Bananas are not the only fruit

...but they are the only ones to feature in my family history.

Encouraged by the recent ancestry blips from Kendall and Guinea Pig Zero I've decided to give it a try myself. Even more, I've been inspired by the poems  by chaiselongue. Focused on her maternal grandmother, the book includes an image of her New York marriage certificate. As it happens, my own maternal grandparents were married there and this is theirs, dated 6th September 1892.

Grandfather Herbert was the cosseted eldest son of nouveau riche Londoners, groomed to take over the family building firm founded by his father, who had started out as a bricklayer. The family roots were in rural Leicestershire and the names of Herbert's siblings were solidly Anglo-Saxon: Ada, Ethel, Edwin and Arthur.
One day, aged 24, Herbert went to buy a bunch of bananas at the  greengrocer's down the road in Islington. He was served by a luscious -looking dark-haired young woman of not-yet 20 and he was smitten. A dalliance followed but within months she had  left to join her elder sister in America.

Leah Kesner, my grandmother,  was the youngest of 4 daughters of  Jewish immigrants who had arrived in the east end of London from Lithuania shortly before her birth in 1871.  Her elder sister had been born en route, in the port of Hamburg, the two before that in their home town of Vilnius, where their elder brother remained. Her father had been a furrier there but he, and the daughters, all found jobs in the rag trade in Spitalfields where they lodged in a terrace house next door to one of Jack the Ripper's putative victims. The eldest daughter left to marry cousin Albert in New York, the other two married brothers who ran a greengrocery business in north London: it was while helping out there that Leah encountered Herbert - but her passage was already booked to New York, and her sister had found her an eligible suitor.

Herbert was broken hearted when Leah sailed from Liverpool on the SS Umbria,  packed with refugees,  and arrived at Ellis Island on June 27th 1892. Such was his distress that a month later his sister Ada wrote privately to Leah imploring her to break off her engagement and 'follow her heart' for Herbert was planning to set out for the White Man's Grave of West Africa and the happiness of the whole family would be destroyed. I have this letter: it is as soft as tissue paper, read and re-read many times.  The emotional blackmail worked: Leah relented and Herbert was on the next ship, the SS Gallia, docking in New York on September 3rd. Three days later the couple were married by special license;  they honeymooned at Niagara Falls.

It would be nice to report that a happy marriage ensued but it was not to be. The next 20 years saw Leah shelling out 10 children. Husband and wife were at loggerheads, the boys fought, the girls squabbled. One child died, of too many bananas apparently. Presented with my mother as a premature new born, Leah waved away the wizened infant: "She looks like a monkey".  Herbert counted off the letters of the alphabet on his fingers: "9 is I, we'll call her Ida".
One of my mother's earliest memories was of her mother coming into the kitchen where her father was eating a banana. He had thrown the peel on the floor. "What's that doing there?" his wife asked him. "It's for you to break your bloody neck on" he replied. That was bad enough but even worse, my mother was mortified to hear her mother repeat the anecdote to all and sundry when out shopping  later that day. No doubt bananas were on the list of purchases.

This family history did not receive much airing when I was growing up. The emphasis was all on my father's side: Russian gentry and much more prestigious. As it happens, my paternal grandmother also has a curious connection with New York - but that is another story.