“The Very Soul of Human Progress”: How Newspaper Databases Revealed a Poor Immigrant's Lecturing of a Movie Star about the "Slums"

Sussya Klepper was born in Romania in 1884. She called it the “dark age”—literally, they had no electricity. When she was two months old, her father Aron boarded a ship to New York. After a year of making $6 a week with a push cart on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he had earned enough money to send for his wife, brother-in-law and baby daughter Sussya. 

Sussya, or Susan as she went in New York, grew up on the Lower East Side. She eventually had three siblings, and they all shared a single bedroom in a tenement on Allen Street—the two boys shared a bed near the window and the two girls another bed near the wall. Her father ran a pawnshop on the ground floor, where her mother helped; and despite the limited space, they took in boarders to make an additional income.

Years later, Susan described growing up on the Lower East Side as the absolute worst—how the streets were filled with mud; how the loud elevated rail passed right outside their bedroom window; how there was no privacy whatsoever; how they needed to venture to an out-house for a toilet. Susan was “in rapture” when she saw a tree, or even a nice rug, and she yearned to one day be able to leave the filth of the Lower East Side.

Susan attended a public high school, where she was confronted by Christian students who pulled her hair and soaked it in ink wells because she was Jewish; indeed, one girl told Susan that she would have liked to be friends with her had Susan not “killed our Lord.” Susan remained in school, though, where she focused on being the best student in her class, and she graduated from Brooklyn's Manual Training High School in 1903. Over the next ten years, Susan held jobs as a bookkeeper and teacher, and – as an accomplished pianist – founded a choir that sang at the Friday night gatherings of the Men's Club of the uptown prominent reform congregation of Temple Emanu-El.

Susan with her choir (including her sister and three of her soon-to-be sisters-in-law), accompanied by her soon-to-be husband David Snyder and his friend Sam Sobel, New York, 1910

In 1911, Susan married a fellow Jewish immigrant, who was then studying at City College of New York, and who – inspired to make something more of himself – by 1916 had earned a second degree, the precursor to an MBA, at New York University. After having a child, the new family had moved up to the Bronx and lived right by the Botanical Gardens, where Susan could finally enjoy nature. Life had gradually improved for the now-married mother, Mrs. Susan Snyder.

Susan Klepper and David Snyder (Schneiderman) were married on December 28, 1911 in Manhattan

Good Fortune for a Young Canadian Girl

Life was also going quite well for a young Canadian woman named Gladys Smith, although her life had also gotten off to a difficult start. In 1898, when Gladys was only 5 years old, her father John (who had been working as a bartender at the time) died, leaving her widowed mother with three young children.

Death entry for John Charles Smith, age 30, a bartender in Toronto

On the 1901 Canadian census, we see a 30 year-old widowed mother Lottie Smith working as a seamstress in Toronto, caring for her three children under the age of 10, as well as her divorced sister and her Irish-born widowed mother.  

Excerpt from the 1901 Canadian census: Lottie Smith, a 30-year old widow with three children, living with her "separated" sister and widowed Irish-born mother

The Smith family took in boarders as well, some of whom allegedly introduced them to theater. By 1910, the Smith family had left Toronto and come to the United States, first to Manhattan, for a fresh start. On the 1910 census, both mother and daughters now listed their occupations as theater actresses. 

Excerpt from the 1910 US census: Charlotte (Lottie) Smith and children in Manhattan; now the women are all listed as theater actresses

Around that time, Gladys Smith took a stage name: Mary Pickford. And this young Canadian immigrant exceeded all expectations. By 1916, Mary Pickford had soared to the top of the newly-thriving film industry. As a recent article explained, “Mary Pickford was the most famous woman in the world; the first female celebrity not just known by name, reputation or sketch, but even the way the corners of her eyes curled down when she smiled.” In a remarkably short amount of time, this blonde Canadian quickly rose to become the first female movie superstar, amassing a fortune. She did it all; as another article explained: “One hundred years ago, the most powerful woman in Hollywood was a producer, a studio head and a major force onscreen.” Pickford later co-founded United Artists with other celebrities, including Charlie Chaplain; co-founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and received two Academy Awards. Indeed, while we are focusing on census records, by the 1920 census, Mary Pickford was living in Los Angeles with her mother and sister, and now living with them were a waitress, child's nurse, cook, ladies maid, housekeeper and chauffeur!

