School building.

I had to cross the railroad track to go to school. Many times the train was stalled on the track, so we would crawl under and go on our way. If a moving freight train was long, we had to wait. It meant we had to run faster to get to school on time.

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In the next article, the Kovach family moves to Washington Avenue and continues to prosper in small-town America.