Rachel Lazansky

1870s–1880s

Born about 1874–1877 in the Łomża area of Russian Poland to Abraham Lazansky and Elsie Mayes. Came to America with her parents as a girl, probably around 1887–1888.

1890s–1900s

Married Louis Vigotsky (Rosen) and began a family of more than a dozen children on the Lower East Side, starting with Sam in 1896. Naturalized in 1900.

1910s–1930s

Raised her family in a series of tenement apartments, from 1915 at 403 Grand Street. Lost her son Chubby in 1939.

1940

Died at home at 124 East 89th Street in Brooklyn on 1 April 1940.

From Łomża to the Lower East Side

Rachel Lazansky, known as Rae, was born around 1874 to 1877 in the Łomża area of Russian Poland, the daughter of Abraham Lazansky and Elsie Mayes. Her Hebrew name was Rivka Rachel. She came to America with her parents as a girl; most records place her arrival around 1887 or 1888, though one says 1895. Her sister Lena married Noah Schlossberg, and another sister married a man named Rosengarten.

Rae married Louis Vigotsky, a tailor who took the name Rosen. Their son Sam, born in 1896, was one of the oldest of more than a dozen children, among them Gussie, Jaffee, Jack (Ben's great-grandfather), Isidore, Abe, Eddy, Harry, Ruby, Lillian, Elsie, Ralph, and William, called Chubby; a daughter, Helen, died in early childhood. The family lived at 204 Broome Street in 1898 and then at Clinton Street, Monroe Street, and Rutgers Place, and from 1915 at 403 Grand Street.

Grandma Rae

Her granddaughter, the writer Eleanor Rackow Widmer, drew an unsparing portrait of her. "Grandma Rae had more children than she could handle, displayed affection for none, was a compulsive cleaner, and each and every day cooked the identical menu in a two-foot-tall cast-iron pot: meatballs and potatoes." She was strict and saw to it that her children cleaned and scrubbed, and Eleanor called her an "ice queen." In the apartment, "you entered directly into the kitchen and then the rooms followed each other in a row," each filled with beds whose "gray wool blankets, squared at the corners and pulled tight, signaled that no one dared disturb the symmetry." The windows, floors, and bedclothes were always spotless. On the roof her sons kept a garden, and the family hung the laundry up there to dry.

In her last years Rae lived in Brooklyn, at 124 East 89th Street, a house that became a base for the family and where her youngest son, Chubby, died in 1939, just short of twenty-one. Rae died at home there on the morning of April 1, 1940, of a coronary thrombosis, and was buried at Montefiore Cemetery in Queens.