Ancestor Story

We all have ancestors. Ancestors are the people in our families who came before us. All ancestors go back in time and many traveled great distances across the globe. Some families know the lives of their ancestors as well as they know their own lives. Other families may spend years looking for lost ancestors, maybe never finding them. Ancestors may carry stories of adventures or stories of every day life; part of the fun is learning these stories about our ancestors.

I am writing my ancestor story on my great grandma Sophie Chargo. A few things about her are that she was five feet tall and pretty short. She weighed one hundred and ten pounds. Her eye color was brown, and her hair color was brown. Before she died she enjoyed going shopping for clothes that were in style. She died in November 2003. She was born September 18th 1912, in Minsk Russia. In 1914 Sophie Immigrated from Russia to America, at age two.

Sophie was always nice because, she was thoughtful and kind for many years. She cheered people up when they were not happy. Everyone was grateful to know someone as kind as her. It was sad when she died because everyone loved her as much as I did.

An important event that happened to Sophie is that she got married to Morris Chargo in 1933 at a Synagogue in Minneapolis MN. After they got married they moved to Willmar MN. Sophie was a Valedictorian in her graduating class. She had two brothers named Reuben and Max. Sophie’s mother Fanny owned a grocery store called National Grocery and Meats.

When Sophie was young she used to ride streetcars, a lot. One day the streetcar was really crowded and she noticed that her shoelace was untied. She was able to bend down and tie it. When she was ready to get off, she got up and started to walk when she almost tripped! She discovered that she had tied the person’s shoe that was next to her!

Sophie led an exercise class until she was well into her 80’s. During the war, she had what was called a Victory Garden where she grew veggies and every Sunday she would go to the garden and weed and cultivate it. Once she got very mad with Morris because he would never help with the garden, but would follow very mad with Morris because he would never help with the garden, but would follow her picking up the night crawler worms.

I think Sophie is interesting, and I hope you do too. I think Sophie is unique in many ways, but I think that a favorite part of the stories that I told you about is the streetcar one. Sophie is a lot like my friends great grandparents, because she died in 2003. Sophie was my favorite ancestor and I hope stories of her will get passed on from generation to generation.

Historical Documents

Ship manifest information (Lines 20-25):

Sime 'Sophie' Gerschonowitz CHARGO, born September 18, 1912, arrived in America via Canada on the ship Mount Temple, arriving at the port of Quebec on September 16, 1913. She is listed on manifest line 22, age 9/12th. Sailing with Sophie were her brother Ruwen (Ruben) age 2, and her mother Chaie Gerschonowitz, age 27, along with her grandmother Beile Plotnik, tailoress, who had Chaie's brothers Schafe, age 15, and Leibe, age 12, with her. They were going to meet Beile's husband, "J" in Minneapolis.

Note: Some of the original manifest original data was updated by the naturalization service in later years.

Manifest page 1 (Lines 20-25): Will open in new browser window or tab.

Manifest page 2 (Lines 20-25): Will open in new browser window or tab.