Embedded Files
Notes by Joe Essid Jr.
Suleiman (say it fast...sounds like "slyman") arrived on SS Caroline in the June 1911. From information on his green card, I found his actual ledger entry within five minutes of searching at Ellis.
He traveled with two "friends," embarking in Tripoli Lebanon from what was then the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Caroline's registry, was planning to travel to Lowell, MA. Curiously, the ship's register (see below) lists Sam's father as living there. The other men from Danich who traveled with him also listed relatives at the same address in Lowell. I think it likely they made this all up to get into the US: who could check back then? Sam's mother and father never emigrated to the States. But what of the other men with him?
Sam told me that one of his "friends" took Sam's money, supposedly for safekeeping. Sam held the man by his feet over the ship's railing until the fellow promised to return the cash. With that, Sam was done with these men. Rosemary Fahed notes that Sam had a sister in Richmond, so that became his new destination, with no English in his head and only the name "Richmond" pinned to his coat.
Sam got his American name at Ellis Island, probably from some exasperated Irishman who worked for Immigration. He ended up with his dad's nickname as his new last name. That, and Mary Essid's name, are now on the Ellis memorial in Battery Park, NYC. We visited and had that arranged on the 100th anniversary of his arrival.
His father got his nickname “Assad” (Lion) because he famously killed a big cat, perhaps a Lynx or the larger, and now critically endangered, "Anatolian Leopard" or now extinct "Caspian Tiger." That is possible, because these cats were alive in western Turkey in the late 19th Century. Who knows if one had roamed into the hills of Hatay, when Sam was a little boy?
Gida always called it "The Tiger," but we'll never know for sure. Assad had the help of his dog, "Arbeet." We don’t know his actual first name; I'm guessing his mother's first name was "Ali," as shown on Sam's arrival records at Ellis Island. See the closeup images at bottom.
We may never know that with certainty. As for the dog, I own two of this breed, one a pure-breed Wolf-Coat Anatolian Shepherd, who will grow to 150 pounds (or more!). They are ferocious protectors of livestock. It's possible that's the sort of dog the Nasser family had with their flock of sheep.
SS Caroline, line drawing, from Ellis Island archives. "Must have been a rough crossing on a single-stack liner," the docent added who helped up find the information.
Swede, our Anatolian Mountain Dog, at a "small" 150 pounds. I call him "Arbeet" sometimes.
In my teens I found out a secret about Sam. He spoke Turkish and this led me to wonder about the town of Danich, listed on his Green Card. I asked Turks I know, and one of them, from the Province of Hatay in SE Turkey, said she'd heard of Danich, a small town on the current Syrian border. Turkey's largest population of Maronite Christians live in this area.
I could not find it on a map, but in Sam's youth, Hatay was just another part of the Ottoman Empire, as were Syria and Lebanon. Only after World War I did the modern map come into play, with Hatay going to France and later, after Ataturk's rebellion in the 20s against the European powers, back to what became modern Turkey. This was the same era when Lebanon and Syria became separate nations under colonial rule. The modern name of Sam's village may be different, as the Ataturk's Republic renamed many places in order to unite Turkey under the Turkish language and appear more modern to Europeans. There was even a new alphabet (the Turks spoke their own language but until the Republic wrote in the Arabic script). Sam read and wrote in the Arabic script but was never literate in English, to my knowledge, beyond signing his name.
Sam and the rest of us had many Armenian friends, and given the genocide against them by the Turks at the end of WW I, it's easy to understand why Sam did not advertise his place of birth. We know he worked herding sheep, as his father did, in the mountains. For a while I have speculated that he moved to what become Lebanon to help relatives. This was easy to do and common for Ottoman citizens then. We may never know.
Hatay has its own mountains. The incident with "The Tiger" may have happened there, and there seems little reason for a man living near Beirut to travel north to Tripoli. From Hatay, however, it's a nearby port.
His name supports the Turkish origin. Suleiman The Magnificent was one of the most enlightened of the Turkish sultans, and he extended protections to Christians and Jews in his realm. Many people of Christian and Muslim faith take his name today, and in Istanbul in 2006 I heard a fellow working the front counter in a kebab shop call out to his friend in the kitchen "Slyman! Slyman!" pronouncing the name just as we did my grandfather's. It sent a shiver up my spine.
Sam's name is the fifth down, "Nasser, Sleiman." Note birthplace of Danich, occupation as "farm labor," as well as his nearest living relative's name. This is a mystery. It could be "Mother: Ali Nasser," since other entries on the page list "Father" or "Uncle" in this column. "Ali" can be a male or female name.
Sam's mom was still alive at this point, in the Ottoman Empire. She died of either starvation or malnutrition during the Allied blockade of Ottoman ports after the Gallipoli landings.
See the fifth line down, from the other page of the immigration document. Is that "Father, Mohammed Nasser"?
