By the time Paul Serafin reached Minneapolis in 1905, his last name had been changed to Jacobs at Ellis Island, and he’d lived in New York and Louisiana, where he’d worked picking crops for local farmers. Born in the Syrian Arab Republic (Lebanon) in 1887, he was one of thousands of young Lebanese who left their mountain homes to seek a new life in America.
At the time, Lebanon was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had kept the province of Greater Syria under its oppressive thumb since 1516. Before that, Lebanese people could trace their history back to the first-millennium B.C. Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians. By the late 1880s, Christians in the area were persecuted, and entire families were dying of plagues and starvation due to famine. “They were surrounded and they had no food,” said Chorbishop (Abouna) sharbel Maroun of St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church.
“If a family had seven kids, they knew six were going to die. They’d send their children to the West,” he continued. “If just one could survive, the family name would continue on.”
A man named Michael Henne was among the first wave of Lebanese to make their home in Minneapolis. Henne, who immigrated in 1889, could speak English, which gave him an immediate boost in American society. He sponsored many fellow Syrians, providing them with a roof over their heads as they sought to get a foothold in their new world. In 1895, 30 Lebanese immigrants were housed above his store at 123 Main Street. By 1905, Henne had moved to a larger building at 521 Marshall Street and 51 people lived at that address. By 1918, there were 104 Syrian families in Northeast.
It was not an easy life, but many of the immigrants got off the ground with Henne’s help. In addition to running his own store, he became a kind of wholesaler, providing goods on credit to people who fanned out across the state to sell them. These peddlers were most often women; Lebanese men sought work on the railroads and in the factories.
One peddler was Sadie Jacobs, Paul’s wife. While he worked in the paper mill at B.F. Nelson on Marshall, she took her goods door-to-door. Her grandson, Daher Jacobs, recalls, “The ladies would go up to Hibbing and sell fabrics and sewing supplies, crocheted items. They’d be gone for maybe a month.”
One German woman was so enchanted by Sadie, she wanted her to marry her son. But Sadie was already married to Paul.
Paul’s brother Tom acquired a horse and wagon and traveled around the city selling blocks of ice for iceboxes. It was the genesis of Jacobs Trucking.
Paul, Sadie and their seven children lived at 117 Third Avenue NE, a few steps away from today’s Ukrainian American Community Center. “They were on the bread line during the Depression,” Daher Jacobs said.
Joseph Saba was another early immigrant, entering the U.S. in 1904. Like all the others, he settled in the Main-and-Marshall area. Born in Beirut, he married Mary Chelte of Damascus and they had five boys. Mary died at age 34 of a blood disorder; the Saba family recounts a ghost story in which, shortly after her death, she floated down the stairs in a white dress, moving her lips as though trying to speak. “My father, John, said he grabbed his little brother Delor’s hand and they flew out of the house,” recounted Connie Saba Husby. Joseph turned to alcohol and women, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. John and Delor were sent to St. Joseph’s Home for Children.
Joseph Saba worked for the Minneapolis Water Works Department for 23 years. He was walking to a New Year’s Eve party when he became the victim of a hit-and-run driver. He was Minneapolis’ last traffic fatality of 1939.
The Sabas established themselves solidly in Northeast. They attended St. Maron and sent their kids to Edison. Many worked for the City of Minneapolis. Connie’s brother, Cory, retired from the police force; he worked out of the Second Precinct.
The second wave
The second wave of Lebanese immigrants reached the U.S. shortly before World War II. Emily Awaijane arrived in 1936. During the war, she built bombsights for the U.S. Navy at a factory in what is now the Thorpe Building on Central Avenue and worked at a soda fountain. She also worked as a banquet waitress at the Sheraton Ritz Hotel downtown for many years.
In the 1960s, she and other Lebanese women prepared food in their homes that other Lebanese people would buy, according to a 2003 obituary in the Northeaster. In 1973, she opened Emily’s Lebanese Deli at 641 University Avenue NE. Emily’s son, Ron, said they had expected to serve primarily Lebanese customers, but the majority were neighboring Poles and Ukrainians.
