December 14, 2023 • 34 mins
My family moved to Bowling Green in 1987, but we weren’t the first Jews to live there, far from it. Jews had been settling in Bowling Green for over 150 years, drawn by economic prosperity. Jewish merchants helped open up the American frontier, wherever they could a stream or railroad to follow. They learned to adapt their faith and traditions to a new place, one where there wasn’t a Jewish community to rely on. And when their children grew older, and fell in love, it was sometimes with a local Christian kid.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Laura Yares of Michigan State about 19th century Jewish life, and what it can teach us today. I also speak with Dr. Matt Boxer of Brandeis University about how and why Jews ended up in small towns to begin with. Along the way, Ben Dubrovsky shares another chapter in the story of Josh, while I share the Jewish history of the Nahm family, four brother who settled in Bowling Green just before the Civil War. The episode finishes with an introduction to a new friend, John Nahm, who grew up in Bowling Green and whose great-grandfather was Sam Nahm, one of the four original brothers and the only one to be buried in Bowling Green.
72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two.
So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving.
72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website.
You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com.
Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You.
The thing that I think is very importantto remember about the geography
of American Judaism in the 19th century isthat whereas today it might seem very
intuitive to think of certain places asmajor Jewish centers and other places as
small Jewish communities,that was a map that had yet
to be drawn in the 19th century.
(00:23):
It wasn't clear where the one small townwas actually going to blossom and bloom
into a major Jewish metropolis orwhether it would stay a small community.
The map of American Judaism was really yetto be drawn,
and it wasn't clear that Bowling Greenwouldn't necessarily
become the next Cincinnati.
(00:44):
That's Dr.
Laura Yaris, a professor at Michigan Stateand the author of a recently published
book that explores the growthof Jewish Sunday schools in America.
Like most american Jews,I grew up attending one of those
Sunday schools, and I spoke with Dr.
Yaris about how Jewish life and Jewishcommunities evolved as Jewish immigration,
especially from western Europe,ballooned in the mid 19th century
(01:06):
and the United States continued itsaggressive pattern
of white western expansion.
But first, a little history and anotherchapter in the story of Josh.
Kentucky joined the unionas a state in 1792.
(01:30):
The story I learned in 8th grade Kentuckyhistory class is that Daniel Boone.
Led a group of pioneers who bush.
Whacked their way throughthe Cumberland Gap and across
the Cumberland plateau and founded.
Boonesville along the Kentucky river.
The real story is much more complicated.
Than that, with multiplefailed attempts and.
A fair bit of violence on all.
(01:51):
Sides between Boone'spioneers and the native.
Cherokee and Shawnee, who saw him only.
As a white invader.
After joining the Union as a slave state,Kentucky grew rapidly.
Native american tribes wereforcibly displaced in most areas.
Slaves were imported to work.
The rich, dark soil and tobacco became.
A cash crop that stripped the land.
(02:12):
Of its wealth and made kingsof the early landowners.
In his poem New Earth, I, J.
Schwartz captures all of this from the.
First pioneers through the growthand death of the antebellum aristocracy
and their wild lifestyle, which provedcompletely unsustainable, of course.
Without the benefit of free labor.
Schwartz even captures howthese southern aristocrats.
(02:35):
Struggled to make senseof their sudden downfall.
His story matches the stories that Ilearned in my 8th grade
Kentucky history class.
But this part of Schwartz's story also.
Introduces a new character,Vivian, born of.
Old Kentucky Stock,a fine christian daughter
of the Confederacy, who falls in love.
With Jake, Josh's eldest son, and marries.
(02:57):
Into Josh's Jewish family.
The first pioneers who cut their dreadfulway through the western side of Virginia
and reached the fertile regionof the bluegrass, were truly heroes.
It was the striving of human nature,the eagerness to discover new land
which drove the pioneers on,cutting through the huge spiral mountains
(03:22):
stretching for hundreds of miles,covered with dry, scrubby trees.
The pioneers did not know aboutthe wealth under their feet.
In the bowels of the Yellow Mountains weremany rich treasures of hard, heavy,
sparkling coal and richveins of black iron.
They looked for grass for theircattle and flat land to plow and sow.
(03:45):
The first to see the land of bluegrassfor himself was Daniel Boone,
the powerful, bold hunter.
When Boone discovered the rich soilof Kentucky,
he immediately sent a messenger to hisbrother and all his relatives
with the words, I discovered land.
The grass is green and rich.
The plain is broad and wide,the water sweet.
(04:06):
Come, let's settle in this paradise.
And caravans started to movewith oxen harnessed to covered wagons.
In the wagons, children with thin,pinched faces and open,
eager eyes played with them were muscular,melancholy women, hardened in battle.
Like men, they cut through mountainsand after months of hardship, settled,
(04:27):
facing wind and cold, hunger and thirst.
And worst of all,the wild fury of battling tribes
of Indians who stalked them like wolves.
Sensing the beginning of the end,the red man blocked their paths.
In his rage, he spared no one,decorated himself with the scalps
(04:48):
of the men, women and children.
The lucky ones who finally struggledthrough to the fertile land,
carried on their shoulders the burdenof the needs and dangers of the new
settlement, unsuccessful crops,the frequent attacks of the enemy
with bows and arrows, tomahawks and fires.
(05:09):
The second generation was more relaxed.
The bloody war stopped and peopleworked in peace and freedom.
Flocks of sheep increasedand the plow glistened in the sun.
The women, still working like men amongsheep in field, carried, nursed, buried
and put the new generation on its feet.
They still looked like men with broadhands and feet and red faces.
(05:32):
But the stubborn gloom was gone andsometimes their mouths broke into a smile.
The women of the later generationswere even softer and more feminine.
The fire of lust and desire in theirblood and in their clear, worry free eyes.
Careless laughter was on their lips.
The white males, masters of the fields,used whips on the black man from hot
(05:55):
Africa who poured hissweat into the rich earth.
A new nobility grew up of powerful richlandowners with tens
and hundreds of servants.
A constant stream of luxuriesfrom the whole world came into their
fabulous castles and palaces.
Furs from Alaska and Siberia,wonderful original satin
and silk dresses from Paris.
(06:18):
The finest jewelry fashionedand engraved by goldsmiths.
Aged bubbling champagnes,the most expensive cigars from Havana.
White ostrich feathers from Africa.
Through time,the men became soft and effeminate like
the women, their hands and faces white andlanguid, their lips made only for kissing.
(06:40):
They dressed in designer suitswith fluttering ascots and wraps, and,
like patricians from birth,devoted themselves to art,
to song, to Bacchus and Amor.
When the tough hewn plebeian Lincolnarose, waving his sharp ax, with which,
(07:03):
as a youth, he split woodin the forests of his Kentucky home.
And when the ax undercut the rootsof their life, the unruly,
dispersed slaves guzzled the champagnefrom their master's cold cellars
and paraded on naked black feet in theirmistress's sable furs,
white ostrich feathers on black heads.
