When my great-grandfather, Moses “Mo” Freije, came to the United States, he was 14 years old and completely alone. While his parents stayed in the small village in Lebanon where he was born, Baskinta, Mo travelled on a boat to Ellis Island in New York, eager for a better life. Tumbling out with hundreds of other passengers, he was processed and soon approved to live in the US. He drove to meet extended family in Worcester, MA, where there was a thriving Lebanese community—but it wasn’t smooth sailing yet.
Mo got a job at a textile mill that operated with typical late 1800’s machines—wobbly and dangerous, they were made of wood and would frequently come apart as they operated. Mo’s job was to crawl in the cracks between the machines and nail them back together with a hammer. At the same time, he was learning English and soon moved to Binghamton, New York, in pursuit of better work. He got a job at a gas company; there, he got wind of the so-called electrical revolution spreading across America. Mo’s undeveloped-but-strong business sense fired, and he started studying electricity. After learning how to use wires and circuits, he went door-to-door in neighborhoods about to get electricity, asking people if they would like him to wire their houses so they could use it.
In his mid-20s, Mo met a young lady named Jessie. Smart and beautiful, she caught Mo’s eye, and family legend has it that he fell in love at first sight. He asked her father if he could start courting her, but her father said she was too young as she was only 18 at the time. Disappointed but determined, Mo wrote letter after letter to Jessie. They kept in touch over the next year, and soon after they started dating and eventually got married. When I asked my mother and uncle about Mo, they said he adored Jessie to no end—and that Jessie was head-over-heels for him as well.
Mo’s endeavors in electricity helped him and Jessie after they got married, as well. He started a profitable company, Freije Electric, which gave him more than enough money to support his family, which soon included a daughter—my grandmother—Joyce. Though he struggled in America at first, Mo Freije died a successful and happy man.
