Ancestors Followed the Subway Out of Manhattan

1989 map of New York
City subway system

Sometimes a map or multiple maps can help us understand ancestors' movements within a city or region. That's the case with my immigrant Farkas and Schwartz ancestors who lived in New York City around the turn of the 20th century. 

Although they began their new lives in Manhattan, my maternal great-grandparents and grandparents were able to move to less-crowded residential neighborhoods in the northern borough of the Bronx because of the subway.

The Farkas family rode the subway and "the el"

My collection of now-obsolete
New York City subway tokens

My great-grandfather Moritz Farkas (1857-1936) was escaping financial ruin after hail destroyed his crops in Hungary. He sailed to New York and initially was a boarder in someone else's Lower East Side Manhattan tenement apartment. This was in August of 1899, before any modern mass-transit systems were even built. Once his wife, Lena Kunstler Farkas (1865-1938) and their children arrived from Hungary, they moved to an apartment of their own on the Lower East Side.

By 1920, however, Moritz, Lena, and their family (and many of the married children) were living in the borough of the Bronx, just north of Manhattan. This move was made possible by the expansion of the city's subway lines into what was then a much less-populated area. Ironically, many of the subway lines were actually overhead, not underground, and were usually called "the el," short for "elevated."

Now Farkas family members could ride the subway to work and to visit each other, not to mention go to the Bronx Zoo, the Bronx Botanical Gardens, and Coney Island by train! Family stories, corroborated by more than one cousin, say that to save money, Lena sometimes gave her two middle sons only a nickel each per day to ride the subway to work...one way. They had to walk home when the nickels ran out.

Teddy and Minnie never needed a car

My maternal grandpa Theodore "Teddy" Schwartz (1887-1965) also came to New York City from Hungary, arriving in 1902, before the subway opened to the public. He lived as a boarder on the Lower East Side for the first nine years, then married my grandma Hermina "Minnie" Farkas (1886-1964) in 1911. At that point, the subway system was growing by leaps and bounds, reaching far and wide year after year.

With affordable mass transit within walking distance, Teddy and Minnie moved their family from Manhattan to the south Bronx, then a fast-growing residential area with new schools and parks. They settled on Fox Street, directly across from an elementary school, and Teddy opened a grocery store down the block.

Teddy and Minnie never had a car and didn't need one, given the ongoing improvements of the New York City subway system. Here's what the network looked like in 1939. By that time, all three of their children were working--taking the subway into Manhattan and back to the Bronx on every business day. The price was right and the subway was the fast track to better-paying jobs in the heart of New York City.

"On the map" is the #Genealogy prompt for week 38 of the #52Ancestors series.