By June Evins

Henrietta Mayer Bach always said, “Use your head for more than a hat rack.” 

If you tried to rush Isidore Bach when eating a meal, he would always say, “The good lord took nine months to make me. I am in no hurry.” 

Who are the people behind these sage phrases that are a part of my repertoire? Until recently, I would only have been able to answer that question with bits and pieces of their story. I now have seen a clearer picture of their lives and can begin to color in the blank space. 

This past Christmas, my Aunt Allison gave my family the gift of stories. She had recently found a collection of audio interview recordings with Henrietta and Isidore Bach, my maternal great-grandparents, conducted by Babs Isaacson, their niece. She digitized these interviews and shared them with us. 

On my paternal side of my family, we have been in America for 12 generations. Due to my father’s personal passion for history and delving into his ancestry, I have grown up hearing stories about my paternal ancestors and how they started their lives off in the New World. The story of why my last name is spelled E-V-I-N-S, rather than the more common E-V-A-N-S, is forever ingrained in my mind, and I can name many of my direct ancestors without a second thought. It has been very eye-opening to look at my ancestors from a different perspective and to be able to now compare how both sides of my family, at different points in time, decided to pick up their lives and move in hopes of a better future. 

A family tree of the maternal side of my family. Photo credit: June Evins.

My mother Penny and her sisters Jennifer and Allison are the daughters of Jill Friend Moses and Sidney Bach. My Grandpa, Sidney is the son of Henrietta Mayer and Isidore “Isi” Maas Bach, better known as MaMa and BaBa. 

Henrietta was born in Beaumont, Texas on June 20, 1908. At the time of her interview with Isaacson in 1995, she was 87 years old. Beaumont, a small city in southeast Texas near Houston, was a small town with a population of roughly 10,000 people when MaMa was growing up. She was the daughter of Carrye Levy, of Galveston, Texas, and Sidney Mayer, of Montgomery, Alabama. 

Listen below to Henrietta Bach recount memories of her childhood. 

Sidney was one of nine children and was the only child born in the United States. His family immigrated from Germany to Montgomery before the Civil War because they thought “the streets were paved with gold” in America. When Sidney Mayer was a young boy, his family immigrated back to Speyer, Germany because their land was destroyed during Sherman’s March to the Sea. Sidney moved back to the United States after graduating from high school with his older brother Louis. 

MaMa excelled in high school, but she did not recall studying much. She was one of the top students and the salutatorian of her high school class. After high school, she went on to study at the University of Texas at Austin. She loved school and especially studying physics. The only subject she did not succeed in was languages. She took Latin, Spanish, and French, and got D’s in all of them. At the time, you needed 32 A’s to become a Phi Beta Kappa, and every D took away two A’s. So Henrietta was not able to attain this honor because of her language grades, which, she said,  “upset me terribly.” During her senior year in college, she was asked by the National Panhellenic Council to transfer to Washington University in St. Louis to help improve their chapter of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. “Like a fool, I said yes.” She then had to complete all of the Washington University requirements in order to graduate. 

Henrietta Bach’s Masters Degree in Mathematics from Columbia University. Photo credit: Alison Bach.

For her masters in mathematics, Henrietta attended Columbia University in New York. MaMa was fearless and a pathmaker, as one of the only girls in her class at Columbia. When her thesis professor went on a sabbatical, Henrietta was asked to take over his lectures during his leave of absence. She said yes but was very nervous. The class was all male, and she thought they would think less of her because of her gender and accent. So before the first day of class, she stood in front of her mirror for hours trying to change her southern accent to prevent embarrassment. 

After receiving her masters, she was asked to supervise the research department at Columbia. This was the beta testing of the first IBM computer software. She shared that “I didn’t have enough sense to buy stock in IBM at the time, and look at what happened.” While working at Columbia in New York, she was called to return home to Beaumont because of her father’s recent decline in health. 

Henrietta’s father Sidney passed away at the age of 62, one day before the Texas Centennial, on June 5, 1936. After Sidney’s passing, Henrietta stayed in Beaumont to help her mother with settling affairs and running the family business, Mayer’s Cigar and Tobacco. Soon after she returned home, she met her husband Isidore Bach and moved to New Orleans in 1937. 

At the start of their honeymoon, before touring Canada and the West Coast, Henrietta and Isidore were in New York City. Isidore was in the fur trade and had to do some business while they were in town. He returned to their hotel and told MaMa, “Honey, we’re broke.” The bottom had dropped out of the fur market, and he told her “Don’t worry, we won’t starve. The trappers will always find we have something to eat.” MaMa said at that moment her honeymoon ended and her marriage began. 

Not long after, Isidore left the fur market, even though he’d been considered the smartest fur trader in New Orleans. A year and three months after they were married, MaMa gave birth to her only child, Sidney Bach, my grandfather. 

Along with raising her son, Henrietta worked for the city council of New Orleans, helped with the Red Cross, was a greeter at the train station, and was the treasurer of the Council of Jewish Women. During World War II, Henrietta had official government passes to go onto the docks in the port of New Orleans, which were usually sealed off to anyone who was not involved in the government. Henrietta was able to meet the ships and arriving war refugees, mostly Jewish Holocaust refugees. She would bring them to her home and cook them red beans and rice or gumbo for dinner, and then she and Isidore helped relocate them to homes and families in the US. 

Henrietta and Isidore Bach. Photo courtesy of Penny Evins.

Isidore Bach was born on July 30, 1896, in Houma, Louisiana. He was 91 at the time of his interview in 1995. Isidore had quite an aptitude for languages, unlike his wife. He was fluent in English, German, Italian, Hebrew, Ojibwa Indian, Spanish, and both Cajun and formal French, but he had no ear for music. 

