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Isaac (Yitzchak) was born in Topoloveni (Romania), on July 15, 1878 to Schimen and Anna (Krauthammer) Peretz. He and his family were able to lead a comfortable life. We don’t know the extent of Isaac’s education, but we do know that he became an officer in the Austro-Hungary army of Emperor Franz Joseph. While in the army, he was in Vienna where he went to a tea dance and met Fannie Haber
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Fannie (Feige) was born in Plumacz*, Austria, in 1882 to Israel and Chai Rene Haber. Her family had enough money so that she was able to attend and graduate from gymnazium. After the death of her parents, she moved to Vienna to live with an aunt. One day she went to a tea dance and met a dashing, tall officer named Isaac Peretz. About 1902, they married and lived in Austria. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Austria had an upsurge in anti-Semitism. In fact, the four-term mayor of Vienna was a rabid anti-Semite, so they [Isaac and Fannie] decided to move to America. Isaac went first. On February 27, 1904, six and a half months after the birth of their son, Isaac (listed on the manifest as Itzig Peretz) boarded the Graf Waldersee in Hamburg. He landed in New York City on March 11, 1904.
Fannie and their son, Srul [later called Samuel], followed Isaac to New York. They traveled from Rotterdam aboard the Potsdam, arriving in New York on September 3, 1907. Isaac met them and took them to their new home at 17 Ridge Street in New York City. At some juncture, they moved to 105 Livingston Street where their second child, Anne, was born on April 23, 1909.
Isaac prepared a Declaration of Intent on November 9, 1909, and a Petition for Naturalization on April 13, 1914. [His name appeared on the documents as Issac] After having signed a renouncement of allegiance to Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary, Issac was granted citizenship on July 22, 1914. Their third child, Max (Mack), was born on August 29, 1914. Soon afterwards they moved to Brooklyn.
During the great influenza epidemic of 1919, Fannie was taken ill with the disease and taken to the hospital by ambulance. Anne ran after the vehicle calling to her mother until it went too fast and too far. Fortunately, she [Fannie] recovered, but it was traumatic especially for Anne. …
As a result of Isaac not being conversant in English, he worked at menial tasks for a manufacturer of men’s trousers. It must have been terribly hard on him and Fannie, as they both had been raised in comfortable homes, and, all was left in Europe. They had brought with them the remnants of their former life such as Fannie’s jewelry, their embroidered linens, a carriage clock with Fannie’s monogram, and Sarah Leah’s (Isaac’s grandmother) candlesticks. Fannie enjoyed wearing jewelry. Most days she wore her diamond studs and rings. Her girlish figure had plumped to generous proportions from lack of exercise, due to her asthma condition, as well as a sweet tooth. But she always was meticulously dressed with her dark hair parted in the center and pulled back into a bun. Fannie always was loving, genteel, highly cultured, and retained an interest in education, especially improving her English. Their home was modest but a happy one.
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**There might have been some confusion over naming the town of Plumacz, Fannie’s birth place. It might actually have been called Tlumacz. According to Wikipedia, “From the first partition of Poland in 1772 until 1918, the town (namedTłumacz) was part of the Austrian monarchy(Austria side after the compromise of 1867), head of the district with the same name, one of the 78Bezirkshauptmannschaftenin Austrian Galicia province (Crown land) in 1900.The fate of this province was then disputed between Poland and Russia, until the Peace of Riga in 1921, attributing Galicia to the Second Polish Republic."
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