(07:24):
The younger, stronger ones awakened andfaced a new life under new circumstances.
The weaker, under stress,lost their heads, gave up rich,
fertile plantations,sold out their castles in estates
for whatever they could get, headedtoward wherever their eyes led them.
Still others went to their rest in poor,squalid quarters of London and Paris,
(07:44):
died beggars drunk on cheap absinthe.
Years later, many dragged themselves backhome so that their spent bodies could
be laid in their native, faithful earth.
From one of these very families,Vivian was conceived.
(08:05):
She just barely remembered her parents,as if in a distant, faded dream.
Yet some memory remained in hermind like a pale, golden beam.
The child was raised by her uncle,an aristocratic small landowner.
She grew a young seedling,eyes bright like cornflowers,
golden red curls of soft hair,slender, shapely supple limbs.
(08:30):
And this girl was a mixture and synthesisof all the generations,
the strength and determinationof the pioneers, the sunniness,
tenderness and exuberanceof generations raised in serenity.
When the girl started coming to the jew'shouse, a friend of his daughters,
the whole house came alive,and alive with Vivian.
(08:52):
The girl seemed as if under a spell.
The elder Josh delighted in the fresh,silvery, sparkling laughter.
It made him younger.
Even the old woman smiled,the creases on her face happily
dissolving, and Jacob couldn'ttake his eyes off the girl.
At first, he didn't dare get closeto Vivian, but later he felt
more comfortable with her.
(09:14):
He invited her to the Sunday eveningdances, and his heart beat with a painful
sweetness, beat when henervously drew her to him.
Under the tan skin of his face,his blood throbbed hot with desire.
With time, the friendship grew,the differences between them
and attraction, something new,fresh and exciting.
(09:37):
As the fresh spring earth absorbsthe first fragrant spring rain,
their young, desirous hearts absorbedthe fresh stream of bubbling,
rushing feelings before their heartsunderstood where they were drifting,
the two were already dreaming,carried on a stream of pink waves,
charmed, lulled by the tender feelingswhich occupied and spun their lives.
(10:01):
Thus, some time passed until one fine day,the pair went to the old good
natured pastor and married.
(10:41):
So Jews were.
Were very mobile duringthe 19th century, right?
They were making their way to ruralcommunities because of economic
opportunities, just like otherimmigrant Americans were.
So they were peddlers travelingfrom town to town, selling goods.
And if they were successful,they might set up a dry goods
store in a town that needed one.
If they were really successful,they might ultimately become
a wholesaler or importer of goods.
(11:05):
And they participated in the broadermovement of white westward expansion
alongside Christian Americans as well.
And I think it's really importantto remember that Jews were offered these
kinds of opportunities to be mobile,to move around, to follow opportunities
to follow the railroad becausethey were able to pass as white.
(11:26):
In Europe, Jewishness was markedon identity documents,
and so one's Jewishness reallyrestricted the ability to travel, right.
To follow economic and otherkinds of opportunities.
And in America, there weren't those kindsof restrictions against Jewish movement
in the way that there were certainlyrestrictions against other groups based on
racial and ethnic and religious identity.
(11:47):
So thinking, of course,of African Americans, thinking
of Native Americans, Mormons.
But Jews had liberty,and they embraced it.
Which wasn't to say that Jews themselveswere necessarily embraced everywhere they
went, but they certainly didn't facethe kinds of structural barriers
against mobility that other groups did.
(12:08):
Before the railroad came, Bowling Green,Kentucky, was a quiet market town
on the banks of the Baron river,which flows into the Green river
and on into the Ohio,a network of streams that made trade
possible for the entire region.
But water levels and shallow rapidsin the river meant it
wasn't navigable year round.
That changed in the 1860s,when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
(12:29):
built a new station in Bowling Green.
The railroad connected Bowling Greento a growing system of rail lines
that at its peak covered 14 stateswith over 6000 miles of track.
The new station was just a fewblocks from the town square.
An easy walk,and the rail line's passenger service
ushered in a new waveof immigration for the town.
(12:57):
My name is Matt Boxer.
I'm an assistant research professorat the Cohen center
for Modern Jewish Studiesand Steinhardt Social Research Institute
at Brandeis University.
We study contemporary Jewish life and allof its know interviews, focus groups,
survey research, statistics, demography.
(13:18):
If there's a way to study the Jewishcommunity, we try to do it.
I've known Dr.
Boxer for a while now.
We're both from small towns,and we have similar stories.
Despite the fact that I'm from Kentuckyand he's from upstate New York.
Dr.
Boxer is an expert on contemporary.
Jewish life and small town Jewish life.
(13:38):
And when I spoke with him, he.
Had a lot to say about howand why jews ended up in small.
Rural towns to begin with.
So, yeah, jews having particular skills.
Our culture is very much basedin scholarship, and so that contributed to
development of certain commercial skills.
We were among the best bookkeepers.
(14:00):
We were among the best financial advisors.
We were among the bestsalespeople in the new world.
An awful lot of jews ventured westward,southward, all across the continent,
opening up trade routes,because we had the skills to do it,
and other people didn't, necessarily.
And so wherever the railroad expanded,wherever there were waterways making their
(14:22):
way inland, new settlements would open up.
They needed to establish trade routes.
Jews were essential to that in an awfullot of places all over the country,
some of which are still major citiestoday, and some of which are just small
towns all over the country that don't havemuch of a population and where a lot
of the Jewish history is forgotten.
(14:44):
But we were there.
We helped establish those towns.
We helped establish thoserailroutes, those waterways.
Your hometown has a Jewish storythat not a lot of people know about.
My hometown has a Jewish storythat not a lot of people know about.
There are a lot of places with smallJewish communities,
or even no Jewish community todaythat have a Jewish past that not
(15:06):
a lot of people know about.
My research wasn't supposed to uncover a.
Hidden Jewish historyin Bowling Green, but.
I was reading about the Civil Warand general order number eleven,
a declaration issued in 1862by General Grant expelling.
Jews from his military districtof Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
(15:29):
During the Civil War,Kentucky was a border state.
Officially, the government voted to stayin the Union, but confederate sympathizers
set up a shadow government with theircapital in Bowling Green, and as a result,
the state was occupied,to varying degrees, by Union troops.
For most of the war, the Ohio.
River was strategicallyimportant to both sides.
(15:49):
Louisville and Paducah in particular,were already major industrial
hubs when the war broke.
Out, and both had sizableJewish communities.
Relative to their size.
General Grant, who in the war's earlyyears commanded the Grand army
of the Cumberland,the Union's main military force in the
western states, occupied both cities.
Louisville and Paducah.
(16:11):
At the time, newly immigrated german Jewswere busy forming communities up and down
the Ohio river and its tributaries.
In Paducah, 20 Jews had come togetherin 1859, to acquire land for a cemetery
and form a Jewish burial society,traditionally the first step
in formalizing a new Jewish community.
General order number elevenwasn't fully carried.
(16:33):
Out, not in Paducah nor anywhere else.
And it was quickly countermandedby President Lincoln.
