Morris Michtom — toy manufacturer with roots in the Russian Empire
Morris Michtom was born into a Jewish family in the Russian Empire on 12 September 1869, according to Wikipedia, or in 1870, according to the Jewish Virtual Library; the town of his birth is not recorded in published sources. He arrived in New York penniless in 1887, while still in his teens. His wife, Rose, née Katz, born in 1867, is described by one source as a Russian Jewish immigrant and by another as born in Romania.
The couple settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn, where Morris kept a small candy and toy shop at 404 Tompkins Avenue. By day he sold sweets and novelties; in the evenings he and Rose made stuffed toys to sell in the shop.
In November 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt, on a hunting trip in Mississippi, took pity on a bear at the end of an unsuccessful hunt, and the cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew the scene in a cartoon published in The Washington Post on 16 November. Seeing it, Morris suggested that Rose sew a replica of the bear. She cut a piece of plush velvet into the shape of a bear cub, stuffed it and sewed on shoe-button eyes, and Morris put it in the shop window with a sign reading 'Teddy's bear'; the date is given variously as late 1902 or 15 February 1903. Customers asked to buy it at once, and Rose could hardly sew them fast enough. Morris sent one of the bears to the president and asked permission to use his name, which was granted.
The demand turned the shop into a manufacturer. The Michtoms founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, in 1903 according to some accounts and 1907 according to others, with the Butler Brothers as wholesale distributors. Ideal could not patent the teddy bear, and many imitators followed, among them Richard Steiff in Germany, who developed a similar toy at about the same time. Their son Benjamin joined the business in 1923 and later renamed it the Ideal Toy Company.
Morris Michtom died in Brooklyn on 21 July 1938, aged sixty-eight, a year after Rose. After his death Ideal became the largest doll-making company in the United States, remaining in family hands until the 1970s. The original bear, kept by Roosevelt's grandchildren, is now in the Smithsonian Institution.
"Came to New York in 1887, in his teens; the town he left in the Russian Empire is not recorded."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russian Empire (town not recorded)
Born in the Russian Empire in 1869 or 1870 into a Jewish family — his birthplace is not recorded in published sources — he came to New York in 1887 as a teenager.
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Russian Empire (town not recorded). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.