Isaac Jacob Cohen

[from a book by JH & JK:]

Isaac Cohen was the son of Jacob Cohen and Rebecca Ashkinasi, and was born in 1878. In 1901, Isaac went to Janina to find a wife, and even though his future bride Hanoula was against marrying a man from Castoria, Isaac was just too good looking for her to pass up. Yesula, Hanoula’s father, made Isaac live with them for a few months so he could get to know him better. When Isaac’s mother found out she came riding into town on a fast horse (she rode so fast that as soon as she got there, the horse died), expecting not to like Hanoula, but she stayed a while a got to like Hanoula very much.

During one of Isaac’s pre-nuptial visits, Rachel, Hanoula’s mother cooked some fish for breakfast and told Hanula to watch it. While the fish was under Hanoula’s care the cat ate it. She was horrified and didn’t know what to do. But Isaac came to the rescue. He went out and bought more fish, took it to the town bakery to have it cooked, and brought it home ready to eat. When Rachel returned home she thought the fish pieces looked different, but she never found out what happened.

In 1903, after having their first child in Janina, a girl, named Rachel Cohen, born in 1903, Isaac decided to emigrate with his wife and infant child to America. Yesula insisted they also take Eli, Hanoula’s youngest brother, as an escort. They went from Greece to Marseilles by boat. Then they went overland to Cherbourg, France where they boarded a boat, the SS Moltke, for America.

When the four of them got to Ellis Island, they were given medical examinations. Hanoula had something wrong with her eyes so they put a chalk “X” on the back of her coat and sent her to another line. Isaac, Eli and baby Rachel went to another line. When Isaac discovered, from an Albanian immigration worker, that the line his wife was on meant she was going to be sent back to Greece and the only way to save her was to erase the “X” from the back of her coat, he walked over to her, put his arm around her and guided her to his line. As he walked he moved his arm up and down her back wiping off the chalk mark.

The first job they got in New York was sewing in a factory. Because Hanoula sewed faster than Isaac she made $6 a week while Isaac only made $4. He didn’t like this so he quit and got another job for $10 a week. But unfortunately after only two weeks his boss died, so Isaac went into business for himself selling aprons. They lived on Eldridge Street, their flat always being shared with other family members. There they had five more girls. They moved to Brooklyn in 1917, where they had their first son, and 2 more daughters, making a total of 8 children in all.

Isaac became a citizen of the United States in 1930. Hanoula’s native language was Greek and Isaac’s native language was Spanish. When they met Hanoula learned Spanish and Isaac learned Greek. When they came to America they both learned English. However the language they spoke amongst themselves was Greek.

[Reminiscence of Jack Kaplan:]

I remember Isaac was a clever man and a "Jack of all trades". Once he influenced my father David Kaplan to use him as a contractor to build a house in the Bronx on a corner lot, which my father owned. It was during the early part of 1929, before the wall street crash. Isaac Cohen hired a number of workers to dig a foundation and to build frames to pour concrete. It seemed that Isaac was paying these workers too little for the work that they did and they decided to strike. Well Isaac went back to Brooklyn and left the job undone.

But it seems that Isaac had a lot more problems of his own. He was desperately trying to build a house for his family on 2063 74th street in Brooklyn. He moved his family in before it was done in January 1926. There were no utilities and floors were not finished and there was no stove. As Mollie Cohen Weissbard remembers, "We never did get the proper certification to move in from the government so we always had to deal with many violations, especially when the neighbors complained about the noise that came from our basement factory."

In the basement in their home in Brooklyn Isaac installed a number of sewing machines and turned it into a factory producing baby bloomers, nightgowns and lots of ladies tea aprons. As the years went by lots of remnant pieces were accumulated from the manufacturing process. Isaac started patching together pieces and made up hundreds and hundreds of aprons, which were really a sight for sore eyes. However, Hanoula had real mazel and time after time they would send me, Jack Kaplan, hundreds of these aprons and I would find people to buy them. They were really lucky people.