Daily Talks by Mary Pickford

During this period, Mary Pickford wrote daily nationally-syndicated columns for newspapers, covering a large variety of topics. Susan Snyder enjoyed reading Mary’s columns, and a century later, Susan's descendants have a personal letter that Mary Pickford ultimately wrote to Susan regarding these columns. The letter reads as follows:

My dear Mrs. Snyder,

Your letter was such a very interesting one that I should like you to know how very much I enjoyed hearing from you. I admire your spirit and the way in which you stand up for the people of the slums. I must say I never liked the word slums, and I am sorry that I used it in my article for it certainly does make one think of filth and all sorts of unsanitary conditions.

I think the majority of people realize and acknowledge the sacrifices which so many people of the poorer classes gladly make to give their children an education.

I am so glad that you like my little talks in the Globe, and if you should happen to think of anything in particular about which you would like me to write, will you let me know?

With kindest wishes to you, I am

Sincerely,

Mary Pickford

Whatever Susan wrote to Mary Pickford, it was obviously impactful enough that this global superstar took the time to respond with a personal letter. But while the letter survived, the story behind it vanished with Susan, who passed away in 1981. That is, until newspapers became digitized and searchable.

The Backstory Comes to Light

In the past few years, one of the most rapidly expanding genealogy resources has been historical newspapers. Some of the largest databases for American newspapers include Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, The Library of Congress's "Chronicling America" database, and especially for New York research the Fulton History database, among many others. A phenomenal list of cumulative US newspaper resources is available on The Ancestor Hunt's website here. These sources have collectively scanned millions of pages of historical newspapers, and with modern OCR text recognition software, the formerly print newspapers can now not only be viewed online, but they are also searchable. This results in the possibility of now very easily uncovering stories that had long been suspected to be lost to annals of the past.

With these wonderful new resources, I set out to attempt to piece together the story behind the Pickford letter. The keyword to me in the letter was obviously "slums." Clearly Ms. Pickford wrote something about "slumming," so I searched on Newspapers.com for anything that contained the words "Pickford" and "slums" or "slumming," and I limited my search to articles from 1916 that were in the few months before the date of her letter to Susan Snyder. And jackpot, there was a match, from February 16, 1916 -- an internationally-syndicated article covered in newspapers spanning from Buffalo, New York to Anaconda, Montana to Regina, Saskatchewan. The article was entitled, "A Slumming Party."

Pickford's article began: “I have read about it often and have heard about it oftener, but I never really went slumming until the other evening. Of course, I feel there is no part of the city, from the heights to the depths, we do not see when we are abroad taking pictures. But the terrors are always lessened by the sunlight drifting into the alleyways, making them a little less gloomy and formidable than they seem in the dark nights, lighted only by an occasional street lamp.”

Pickford then elaborated about the people of the slums: “It has always seemed strange to me to find how happy the people are who live in these miserable tenements, while I have often observed how somber hued are the lives of those who come from mansions on Fifth Avenue or the Drive.” After passing by the “old Italians with their hurdy-gurdy,” despite the late hour, Ms. Pickford noted how “there were dozens of children swarming around, dancing in the cold, partly to keep warm and partly because theirs is the natural joy of living.” Pickford goes on to describe an evening at the Yiddish Theater, which she enjoyed, and after “thundering applause, we escaped, I do not know how, because they mobbed us as far as the street.” Ms. Pickford and her rich friend finished their journey in Chinatown, where they “discovered a guide who took us through mysterious highways and byways, impressing upon us that unless we were masked and muffled to the eyes we stood in immediate danger of not only being killed, but spending a night in the city jail.” But their Chinatown adventures were short lived: “Alas, all we saw of terrible Chinatown was an old, dilapidated joss house, a little hovel where a Chinese woman sold bracelets for fifteen cents apiece and a peek into a door which the guide, in awed whispers, assured us was a notorious gambling house and opium den.”

Wow. I wasn't sure if I was more amazed that I found the article, or by the contents of the article itself. The most famous woman on Earth had just published a rather condescending article about the Lower East Side. Ms. Pickford’s assessment attempts to be innocent, writing as some Marie Antoinette about her experience in the dark and dirty slums, but in what she believed was a positive and lighthearted manner, one that she believed her international readership would enjoy.  