Still, the Jews of Kentucky didn't farewell during Grant's occupation because
Paducah and Kentucky generally was oneof the few places that Grant's order
was at least partially fulfilled.
In Paducah, local Jewish families werewoken up in the middle of the night
(16:56):
and sent away with whatever belongingsthey could gather and carry in the moment.
Most of these Jews wound up in Cincinnati,home to a large and influential Jewish
community, which helped the expelled Jewsgain the attention of President Lincoln
and reverse Grant's order.
But it took 20 days for all thisto happen, and as you might imagine, that
was more than long enough to be memorable.
(17:17):
Six years later,the American Israelite, a.
Major weekly Jewish newspaper that waspublished in Cincinnati
by Isaac Mayor Wise, included an editorialabout the ongoing fallout
from Grant's order.
At the time,Grant was running for president,
and Wise was discouragingreaders from voting for him.
Our readers must remember, he wrote, the.
Chicaneries to which theywere subjected in.
(17:39):
Louisville, Bowling Green,Nashville, and elsewhere.
And this is where my story really begins,because who, I ask myself, were these
Jews living in Bowling Green in.
1862 who were harassed asa result of Grant's order?
Where did they come from?
When did they leave?
How have I not heard of them before?
(18:00):
Next, I found an ad in theAmerican Israelite from 1873.
It read, the Israelitesof Bowlingrin, Kentucky.
Numbering about 40 souls in all,have purchased the lot
for the purpose of a burial ground.
The lot adjoinsthe protestant and catholic.
Cemeteries, and it is beautifully located.
Its cost was $550.
(18:25):
In the space of eleven years,the Jewish community of Bolingrain had
gone from being harassed by theirneighbors to sharing a border of sacred
ground on a plot of land that costthem about $14,000 in today's money.
Not a lot, but certainly not nothing.
And the question I was leftwith was, who paid the bill?
(18:47):
The American Israelite,like many Jewish institutions today,
had a habit of listing new subscribersand general donors in each edition.
And in the April 24, 1863 edition,four months after Grant's order was
rescinded, the American Israelite thankedenam of Bowling Green,
Kentucky, for his generous gift.
(19:08):
It's the first record I could findof the Nam or Nam family who left behind
a remarkably hidden legacy and were almostdefinitely the first jews to live
in my hometown, Bowling Green, Kentucky.
(19:29):
So jews found their way to smaller townsin search of opportunities,
in search of economic opportunitiesto pursue marriage opportunities.
They move for the same kinds of reasonsthat people move today,
because of relationships that they haveand because of work opportunities as well.
The primary obstacle, of course,to setting up a Jewish community
(19:52):
in a small place in a ruraltown was other jews.
You need other jewsto make Jewish community.
You needed a lot of resources.
You needed a lot of people with expertise,and if you could attract people
to the town, you could provide that.
So it was very common for jewsto advertise in the Jewish newspapers
for people with these knowledge setsand with these capabilities to come
(20:14):
and move to their small towns.
And immigrants themselves would alsoadvertise their services in the, you know,
Shochett recently arrived from Bavarialooking for works.
So we can't discount the roleof the american Jewish press in really
facilitating movement in thisperiod of american Jewish history.
(20:37):
This is prior to the radio.
This is prior to television.
This is prior to the Internet.
That periodical press was really the waythat people communicated,
the way that they gossiped, the waythat they put their towns on the map.
And again, it wasn't clear that thesesmall communities weren't going
to become big metropolises everywhere.
(20:59):
The map of American Judaism was really yetto be drawn,
and it wasn't clear that Bowling Greenwouldn't necessarily
become the next cincinnati.
The question that jews faced, of course,in the 19th century is the same question
that jews face today,which is what it means to navigate
and negotiate Jewish difference.
(21:20):
Sometime before 1864, brothers Emmanuel,Samuel, Moses, and Benjamin arrived
at the port of New Orleans and wove theirway through customs with thousands
of other german immigrants.
They booked passage up the Mississippito Caro, Illinois, and then followed
the Ohio to Louisville, Kentucky.
But they only stayed a few years.
By 1863, the Nam brothers weremoving south to Bowling Green.
(21:45):
The new Ellen Railroad promised economicprosperity for anyone willing to chase it,
and Emmanuel in particular set outto build the largest clothing
and shoe store in southern Kentucky.
He built a new building at 422 Main streetin downtown Bolingrain,
right on the town square.
His brothers Ben and Moses opened up a drygoods store next door, and Sam
(22:06):
established a produce company nearby.
For the next hundred years,the Nom family was at the center of
Bowling Grain's economic and social life.
They joinedthe Bowling Grain Country Club,
the Elks Lodge, helped found the boysand girls Club, and published their travel
itineraries in the newspaper,like all good southern aristocrats.
(22:26):
And they fought on bothsides of the Civil War.
In 1902, the Elks Lodge publishedan acrostic poem for the holidays and the
local newspaper that read Innisfurnam.
So sassy.
The Nams were deeply embeddedin Bowling Green,
and it only took one generationbefore someone married a non jew.
(22:47):
Moses had a son named Clarence,and he married a local
christian woman named Clara.
But Clarence died in 1944,and two years later his widow
Clara married Duncan Hines.
Yeah, that Duncan Hines.
Emmanuel's son Max was said to bethe richest man in southern Kentucky when
(23:08):
he died in 1958 with an estimatednet worth of about $2 million.
Among his many accomplishmentsand contributions to the area
is one that stands out for me.
As presidentof the Mammoth Cave National Park
association and chairof the Kentucky National Park Commission,
Max spent 20 years of his life workingto establish Mammoth Cave National Park,
(23:31):
30 miles north of Bowling Green, a placethat I spent a lot of time growing up.
And Max's daughter,the fourth and final generation of his
line to call Bowlingrain home,became a globetrotting author
and suffragette Eminem Sachs.
Arlene Phillips published gossipyfiction based on her hometown.
Our ladies had rather have new bonnetsthan new ballots, bless their sweethearts,
(23:51):
she wrote in talk, her debut novel abouta woman who dares to run the family
bookstore rather than Mary.
After her parents die suddenly,Emani moved to New York,
where for a time she was married toWalter Sachs, a future Goldman Sachs fame.
She wrote the definitive biographyof three love, advocate and 1872 female
presidential candidate Victoria Woodhole,and she spent the final years of her life
(24:17):
trudging to backwoods cabins to documentthe folk stories and traditions
of pioneer and native Kentuckians.
Today there's a nomstreet in Bowling Green.
The Nam building that Emmanuelbuilt downtown still bears his name.
It's listed in the National Registerof Historic Places,
but the plaque that marks the registrationmakes no mention of the
(24:39):
brothers being Jewish.
And while each of the four brothers homesare listed on the town's heritage walk,
only one of them is buriedin Bowling Green, and the cemetery plot
that they probablyhelped purchase in 1873.
For $550 was never used.
There's no record of it.
Today, Max and his wife are buried.
