Category Archives: Photos

Gerson Rothschild’s Family: Some Additional Photographs

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During the course of my emails and conversations with the descendants of Clara Rothschild and Moritz Katz, I received some photographs of family members about whom I’d previously posted. I will add these to those earlier posts, but since many readers will not be going back to posts they’ve already read, I also wanted to post them here.

First, this is a photo of Gerson Rothschild and Frommet “Fanny” Kugelmann’s oldest child to survive infancy, Siegmund Rothschild, whom I wrote about here.

Siegmund Rothschild c. 1915
Courtesy of the family

I don’t know when this was taken, but it appears he was wearing a cap from some kind of uniform. Siegmund was born in 1884 and looks perhaps in his thirties here, so perhaps this was taken during World War I. A Google Image search using the picture of Siegmund’s cap turned up several photos of soldiers in the German army during World War I wearing similar caps. I asked Siegmund’s grandson Alex whether his grandfather had fought for Germany in World War I, and Alex told me that he had and that he’d felt betrayed by his country after the Nazis took over and started persecuting Jews, including those who had served in the German army twenty years before.

Closeup of Siegmund’s cap
Bavarian officer in World War I, found at https://www.omsa.org/a-photo-of-bavarian-military-max-joseph-order-recipients/

This photograph is of Siegmund, his sons, and his wife Elise taken in 1938. From left to right are Siegmund, Werner, Ernst, and Elise.

Siegmund, Werner, Ernst, and Elise (Bloch) Rothschild, January 1938. Courtesy of the family.

This photograph is of Siegmund’s wife Elise and their son Ernest in the laundromat they owned in New York City in the 1950s.

Elise Bloch Rothschild and her son Ernest in their laundromat. Courtesy of the family

The fourth photo is of Auguste Rothschild Feldheim, whose life I wrote about here. Auguste married Wolf Feldheim in 1919, three years after his first wife Johanna died. This photograph must have been taken around the time Auguste married Wolf, and she is surrounded by Wolf’s children from his first marriage. On her lap is Arthur, later known as Aharon, who was born shortly before his mother died in April 1916. The little girls are from left Else (born in 1914), Ruth (1912), and Selma (1913). Ruth was the daughter who married Jonas Tiefenbrunner and survived the war in Belgium, helping her husband protect and care for Jewish children in an orphanage there. Aharon and Selma ended up in Israel. Else was killed in the Holocaust.

Auguste Rothschild Feldheim with her four stepchildren. Courtesy of the family

When I look at this photograph of these little children, all I can see is a haunted sad look in their eyes. A photograph definitely tells a story without words.

Finally, this photograph may be of Jenny Rothschild Abraham and her husband Salomon Abraham, but Judy, who sent me these photos, was not certain.

Maybe Jenny Rothschild Abraham and her husband Salomon Abraham
Courtesy of the family

When I compare this woman’s face to the photos I have of two of the other Rothschild daughters—-Auguste and Clara—-I definitely see a resemblance. But I do not have Ava Cohn’s skills so I can’t tell for certain whether this is Jenny or any of the other Rothschild daughters or somebody completely unrelated. I think Ava would say that we’d need more photos to be sure. What do you think?

Clara Rothschild Katz closeup
closeup of perhaps Jenny Rothschild Abraham
Auguste Rothschild Feldheim closeup

Now I will go back to the posts for these cousins and add their photographs to the appropriate posts. And with that, I will move on to the next child of Gelle Blumenfeld and Simon Rothschild, their ninth child, Malchen Rothschild.

Clara Rothschild Katz, Part I: Living in and Escaping from Germany

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Doing family history research is a labor of love. I have said that many times over the almost fifteen years that I’ve been engaged in this work. Being able to honor the memories of those I never knew but who are somehow related to me is a joy and a privilege. Connecting with and getting to know so many living “long-lost” cousins has given me great joy.

Researching the family of Clara Rothschild and Moritz Katz has led me to a really special opportunity for such joy—-the opportunity to talk to their son Hal Katz, my one-hundred-year-old fourth cousin, once removed. Imagine having lived through an entire century and seeing all the horrors and all the miracles since 1924—the Holocaust, World War II, the creation of the state of Israel, the Cold War, the social activism and unrest of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Vietnam War, all the civil rights movements, the election of the first African-American president, the COVID pandemic, and the introduction of so many scientific inventions good and bad—-the atomic bomb, television, cell phones, the internet, and now AI. It’s mind-boggling how much the world has changed in the last hundred years.

