Oral history interview with Harold and Lillian Breen Jacobs, 1997.

ArchivalResource

Rosengarten, Dale, 1948-. Oral history interview with Harold and Lillian Breen Jacobs, 1997.

Oral history interview with Harold and Lillian Breen Jacobs, 1997.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/50899744

Harold Jacobs details his family history and his personal and professional life in Charleston, South Carolina; his wife Lillian Breen Jacobs adds a few comments at the end of the interview. Harold Jacobs' grandfather, Isaac Jacobs (originally named Karesh), arrived in New York from Prussia right before the Civil War; he fought for the Union side from Cincinnati. He soon moved to Due West, S.C., where he met and married Jeanette Slager, who had emigrated from Prussia with her two sisters who lost contact when they were separated in New York City and were not reunited for fifty years. Isaac Jacobs and his wife moved to Charleston and set up in general mercantile business on King Street. The Jacobses had several children including Samuel, father of the interviewee. Samuel first had a shoe store and then went into the grocery business; having both his legs amputated, he eventually worked as a bookkeeper. Samuel married the daughter of Dora and Julius Cohen, of San Francisco, Ca. They first lived on St. Philip Street and then moved to Allen Park, near the Citadel. Harold Jacobs' father was orthodox, and a member of Brith Sholom synagogue; his mother was a member of the reform Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. As a boy, he attended both congregations and over the years, the family grew less observant. He notes that the orthodox and reform Jews did not mingle at all; it was the formation of Aleph Zadek Aleph fraternity that started the youth of the different synagogues interacting. While still at Charleston High School, which he remembers fondly, Harold Jacobs started selling "snowballs" (snow cones) from a rough cabin-like building. It was named, in jest, Harold's Cabin. As the store moved and improved, the name stuck. Harold Jacobs enlisted when World War II broke out, and although he was sent to North Africa, he had mostly administrative jobs. After the war, traveling out of state, he saw grocery stores with specialty and gourmet items. He decided to stock those in his store, and he was the first grocer to have frozen vegetables in the city of Charleston. Through mutual friends, he met Lillian Breen of Rocky Mount, N.C; her parents had come from Riga, Russia, through New Jersey to Rocky Mount, where her mother had a brother nearby, the grandfather of writer Eli Evans. There were not many Jewish families in Rocky Mount, so Lillian was not as knowledgeable of Jewish ritual as her husband; they married in 1946.

Sound recording : 1 sound cassette : digital.Transcript : 44 p. ; 28 cm.

College of Charleston, Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library