We knew of a sister in Richmond, but no other siblings. As with the other relative's identity, we may never know that answer.
From an online article about the events in what is today Lebanon, during WWI; it aligns with accounts by Irfan Orga in Portrait of a Turkish Family, whose family, though close to the Sultan's court in Istanbul, nearly died of starvation themselves after losing the breadwinner at Gallipoli and their home in a fire.
Ottoman officials outsourced the provisioning of foodstuffs to consortia of merchants, lacking the administrative capacity to enact an empire-wide system of grain distribution. In Anatolia, this policy aimed at rewarding Muslim merchants loyal to the CUP ruling clique. In Lebanon and Syria, an intersect commercial/state alliance saw Ottoman officials and Christian and Muslim merchants entrusted with ensuring the civilian population was well supplied with food. Limited shortfalls in grain harvests morphed into a catastrophic decline in the market release of wheat. Those charged with feeding civilian populations with grain in Syrian and the Lebanon sought profits instead of the public good. Their criminal negligence wrought terrible consequences and in the hardest hit areas, such as Lebanon, one in three inhabitants starved to death. The war ended with much of the Empire’s population suffering from hunger. Food shortages also sapped the morale and fighting capabilities of the Ottoman military.
Sam's Flute and Mountain Lion
In August 2021, I gave both of these mementos that belonged to Sam to my niece, Samantha Essid. Sam had a few flutes, and his favorite was a "dime store" plastic flute, but I loved the metal one I gave her, and I recall him playing it too.
He had a ceramic mountain lion that I believe one of my siblings gave him. I wanted Samantha to have a few things from her namesake ancestor, so I put her in charge of these family artifacts.
Here's a closseup of Line 5 from the Caroline's register. Sam's occupation, just to the right of the area shown, lists "farm laborer."
Another closeup of the register, showing the address of 28 Suffolk Street, Lowell MA, Sam's stated destination. He never went there, as his story to me revealed.
I'm inclined to read that line as "Father Mohammed Nasser," and if this is correct, we have the name of Sam's father before he earned the nickname "Assad" that became our family surname at Ellis Island.
I think we hit the jackpot here with his mother's name, Ali Nassar of Danich.
Notes by Rosemary Fahed
The alien card (shown below) must be from the time Uncle Joe and Uncle Charlie took Gida on a trip to Canada. I think I gave you a copy of the picture with them and Uncle Joe Wilby and his son, Emerson. Emerson's son Jack married Lyla Oley, Faiz Oley's sister. Uncle Joe Wilby was Sita's brother-in-law (Sita's first husband was Tom Wilby) Uncle Joe Wilby married Sita's niece, Bessie Ramey. The two were not related, but Aunt Bessie was Sita's niece on one side and her sister-in-law on the other side. (Couldn't resist giving you that little bit of info.)
I remember another time Uncle Joe took Gida to Detroit to see a cousin that he had not seen since he came to America. The cousin had done well and Gida said they were treated royally. They corresponded for many years after that.
Update by Joe Essid Jr.
Dad mentioned going to Frankenmuth, Michigan with his father to meet a cousin. Lots of Maronites settled in Michigan then; Frankenmuth is north of Flint, about 1/3 up the Lower Peninsula. It was the only time Sam had seen him since they immigrated.
In 2017, our cousins in New Brunswick fondly recalled Uncle Charlie driving up with Sam and my dad, in a fancy Cadillac. That was the only time dad or Sam left the country.
Chances are, Sam got this card to enable him to visit family in Canada.
We are fortunate to have it, as it lists the address of his and the family's then-home, 3118 Rosewood Ave. in Richmond. It saddened us all that the house of bulldozed to make the Downtown Expressway, which also destroyed hundreds of other homes.
I'd like to think we are not that stupid today.
In any case, in 1967 he and Mary (Montura) Soffee Essid purchased a home at 18 North Shepherd Street, fewer than 10 city blocks from the Rosewood home.
This card notes the exact date he arrived at New York (June 5, 1911), which gave me instant access to the database at Ellis Island.
Finally, we have his birthday, March 19 1892. Or is it 1893 shown on the Naturalization certificate?
That would have made him 89 or 90 when we passed in May of 1982.
I included the flip side of each document because we have Sam's thumb print! He had HUGE hands. The story of him picking up a Model T's four-cylinder engine off the ground and tossing it on the back of his truck, on a dare, may not be unreasonable.
He reportedly asked a fellow who knew him what he wanted for the old motor that Sam planned to scrap. I was told that the man knew Sam was strong, so he said "if you can pick it up, you can have it free."
We do, from my dad, have that story as well as the informal wrestling matches held on weekends at Chimborazo Park in Richmond's Church Hill neighorhood. Sam was a regular at these and was considered one of the best wrestlers in the Lebanese community.
Google Sites
Report abuse