They didn't all enjoy it though. Despite being a recent “graduate” of the Lower East Side, which she herself despised, Susan did not like the article. Indeed, she was so infuriated by how “her people” were described that she evidently wrote a letter to the most famous woman in the world. Ms. Pickford surely received scores of fan mail, so the odds of Susan actually receiving feedback on her accusatory letter were not high. However, a few weeks later, Susan received back the letter from Ms. Pickford; one can only imagine that Susan might have been a bit terrified to open the letter. The letter (shown above) was actually remarkably personal.

The fact that Ms. Pickford took the time to respond signified to me that Susan must have really written an impassioned letter. But the fact remained that obviously Susan did not retain the letter – she mailed it to Mary Pickford – and the odds that Susan's letter would turn up in a museum collection for Mary Pickford were close to none.

Susan's Letter Emerges . . . In the Newspaper

Susan’s letter did not survive, and the contents of her letter to Ms. Pickford were left to imagination for a century. And then it reappeared, in none other than an article by Mary Pickford. I noticed that in Ms. Pickford's articles, she often answered fan questions, so it got me thinking whether there was a subsequent article after Susan wrote to Ms. Pickford that might have had a short response to Susan. I looked for more articles that potentially mentioned the "slums" after March 1916, and I was shocked at what I found next.

On March 31, 1916, Mary Pickford was back at it, writing a new daily talk entitled, “Rosy Cheeks of the Ghetto.” Yes that’s right, after telling Susan Snyder that she did not like the word slums, Mary substituted slums out and replaced it with ghetto... After an anecdote about arguing with a director about whether the “children of the ghetto” are “half starved” or “the sturdiest, healthiest little shavers that ever gave promise of becoming helpful citizens,” Ms. Pickford elaborated that she (allegedly) went “often to what is known as the East Side in search of color, atmosphere and romance,” where regardless of season, “the little, bare feet of the children go tripping merrily along to join other little bare feet dancing to the ground-out melody of the hurdy-gurdy.” 

After expounding about how healthy the poor youth of the ghetto appeared, most remarkably, Ms. Pickford adds: “And now comes one of my correspondents, writing me direct from this ‘melting pot’ neighborhood,” one “Mrs. S. S.,” initials that would have remained a mystery but for Susan saving and passing down the letter she received from Mary Pickford. After a century of mystery, searchable online databases have now brought back to light the fact that Mary Pickford quoted Susan Snyder’s letter in her newspaper article. Susan's voice – that of a strong and impassioned immigrant – comes to light:

Let me take you behind the scenes, and show you why the children look robust—let me show you home life as it is and not as fiction makes it—let me show you character, the homes of philosophers, future men of fame. The typical east-side apartment is neat, plainly furnished, crowded because of many children, but in every home there comes a visiting tutor. The poorest family will stint on necessities, but will manage to save enough to hire this teacher of languages and religion. This also is the spirit in which they educate their children at the public schools and colleges. These people worship education. They honor an educated man, a man of many learned degrees, more than they would a J. Piermont Morgan. How many times have I seen mothers plying their needles early and late to keep children at college. But why, oh, why don’t the stage and film show the beautiful unselfishness of parents who skimp and save and educate their children, with this comforting reassurance to each other: “So our children may not have to work for their living as hard as we do!”—in its essence the very soul of human progress.

We'll be back to this remarkable response in a moment. After giving reference to the response of the “mother of the ghetto,” Pickford recounts how she relished the joy of these children she saw there and concludes: “And how I love them, because they are all so alive—alive from their little bare heads to their inquisitive toes, too often peeping out unprotected into the cold world, but miraculously warmed by the world-joy that too early, alas, often turns to world-pain in the breasts of many of these children of toil.” Ah yes, how Twitter would have enjoyed this article.

