Paragon Oil - Schwartz Family History

Schwartz Family History

Sam's father, Chaim Yael "Hyman" Chernofski, married Gittel Rifka "Gertrude" Bobrutsky, daughter of Mordkho "Max" Bobrutsky and Sarah Fuchs, probably around 1863. Chaim and Sam had started the family into the Whale Oil business during the late 1880s. After the purges in the early 1890s, one part of the family decided to go to America, while others stayed behind in Russia to continue the exporting of Whale Oil. The family immigrated through the port of Bremen, Germany, where their name was changed from "Chernofski", which had at its root the Russian word for black, to "Schwartz", the German word for black. The family traveled to London, England during the early part of 1895 to strengthen contacts they had previously made with the Royal Court of Queen Victoria that would serve them later with Paragon Oil. According to old family documents, the majority of the family finally traveled to America during late 1895 as First Class passengers on the White Star liner Teutonic.

Several of the five brothers' first cousins, including the sons of Sam's youngest sibling Barney Schwartz and the sons one of Lena's cousins, also joined the operation. However, some of them chose to adopt different surnames in the workplace, including the surnames "Harvey" and "Lawrence", so that it would not be immediately obvious that most of the people working in the upper levels of the company had the last name Schwartz, and thus were related. Avoiding public anti-Semitism was also a contributing factor to the cousins' surname changes; indeed, even some of the five brothers' first names were different than those on their birth certificates and early census records, changed to sound less overtly Jewish. For example, Arnold's real first name was Abraham, and the brother whose birth certificate showed "Benny" Schwartz officially went by the more genteel "B. Davis" Schwartz for most of his later adult life.