Another rider on that wave was Michael Jacob (no ‘s’), who arrived in 1932. After serving in in the U.S. Air Force during the war, he helped out in the family’s grocery store on 2nd Street. In 1971, he and his brothers Albert and Ramez bought a bar at 101 Main Street and called it Jacob’s 101, which they operated until 1991. He sold to nephew George Jacob who kept it open until 2005. It was a popular after-school hangout for teachers from Sheridan and Edison. The three brothers also owned and operated Schullers Tavern in Golden Valley and Ray J’s American Grill at 500 Central Avenue SE. Michael’s sons, Rob and Tony, operate Ray J’s and Nye’s, 112 East Hennepin.
Successive waves of Lebanese immigration followed; one of the largest occurred 1975-1991, during the Lebanese civil war. One of the immigrants at that time who took up residence in Northeast was Elie Farhat, who was in his 70s. Orphaned in Beirut, he made a living as a banker there until the country tore itself apart. He died from COVID-19 in 2020.
Another is Zakie Maalouf, who owns Zakia’s Deli at 2412 Kennedy Street NE. She and her son David opened the deli in 2007, following the death of her husband Assaad in 2006.
Encountering prejudice
Historians often remark about how quickly Lebanese settlers became acculturated to American society, perhaps due to their mobility as peddlers. Even so, they often encountered prejudice in Northeast. Connie Husby, who, like many Lebanese Americans, is dark skinned, with dark hair. She remembers being called the N-word as a child.
Daher Jacobs said he didn’t recall any specific instances of racism, but said being called a “Black Syrian” was an invitation to a fight. “Most of the street corner fights between Poles, Ukrainians and Lebanese were more about territory than race,” he said.
St. Maron, the center and soul of the community
Throughout all these waves of immigration, there’s been one constant: St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church. Because Lebanon didn’t exist as a country until the 1940s, most Lebanese identified by their religious affiliation, Christian or Muslim. Those who settled in Northeast were primarily Maronite Catholics from the Batroun district of Lebanon.
“The first 20 years, friends and cousins were following each other into Northeast,” said Abouna Maroun. “They gathered around Marshall and Main Street. On February 9, 1903, the Feast of St. Maron, our patron, they celebrated the first Maronite mass in Minneapolis.”
The service was held at a residence at 311 Main Street. Fast-forward to 1919, and the Maronites acquired an abandoned church at 625 Main Street. By 1939, the growing congregation had purchased the Everett Public School at 6th and University; less than ten years later, they built a new church there.
Today, said Abouna Maroun, “St. Maron is a mosaic of different cultures that are brought together here. Because of the religion, language and culture it brings people of similar cultures and languages together. We have the Maronites, the Melkites [Greek], Turkish Orthodox, Iran, Holy Land, Syria, Jordan — Christians from all over the Middle East. The music, the food, keeps the culture alive.”
Connie Husby agrees. “It’s always about the food, and dancing the dabke.”
Below: The Lebanese American Club, 1921. Joseph Saba is on the far right, second row. His brother Maroun, is on the far left, first row. (Photo provided by St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church) Emily Awaijane, founder of Emily’s Lebanese Deli (Northeaster file photo) Repairing the steeple of the St. Maron Church at 625 Main Street (Photo provided by St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church)
Sources:
Ancestry.com
Ashmore, Kerry, “She turned a knack for baking flat bread into a family business,” Northeaster, June 5, 2003
Doche, Viviane, Cedars by the Mississippi: The Lebanese-Americans in the Twin Cities, San Francisco, 1978
Hajar, Paula, and Jones, J. Sydney, Lebanese Americans, https://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Lebanese-Americans.html
Holmquist, June Drenneing, editor, They Chose Minnesota, A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1981
Nassiff, Anna, “I am here to build with you:” Placemaking and segmented assimilation of Lebanese and Lebanese-Americans in the Twin Cities, Macalester College, May 2014
Vue, Katelyn, “Grandchildren remember Elie Farhat as a quiet family man, former banker in Lebanon,” Sahan Journal, Dec. 6, 2020
Interviews with Chorbishop sharbel Maroun, St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church; Daher Jacobs and Connie Saba Husby, October 2021