Hal Katz has lived through it all, starting as a small boy in Germany, living in a small town, escaping from Germany in 1938 shortly after his bar mitzvah, settling in New York City as a young teenager, fighting for the US in World War II, building a lifelong career with General Electric, marrying and having children, and now still living on his own, playing bridge, and talking to me on Zoom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Over the course of three Zoom calls, I have been blessed to talk to Hal as well as his daughter, his nieces, his nephew, and another Rothschild cousin, all of whom are my cousins.

And so now as I turn to the story of the sixth of Gerson and Fanny’s children who lived to adulthood, their daughter Clara Rothschild, I feel so fortunate that I was able to hear her story and the stories of her family from her son Helmut Harold “Hal” Katz. Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this post came from Zoom calls or emails with Hal and members of the family or from interviews with Hal or Hal’s brother Otto done by Otto’s daughter Judy, Hal’s niece.1

As we saw, Clara Rothschild was born on July 15, 1891, in Waltersbrueck, Germany.  According to Hal, this photograph of Clara was probably taken when she was nineteen and working as an apprentice bookkeeper in a dry goods store.

Clara Rothschild c. 1910
Courtesy of the family

On November 1, 1921, she married Moritz Katz, who was born in Neuenhain, Germany, on November 4, 1894. Here is a photograph of Moritz taken in 1912 when he was eighteen, a photograph of Clara in the 1920s, and an undated one of Clara and Moritz taken years later.

Moritz Katz in 1912. Courtesy of the family.

Clara Rothschild in the 1920s. Courtesy of the family.

Clara Rothschild and Moritz Katz undated
Courtesy of the family

Clara and Moritz had three children, Otto, born in 1922, Helmut (Hal) born in 1924, and Ilse, born in 1928. Hal told me that until he was six years old, he and his family lived with his paternal grandmother, Caroline Rosenblatt Katz, in Neuenhain. His paternal grandfather Jacob Katz had died many years before in 1899. Neuenhain was a very small village, about two hundred people. Hal’s parents and grandmother ran a grocery business out of their home selling produce grown on their farm. This is a photograph of Hal’s paternal grandmother Caroline in 1930 in Neuenhain.

Caroline Katz 1930. Courtesy of the family

Hal said that they were the only Jewish family in the village, and he never understood how his father had become so knowledgeable about Judaism and Hebrew since there was no Hebrew school in Neuenhain. The closest synagogue was within walking distance, but it was a challenge finding the ten men to make a minyan. His father was able to lead services and even acted as the kosher butcher on the side.

Here is a beautiful photograph of Hal with his older brother Otto taken when they lived in Neuenhain. Hal looks no more than two years old, so this photograph was probably taken in about 1925-1926.

Otto and Helmut Katz, c. 1925-1926. Courtesy of the family

I asked Hal what he remembered about his maternal grandfather Gerson Rothschild, and he told me that he was in the coal business. He also said that the first funeral he ever went to was Gerson’s funeral in 1930 when Hal would have been six years old.

When Hal was six, the family moved to a larger town, Borken, which was about six miles from Neuenhain and had a population of about two thousand people and more of a Jewish community than Neuenhain. There his father Moritz had a business selling the raw materials needed to make clothing. Hal compared it to being a peddler. From the way Hal spoke, it sounds like those early years of his life were happy and secure. He had many cousins from his Rothschild side—-all the children of his mother’s siblings—who were living in other towns in the Hessen region. He also had many relatives from his Katz side.

This is a photograph of the three Katz siblings taken in Borken in 1934. It was probably Ilse’s first day of school since she is holding a cone filled with candy traditionally given to children in Germany on their first day of school.

Otto, Ilse, and Hal Katz 1934 in Borken. Courtesy of the family

Of course, everything changed after Hitler came to power. In an interview Judy did with her father Otto, he reported that once the Nazis came to power, the children had to change schools as they were no longer allowed to go to school with Christians, so they went to a Jewish school. In addition, the family was forced to sell their land and their business and lived on the money from those sales until that money ran out.