When BaBa was a child, a yellow fever epidemic was raging throughout the city of New Orleans. During one summer when the fever was especially viral, his parents sent Isidore and his siblings to an island to isolate them from the virus. However, this isolation was unlike any COVID-19 “stay at home” quarantine period. They took small motor boats with a sail, in a bayou with little wind, loaded with supplies to last them the summer, and sailed through the bayou to a small island off of “land’s end,” which was to the end of Bayou Terrebonne on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. The trip took a while because of the lack of wind in the bayou. 

On the island, the kids were left to fend for themselves, with no adults, for a few months. BaBa described the sweltering humidity and how they had no air conditioning or indoor plumbing at that time. 

Isidore attended what is now known as Warren Easton High School and was a part of the first graduating class in 1914. Isidore was the first graduate of the school, because the graduation went in alphabetical order, and he the first name on the list of graduates. At the height of the fur trade in the 19th century, Louisiana was one of the largest producers of furs in the United States, mainly because of the marshes, where the yearly catch included between 10-12 million muskrat, nutria pelts, several hundred thousand swamp raccoon pelts, and several hundred thousand mink pelts. These pelts were used for the inner lining of garments in cold European countries. The main trading center for raw pelts was in Germany, and annually one of BaBa’s uncles would travel to Germany to manage their business affairs. 

In 1914, BaBa traveled with his uncle to Europe to learn about the fur business. He happened to be in Germany as World War I was beginning. The men he met who had to fight in the war told him of the horrors of trench warfare. After six months, the war was becoming more intense, and BaBa decided to return home to the United States and enlisted in the Navy. While enlisting, BaBa shared that he spoke German and could help with debriefing German prisoners for intelligence purposes. An officer asked him what generation American he was, and when he told him that he was a second-generation American, he was rejected because they only accepted third-generation German Americans. BaBa was stationed in the Algiers neighborhood, right across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, and was assigned to the Naval Air Station. Due to its proximity to his home, he was able to sleep at home every night. When he was discharged, he joined his family in the fur and moss business. 

Isidore’s journal with translations for Ojibwa words he learned. Photo credit: June Evins.

Spanish moss, found hanging from tree limbs in Louisiana and other parts of the South, has an inner fiber that is fine and has a texture similar to hair. This fiber was used as a filler for furniture. The phrase “don’t let the bed bugs bite” is actually derived from the insects that would come with the moss when untreated. Isidore’s father and uncles owned a moss ginnery on Bayou St. John in New Orleans. 

When working in the fur business, Isidore had the opportunity to travel up to Canada for fur trading. While trading with the Ojibwa Indians, he lived with them and learned their language, and he created a dictionary of translations. In his recorded interviews, he talks about their way of life and going up north in the winter to hunt for furs, and then moving towards Quebec in the summer and spring to trade the furs. 

After retiring from the fur and moss business, BaBa entered the hospitality business as a restauranteur. He bought the St. Regis Restaurant on Royal Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, and it was a success. At this time, there was little on the highway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge except for O’Shannessy’s bowling alley. BaBa and his partners decided to build a second St. Regis on Airline Highway, the main highway leading west out of New Orleans before the interstate highway system was built. 

Matchbook from the St. Regis.
Photo credit: June Evins.

The restaurant was known for its “Chicken In the Rough,” a precursor to the fast food fried chicken we know and love today, and “Shrimp in Shorts”—shrimp peeled to its “shorts,” with just the tail for easy dunking. The restaurant was famous for its rooftop sign of a rooster playing golf. It was a regular hangout spot for college students, with live music performances on the weekends, where the likes of New Orleans legendary trumpeter Al Hirt got their start.

Isidore then went on to buy La Louisiane, which was founded by Antoine Alicatore, who also founded Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter, which still operates today and is one of the oldest family-run restaurants in the country. In 1955, Isidore sold the restaurants and retired. 

My Grandpa Sidney, Isidore’s son, often tells us classic “Boudreaux and Thibodeaux” stories. Boudreaux and Thibodeaux are fictional characters in Cajun jokes, archetypes who live in the swamps and bayous and are always up to some mischief. These jokes are typically delivered with a strong Cajun accent to achieve their full effect. 

Listen to Isidore share one of his Cajun stories.

“I’ll tell you one day, when I was down the bayou, I was pagailler (“pah-gah-yeh”—paddling) in my pirogue (“pee-row”—canoe), and I meet my friend Télisphore Boudreaux. 

And he says, ‘Hello, Isi.’ 

And I say, ‘Hello, Téli.” 

He says, ‘Comment vas tu?’ (“How are you?”) 

I say, ‘Oh, I’s fine.’ 

He says, ‘Where you go?’ 

I say, ‘Oh well, I’m gonna’ go over to Schriever, and go take the train to New Orleans, go over and see my friend Buddy Issacson. He want me to come spend some time with him and for the Mardis Gras, and I’m gonna’ go and see what kinda’ Mardis Gras they got there. 

And sure enough, we’re going to have one helluva good time down there. And I’m going to stay with him and do every-ting they do too, and when I come back, I’ll tell you all about it, eh? Au revoir, Bonne chance (“Goodbye and good luck”) my friend.’” 

Isidore had a Southern Louisiana accent, different from the typical Southern drawl that you might find in Georgia or Alabama, and even Cajun accents fit into their own category. Thomas Moore Devlin from Babble does a great job of explaining the different accents that you might hear in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana. BaBa sounds like he is from New York at times, based on his pronunciation of vowels, but with the slower pace of a southern drawl, and hints of French or Cajun influence from growing up in the south Louisiana city of Houma. 

There is something special about the ability to listen to my great-grandparents talk and to hear them tell their stories. A direct source of information is hard to find after someone passes away. Telling stories and recording them is incredibly important for passing down information and lessons to the generations who follow you.