(25:00):
In Fairview Cemetery,the historic cemetery in Bowling Green.
But four generations of the nom familyare also buried at Adeth Israel Cemetery.
In Louisville, the oldestsynagogue in Kentucky.
Welcome back to Soaky sunrise.
In this week's throwback Thursday,a fountain square building is named
(25:23):
for one of Bowling Green'smost famous families.
WNKY's Tilia Butler tells the storyof the Nom family in this
week's throwback Thursday.
The Nom building sits in the main streetrow of Mountain Square
in downtown Bowling Green.
This week we visit the Nom familyscrapbook and take a deeper look inside
one of Bowling Green'swealthiest victorian families.
(25:44):
The building is over 130 years old.
The four Nom brothers immigratedfrom Bavaria to the US in the years
leading up to the Civil War.
They arrived in New Orleans,and by the early 1880s Emmanuel
nom had settled in Bowling Green.
In 1888, Nom had this building constructedfor his clothing, hat and shoe store.
The noms ran the biggest clothingand furnishing house in southern
(26:04):
Kentucky until it closed in 1930.
Emmanuel's only son was Maxwell,who built the family estate into an empire
the largest Bowling Green had ever seen.
The family wealth was valued at over$2 million by 1958 when he passed.
Maxwell and his wife had one child,a daughter named Emany.
Emany's exploits are worth a throwbackThursday all their own,
(26:26):
but today we explore how Emani traveledthe country telling Bowling Green's story.
Emany Nam was not the typical southernbell socialite of the early 19,
teens and 20s.
She aspired to be a journalist and movedto New York City, landing a reporter
job at the New York Times.
She met Walter Sachs of the Goldman Sachstycoons of Wall street investors.
They had a brief marriagein 1917 and a child.
(26:49):
Then Eminem became fascinated with novelsand published a short
piece in 1924 titled Talk.
She based the characters and placeson Bowling Green,
mentioning Fountain Square, Beach, Bendpark, the school on the Hill, and more.
Her writings are at the Kentucky Museumand library at WKU.
Left a lasting legacy.
Read more on historic marker on thisbustling centerpiece of Fountain Square
(27:12):
that's it for throwback Thursday,brought to you by Hospice of southern
Kentucky in Bowling Greento Leah Butler for Soki Sunrise one.
Of the things that we might take awayfrom the 19th century is that Jews in 19th
century America were remarkablyresourceful and innovative in thinking
about what it meant to maintain Jewishties whilst also participating
(27:33):
in broader american society.
Some historians might describethis as assimilation, right?
That there was compromise in the waysthat they practiced their Judaism.
But I really think it's valuable to thinkabout this in other terms as examples
of the very organic and creative waysthat Jews at a grassroots level have
maintained Jewish connections that areadjacent to institutions or
(27:57):
outside of institutional auspices.
Because particularly for Jews in smalltowns, in frontier towns,
those institutions didn't exist.
And in that context,religious schooling becomes really
important because it's one of the placeswhere a family like the Nams could access
some semblance of connection to a broaderJewish world outside of their small
(28:20):
communities, they could go to othernearby towns for religious schooling.
But equally, there was an enormouslymobile circulation of resources.
There were circuit teachers that were sentout by organizations like the UAHC,
the Union of American Hebrew Congregationsin Cincinnati to travel around
small frontier towns to teach.
(28:42):
There was the mobilityof printed materials.
With the developments in printingthat happened in the 19th century,
as well as the railroad, it was mucheasier to distribute printed materials.
And so even if you were the only jewin your small town,
even if you're one of just a few Jewishfamilies, you could still get a periodical
every week that made you feel connectedto a much broader Jewish world.
(29:13):
By the time my family arrived in 1987,less than a decade after Emily's death,
we had no sense that any jewshad ever lived in Bowling Green.
And in the 16 years we livedthere, we never found out.
But it would have been nice to know wecould have reflected on Bowling Green's
Jewish history on one of our thousandcamping trips to mammoth Cave.
(29:34):
We might have considered the historyof Jewish merchants in Bollingerin when
my mother opened a needlepoint shopon the same town square just steps away
from the nom building,or the first time that we stepped foot
in that long, dilapidated train station.
I even could have visited the Nom family'sgraves in college when I lived just a few
blocks from the out of Israelcemetery in Louisville.
(29:58):
The Nom family archive is heldat the special collection library
of the Kentucky Museum on the campusof Western Kentucky University.
The archive has letters and photos and allsorts of documents and artifacts passed
down through four generationsof family members.
Max's papers are there,and his checkbooks and Emily's handwritten
notes from her days collecting folkstories from the residents of Kentucky's
(30:20):
remotest woods and hollers.
When I was researching this podcast,I emailed the librarian in charge
on a whim, curious to see if any audiotapes from Emine's research
were included in the archive.
No such luck.
But the librarian did me one better.
She put me in touch with John John Nam.
(30:42):
His father was Fred Nam Jr.
And Fred's grandfatherwas Sam Nam, one of.
The four original brotherswho immigrated from.
Germany in the mid 19th century and.
The only one to be buried in Boling.
When we talked, he told me all.
About his family and about growing upin bolingering in the mid 20th century.
But I'll save that for another episode.
For now.
(31:04):
I'll share a storythat he told me about Max.
I'll tell you a story about Maxfrom a little boy's perspective.
I used to go to his house, and, you know,it was this enormous building,
and he had a staircase,and it was like gone with a wind.
You know, it was just big, ornate.
(31:24):
And I went up there, and there was thephotograph that the dog is listening to.
Right?
He's got a record sitting on it,and he's got a feigning couch.
And I remember that going upstairs,because that's typically.
You didn't go upstairs.
But then I also remember he had theseenormous windows, and either side
had these tassels that came down.
(31:50):
And one of the things we were not allowedto do is to touch any one of them,
because if you pulled on one,somebody was going to show up.
And if it was this one, somebodyfrom the kitchen was going to show up.
If it was that one,Vernon was going to show up.
The butler.
All right, so Max had this reputation forbeing miserly, and I guess it was his
(32:16):
financial background and actuallyhave a check register of his.
That's 1922 to 1935, and it's gotthousands of dollars registered in it.
And I'm going,wasn't that during the Depression?
I'm going, wow, that wasa lot of money back then.
(32:39):
But he would have Vernon,his chauffeur and butler, follow him,
and you could tell at night when he wouldcome in his house and go up the stairs,
there'd be a light come on,and then the light go off,
and Vernon would follow him, turning thelights off as he was going up the stairs.
(32:59):
That was Max.
We move in a circle, wrote Emanue,and towards first principles again.
A country born man may live in the cityfor years, but the longing for the smell
of the land comes back to him,and he generally winds up
amid the trees and flowers.
(33:19):
Next time, on 72 miles,how my family started moving back
and forth along that same circle,searching for a place of our own
and repeating the physical and Jewishjourneys of the Nam family.
A journey that, for us,was jumpstarted when we left
the relatively large Jewish communityof Louisville behind and moved
south to Bowling Green.
