A note from Katie (written with the help of some incredibly witty commentary from Bekah)

Tomorrow we will be going to Bulgaria. No, I’m not talking about the shady country with the child snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, although that is a frequently asked question whenever Bulgaria is mentioned. It’s actually a beautiful little country in Eastern Europe that lies along the Black Sea. We will leave tomorrow to spend a week there. Why Bulgaria, you may ask. This trip is actually part of a story about a century in the making, and it’s a pretty incredible story too.

In the early 1900s three Bulgarian brothers moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Their names were Mitu, Marion and Simeon. They moved into apartments on N Cameron Street and began their new American lives, working in a local steel mill. The eldest, Mitu had a wife and son who remained in Bulgaria. He made multiple trips across the ocean, traveling between the two countries. Among the records we have been able to locate are the manifests of the ships he took on these voyages. We have very little information about him, and no knowledge of whether he died in America or Bulgaria. His two brothers, however, remained in America for the rest of their lives. The middle brother, Marion found love in the new country when he married a Romanian woman named Annie.

Simeon, the youngest of the three brothers began to adapt to American life as well. He changed his name to Samuel and lived with his brother Marion in the apartments on N Cameron Street. On August 20, 1921, Samuel traveled to Ellis Island and married a young Bulgarian woman named Nadelka Kristova. It is still unclear how the union came about. Perhaps the couple knew each other prior to Samuel’s move to America, or perhaps Mitu found a Bulgarian bride for his younger brother on one of his trips back to their homeland. Nadelka, or Ena as she was sometimes called, joined her new husband in the Cameron Street apartments where unbeknownst to them their life would soon be turned upside down.

In January of 1920 the 18^th Amendment went into effect and the nationwide prohibition of alcohol began. Like many of the nation’s immigrants, Marion and Samuel began to profit by selling their now illegal homebrew. Business was booming. The brothers used a confectionery shop as a front for their illicit activity. Both Nadelka and Annie were involved in their husbands’ business as well. By this point Marion and Annie had four children: twin boys named Peter and Michael and two younger girls, Christine and Katherine. The couple began to take boarders in the apartments they owned on Cameron Street. Among these boarders were two men, John Toni and Jack Stanoff who inhabited 1108 N Cameron Street.

But unfortunately this newfound prosperity did not bring about a time of peace for the Kanoff family. In the following years, the family members would be in and out of jail for violation of prohibition laws. In late 1921, shortly after Samuel’s marriage, Marion was attacked, suffering a blow to the head. Little is known for certain about the assault but it seems to have coincided with an altercation between Marion and one of his boarders Jack Stanoff. The quarrel allegedly began over Stanoff’s interest in Annie Kanoff and resulted in Marion evicting Stanoff from the apartment building. Stanoff however would claim to have left Cameron Street to avoid implication in the Kanoffs’ moonshining business. According to the later testimony of his son Peter, around this time Marion began to grow uneasy about his safety. He installed an electric light in his backyard for extra security and even asked for police protection. Tragically these precautionary measures would not be enough. On the evening of November 29, 1921, ten year old Peter Kanoff discovered his father beaten unconscious and left for dead in the shed behind the Cameron Street apartments. Although Marion was rushed to the hospital it was too late. He remained in a coma until his death, which occurred three days later on December 2, 1921. He was thirty-three years old.

Jack Stanoff and John Toni, another of the Kanoffs’ boarders, were arrested. The trials received a great deal of publicity and were heavily covered by the local newspapers. Toni was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Stanoff was also convicted but was soon acquitted on the basis of Toni’s testimony. Days later a county commission was ordered to inquire into his sanity. He was found to be insane and was eventually admitted to the Pennsylvania State Hospital. John Toni served twelve years.

After Marion’s death, both Samuel and Annie continued to manufacture and sell illegal liquor. Annie soon married again, this time to a Romanian man named George Ionoff. Together they ran Marion’s confectionery shop and eventually opened several bars throughout the Harrisburg area. Samuel and Nadelka continued to live at 1124 N Cameron Street. Although their first two children died young, the couple’s family began to grow, and they would eventually have five healthy children: twins Peter and Michael, George, Christine and Christopher, my grandfather. Christopher was born on June 4, 1935. At the time of his birth Nadelka had been struggling with health issues for quite a while. Her mental health was questionable at best and the neighbors worried about the baby. They took turns looking in on him, making sure that he was taken care of. One day, one of the women noticed that she had not heard him crying for some time and became concerned. She went over to the apartment and discovered that Nadelka had put Christopher in the ice box. Although we don’t know her name, without this neighbor my family would most likely not exist.

Nadelka was admitted to the Harrisburg State Hospital where she remained for nine years, until her death in 1945. Christopher was only three months old when Nadelka was admitted to the state hospital. He was placed in foster care with a German couple, Andrew and Mary Werlick. He lived with them for the first few years of his life, during which he was baptized at a local church. At age five Christopher was moved to a different foster home, this time in Campbelltown, were he lived with the Snavely family. He remembers Mr. Snavely as a man of faith who would often pray over the children. By age ten, both of Christopher’s parents had passed away and throughout his childhood he would be in and out of the children’s home. He eventually ended up living with a Bulgarian man named Steve Yochev who had been friends with Samuel and had lived in the Cameron Street Apartments. It was because of Steve that Christopher was able to learn more about his Bulgarian heritage. Steve would often mention the name of the town from which the Kanoffs had originated back in the old country, and although we were never sure of what that name was, it was Christopher’s distant memories that would ultimately enable us to find our relatives in Borovo.

Despite the many hardships of my grandfather’s childhood, God was incredibly faithful. It sometimes amazes me to see the faith that my Paw Paw has. I know that while he was growing up he must have often felt lonely and afraid, but he is still one of the most loving people that I know. Seeing the way that he and my grandmother love our family has been one of the most influential things in my life and it is so incredible to see the way that God cared for Paw Paw and has used him to bless our family. I am so excited for him to get to meet his family in Bulgaria.