Some people have nice easy genealogies. Their families all come from one place, and records are available dating back for thousands of years. Other people have jumbled messes of genealogical data, with ancestors all over the world, and records scattered just as widely, if they exist at all. Such is my lot. Fortunately, my mother, along with my Aunt Helene, was able to track down much of this information for me. So here it is, the whole lot of it. Not very organized, but much better than it had been. Also, I have stuck to my direct ancestors. I would have gone crazy writing about everybody, and have driven crazy anyone trying to read about it.

            The earliest recorded appearance of the Shoemaker name was in 1597 at Monschau, a Mennonite settlement located along the border between Germany and Belgium. There lived one Heinrich Schumacher. When religious persecution grew in this area, the Mennonites moved to Dollendorf, on the east bank of the Rhine, south of Cologne.

            The first mention of George Schumacher, the oldest Shoemaker on the family tree, is found in records from Dollendorf dated February 15, 1655. At this time, the Mennonites were ordered to move by the Duke who ruled the area. They moved southward along the Rhine, going first to Mainz, and finally settling in Kriegsheim, near Worms.

            In 1659, William Ames and George Rolfe, Quaker missionaries, visited Kriegsheim. George Schumacher, along with his older brother, Peter (and possibly also another brother, by the name of Jacob), were converted at this time. This conversion did not decrease the religious persecution that they suffered. Finally, in 1682, William Penn visited Kriegsheim, inviting both the Quakers and the Mennonites of that village to settle in Pennsylvania, free from persecution. The Schumacher brothers were among the many who accepted this offer, and in 1686 George Schumacher set sail for America with his family. George died on the ship. However, the rest of the family arrived in Philadelphia and purchased two hundred acres of land near the city, in the area that became known as Shoemakertown. This land was added to when Sarah Wall Shoemaker, wife of the second George Shoemaker, inherited a large tract of land from her grandfather Richard Wall, another important landowner in the area. With these two tracts, the Shoemakers remained among the most prominent families in the region for many generations.

            In May 1826, Malachi Shoemaker, the sixth son of William Shoemaker, left the family holdings (which he would not have inherited anyway), and moved west into yet uninhabited lands. He settled in a wooded area in the northern part of Pennsylvania. There he built a hat factory, and in 1831 was among the founding fathers of Granville Township. He also established a farm in the area. Records show that this farm was purchased by Payne Shoemaker, eldest son of Malachi, from a wealthy Philadelphian named Henry Cramond on March 24, 1871, and had previously been held by him under a contract dated November 17, 1858. Most likely, the Cramond family had held title of these lands under an old land grant, and had ignored them. The 1858 contract was probably made after Henry Cramond inherited this title, and hired an attorney to claim his rights.

            In any event, this farm was held by the Shoemaker family for three generations after Payne. Then, in 1971, Floyd Shoemaker, being too old to work the farm, sold most of it to his neighbors, the Jennings family. Floyd kept only the two-acre plot of land containing his house. This house remains in the family today, owned by Helene Shoemaker Whitman, my aunt, and granddaughter of Floyd Shoemaker.

            The Nicholson family is a little harder to trace back. We know that Patrick Henry Nicholson was born in Galway, Ireland on March 17, 1852. We also know that his parents, William Edward Nicholson and Winifred Spellman, lived in that region. However, this leaves an important question unanswered. Nicholson and Spellman are not Irish names. Rather, they are Scottish. What were these families doing in Ireland? Certainly, it was no better a place to live than Scotland during the mid-nineteenth century.

            Unfortunately, we do not have genealogical records to answer that question. There are many reasons why an individual might want to migrate, aside from those that are recorded in history. However, if we discount these possibilities and stick to the history books, the family history in Ireland seems to go back several centuries, to the reign of King James VI of Scotland. James VI, who was king of Scotland from 1567 until 1625, encouraged the establishment of Scottish colonies in Ireland and America. It is possible that the Nicholson and Spellman families were among these colonists. This is the only historical explanation available for this generally unadvantageous migration.

            Patrick Henry Nicholson’s migration to America is much simpler to explain. In those days, America had a reputation as a “land of opportunity” where the streets were “paved with gold.” As the people of Ireland were generally in a state of starvation throughout the period, many departed for America. Patrick was among these immigrants. The other three grandparents of Teresa Marie Nicholson Shoemaker (my grandmother) were Irish, and came to America under the same circumstances.

