Abe Savetman

The birth certificate for "Abraham SOWETMAN" showed that he was born on January 3, 1906 at 127 Madison St in NYC (on the Lower East Side) to parents Solomon SOWETMAN, age 32, and wife Dorah, maiden name SCHOCHET, age 28. It indicated that this address was the residence of the parents, and that this was her first child and the only one living.

The 1930 and 1940 Censuses show him living in Lakewood, NJ with his parents at 608 County Line Road, and the operator of a poultry farm. He apparently stayed in Lakewood his whole life, except for a 5-year stint in Tennessee in the 1970s. .

Abe was a man way ahead of his time. He was a vegetarian who grew wheat on his New Jersey farm and used it to bake fresh,wholewheat bread from his home oven--truly "homemade bread" made from scratch. He was featured in several articles in the Asbury Park Press from 1958-1976, with photos (one with his dog Teddy). In one of the 1976 articles, he mentioned that his family had moved to Lakewood in 1923..

A letter he wrote in November, 1977 to Dora & Manny Hoffman had a return address of East County Line, a street in Lakewood, apparently the renamed version of County Line Road.. Donald and Barbara Hoffman saved it and gave it to me, and it's posted here. In it, Abe makes references to many of his first cousins (all first-generation) and how difficult it was for him to keep in touch with everyone. He says that the last time he saw Dora and Manny was in Baltimore, around 1960.

He mentions that he had sold the New Jersey farm five years earlier and bought a farm in Tennessee. He says he had distant cousins in Oak Ridge, Tennessee--the Silvermans--and that Mrs. Hormats was an aunt of Mrs. Silverman. He added that he had cousins on his mother's side in Jackson, Tennessee, in the western part of the state. He says that he was happy for a while in Tennessee but eventually became lonesome and depressed and missed his old friends and sights in NJ. So he sold the Tennessee farm and just bought back the old one, and that's where he was currently. He has just demolished the old house and started a new home, 200 feet further back from the road, to escape the traffic noise, which was the cause of his selling and moving five years earlier.

He mentions that he is busy with the farm, and that the soybeans he'd planted that year had not yet been harvested because of too much rain. He expects to be busy in the spring with the fields, and hopes to be able to get the shell of the new house up before then. He also says that, although he'll be 72 in early January, he feels like 50 or younger--doesn't count the years, claims he's allergic to doctors, and advises Dora & Manny to keep away from them.

In his May 1982 will, Abe made some very unique, specific bequests that reflected his thinking and his values. A copy of it is posted here, obtained from Yogi Savetman.

Ed Friedel, June 2018