My grandmother, Fruma-Tsivye Lurye (wife of Boruch Lurye) with her mother Chaya Gurevich. 1913 , Konotop.
Let me start with my grandfather, my mother's father. I don't know where he came from. I only know that he was born into a very poor Jewish family. His name was Boruch Lurye. He was a tinsmith and owned a workshop with work-hands in Konotop. The buckets and other articles they made they took to fairs. Mother told me that as a young man my grandfather was a solider. At that time soldiers were to serve in the army for 25 years. He got very sick in the army. According to my mother, the doctors told my grandfather that he should go to St. Petersburg, to the tsar himself, and get a release from the army. I don't know who received him in St. Petersburg in reality, but he took his documents about kidney disease there; he was transferred to the reserve and returned to Konotop, to his wife. Grandfather died at the age of 48, in 1905, from his kidney disease. In those times young people created families. Grandfather was around 17 years old when he married my grandmother, Fruma-Tsivye (I don't know her maiden name). She was around 16 years old. She was a housewife. They had 14 children, but only six of them survived: three sons and three daughters. The eldest child was Soreh-Liba, born in 1875. Then Meishko was born 1888, then Rakhil and Avram were born, and Shlemka was born in 1899. I have practically no memories of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye, because she died at the end of 1918-1919, when I was too young.
Keeping order around the house of such a large family and feeding the workers of - all of these duties rested on the shoulders of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye. They also had cows. Their children certainly helped the parents. Everyone was working. They owned nothing but the workshop. Aunt Soreh-Liba, for instance, soldered together with her father's workers.