In 1937 when he was fifteen, Otto left school and was doing an apprenticeship in a retail clothing store in Wolfhagen, a town about 40 miles north of Borken. Apparently this was a common practice—-to send a teenage boy to live with another Jewish family and learn a trade. In an interview with his daughter Judy,  Otto said that the store had so little business that he spent his days gardening. One day Otto was riding his bike in Wolfhagen and a group of Hitler Youths tried to take his bike from him; Otto hit them with the bike pump and escaped. When Otto told the man with whom he was apprenticing what had happened, that man contacted Moritz.

Moritz went to Wolfhagen and took Otto to Kassel to stay with relatives for six months. Fortunately, Moritz had had the foresight to see what was happening with the Nazis, and this gave him the extra incentive to work on getting them out of the country. He was able to get the necessary papers to leave Germany with the help of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society and a sponsor named Albert Decker. First, Moritz left with Otto and went to Hamburg where the two of them were able to board a ship and travel to America. Leaving Clara, Hal, and Ilse behind was very difficult because none of them knew when they would see each other again.

Hal believes this family photograph was taken not too long before Moritz and Otto left Borken for the US.

Katz family in Borken, maybe 1936. Courtesy of the family

Moritz and Otto arrived in New York on August 27, 1937.2

Fortunately, Clara was able to leave with Hal and Ilse eight months later, just a few months after Hal celebrated his bar mitzvah in Borken without his father or brother. In an interview Judy did with Hal in 2023, Hal told her that Clara and the children were living with a family from Borken, the Blums, until April 8,1938 when they left to go to the US. First, they took a train to Antwerp, where they stayed with the Tiefenbrunners at the orphanage they were running. (See earlier blog post here.) Then they boarded a freighter, a slower moving form of transport that was crowded with mostly Jewish people escaping Hitler. This photograph was taken before they boarded the ship to leave Germany on April 11, 1938.

Clara, Ilse, and Hal (on the right side of the photo) on the day they left Germany for the US in 1938. Courtesy of the family

They arrived in New York after an uncomfortable eleven day journey on April 21, 1938.3

Thanks to Moritz’s foresight, he and Clara and their children were now safely out of Germany, and they were the first ones in the extended Rothschild family to get out—-before Siegmund and before Max, Clara’s brothers.

And as we have already seen, most of the rest of the family did not escape in time. Hal said that his parents did all they could to get other family members out, but unfortunately as we have seen and as we will see, those efforts did not succeed. Hal said that they eventually lost contact with those still in Germany. When I asked why those who remained—-e.g., Clara’s sisters Katchen, Auguste, Jenny, Rosa and Amalie—-hadn’t also tried to get out of Europe when Moritz and Clara did, Hal said he thought they all just believed it would all blow over and that they would be safe.

But Clara, Moritz, Otto, Hal, and Ilse were now in New York, starting over in a new country.

More on that to come in my next post.

  1. Zoom calls with Hal Katz and family, May and June 2025. Interviews with Hal and Otto over the years by Judy Katz. ↩
  2. Moritz Katz, ship manifest, Departure Port Hamburg, Germany, Arrival Date 27 Aug 1937, Arrival Port New York, New York, USA, Ship Name Hansa  The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715; RG Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; RG: 85, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  3. Clara Katz ship manifest, Place of Origin Germany, Departure Port Antwerp, Belgium, Arrival Date 21 Apr 1938, Arrival Port New York, New York, USA
    Ship Name Gerolstein, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715; RG Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; RG: 85, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩

The John Nusbaum Album: Some Final Thoughts

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So what is left to talk about regarding the Nusbaum album, you may wonder? Well, Ava Cohn aka Sherlock Cohn analyzed about a quarter of the photographs taken in Philadelphia, all of the Santa Fe photographs, and about a third of the photographs from Germany. Add to that the handful I discussed that had names on them plus the photographs from Peoria, and that means many but not all of the photographs in the album have been discussed or analyzed. What can I say about those others?

There are some that are more like postcards of famous places or people, e.g., a photograph of a painting of Goethe and one of “Baby Benson,” a child performer popular in the 1870s. But otherwise all the other photographs—at least another forty—are of people who have not been identified.

Goethe

I gave up on the ones from Philadelphia—too many possibilities! An infinite number now that I know that these CDVs could have been given to the Nusbaums by friends, acquaintances, even visitors from other states, as we saw with S.B. Axtell’s CDV left as a calling card. I posted on a Philadelphia genealogy group on Facebook, inviting people to send me photos of their ancestors that I would use to compare with mine, but I had no luck.