            My knowledge of this part of my family history is bad, as Teresa Nicholson, unlike my other grandparents, is no longer living. Much information critical to this history died with her (or perhaps with her mother). However, other accounts of immigrants from this period tell of a hard lifestyle, in which the entire family worked long hours for little pay, in contrast to the lives they lived in their former countries, where only the men worked. Confirming this information, I am told that Mary Elizabeth Maxey Carmody worked as a nanny for the Bacon family. This is just the sort of long-hours job that immigrant stories often describe, and provides a good picture of what life was like in the Carmody family.

            There were several people within the Nicholson and Carmody families named John. None of them called themselves John. I mention this seemingly irrelevant detail now as I begin to tell about my great-grandfather for whom I am named, John Thomas Francis Nicholson, who was called Joe. Grandpa Joe served as a volunteer fireman for the Elmira Heights fire department from 1908 to 1914. He was a bit old to fight in World War I, although not so old that he could not have fought. He did not serve in the war, but his brother Harry did. Harry was with the Fighting 69th, a famous Irish-American unit. After the war, Harry suffered from the effects of mustard gas poisoning. He never married. Meanwhile, Joe married sometime during the war. His wife died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Joe married again on November 16, 1921, a more fruitful union. Joe owned a butcher shop in Elmira Heights, NY. Most of the people in the neighborhood where Joe’s shop was located were immigrants from Russia and Poland. Joe could speak both languages fluently. He lost the shop in the Depression, and was forced to take a job digging ditches for the WPA. During this time, Joe experienced heart trouble. By the 1940s, his heart condition was bad enough that he could not work. To support the family, his wife, Mary Ellen Carmody Nicholson, obtained a nursing license. She worked as an L.P.N. at the local hospital until 1964, when she retired.

            Marvin Shoemaker married Teresa Nicholson on April 13, 1951. Neither of them had any higher education. Marvin avoided fighting in Korea because he had injured his back in an automobile accident before the war started. This injury also kept him from doing heavy physical labor. Marvin worked in office jobs for most of his life.

            Marvin left Teresa in 1965. He got a divorce several years later so that he could remarry. Teresa had custody of their children. She was unable to hold a job, and the family lived on welfare payments. The children grew up without a father because Teresa’s mother refused to allow Marvin to visit (she also destroyed most of the pictures of Marvin with Teresa, making research for this project difficult).

            The Lurie family story is fairly similar. Lena Super came to the United States from Vilna in 1887. She had an arranged marriage in the United States that was mostly unsuccessful. Hillel and Miriam immigrated around the same time. They came from some place in Russia (I was unable to locate it on a map; probably it was in the northern part of the country). Hillel worked in New York’s garment district, and later started a leather business in Jersey City. His son Charles grew up in Jersey City. Charles Lurie served in the Navy Signal Corps during World War I. After his marriage to Anna, Charlie moved to Allentown, PA, and started his own leather-goods store. He lost this store in the Depression. Charlie made one more business attempt after the Depression, some time in the 1950s. Along with his son Bertram (who, like Marvin, avoided Korea, due to a congenital heart murmur), he bought a coal yard. This yard was eventually bought out by the Lionetti Fuel Company. Bertram worked for Lionetti for many years after this. He had a reputation as one of the best oil salesmen in the business.

            Yetta Weissberger was born in the village of Tarnaf (somewhere in eastern Europe; in villages of that size, it did not matter what government was providing currency, which was the only thing they took from or gave to the government). She was the youngest of nine children. Her brothers Max, Itz, and her sister, Rose moved to the United States, then sent for her after World War I.

            Philip Hirschfeld was born in Bobowa, a small village in Poland. Like the Luries, he worked as a leather dealer, selling material to shoemakers (ironic, isn’t it?). When World War I started, Philip was in Austria-Hungarian territory, and was conscripted by that empire. After the war, Philip moved to the United States, where he met and married Yetta. He built up a successful grocery business, and became fairly wealthy. Unlike my other relatives of his generation, Philip avoided losing his money in the Depression. He even took his family on a trip to Europe in 1931.

            Unfortunately, Philip died in 1940.  Yetta ran Philip’s shop for three years, and then remarried, to Louis Rothman. Louis, a widower, sold paper goods. In 1951, Yetta moved to Lowell, MA, to take over her sister’s dry goods store. This was a successful business, and Yetta operated it until her retirement.

            Thus concludes this telling of my family story. A long and painful road it was, covering many disparate parts of the earth. Note, however, that the stories were all very similar in the end. This is the way of men. No matter where we come from, we are all the same.