Extended Jewish families were common on the Southwestern frontier. Pioneer Jews wanted to retain their Yiddishkeit, so they brought along their families and married cousins and for the most part stayed Jewish keeping the story of Mishpoche alive. Most came for the same reasons we pack up and move today – opportunity and, for some, health reasons.
A truly great story of Mishpoche is the Kapinski family of immigrants from Lithuania. Moses and Chiatsilla Kapinski moved to England with their large family of children sometime after their son Hyman was born in 1873. Their older son Abraham immigrated to America and settled in Harrisburg, PA. When Hyman turned 17, Abraham sent funds for his two brothers, Louis and Hyman, to join him in Harrisburg. Shortly after his arrival in 1890 Hyman changed his name to the more American sounding Capin
and worked alongside his two brothers as a tailor. Six years later, in 1896, he married a fellow Lithuania immigrant, Miss Dora Lun.
She had immigrated to Harrisburg to keep house for her brother. In 1898 Hyman became a naturalized citizen and had an established tailoring business. Eventually the American family brought the Kapinski parents and other siblings to Harrisburg, where the men of the family all worked as tailors. Dora suffered from chronic respiratory
problems and so on advice from her doctor Hyman and Dora and their six children headed west to a warmer climate. Traveling by train, the family made the week-long trip to Los Angeles where they intended to stay. However, six months in Los Angeles, proved too damp for Dora. The family moved to Yuma, AZ, which proved to be much too hot, and Hyman could not find work.
By 1911 Hyman had settled in Tucson and established a tailor and steam-cleaning shop on Stone Avenue. The seven Capin children attended school. Dora’s health improved in Tucson but her concern that the small Jewish community of Tucson would not provide her children with the requirements of a Jewish life and the lack of kosher food prompted yet another move. In 1914 Hyman and his brother Phillip opened a tailor shop near the newly enlarged Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX, and moved the large family to a home nearby. It proved to be a very profitable move for the family. About that same time two other events added to the growing extended
family. Hyman’s sister Bessie married Harry Chernin, and in 1917 his sister Sadye married Robert Marcus. The Pancho Villa raids into New Mexico brought a new wave of military to the region. President Wilson sent General John J. Pershing to Columbus, NM, to oversee the new troops.
The obvious opportunity awaited and Hyman opened a tailor shop in Columbus sending his new brother- in-law Harry Chernin to manage it. The opportunity did not last long. In 1918, with World War I ending, the military withdrew from Columbus and much of El Paso and business declined. Undaunted Hyman heard of a new military installation in Nogales, AZ – Camp Steven D. Little. In 1920 Hyman purchased a house and moved his family to Nogales. He established a very lucrative arrangement for tailoring with Camp Little and perfected the paper pattern he had invented for military uniforms. Utilizing this new “technology” allowed uniforms to be mass produced quickly and at a greatly reduced cost to the military. The Capin shop grew rapidly and within a short time was employing almost 100 people in the production of handmade clothes and uniforms.
By 1926 Hyman had purchased two department stores for his sons and sons-in-laws to operate. He brought the Harry Chernin and Robert Marcus families to Nogales as partners in the retail side of the business. Hyman left the retail work to his extended family, preferring to remain a tailor, once boasting that he “owned more retail square footage than any other Arizona businessman, but had never worked a day in any one of those establishments.” Their family raised, Hyman retired in 1931. The couple returned to Tucson, ironically for the opposite reason they had left – Tucson now had a large Jewish community. The Capin business became known as the Capin Mercantile Company, and it was one of the largest employers in the region. Over the history of the firm there were 40 stores throughout Arizona and New Mexico, all of which were managed by the sons and sons-in-laws of Hyman Capin.
Through all the relocations Dora raised her eight children in a kosher Jewish home. Although none of the children had a formal Jewish education, all of the Capin children married Jewish men and women. Throughout their life of relocation, business ups and downs and the demands of raising a large number of children, Dora and Hyman’s singular driving force was seeing to the welfare of their Mishpoche. Their Yiddishkeit was always paramount.
