He came from Belarus and set up shop in Jamaica
Published on: Thursday 11 July 2019
Samuel Leaf was born in Grodno, Belarus, on the border of Poland on Sept. 1, 1882. He arrived in America in 1884 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1904. He married Russian immigrant Rose Lubitz and they had five children: Alice, Sophia, Abraham, Herbert and Harold.Armed with only an eighth-grade education, Leaf worked in the furniture district on West 32nd Street in Manhattan, learning all about the business. After learning everything about hardwoods like maple and oak, he opted to go another way, opening a store that sold chrome kitchen sets on Hillside Avenue.
