Quote Originally Posted by Brock7 View Post
My grandmother told me there was a Jew who came from the same small village in Poland as she did who traveled through her neighborhood collecting rags and who sold household notions such as needles and thread and romance novels in Polish and she could play the numbers through. She was invited to have tea at his house a few times and said they seemed to do very well.

I may have heard of them called the ragman, but I've never heard anyone use the term sheenyman. I've only read it in this forum.
You may be talking about my great-grandfather. My dad's father's side of the family were Jews that emigrated from Poland just before he was born. The only things I know about his dad [[my great-grandfather) is that he only spoke Yiddish, his occupation on the 1920 census was listed as "peddler", and my Dad once told me he was a sheenyman.

now that might not be him, but then again...