But I thought I could at least make an educated guess about the four photographs of children that were taken in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, all taken by a photographer named J.M. Wimer.

I have only one family on my family tree that lived in Lewistown in the mid-1800s—the family of Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock. Mathilde Dreyfuss was the sister of my three-times great-grandmother Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum. I at first thought it would be obvious who was who in these photos. As if…

Mathilde was married first to John Nusbaum’s younger brother Meier or Maxwell. They had two children together, Flora in 1848 and Albert in 1851. Tragically, Maxwell was killed in the San Francisco fire of 1851 while traveling there for business. Mathilde married Moses Pollock a few years later and had three children with him: Emanuel (1856), Miriam (1858), and Rosia (1870).

By 1860 Mathilde and her family were living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and by 1870 they were living in Philadelphia. CDVs were first seen in the US in about 1859-1860. Assuming the photographs were taken before Mathilde moved to Harrisburg and thus before 1860, that would mean these photos were taken no earlier than 1859 and no later than 1860, if they are of Mathilde’s children while living in Lewistown. In 1859 Albert Nusbaum would have been eight, Emanuel Pollock would have been three, and Miriam Pollock would have been a year old. Rosia wasn’t yet born, and Flora would have been eleven, but I don’t see an eleven year old girl here. So I thought maybe the older boy was Albert, the baby was Miriam, and one of the others was Emanuel.

But then I remembered that Ava had said that the fringed chairs were not introduced until 1864.

Also, it appears that in the 1850s until sometime after 1870, J.M. Wimer (sometimes spelled Weimer) was living in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, which is about thirteen miles from Lewistown. He doesn’t show up in Lewistown until the 1880 US census. Newspaper articles from 1871 show him as a resident of Mifflintown. Now thirteen miles doesn’t sound that far in today’s world, but in the horse and buggy era that might take three hours, not exactly a convenient commute.

So perhaps these photos were taken in the 1870s or 1880s. If so, I had no relatives living in Lewistown at that time. And thus, once again, I can’t be certain who these children are.

As for the remaining photographs in the album not taken in Pennsylvania, Santa Fe, or Germany, there are about twelve photographs in the album that were taken in New York City. I have no idea who could be in these photographs. As far as I can tell, assuming that these photographs were also taken some time between 1860 and 1890 like all the others in the album, there were no Nusbaum or Seligman relatives living in New York City during those years. Could they have visited and had photographs taken? Of course. Could these be friends of the family? Certainly. But unless someone comes up with a photograph to match these people, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack to try and identify them. Or even more impossible.

Then there are the CDVs from places where I cannot find any likely family connections, like Montgomery, Alabama, St. Louis, Missouri, and Wheeling, West Virginia. Sadly, I have no way of knowing who these people could be. They, like so many of the others in the album, will remain a mystery.

And thus, I come to the end of this chapter in my genealogy journey. Out of over one hundred photographs, I have a positive identification of Moritz Seligmann, my three-times great-grandfather, and a probable identification of Babette Schoenfeld Seligmann, his wife, my three-times great-grandmother, based on earlier photographs. I have positive identification of two babies who died as children (Milton Josephs and Eva Dinkelspiel) because their names are on the photographs. Same for two people who were distantly related to me by marriage, the Gardiners, the parents of Doris Gardiner who married Otis Seligman. And also I can identify some people who were not related to me at all—Louis Sulzbacher, Goethe, Baby Benson, and some mysterious visitor named S.B. Axtell.

Beyond that, I have some possible identifications—maybe there’s a photograph or two of John Nusbaum, maybe some of his sons in Peoria, maybe a photograph of Frances Nusbaum, maybe one or two of her sister Miriam—but nothing nearly definite enough to label them as such.

Nevertheless, this has been an exciting and worthwhile adventure. I’ve learned a great deal about CDVs, the dating of photographs, and the names of some Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and German photographers and when and where they worked. I’ve had the great pleasure of collaborating with Ava Cohn in trying to identify the people in the photographs.

