REAL ESTATE MOGUL

    Between 1919 and 1929 my grandfather, Louis Levine bought and sold over 50 pieces of property in Jeanette, PA. This is not news to me. Our family lore stated that Louis was a contractor and built a street of houses in Jeannette and it was called Levine Street. It is more likely that during those 10 years he bought land and either sold it to someone or perhaps had houses built on some parcels and then sold those. He had three different partners during that time period. There were parcels of land labeled from the Levine Penn plan and others from the Levine Leiberman plan.

     I attended a genealogy seminar about using land records to aid in my family history research. Jeannette was in Westmoreland County so I googled the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds, searched his name and got 55 hits about transactions he was involved in. I’m not going to bore you with the details of every transaction but I will highlight the significant ones. The first transaction was made on 5/21/1919. He purchased three lots on Gaskill Avenue from Harry and Gabriella Petz for $6200. Louis himself lived at 712 Gaskill along with his wife Tillie, sons Bernard and Moses? (my father Morris), and his brother in law Julius who we knew as Louis. It had listed my grandfather as a hardware merchant. It looks like he sold real estate on the side. Here is the first page of that deed.

    On 6/13/1919 Louis sold two lots on Clay Avenue to Harvey Sorber. It looks as though Louis and his brother in law, Frank Levin had acquired these lots together by inheritance. I don’t have much experience reading deeds but it looks like they may have built a building on these lots and then the owner died. They seemed to have acquired the property as payment for their work. Franks then sold his portion to Louis for $1.00 and Louis sold the package for $12,400. Here is the first page of that deed.

    In June of 1920 Louis and his partners, Morris and Harry Penn purchased a plot of land from the Jeannette Glass Company. This was the first mention of any partners that my grandfather may have had and the names were not familiar to me nor part of my family tree. Morris and Harry were brothers and lived next door to each other in Export PA which was close to Jeanette. A search among public trees on Ancestry found that the Penn brothers were from Belarus. The Belarus connection with Louis is what probably prompted that partnership.

     Matt Arkin entered the picture in October of 1922. Matt was married to my grandfather’s first cousin, Mae Levine. Matt and Louis bought and sold several pieces of property over the next year. Matt eventually left the partnership and began an auto parts business. Matt Arkin was extremely helpful to my father when he wanted to get into the auto parts business in Erie, PA. A new partner appeared late in 1923. Harry Lieberman and his wife Blanche were partners of record in almost all of the transactions through 1929. Most of those transactions showed that Harry Lieberman got most of his shares of the properties from Matt Arkin. Matt’s mother in law, Rebecca Levine was born a Lieberman. I would think that there is a relationship there but I haven’t been able to pin anything down.

    Some time in 1926 Louis and his family moved from Jeannette, PA to Pittsburgh. My father had told me that he had a hardware business in Squirrel Hill which was a predominately Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh. In December of 1928 a transaction he was involved in stated that he lived in Cranesville, PA just outside of Erie.

     There were a lot of other transactions that involved other Levines or Levins. Some of them were close relatives of my grandfather but some are more distantly related. A Louis Levin with no “E” on the end of his name, along with his wife Bessie sold some property on Main Street in Mt. Pleasant, PA. This is the same Louis that lived in the same apartment with my grandfather’s sister, Bertha in 1910 in Mt. Pleasant. I am still not 100% sure of who he is but he is in the family tree of Beny Levin who I believe is my third cousin. There is also a transaction involving a Sam Levine and his wife, Bessie selling some property to Louis and Meyer Barron. It is rumored that Meyer is related to me but I haven’t found that connection yet. He is from Traby, Belarus, the same town as my grandfather.

    Many people overlook the importance of the records of real estate transactions. They can prompt new searches into different locations, relationships, and significant events in an ancestor’s life.