The Smud FamilyAsk

The arrival, on 23 December 1904

Buenos Aires

The ship docked in the port of Buenos Aires in the early hours of 23 December 1904. The family lived first in the Immigrants' Hotel and then in a tenement house on Calle Azcuénaga.

The ship docked in the port of Buenos Aires in the early hours of 23 December 1904. It was high summer, and Manuel Quintana was president of Argentina.

After customs, they were lodged in the Immigrants’ Hotel. Some time later the family was renting a room in a conventillo —a tenement house— on Calle Azcuénaga, half a block from Rivadavia, in central Buenos Aires. That building was later demolished; the one that replaced it first housed the city’s Schools Directorate and later the medical examinations department of ANSES, Argentina’s social security agency.

Felix landed in mid-1905 and joined them. He died in Buenos Aires around 1909; Malke, around 1915. The three siblings went to primary school there before moving to Entre Ríos.

What happened here

  1. 23 December 1904

    The ship docks in Buenos Aires

    The ship docks in the port of Buenos Aires before dawn. In the immigration register the surname is written “Smud or Smod”.

  2. mid-1905

    Felix lands

    Felix lands in Buenos Aires. To keep his promise to join his family he had had to desert the army.

  3. c. 1909

    Felix dies

    Felix dies of tuberculosis contracted at the front. He was a little over forty and had been in the country for four years.

  4. c. 1915

    Malke dies and the siblings move to Entre Ríos

    Malke dies. The three siblings —Alejandro, Marcos and Aida— move to the province of Entre Ríos.