(33:48):
72 miles features the stories of threeseparate interfaith Jewish families,
two real, one not and one mine.
Together, they trace 150 years of Kentuckyhistory with experiences that resonate
today about being Jewish in America,about being Jewish and being southern
at the same time,and the blending of the two.
(34:09):
So strap in and take a ride with be upand down I 65 or back and forth
on the Ellen railroad.
In the end, the win and the who don't makeas much difference as you might think.
But the where sure does.
My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughann.
It's 72 miles till Kentucky.
Let's get moving.
You.
The thing that I think is very importantto remember about the geography
of American Judaism in the 19th century isthat whereas today it might seem very
intuitive to think of certain places asmajor Jewish centers and other places as
small Jewish communities,that was a map that had yet
to be drawn in the 19th century.
(00:23):
It wasn't clear where the one small townwas actually going to blossom and bloom
into a major Jewish metropolis orwhether it would stay a small community.
The map of American Judaism was really yetto be drawn,
and it wasn't clear that Bowling Greenwouldn't necessarily
become the next Cincinnati.
(00:44):
That's Dr.
Laura Yaris, a professor at Michigan Stateand the author of a recently published
book that explores the growthof Jewish Sunday schools in America.
Like most american Jews,I grew up attending one of those
Sunday schools, and I spoke with Dr.
Yaris about how Jewish life and Jewishcommunities evolved as Jewish immigration,
especially from western Europe,ballooned in the mid 19th century
(01:06):
and the United States continued itsaggressive pattern
of white western expansion.
But first, a little history and anotherchapter in the story of Josh.
Kentucky joined the unionas a state in 1792.
(01:30):
The story I learned in 8th grade Kentuckyhistory class is that Daniel Boone.
Led a group of pioneers who bush.
Whacked their way throughthe Cumberland Gap and across
the Cumberland plateau and founded.
Boonesville along the Kentucky river.
The real story is much more complicated.
Than that, with multiplefailed attempts and.
A fair bit of violence on all.
(01:51):
Sides between Boone'spioneers and the native.
Cherokee and Shawnee, who saw him only.
As a white invader.
After joining the Union as a slave state,Kentucky grew rapidly.
Native american tribes wereforcibly displaced in most areas.
Slaves were imported to work.
The rich, dark soil and tobacco became.
A cash crop that stripped the land.
(02:12):
Of its wealth and made kingsof the early landowners.
In his poem New Earth, I, J.
Schwartz captures all of this from the.
First pioneers through the growthand death of the antebellum aristocracy
and their wild lifestyle, which provedcompletely unsustainable, of course.
Without the benefit of free labor.
Schwartz even captures howthese southern aristocrats.
(02:35):
Struggled to make senseof their sudden downfall.
His story matches the stories that Ilearned in my 8th grade
Kentucky history class.
But this part of Schwartz's story also.
Introduces a new character,Vivian, born of.
Old Kentucky Stock,a fine christian daughter
of the Confederacy, who falls in love.
With Jake, Josh's eldest son, and marries.
(02:57):
Into Josh's Jewish family.
The first pioneers who cut their dreadfulway through the western side of Virginia
and reached the fertile regionof the bluegrass, were truly heroes.
It was the striving of human nature,the eagerness to discover new land
which drove the pioneers on,cutting through the huge spiral mountains
(03:22):
stretching for hundreds of miles,covered with dry, scrubby trees.
The pioneers did not know aboutthe wealth under their feet.
In the bowels of the Yellow Mountains weremany rich treasures of hard, heavy,
sparkling coal and richveins of black iron.
They looked for grass for theircattle and flat land to plow and sow.
(03:45):
The first to see the land of bluegrassfor himself was Daniel Boone,
the powerful, bold hunter.
When Boone discovered the rich soilof Kentucky,
he immediately sent a messenger to hisbrother and all his relatives
with the words, I discovered land.
The grass is green and rich.
The plain is broad and wide,the water sweet.
(04:06):
Come, let's settle in this paradise.
And caravans started to movewith oxen harnessed to covered wagons.
In the wagons, children with thin,pinched faces and open,
eager eyes played with them were muscular,melancholy women, hardened in battle.
Like men, they cut through mountainsand after months of hardship, settled,
(04:27):
facing wind and cold, hunger and thirst.
And worst of all,the wild fury of battling tribes
of Indians who stalked them like wolves.
Sensing the beginning of the end,the red man blocked their paths.
In his rage, he spared no one,decorated himself with the scalps
(04:48):
of the men, women and children.
The lucky ones who finally struggledthrough to the fertile land,
carried on their shoulders the burdenof the needs and dangers of the new
settlement, unsuccessful crops,the frequent attacks of the enemy
with bows and arrows, tomahawks and fires.
(05:09):
The second generation was more relaxed.
The bloody war stopped and peopleworked in peace and freedom.
Flocks of sheep increasedand the plow glistened in the sun.
The women, still working like men amongsheep in field, carried, nursed, buried
and put the new generation on its feet.
They still looked like men with broadhands and feet and red faces.
(05:32):
But the stubborn gloom was gone andsometimes their mouths broke into a smile.
The women of the later generationswere even softer and more feminine.
The fire of lust and desire in theirblood and in their clear, worry free eyes.
Careless laughter was on their lips.
The white males, masters of the fields,used whips on the black man from hot
(05:55):
Africa who poured hissweat into the rich earth.
A new nobility grew up of powerful richlandowners with tens
and hundreds of servants.
A constant stream of luxuriesfrom the whole world came into their
fabulous castles and palaces.
Furs from Alaska and Siberia,wonderful original satin
and silk dresses from Paris.
(06:18):
The finest jewelry fashionedand engraved by goldsmiths.
Aged bubbling champagnes,the most expensive cigars from Havana.
White ostrich feathers from Africa.
Through time,the men became soft and effeminate like
the women, their hands and faces white andlanguid, their lips made only for kissing.
(06:40):
They dressed in designer suitswith fluttering ascots and wraps, and,
like patricians from birth,devoted themselves to art,
to song, to Bacchus and Amor.
When the tough hewn plebeian Lincolnarose, waving his sharp ax, with which,
(07:03):
as a youth, he split woodin the forests of his Kentucky home.
And when the ax undercut the rootsof their life, the unruly,
dispersed slaves guzzled the champagnefrom their master's cold cellars
and paraded on naked black feet in theirmistress's sable furs,
white ostrich feathers on black heads.
(07:24):
The younger, stronger ones awakened andfaced a new life under new circumstances.
The weaker, under stress,lost their heads, gave up rich,
fertile plantations,sold out their castles in estates
for whatever they could get, headedtoward wherever their eyes led them.
Still others went to their rest in poor,squalid quarters of London and Paris,
(07:44):
died beggars drunk on cheap absinthe.
Years later, many dragged themselves backhome so that their spent bodies could
be laid in their native, faithful earth.
From one of these very families,Vivian was conceived.
(08:05):
She just barely remembered her parents,as if in a distant, faded dream.