The Words of the Immigrant Mother

Susan Snyder is my great-grandmother. She described her life as spanning the “dark age to the rocket age,” being born without electricity in Eastern Europe to watching a man on the moon on television; she lived until 96, happily married for nearly seven decades. By the 1930s, she and her family had moved to a beautiful apartment in Brooklyn overlooking Prospect Park. She raised a family, was an accomplished pianist, taught Sunday School, led tours for the blind in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, volunteered as a “candy striper” during World War II, enjoyed playing mahjongg and bridge, and loved spending winters in Florida and California with friends and family. Her life did not include much glamour or fame, but she did live the American Dream, one which created opportunities for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who include an array of attorneys, accountants, academics, musicians, and more in fields including real estate, design, engineering, and technology.

Susan lived until age 96; she and David were married for 69 years

Surely Mary Pickford would have conversed with the descendants of the ghetto mother. But what about Susan? When Susan wrote to Mary Pickford, she was 31 years old, with a three year-old at home, a husband studying at NYU, and both of them working additional jobs to make ends meet. She was an immigrant who grew up in poverty, sharing a bedroom with three siblings, and with parents who did not speak English well. She did not know that she would one day live on Prospect Park and vacation in Florida, or that her descendants would lead prosperous lives and careers. 

Susan’s letter is the epitome of the testament to working class immigrants. And given that context, her language, vocabulary, and writing style were incredible, writing about immigrant parents' “beautiful unselfishness” to do anything imaginably possible to give their children a better future. The vision and stunningly remarkable quality of her words is forceful—this 31 year-old poor mother saw a future for herself and her people that was rooted in hard work and education: “‘So our children may not have to work for their living as hard as we do!’—in its essence the very soul of human progress.” What words for a “mother of the ghetto”!  

As time goes on, and upward mobility works its magic, many forget how we got to where we are. Mary Pickford is a perfect example. She was no royalty; when she was a child in Canada, her widowed mother worked as a seamstress, caring for three children and her widowed immigrant mother. Pickford likely wanted to forget about that, and she had the chance to do it—she moved countries and changed names; no one had to know. But with this anonymity and fresh start, she then wrote about the less fortunate in such an elitist manner (I wonder whether she thought that type of rhetoric was somehow necessary to fit in). 

Had Susan been born today, I can only imagine what type of life she may have lived; women could not even vote at the time of these correspondences. I bet she would have made a good lawyer (and I bet she admired the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Nonetheless, Susan was able to impact a world-famous celebrity through nothing more than basic skills learned through a public school education—words. With Susan’s New York City public school education, accompanied by a passionate desire to create a better life, she made a positive impact. I am sure her parents were proud to know that the sacrifices they made in coming to America had made a difference those days in 1916; and I know that a century later, her lessons, pride and passion in standing up for those less fortunate live on. And may we all remember, as Grandma Sue put it, the “beautiful unselfishness” of those striving to better their lives and the lives of their children.

A Postscript on Newspaper Resources

The amount of information I have found through newspapers on my family – both in the US and in Europe – is remarkable, and these sources help piece together the actual lives of the ancestors that are not told through vital records. Susan's life, which is well-documented, is no exception.

Through US newspaper sources, I have located the following articles, which are listed here merely to show what types of information you might be able to find on your own "ordinary" ancestors:

• A New York Times article about the summer vacation program for the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, in which young girls are interviewed about their aspirations. Thirteen-year-old Susie Klepper stated that she "desires to be a piano teacher," New York Times (July 31, 1897).
• Announcements of Susan performing piano solos at her school at age 14, including at the School No. 1 celebration of Washington and Lincoln's birthdays, Brooklyn Citizen (Feb. 21, 1899); and at the "closing exercises" for the graduation from Public School No. 1, Brooklyn Standard Union (June 29, 1899).
• Inclusion in a list of graduates from Manual Training High School, from its "Business Course," Brooklyn Standard Union (June 25, 1903).
• A variety of articles from 1912 announcing the weddings of a variety of civil servants with the Department of Weights and Measures, including David Snyder to Susan Klepper, e.g., Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Nov. 19, 1912).
• An announcement entitled, "Mrs. Susan Snyder Plans Annual Charity Musicale," announcing that Susan was giving her "annual musicale and organ recital," with proceeds going to the Brooklyn League of the Los Angeles Sanatarium for Tuberculosis, and with other performances by my grandmother and great-aunt, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Apr. 14, 1941).

So please make sure to search newspapers, you truly never know what you might find!

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