HAFT - GOODMAN FAMILIES

Harry Haft came to the United States from Russia with his parents,  grandparents, brothers and sisters, in 1906. After traveling around the country, working at odd jobs, he settled with his parents on a farm in Brainerd, New-York (near Albany), which had been bought with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).  It was there that Clara Duchin went for her vacation from her job in the garment industry in New York City (the type of work she had been doing since she was a small child in Russia). They were married in 1917 and stayed on the farm for a year or two, where their son, Isaac, was born. They moved to Crown Point, Indiana, where Harry worked in the steel  mills of Gary and where their daughter, Edna, was born. They then moved back East to a dairy farm in East Greenbush, New York, where their daughter, Helen was born.

In 1927, they moved to a poultry farm on Old Freehold Road as partners with Clara's sister and brother-in-law, Louis and Ida Pyenson. Several years later they bought the farm across the street.

Edna recalls events from those early years such as the struggle to make ends meet and the financial help given by the Jewish Agricultural Society. The first year on the farm they had no chickens and they took in boarders, just as the Hafts had done in Brainerd, New York.

Harry and Clara worked side by side, borrowing money and re-investing any profits into building new coops, barns for feed, modernizing with automatic waterers and feed carriers.

Harry died at the age of 58 in 1942, and Clara ran the farm after that, until 1961, when she sold it. She lived across the street in an apartment in her sister's house  (the Dardicks) and finally, with her daughter and son-in-law, Irv and Edna Goodman, until her death at the age of 81 in 1973.

The Haft children grew up on the farm. Helen left permanently when  she  went  to college. Isaac stayed until he was drafted in WW II. He returned with his wife, Lucille, and ran the farm with his mother for several years until the economic conditions  in poultry farming forced him to look for other sources of income. He worked as a project engineer and died in California at the age of 50, in 1967.

Edna Haft met Irvin Goodman in 1938. He had moved to a farm on Silverton Road with his mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Max. J. Smith.  They were married in 1940, had a small farm on Vermont Avenue and then moved to the Haft farm after her father died. After Irv spent a couple of years in the Army, they bought a farm on Old Freehold Road, which they farmed until 1952, when adverse economic conditions forced them to sell it. They moved to Clayton Avenue, where they have been living ever since. Their three children, Fred, Joan and Lois, live in Maryland, Wisconsin, and California, respectively.

Reminiscing about the Jewish Community Center, Edna recalls that,  while  her father was not religious, he was willing to join the services when they were short of men. He also made sure that the furnace was lit (wood and coal) whenever there was a meeting. The meetings were the social events  and the children were  usually  present as  baby-sitters were unheard of in those days.