Yet some memory remained in hermind like a pale, golden beam.
The child was raised by her uncle,an aristocratic small landowner.
She grew a young seedling,eyes bright like cornflowers,
golden red curls of soft hair,slender, shapely supple limbs.
(08:30):
And this girl was a mixture and synthesisof all the generations,
the strength and determinationof the pioneers, the sunniness,
tenderness and exuberanceof generations raised in serenity.
When the girl started coming to the jew'shouse, a friend of his daughters,
the whole house came alive,and alive with Vivian.
(08:52):
The girl seemed as if under a spell.
The elder Josh delighted in the fresh,silvery, sparkling laughter.
It made him younger.
Even the old woman smiled,the creases on her face happily
dissolving, and Jacob couldn'ttake his eyes off the girl.
At first, he didn't dare get closeto Vivian, but later he felt
more comfortable with her.
(09:14):
He invited her to the Sunday eveningdances, and his heart beat with a painful
sweetness, beat when henervously drew her to him.
Under the tan skin of his face,his blood throbbed hot with desire.
With time, the friendship grew,the differences between them
and attraction, something new,fresh and exciting.
(09:37):
As the fresh spring earth absorbsthe first fragrant spring rain,
their young, desirous hearts absorbedthe fresh stream of bubbling,
rushing feelings before their heartsunderstood where they were drifting,
the two were already dreaming,carried on a stream of pink waves,
charmed, lulled by the tender feelingswhich occupied and spun their lives.
(10:01):
Thus, some time passed until one fine day,the pair went to the old good
natured pastor and married.
(10:41):
So Jews were.
Were very mobile duringthe 19th century, right?
They were making their way to ruralcommunities because of economic
opportunities, just like otherimmigrant Americans were.
So they were peddlers travelingfrom town to town, selling goods.
And if they were successful,they might set up a dry goods
store in a town that needed one.
If they were really successful,they might ultimately become
a wholesaler or importer of goods.
(11:05):
And they participated in the broadermovement of white westward expansion
alongside Christian Americans as well.
And I think it's really importantto remember that Jews were offered these
kinds of opportunities to be mobile,to move around, to follow opportunities
to follow the railroad becausethey were able to pass as white.
(11:26):
In Europe, Jewishness was markedon identity documents,
and so one's Jewishness reallyrestricted the ability to travel, right.
To follow economic and otherkinds of opportunities.
And in America, there weren't those kindsof restrictions against Jewish movement
in the way that there were certainlyrestrictions against other groups based on
racial and ethnic and religious identity.
(11:47):
So thinking, of course,of African Americans, thinking
of Native Americans, Mormons.
But Jews had liberty,and they embraced it.
Which wasn't to say that Jews themselveswere necessarily embraced everywhere they
went, but they certainly didn't facethe kinds of structural barriers
against mobility that other groups did.
(12:08):
Before the railroad came, Bowling Green,Kentucky, was a quiet market town
on the banks of the Baron river,which flows into the Green river
and on into the Ohio,a network of streams that made trade
possible for the entire region.
But water levels and shallow rapidsin the river meant it
wasn't navigable year round.
That changed in the 1860s,when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
(12:29):
built a new station in Bowling Green.
The railroad connected Bowling Greento a growing system of rail lines
that at its peak covered 14 stateswith over 6000 miles of track.
The new station was just a fewblocks from the town square.
An easy walk,and the rail line's passenger service
ushered in a new waveof immigration for the town.
(12:57):
My name is Matt Boxer.
I'm an assistant research professorat the Cohen center
for Modern Jewish Studiesand Steinhardt Social Research Institute
at Brandeis University.
We study contemporary Jewish life and allof its know interviews, focus groups,
survey research, statistics, demography.
(13:18):
If there's a way to study the Jewishcommunity, we try to do it.
I've known Dr.
Boxer for a while now.
We're both from small towns,and we have similar stories.
Despite the fact that I'm from Kentuckyand he's from upstate New York.
Dr.
Boxer is an expert on contemporary.
Jewish life and small town Jewish life.
(13:38):
And when I spoke with him, he.
Had a lot to say about howand why jews ended up in small.
Rural towns to begin with.
So, yeah, jews having particular skills.
Our culture is very much basedin scholarship, and so that contributed to
development of certain commercial skills.
We were among the best bookkeepers.
(14:00):
We were among the best financial advisors.
We were among the bestsalespeople in the new world.
An awful lot of jews ventured westward,southward, all across the continent,
opening up trade routes,because we had the skills to do it,
and other people didn't, necessarily.
And so wherever the railroad expanded,wherever there were waterways making their
(14:22):
way inland, new settlements would open up.
They needed to establish trade routes.
Jews were essential to that in an awfullot of places all over the country,
some of which are still major citiestoday, and some of which are just small
towns all over the country that don't havemuch of a population and where a lot
of the Jewish history is forgotten.
(14:44):
But we were there.
We helped establish those towns.
We helped establish thoserailroutes, those waterways.
Your hometown has a Jewish storythat not a lot of people know about.
My hometown has a Jewish storythat not a lot of people know about.
There are a lot of places with smallJewish communities,
or even no Jewish community todaythat have a Jewish past that not
(15:06):
a lot of people know about.
My research wasn't supposed to uncover a.
Hidden Jewish historyin Bowling Green, but.
I was reading about the Civil Warand general order number eleven,
a declaration issued in 1862by General Grant expelling.
Jews from his military districtof Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
(15:29):
During the Civil War,Kentucky was a border state.
Officially, the government voted to stayin the Union, but confederate sympathizers
set up a shadow government with theircapital in Bowling Green, and as a result,
the state was occupied,to varying degrees, by Union troops.
For most of the war, the Ohio.
River was strategicallyimportant to both sides.
(15:49):
Louisville and Paducah in particular,were already major industrial
hubs when the war broke.
Out, and both had sizableJewish communities.
Relative to their size.
General Grant, who in the war's earlyyears commanded the Grand army
of the Cumberland,the Union's main military force in the
western states, occupied both cities.
Louisville and Paducah.
(16:11):
At the time, newly immigrated german Jewswere busy forming communities up and down
the Ohio river and its tributaries.
In Paducah, 20 Jews had come togetherin 1859, to acquire land for a cemetery
and form a Jewish burial society,traditionally the first step
in formalizing a new Jewish community.
General order number elevenwasn't fully carried.
(16:33):
Out, not in Paducah nor anywhere else.
And it was quickly countermandedby President Lincoln.
Still, the Jews of Kentucky didn't farewell during Grant's occupation because
Paducah and Kentucky generally was oneof the few places that Grant's order
was at least partially fulfilled.
In Paducah, local Jewish families werewoken up in the middle of the night
(16:56):
and sent away with whatever belongingsthey could gather and carry in the moment.
Most of these Jews wound up in Cincinnati,home to a large and influential Jewish
community, which helped the expelled Jewsgain the attention of President Lincoln
and reverse Grant's order.