I’ve also gained some insights into the lives of my Nusbaum-Seligman relatives from the overall collection of CDVs. They knew many people from many different places, and the photographs appear to be of people who were if not wealthy, certainly not poor. They are well dressed and distinguished looking. Someone was a fan of Goethe, someone was a fan of Baby Benson. And reviewing the album reminded me of one of the tragic realities of life in those times—many children did not live to adulthood, like Milton Josephs and Eva Dinkelspiel. Even if I can’t put names to most of the faces, I have had a glimpse into the lives of my ancestors.

And I have had my hands on a physical object that I know for certain was handled by my three-times great-grandparents John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss, by their daughter Frances, my great-great-grandmother, and by her husband Bernard Seligman, and most likely also by my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen and her siblings. Before it ended up in the hands of an antique dealer in Santa Fe, it was in the possession of Eva’s niece and Arthur Seligman’s daughter Joan, Joan’s daughter Adrienne, and Joan’s granddaughter Jhette. It is now back safely in Jhette’s hands. And I instead have the scans of all the photos and that sweet memory of holding the album lovingly in my own hands for several months.

May it stay safe and protected for at least another 160 years.

 

John Nusbaum Album: Four Photographs With Names, But Who Were They?

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Returning once more to the Nusbaum Album, out of the more than one hundred CDVs in the album, only six had names on them. We saw two in my last post, and this post will discuss the other four that had names on them. Two had the name Gardiner on them:

The one of the man says Hellis & Sons at the bottom; on the reverse it repeats Hellis & Sons and lists all their branches, all in England. The one of the woman was taken by J. Telling Photographers in Bridgend, which is a town in Wales. Ava volunteered that she believed these were taken in the 1880s, the one of the man in the later part of the decade, the one of the woman in the early 1880s. She thought the man appeared to be in his early 20s, meaning he was born sometime in the late 1860s.

Since I had only one Gardiner family on my tree, I was pretty certain who those people might be. Bernard Seligman’s son Arthur, my great-grandmother Eva Seligman’s younger brother, had a son Otis Perry Seligman. Otis married a woman named Doris Gardiner, who was born in Nantymoel, Wales on February 17, 1901. Nantymoel is a village in the county of Bridgend. Doris Gardiner’s parents were George Gardiner, born in about 1864 in Wales, and Mary Ann Wilcox, born in 1866 in Wales.  It certainly appears that these two photographs were of Doris Gardiner’s parents George and Mary Ann.

These photographs appear on a very late page in the album on the reverse side of that page so probably were added after the album was otherwise filled. That makes sense since Doris Gardiner didn’t marry Otis Seligman until July 23, 1921, in Cleveland, Ohio, where Doris and her parents had settled after immigrating to the United States in 1914. Doris may have added these two photographs once she joined the family.

Doris and Otis were the parents of Arthur Seligman II, later known as Arthur “Pete” Scott, my second cousin, once removed. Pete was, as long-time readers may recall, a tremendous help to me when I was researching the Sante Fe branch of the family. His sister Joan Seligman Diamond was the grandmother of my cousin Jhette and a prior owner of the Nusbaum Album.  It certainly makes sense that Doris’ parents George and Mary Ann, grandparents to Pete and Joan, great-great-grandparents of Jhette, would be in this album.

The other two photographs with names on them are not related to me nor, as far as I can tell, anyone else in the family. The first, however, is of a fairly well-known person, Louis Sulzbacher. The back of this photograph has the following words written on it: “Compliments of Louis Sulzbacher, Las Vegas Feb 1878, Mrs. N. Seligman, S.F.”

Louis Sulzbacher

Louis Sulzbach

Louis Sulzbacher was, like Bernard Seligman, a German Jewish immigrant to the United States. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture includes this information about Sulzbacher:

An attorney and a judge of the United States Court for the Indian Territory, Louis M. Sulzbacher was born on May 10, 1842, in Kirchheimbolanden, Bavaria. Coming to the United States in 1859 as a young adult, he settled in New Mexico Territory, read law, was admitted to the bar, and opened a law office in Las Vegas. He remained in the Land of Enchantment for some two decades. In 1869 he married Paulina Flersheim in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he served with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

In 1900 Pres. William McKinley appointed Sulzbacher to the newly created Supreme Court in the recently formed Territory of Puerto Rico. He served until his appointment to the [Oklahoma] Indian Territory bench. In 1904 Congress created four additional judgeships for the United States Court for the Indian Territory. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed Sulzbacher as judge for the Western District [of Oklahoma].

