As we saw in my last post, two of the nephews of my great-great-grandfather Gerson Katzenstein fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.  Abraham Mansbach served (albeit briefly) in the Union army whereas his younger brother Heinemann, aka Henry or Harry or H.H. Mansbach, fought for the Confederacy.  I thought it would be worthwhile to research their post-Civil War lives to see if I could learn what effect, if any, this had on their relationship.

After being injured twice fighting in the Confederate army, H.H. Mansbach settled in Piedmont, West Virginia, where he became a dry goods merchant. By 1868, H.H. had married Nannie Hirsch, who was born in Germany and whose parents had settled in Cumberland, Maryland, which is about 25 miles from Piedmont, West Virginia.  In 1870, Nannie’s parents were still living in Cumberland, Maryland, where her father was a merchant.   As of 1870, H.H. and Nannie had two children, Louis, born in 1868, and Hattie, born in 1869.

Where was the rest of the Mansbach family during this time period? H.H.’s sister Henrietta was, by 1861, living in the United States and married to Gabriel Gump, who was also a German immigrant. By July 1862, they had settled in Morris, Illinois, where their first child Abraham was born. In June 1863 with the Civil War going on, Gabriel, a saloon keeper, registered for the draft in Illinois, so he was on the Union side of the war, opposing Henrietta’s brother H.H.

By 1870, Gabriel and Henrietta had moved to Cumberland, Maryland; they had three children at that time, Abraham (7), Louis (6), and Harry (2), all born in Illinois. Also living with them by that time was Henrietta’s father, Marum Mansbach, who had emigrated from Germany on August 6, 1864.[1]

Thus, in 1870, H.H. Mansbach’s sister Henrietta and father Marum were living in Cumberland, Maryland, the same town where H.H.’s in-laws were living and where his wife Nannie had lived herself before marrying H.H. in 1868.  I find it hard to believe that this was just coincidence and thus take it as a sign that H.H. still had a relationship with his family despite the fact that he’d fought for the Confederacy while his brother Abraham and his brother-in-law Gabriel had been on the side of the Union.

As for Abraham Mansbach, brother of H.H. and Henrietta, he had married Eliza Gump in Philadelphia on January 6, 1861.  Eliza was the younger sister of Gabriel Gump, husband of Abraham’s sister Henrietta. Abraham and Eliza had a daughter Mollie, born in October 1866.  I was unable to locate them on the 1870 census, but in 1873, they were living in Baltimore where Abraham was engaged in the wholesale liquor business.

Thus, in some way the Hirsch-Mansbach-Gump families were all interconnected by marriage and/or geography. Henrietta (Mansbach) and Gabriel Gump were living in the same town as HH Mansbach’s in-laws in 1870. Abraham Mansbach was married to Gabriel Gump’s sister.  Perhaps they all knew each other from the “old country” or perhaps they’d all just met after immigrating to the US.  But it certainly seems that at a minimum, H.H. had not been banished from the family since he somehow ended up marrying the daughter of his sister’s neighbors in Cumberland.

Between 1870 and 1880, the families of the Mansbach siblings grew. H.H. and Nannie had five more children in that decade: George (1871), Fannie (1873), Charles (1875), Bertha (1876), and Isaac (1879).  Thus, by 1880, there were seven children in the family; they were still living in Piedmont, West Virginia, where Harry continued to work as a merchant.

By 1880, Henrietta and Gabriel Gump were no longer living in Cumberland, Maryland.  They had moved to Baltimore where Gabriel was now in the liquor business with his brother-in-law Abraham Mansbach. Henrietta and Gabriel now had four sons: Abraham (17), Louis (16), Harry (12), and Joseph (9).  Marum Mansbach was still living with them as well.

Abraham Mansbach, brother of Henrietta and H.H., was still living in Baltimore in 1880, working in the liquor business with Gabriel, as stated above. Abraham and his wife Eliza (Gump) now had two children: Mollie (fourteen) and Jerome (six months).

The 1880s saw the Mansbach family suffer two big losses.  First on April 3, 1883, Marum Mansbach died at age 83. The German-language newspaper for Baltimore, the Deutsche Correspondent, ran this obituary and burial notice on April 5 and 6, respectively:

As translated by those at German Genealogy Facebook group, the obituary reads:

Death of a well-known old German man. One of the oldest Jewish men in Baltimore, Marum Mansbach, died of throat cancer in his 83rd year, on Monday evening at the house of his son-in-law G. Gump, 26 South Green St/Rd. Mr Mansbach was born in Maden, Electorate of Hessen, and came to Philadelphia in 1865. From Philadelphia he moved to Cumberland, Md, and then ten years ago he moved here with his son-in-law. His wife died 43 years ago, leaving him three children who are still alive, sons A. and H. Mansback and Mrs Henriette Gump. The elder of the sons runs a Whiskey wholesalers with his brother-in-law Mr Gump, and the younger has settled in Wheeling, W.-V. The funeral will take place this morning at 10 am at the cemetery of the Hanover St/Rd Synagogue.

The burial notice was translated to say:

Burial. – The mortal remains of Marum Mansbach were taken yesterday morning from the house of his son-in-law G. Gump, 26 South Greene Road, to his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery on Trapp Road, accompanied by numerous mourners. Rabbi Dr Szold gave a moving funeral address. Pall-bearers were H. Hamburger, N. Frank, J. Eisenberg, S. Dettinger, M. Kaufmann and B. Brettenheimer

Then, just four years later on November 18, 1887, Marum’s son Abraham Mansbach, the first of my Katzenstein relatives to come to the US, died unexpectedly while on business in Virginia.  His obituary ran in English in The Baltimore Sun and in German in the Deutsche Correspondent:

 

Here is a translation of the German version:

At the age of 53 years, on Friday morning, Abraham Mansbach, the senior member of the local spirits company, Mansbach and Gump, died very unexpectedly in Culpeper, Virginia, where he had been engaged in business affairs yesterday for eight days. On Thursday he had written to his business partner, Mr. Gabriel Gump, that he was perfectly well; on Friday, however, the named gentleman received a telegram, saying that Herr Mansbach was seriously ill, and then in the afternoon he received a second telegram, which reported his death. His nephew, Mr. Harry Gump, went to Culpeper, accompanied by Alexander Wegner, a long-time friend of the deceased, to fetch the corpse with which they returned the same night. Mr. Mansbach came from Germany and came to America as a young man, where he first ran a dry goods business in Philadelphia; later, however, he moved to Baltimore, and since 1873 has been involved in the trade of spirits. He was particularly well known for his great kindness, and belonged to several societies, including the “Legion of Honor”, the “Ber. Works” and the “Royal Arcanum-Lodge.”

The English version says essentially the same thing:

Abraham Mansbach was survived by his wife, Eliza, his daughter, Mollie, age 21, and his son Jerome, who was nine years old.

Then six years after Abraham’s death, his sister Henrietta died on March 15, 1893. She was sixty-one years old and was survived by her husband Gabriel Gump and their four adult sons, Abraham, Louis, Harry and Joseph.

Gabriel Gump and his sister Eliza Gump Mansbach were thus both widowed by 1893, and H.H. Mansbach had lost his father, his brother, and his sister in the ten year period starting in 1883.  Although it is hard to know exactly what relationship H.H. had with his family of origin by then, it nevertheless must have been sad for him to lose them all within such a short period of time.

More on what happened to the families of Henrietta, Abraham, and HH in the 20^th century in posts to follow.

 

[1] Sailing with Marum were two young women: Bertha, age 24, and Elise, age 17.  I’ve not yet determined who they were and what relationship they might have had to Marum.