But it took 20 days for all thisto happen, and as you might imagine, that
was more than long enough to be memorable.
(17:17):
Six years later,the American Israelite, a.
Major weekly Jewish newspaper that waspublished in Cincinnati
by Isaac Mayor Wise, included an editorialabout the ongoing fallout
from Grant's order.
At the time,Grant was running for president,
and Wise was discouragingreaders from voting for him.
Our readers must remember, he wrote, the.
Chicaneries to which theywere subjected in.
(17:39):
Louisville, Bowling Green,Nashville, and elsewhere.
And this is where my story really begins,because who, I ask myself, were these
Jews living in Bowling Green in.
1862 who were harassed asa result of Grant's order?
Where did they come from?
When did they leave?
How have I not heard of them before?
(18:00):
Next, I found an ad in theAmerican Israelite from 1873.
It read, the Israelitesof Bowlingrin, Kentucky.
Numbering about 40 souls in all,have purchased the lot
for the purpose of a burial ground.
The lot adjoinsthe protestant and catholic.
Cemeteries, and it is beautifully located.
Its cost was $550.
(18:25):
In the space of eleven years,the Jewish community of Bolingrain had
gone from being harassed by theirneighbors to sharing a border of sacred
ground on a plot of land that costthem about $14,000 in today's money.
Not a lot, but certainly not nothing.
And the question I was leftwith was, who paid the bill?
(18:47):
The American Israelite,like many Jewish institutions today,
had a habit of listing new subscribersand general donors in each edition.
And in the April 24, 1863 edition,four months after Grant's order was
rescinded, the American Israelite thankedenam of Bowling Green,
Kentucky, for his generous gift.
(19:08):
It's the first record I could findof the Nam or Nam family who left behind
a remarkably hidden legacy and were almostdefinitely the first jews to live
in my hometown, Bowling Green, Kentucky.
(19:29):
So jews found their way to smaller townsin search of opportunities,
in search of economic opportunitiesto pursue marriage opportunities.
They move for the same kinds of reasonsthat people move today,
because of relationships that they haveand because of work opportunities as well.
The primary obstacle, of course,to setting up a Jewish community
(19:52):
in a small place in a ruraltown was other jews.
You need other jewsto make Jewish community.
You needed a lot of resources.
You needed a lot of people with expertise,and if you could attract people
to the town, you could provide that.
So it was very common for jewsto advertise in the Jewish newspapers
for people with these knowledge setsand with these capabilities to come
(20:14):
and move to their small towns.
And immigrants themselves would alsoadvertise their services in the, you know,
Shochett recently arrived from Bavarialooking for works.
So we can't discount the roleof the american Jewish press in really
facilitating movement in thisperiod of american Jewish history.
(20:37):
This is prior to the radio.
This is prior to television.
This is prior to the Internet.
That periodical press was really the waythat people communicated,
the way that they gossiped, the waythat they put their towns on the map.
And again, it wasn't clear that thesesmall communities weren't going
to become big metropolises everywhere.
(20:59):
The map of American Judaism was really yetto be drawn,
and it wasn't clear that Bowling Greenwouldn't necessarily
become the next cincinnati.
The question that jews faced, of course,in the 19th century is the same question
that jews face today,which is what it means to navigate
and negotiate Jewish difference.
(21:20):
Sometime before 1864, brothers Emmanuel,Samuel, Moses, and Benjamin arrived
at the port of New Orleans and wove theirway through customs with thousands
of other german immigrants.
They booked passage up the Mississippito Caro, Illinois, and then followed
the Ohio to Louisville, Kentucky.
But they only stayed a few years.
By 1863, the Nam brothers weremoving south to Bowling Green.
(21:45):
The new Ellen Railroad promised economicprosperity for anyone willing to chase it,
and Emmanuel in particular set outto build the largest clothing
and shoe store in southern Kentucky.
He built a new building at 422 Main streetin downtown Bolingrain,
right on the town square.
His brothers Ben and Moses opened up a drygoods store next door, and Sam
(22:06):
established a produce company nearby.
For the next hundred years,the Nom family was at the center of
Bowling Grain's economic and social life.
They joinedthe Bowling Grain Country Club,
the Elks Lodge, helped found the boysand girls Club, and published their travel
itineraries in the newspaper,like all good southern aristocrats.
(22:26):
And they fought on bothsides of the Civil War.
In 1902, the Elks Lodge publishedan acrostic poem for the holidays and the
local newspaper that read Innisfurnam.
So sassy.
The Nams were deeply embeddedin Bowling Green,
and it only took one generationbefore someone married a non jew.
(22:47):
Moses had a son named Clarence,and he married a local
christian woman named Clara.
But Clarence died in 1944,and two years later his widow
Clara married Duncan Hines.
Yeah, that Duncan Hines.
Emmanuel's son Max was said to bethe richest man in southern Kentucky when
(23:08):
he died in 1958 with an estimatednet worth of about $2 million.
Among his many accomplishmentsand contributions to the area
is one that stands out for me.
As presidentof the Mammoth Cave National Park
association and chairof the Kentucky National Park Commission,
Max spent 20 years of his life workingto establish Mammoth Cave National Park,
(23:31):
30 miles north of Bowling Green, a placethat I spent a lot of time growing up.
And Max's daughter,the fourth and final generation of his
line to call Bowlingrain home,became a globetrotting author
and suffragette Eminem Sachs.
Arlene Phillips published gossipyfiction based on her hometown.
Our ladies had rather have new bonnetsthan new ballots, bless their sweethearts,
(23:51):
she wrote in talk, her debut novel abouta woman who dares to run the family
bookstore rather than Mary.
After her parents die suddenly,Emani moved to New York,
where for a time she was married toWalter Sachs, a future Goldman Sachs fame.
She wrote the definitive biographyof three love, advocate and 1872 female
presidential candidate Victoria Woodhole,and she spent the final years of her life
(24:17):
trudging to backwoods cabins to documentthe folk stories and traditions
of pioneer and native Kentuckians.
Today there's a nomstreet in Bowling Green.
The Nam building that Emmanuelbuilt downtown still bears his name.
It's listed in the National Registerof Historic Places,
but the plaque that marks the registrationmakes no mention of the
(24:39):
brothers being Jewish.
And while each of the four brothers homesare listed on the town's heritage walk,
only one of them is buriedin Bowling Green, and the cemetery plot
that they probablyhelped purchase in 1873.
For $550 was never used.
There's no record of it.
Today, Max and his wife are buried.
(25:00):
In Fairview Cemetery,the historic cemetery in Bowling Green.
But four generations of the nom familyare also buried at Adeth Israel Cemetery.
In Louisville, the oldestsynagogue in Kentucky.
Welcome back to Soaky sunrise.
In this week's throwback Thursday,a fountain square building is named
(25:23):
for one of Bowling Green'smost famous families.
WNKY's Tilia Butler tells the storyof the Nom family in this
week's throwback Thursday.
The Nom building sits in the main streetrow of Mountain Square
in downtown Bowling Green.