He served until his appointment to the Indian Territory bench. Leaving the bench at Oklahoma 1907 statehood, Sulzbacher resided in Kansas City for a few years. He then moved to New York City, where he died in Manhattan on January 17, 1915, and was buried in Kansas City.

I have no idea what the connection was to the Seligman family in Santa Fe. I am not even sure who “Mrs. N. Seligman” could be, living in Santa Fe in 1878. Frances was living there at that time, but her initial would be F, not N, or if she were being referred to by her husband Bernard’s name, as women did back then, it would be B. Maybe it says Mn., not Mrs., but even then—I have no idea who that would be. I am going to assume that the N was a mistake and that Sulzbacher gave his CDV to Frances Nusbaum Seligman. Ah, maybe the N was for Nusbaum!

Finally, the only other photograph in the album that has a name written on it is this one:

The back reads as follows: “I am sorry you are not at home—will be in the city in about ten days when I hope to meet you. Yours, S. B. Axtell.”

The photograph is of a woman taken by Keely’s located at 5th and Coates Street in Philadelphia. This is the same photographer who Ava found at that location in Philadelphia directories in the 1850s and 1860s. I am in no position to judge the specific date by the clothing, but assuming this photograph was taken in the Civil War era, just who could S.B. Axtell be?

I found only two people with that surname and a first name that started with S—Samuel Axtell and his wife Sarah Leighty Axtell. Although they were married in 1854 in Athens, Ohio, where they thereafter lived,1 both Samuel and Sarah were Pennsylvania natives.2

Whether or not it was Samuel or Sarah Axtell who stopped by to see someone in Philadelphia, presumably John and Jeanette, is impossible for me to know. It’s the best guess I have.

What this photograph did demonstrate, however, along with the one of Louis Sulzbacher is that there are photographs in the album of people who were not part of either the Nusbaum or the Seligman family. As Ava had been telling me all along, people gave these CDVs to friends and family—as mementos, as gifts, as calling cards.

On that note, my next post will be my final post about the Nusbaum Album, and I will make some attempt to identify the people in some of the remaining photographs or at least to address who in the family could have been living in those locations during the second half of the 19th century. Keeping in mind that (1) they could be friends, not family, and (2) they could be of people visiting that location who don’t necessarily live there, I realize that to some extent this is an exercise in futility. But having gotten this far, why not engage in a bit more speculation?

  1. Sarah Ann Leighty, Gender Female, Marriage Date 12 Jan 1854, Marriage Place Athens, Ohio, USA, Spouse Samuel Axtell, Film Number 000311592, Ancestry.com. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 ↩
  2. Samuel and Sarah Axtell and family, 1870 US census, Year: 1870; Census Place: Athens, Athens, Ohio; Roll: M593_1171; Page: 45B, Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census ↩

Nusbaum Album: Frances Nusbaum Seligman Redux

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Before I turn to the photographs that I analyzed on my own (with a few tips from Ava along the way), I want to return to my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum Seligman and my attempts to find her in the album–the album that once belonged to her and has her name on it. Some of this is a review of this post, but with some additional thoughts and images added.

There were several photos in the album that might be Frances based on her birthdate and the date Ava concluded that a photograph might have been taken. For example, on the very first page there is this photograph, which Ava dated as taken in about 1863 when Frances would have been 18; Ava thought the young woman was about 20-22 years old, so just a bit older than Frances would have been. The fact that it appears on the very first page of the album added weight to the possibility that it is Frances.

On the seventh page of the album is this photograph, which Ava also dated as taken in about 1863. Ava thought this woman could be about 25, so slightly older than the one on the first page, but still possibly Frances although Ava ultimately didn’t think so.

Philadelphia c 1863 born abt 1838 maybe Eliza Wiler

Then there is the photograph much later in the album that has an inscription on the back that says it is “Miss Nusbaum” and that it is Joan’s great-grandmother. Ava dated this photograph also in the 1863 time period and thought the woman was a teenager between fifteen and eighteen, placing her birth year very close to Frances’ birth year of 1845. But because this was so late in the album, Ava was skeptical about the inscription.

I added another photograph to this mix just recently. This one was taken in about 1870, and Ava thought the woman in this photograph was about twenty years old, so born in about 1850.

Philadelphia 1869 born about 1848

There was also the fuzzy still from a video of a portrait supposedly of Frances Nusbaum Seligman from Arthur Seligman’s house in Santa Fe.

