My Genealogy Hound

ELLIS FINK, manager of the well-known Star clothing house and gents’ furnishing store at No. 315 Lyon street, is a son of Alexander and Eva Fink, and was born in Pittsburg, Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, December 22, 1856. The father, Alexander Fink, is a native of Wilna, Russia, and came to America when a young man, locating at Apollo, Armstrong county. Pa. He was one of the first men to run a boat on the old Pennsylvania canal from Apollo to Pittsburg. Mr. Fink was the owner of the boat. He lived at Apollo until 1849, when he removed to Pittsburg, and engaged in the retail clothing business until 1861. From Pittsburg he went to New York city and established a wholesale clothing house, continuing it until 1869, when he retired from business, and moved back to Pittsburg in 1870, where he has since resided. Although retired from business for over twenty years he is a stockholder in several of the Pittsburg banks, and in the bridges connecting the city with Allegheny City and other suburban points. The Benevolent Hebrew society of that city has made him its president for several years. He is a republican, and is seventy-five years old. His wife is a native of the same Russian province from which her husband came, and is seventy-eight years old.

Ellis Fink was educated in Pittsburg and the New York city public schools. When fourteen years old he worked in his brother’s clothing store at the Smoky City, where he remained until twenty-two years of age. He then went to Colorado, at the time when things were liveliest there, and engaged in the mining business near Leadville. He stayed two years and made several locations, one of which has recently been sold by him to ex-Lieut-Gov. H. W. Tabor, of Colorado, and Major A. V. Bohn, of Leadville. After his return fom the west he worked for his brother until 1884, and then went to Buffalo and got employment with the large clothing house of Altman & Co., where he remained four years, and in 1888 came to Dunkirk and opened the business which he is still conducting on Lyon street. He has a fine trade, does a good business, and carries the largest stock of clothing to be found in Dunkirk. The firm name is Brown, Friend & Co., the partners being Brown and Friend, of Buffalo, who are interested in one of the largest clothing establishments in the country. Mr. Fink is genial and frank and, handling good clothing, holds the trade he once secures.

On October 9, 1888, he married Harriet Brown, a daughter of Henry Brown, of Buffalo. They have one child, Beatrice, an interesting little girl of nearly two years.

He is a republican, and takes an active interest in politics, and it may be said of him that he is one of Dunkirk’s truly enterprising business men.