Before the break, I finished the story of my three-times great-uncle Meyer Goldsmith and his family. Today I turn to his brother, my three-times great-uncle Levi Goldsmith.

A year after the arrival of his younger brother Meyer and three years after his other younger brother Abraham’s arrival and at least four years after his older brother Jacob’s arrival, Levi Goldschmidt, the second-oldest and remaining son of Seligmann Goldschmidt and Hincka Alexander, immigrated to the United States. Levi (sometimes spelled Levy) was born November 10, 1824, in Oberlistingen,¹ and he came to the US on September 20, 1853, and settled where his brothers had settled—in Philadelphia. For his family, life in America brought more than a fair share of tragedy.

On March 21, 1855, Levi married Henrietta (sometimes Henryette) Lebenbach,² who was born April 11, 1835, in Willebedassen, Germany.³ I’ve been unable to find anything else yet about Henrietta’s background, but I did determine that Willebedassen is only seventeen miles from Oberlistingen. Maybe Levi and Henrietta knew each other in Germany.  I could not find anyone else with the name Lebenbach in Philadelphia or elsewhere who might have been her parents or siblings, so perhaps she came alone. One of her children’s death records show her birth name as Lowenberg; one shows it as Lobenberg.⁴  None of the other children’s certificates had any birth name for Henrietta, so I am inclined to take her marriage record with her name as Lebenbach as the most reliable. Is it possible that this is Henrietta on this ship manifest? I don’t know.

By 1860, Levi and Henrietta had two children, Eva (yes, yet another Eva Goldsmith), born February 11, 1856,⁵ in Philadelphia, and Estella (yes, another Estella Goldsmith) born May 15, 1859⁶ in Philadelphia. Another unnamed child was born in between Eva and Estella, but he died from smallpox on December 26, 1857, when he was only eight weeks old. This was only the first of many childhood deaths the extended family experienced.

Like his brothers, Levi changed his name from Goldschmidt to Goldsmith, and in 1860 he owned $7500 worth of real estate and was working in a clothing store. As noted in my post about his brother Abraham, Levi and Abraham were in the clothing business together by 1861, doing business as Goldsmith Brothers.

By 1870, Levi and Henrietta had eight children. In addition to Eva and Estella, there was George (1861), Felix (1862), Isadore (1864), Helen (1865), Blanche (1868), and Sylvester (1869). Levi (spelled Levy here) claimed to have $25,000 worth of real estate and $50,000 worth of personal property. During the 1870s Levi continued to be in the clothing business with his brother Abraham. Obviously they were doing very well.

On September 22, 1875, Levi and Henrietta’s oldest child Eva married Nathan Anathan (I know—interesting name).⁷  Nathan was a native Philadelphian, born on May 25, 1849, to Marum Anathan and Fanny Teller,⁸ who were both German-born immigrants. Nathan’s father was a wholesale tobacconist, and in 1870 Nathan was working as a clerk in a store.⁹

Nathan and Eva’s first child was born prematurely on June 24, 1876 and did not survive.¹⁰ A second child, Morton Goldsmith Anathan, was born June 18, 1877; sadly that child also did not live very long. He died before his first birthday on March 12, 1878, from diptheria.¹¹ Fortunately, Nathan and Eva’s third child lived to adulthood. Helen Esther Anathan was born on March 7, 1879.¹² In 1880, Nathan, Eva, and Helen were living in Philadelphia, and Nathan’s occupation was, like his father, in the tobacco business. Another daughter was born on February 23, 1883, named Bessie Goldsmith Anathan.¹³

As for Levi and Henrietta, in 1880 they were living with their remaining seven children, and Levi continued to work in the clothing business.

In 1883, Levi and Henrietta’s second daughter Estella married Solomon Rothschild, who proved to be a real mystery man. I could not find one record for him before the 1900 census when he was already married to Estella.¹⁴ I do not have a real marriage record for them, nor can I find him on any earlier census record. I didn’t know the names of his parents or where they were from. According to the 1900 census record and those that follow, Solomon was born in Pennsylvania, but his death certificate says he was born in Germany on August 3, 1851.¹⁵  In fact, the only reason I knew that Estella married Solomon Rothschild is from some of the death records of their children.¹⁶

And then I hit some good luck. From various Philadelphia directories,¹⁷ I determined that Solomon was in a millinery business called J. Rothschild & Co. and that J. Rothschild was Jacob Rothschild, who was living in New York. Searching for Jacob Rothschild, I found this obituary and learned that Jacob had married a cousin named Regina Rothschild. (Since Jacob is not really a relative, I’ve only snipped the headline here, but Jacob’ story is quite a rags to riches saga—a fatherless boy who came alone to the US at 13, started a millinery business in New York that expanded to several other cities, and became a very wealthy real estate mogul and hotel owner; you can find the whole obituary here):

And from there, I found a tree on Ancestry that identified one of Regina’s siblings as the Solomon Rothschild who married Estella Goldsmith. I contacted the owner of that tree, who generously shared with me several records, including this one, Solomon’s birth record showing that his parents were Hirsch Rothschild and Jette Wachtel and that Solomon was born on August 3, 1851, in Oberaula, Germany.

I still have no records for Solomon in the US prior to the 1900 census, except for those directory listings, but I am willing to assume from the 1900 census that he married Estella in 1883. Estella and Solomon’s first child, Jerome Joseph Rothschild, was born on January 6, 1884.¹⁸ A second child, Stanley, was born on January 29, 1886,¹⁹ and died from gastroenteritis on March 30, 1887; he was only fourteen months old.

Felix Goldsmith also married in the 1880s. On September 15, 1886, he married Bertha Umstadter in Virginia.²⁰ Bertha was the daughter of Jacob Umstadter and Fannie Sarlouis, both born in Germany.  Bertha was born on November 4, 1860, in Peterburg, Virginia.²¹

Meanwhile, as I’ve written about before, Levi and Abraham ran into business problems in the 1880s. According to the 1881 Philadelphia directory, their business, Goldsmith Brothers, was in liquidation at that time. In 1883, Abraham and Levi were joined by their brother Meyer in the business.

Whether the Goldsmith Brothers business would have survived with all three brothers involved is not clear, but on December 29, 1886, Levi Goldsmith died from meningitis; he was 62 years old.

And as I’ve written before, Goldsmith Brothers soon dissolved.  Abraham continued in the clothing business for some time with his sons, and Meyer soon moved to New York City with his family where he continued to be in the clothing business.

The Philadelphia Times ran this obituary of Levi on December 30, 1886:

Two of Levi’s children honored his memory by naming their next born children in his honor. Estella and Solomon named their second child, who was born on February 14, 1888, Leonard Levi Rothschild.²² Felix and Bertha named their first child, born on February 24, 1889, Frances Lee Goldsmith.²³ I assume that the middles names were for their recently deceased grandfather Levi.

The 1890s would bring more marriages, more babies, and sadly, more deaths. In fact, the overall story of Levi Goldsmith’s family is filled with tragic deaths like those of Levi and Henrietta’s unnamed son who died of smallpox, of Eva’s first two babies who died before their first birthdays, and of Estella’s son Stanley who died from gastroenteritis as a toddler.