Finally, there is one image I haven’t shared before and that Ava had not previously evaluated. It is not a CDV and it was not inserted into one of the openings in the album, but was just loose inside the album. It is an image of a portrait that sadly was not labeled.

I wondered whether this was a portrait of Frances, but Ava said that this was painted in the late 1840s, early 1850s so could not be Frances. But it possibly could be Frances’ mother, Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandmother.

I then put together a collage of all six faces to compare them better:

One thing I noticed right away was that five of the women had similar lips—all but the one labeled D. Her lips were more heart-shaped. The other five had similar mouths. E seemed to have eyes that tilted down whereas all the others had eyes that went straight across. A and B are the portraits, A perhaps of Jeanette, B supposedly Frances. The more I looked at the two remaining images—C and F—the more alike they looked to me.

I ran them through two online face comparison websites, and both said that C and F were the same person. None of the others, however, matched C, F, or any of the others as the same person or even close. I asked Ava if she thought C and F were the same person, and her AI programs also found a match.

But Ava had reasons to doubt whether C and F were the same person. She pointed out that C, taken in 1863 or so, looks older than F, taken in 1870 or so. How could C have gotten younger looking seven years later?

Also, F is in a photograph with a young man who one might assume was her husband. She is wearing a wedding ring, and Frances was married in 1865. But the man in the photograph with F is not Frances Nusbaum’s husband, Bernard. Maybe it’s one of her brothers. But from the photograph one would think the man and woman are a couple.

So…bottom line? I still cannot be sure whether any of these women were Frances.

I have sent scans of the six photographs that were taken in Santa Fe to the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society and to the New Mexico History Museum, both in Santa Fe, hoping that perhaps they have somewhere a photograph of Frances. So far I have not heard back that they do. But I will keep hoping that I can someday figure out which woman in the album is my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum Seligman.

Nusbaum Album: Are These My Seligmann Relatives from Germany?

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With more realistic expectations but nevertheless high hopes, I awaited Ava’s final work on the Nusbaum Album, some of the photographs from Germany. Although there were some photographs from Stuttgart, Berlin, and Wiesbaden, since I did not know of any relatives living in those places in the mid to late 19th century, I focused on the photographs taken in Bingen and Mainz. Although my closest Seligmann relatives lived in the small town of Gau-Algesheim, both Bingen and Mainz were relatively close by and the closest cities to Gau-Algesheim, and many relatives eventually moved there. It seemed most likely that that my Seligmann relatives would have gone to one of those two cities to be photographed.

I selected three photographs from Mainz, all taken by the same photographer, Carl Hertel, and two from Bingen, both taken by J.B. Hilsdorf. These were all on the back of the first four pages at the beginning of the album whereas other photographs from Germany including from Mainz and Bingen were much later in the album. I hoped that meant the ones earlier in the album were more likely closer relatives.

The first Mainz photograph was dated by Ava as taken between 1873 and 1874; she noted that in 1874, Hertel became a court photographer. She wrote, “Generally, when a photographer was appointed as a court photographer that information would appear on the mounting card in the imprint and after the photographer’s name with the letters HOF. Since there is no indication of this appointment, I am placing the date of the photograph before 1874.”1 In addition, another photograph of Hertel’s found elsewhere with the same imprint was dated 1873.

Ava estimated the age of the man as mid to late 70s based on the lines on his face and the style of his tie. That meant the man was born in about 1800-1804. Ava speculated that this could be my three-times great-grandfather Moritz Seligmann, who was born in 1800. And this time I was able to confirm that speculation because I belatedly remembered that I have an actual photograph of Moritz that I had obtained from a cousin years back:

Moritz Seligmann

So bingo! We had a positive identification!

Moving on to the next two Mainz photos, Ava concluded that they also were taken between 1873 and 1874 based on the information she’d already found about Hertel. The first one she believed to be of a man who was in his thirties, perhaps 35, so born in about 1838-1839. The younger man on that same page appeared to her to be eighteen so born in about 1855. Since these photographs were all taken by the same photographer at about the same time, I thought that perhaps these two younger men were sons of Moritz Seligmann, that is, brothers of Bernard, my great-great-grandfather. In addition, they appeared on the second page of Germany photographs right after the photograph of Moritz, who appeared on the first page of the Germany photographs in the album.