This week we visit the Nom familyscrapbook and take a deeper look inside
one of Bowling Green'swealthiest victorian families.
(25:44):
The building is over 130 years old.
The four Nom brothers immigratedfrom Bavaria to the US in the years
leading up to the Civil War.
They arrived in New Orleans,and by the early 1880s Emmanuel
nom had settled in Bowling Green.
In 1888, Nom had this building constructedfor his clothing, hat and shoe store.
The noms ran the biggest clothingand furnishing house in southern
(26:04):
Kentucky until it closed in 1930.
Emmanuel's only son was Maxwell,who built the family estate into an empire
the largest Bowling Green had ever seen.
The family wealth was valued at over$2 million by 1958 when he passed.
Maxwell and his wife had one child,a daughter named Emany.
Emany's exploits are worth a throwbackThursday all their own,
(26:26):
but today we explore how Emani traveledthe country telling Bowling Green's story.
Emany Nam was not the typical southernbell socialite of the early 19,
teens and 20s.
She aspired to be a journalist and movedto New York City, landing a reporter
job at the New York Times.
She met Walter Sachs of the Goldman Sachstycoons of Wall street investors.
They had a brief marriagein 1917 and a child.
(26:49):
Then Eminem became fascinated with novelsand published a short
piece in 1924 titled Talk.
She based the characters and placeson Bowling Green,
mentioning Fountain Square, Beach, Bendpark, the school on the Hill, and more.
Her writings are at the Kentucky Museumand library at WKU.
Left a lasting legacy.
Read more on historic marker on thisbustling centerpiece of Fountain Square
(27:12):
that's it for throwback Thursday,brought to you by Hospice of southern
Kentucky in Bowling Greento Leah Butler for Soki Sunrise one.
Of the things that we might take awayfrom the 19th century is that Jews in 19th
century America were remarkablyresourceful and innovative in thinking
about what it meant to maintain Jewishties whilst also participating
(27:33):
in broader american society.
Some historians might describethis as assimilation, right?
That there was compromise in the waysthat they practiced their Judaism.
But I really think it's valuable to thinkabout this in other terms as examples
of the very organic and creative waysthat Jews at a grassroots level have
maintained Jewish connections that areadjacent to institutions or
(27:57):
outside of institutional auspices.
Because particularly for Jews in smalltowns, in frontier towns,
those institutions didn't exist.
And in that context,religious schooling becomes really
important because it's one of the placeswhere a family like the Nams could access
some semblance of connection to a broaderJewish world outside of their small
(28:20):
communities, they could go to othernearby towns for religious schooling.
But equally, there was an enormouslymobile circulation of resources.
There were circuit teachers that were sentout by organizations like the UAHC,
the Union of American Hebrew Congregationsin Cincinnati to travel around
small frontier towns to teach.
(28:42):
There was the mobilityof printed materials.
With the developments in printingthat happened in the 19th century,
as well as the railroad, it was mucheasier to distribute printed materials.
And so even if you were the only jewin your small town,
even if you're one of just a few Jewishfamilies, you could still get a periodical
every week that made you feel connectedto a much broader Jewish world.
(29:13):
By the time my family arrived in 1987,less than a decade after Emily's death,
we had no sense that any jewshad ever lived in Bowling Green.
And in the 16 years we livedthere, we never found out.
But it would have been nice to know wecould have reflected on Bowling Green's
Jewish history on one of our thousandcamping trips to mammoth Cave.
(29:34):
We might have considered the historyof Jewish merchants in Bollingerin when
my mother opened a needlepoint shopon the same town square just steps away
from the nom building,or the first time that we stepped foot
in that long, dilapidated train station.
I even could have visited the Nom family'sgraves in college when I lived just a few
blocks from the out of Israelcemetery in Louisville.
(29:58):
The Nom family archive is heldat the special collection library
of the Kentucky Museum on the campusof Western Kentucky University.
The archive has letters and photos and allsorts of documents and artifacts passed
down through four generationsof family members.
Max's papers are there,and his checkbooks and Emily's handwritten
notes from her days collecting folkstories from the residents of Kentucky's
(30:20):
remotest woods and hollers.
When I was researching this podcast,I emailed the librarian in charge
on a whim, curious to see if any audiotapes from Emine's research
were included in the archive.
No such luck.
But the librarian did me one better.
She put me in touch with John John Nam.
(30:42):
His father was Fred Nam Jr.
And Fred's grandfatherwas Sam Nam, one of.
The four original brotherswho immigrated from.
Germany in the mid 19th century and.
The only one to be buried in Boling.
When we talked, he told me all.
About his family and about growing upin bolingering in the mid 20th century.
But I'll save that for another episode.
For now.
(31:04):
I'll share a storythat he told me about Max.
I'll tell you a story about Maxfrom a little boy's perspective.
I used to go to his house, and, you know,it was this enormous building,
and he had a staircase,and it was like gone with a wind.
You know, it was just big, ornate.
(31:24):
And I went up there, and there was thephotograph that the dog is listening to.
Right?
He's got a record sitting on it,and he's got a feigning couch.
And I remember that going upstairs,because that's typically.
You didn't go upstairs.
But then I also remember he had theseenormous windows, and either side
had these tassels that came down.
(31:50):
And one of the things we were not allowedto do is to touch any one of them,
because if you pulled on one,somebody was going to show up.
And if it was this one, somebodyfrom the kitchen was going to show up.
If it was that one,Vernon was going to show up.
The butler.
All right, so Max had this reputation forbeing miserly, and I guess it was his
(32:16):
financial background and actuallyhave a check register of his.
That's 1922 to 1935, and it's gotthousands of dollars registered in it.
And I'm going,wasn't that during the Depression?
I'm going, wow, that wasa lot of money back then.
(32:39):
But he would have Vernon,his chauffeur and butler, follow him,
and you could tell at night when he wouldcome in his house and go up the stairs,
there'd be a light come on,and then the light go off,
and Vernon would follow him, turning thelights off as he was going up the stairs.
(32:59):
That was Max.
We move in a circle, wrote Emanue,and towards first principles again.
A country born man may live in the cityfor years, but the longing for the smell
of the land comes back to him,and he generally winds up
amid the trees and flowers.
(33:19):
Next time, on 72 miles,how my family started moving back
and forth along that same circle,searching for a place of our own
and repeating the physical and Jewishjourneys of the Nam family.
A journey that, for us,was jumpstarted when we left
the relatively large Jewish communityof Louisville behind and moved
south to Bowling Green.
(33:48):
72 miles features the stories of threeseparate interfaith Jewish families,
two real, one not and one mine.
Together, they trace 150 years of Kentuckyhistory with experiences that resonate
today about being Jewish in America,about being Jewish and being southern
at the same time,and the blending of the two.
(34:09):
So strap in and take a ride with be upand down I 65 or back and forth
on the Ellen railroad.
In the end, the win and the who don't makeas much difference as you might think.
But the where sure does.
My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughann.
It's 72 miles till Kentucky.
Let's get moving.
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