Looking at the family tree, I found two possibilities. The older “son” could be Hieronymous Seligmann, born in 1839. The younger “son” could be Moritz’s youngest child, Jakob Seligmann, born in 1853. I was excited at the thought that perhaps I finally had found some relatives I could identify in the album.

I shared my analysis with Ava. She was skeptical that the younger man was Jakob Seligmann because she had identified Jakob in a photograph from a different set of photographs that she had worked on during an earlier project, and she did not see any similarities or enough to believe that the blonde teenager photographed in Mainz was the same person identified as Onkle Jakob in the later photograph.

We went back and forth with me trying my lawyerly best to persuade her that the blonde man could have grown up to be the dark haired Oncle Jakob. But in the end I failed to do so. I have to defer to Ava. She’s the expert, and I am a biased viewer hoping to see what I want to see. But if this was not Jakob Seligmann, who was it? I don’t know. Maybe a nephew or a cousin. Maybe not anyone in the family at all.

Knowing now that the Hertel photographs were likely taken before 1874 as Ava concluded, I looked on my own at the other three Hertel photographs taken in Mainz that appear later in the album:

 

Who are these three women? I don’t know since I have no photographs to use for comparison. Two of them look too young to be Bernard Seligman’s sisters Mathilde and Pauline, who were born in 1845 and 1847, respectively, and certainly too young to be his half-sister Caroline born in 1833, if the photographs were taken around 1873 as Ava concluded about the other Hertel photographs. And they are too old looking to be the children of any of Bernard’s siblings. So sadly they also will remain unidentified.

The next photograph I asked Ava to analyze is on the same page as the two blonde men except this photograph was taken in Bingen, not Mainz, by J.B. Hilsdorf, who was in business in Bingen from 1861 to 1891, according to Ava’s research. When I believed that the other two men on that page were Hieronymous and Jakob, I speculated that this third man could be their brother August, the only other son of Moritz Seligmann who survived beyond 1853 and was living in Germany.

Based on the size of this particular photograph, Ava dated it in the mid-1860s. She thought the man was between 30 and 35 so born between 1827 and 1834.2 August Seligmann was born in 1841 so too young to be the man in this photograph. In addition, Ava compared this photograph to one I have of August and found them to be dissimilar. It didn’t take as much to persuade me this time.

August Seligmann

That left one last photograph for Ava to analyze, the second photograph from Bingen that I had selected.

It also was taken by J.B. Hilsdorf, and for the same reasons Ava dated it in the mid-1860s. She estimated the woman’s age to be in her late 40s, early 50s, giving her a birth year range of 1812 to 1817. Based on the age and other photographs I have of my three-times great-grandmother Babette Schoenfeld Seligmann, Ava thought there was a good possibility that this photograph was also Babette. Here are the other photographs of Babette that Ava used for comparison.

Ava did an incredible job of researching the photographers and the photographs they’ve taken to come up with reliable time frames for when the album photographs were likely taken. But it is only possible to go so far with identification without known photographs of the people in your family to use for comparison. You can narrow down the possibilities and eliminate those who clearly do not fit within the parameters of the dates, but you can never be 100% confident of the specific identity of the person in the photograph based just on dates and locations. I wish I had more photographs that Ava could have used to make facial comparisons, but I don’t. I have to accept that I may never know who most of these people were.

Fortunately, there were a handful of photographs in the Nusbaum Album that were labeled and that I could on my own identify and place in my family tree. More on those in my next few posts.

 

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #4, March 17, 2024 ↩
  2. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #5, April 3 ,2024
    . ↩

Nusbaum Album: Santa Fe Photographs

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I decided to move on from the Philadelphia photographs in the Nusbaum Album even though there were still many more of them in the album because it seemed to be unlikely that I would ever identify anyone.  I asked Ava to focus next on the six photographs taken in Sante Fe, hoping that they would more clearly be of my Santa Fe relatives.

Of those six, three were of young children, two were of adult men, and one was of a couple. My hope was that the couple would be Frances Nusbaum and Bernard Seligman, my great-great-grandparents, the children would be their children, and the two men would be other Seligmans or Nusbaums.

 

Once again there were no tax stamps on these photographs, so Ava concluded that they were taken either before August, 1864, or after August, 1866. Since Bernard and Frances didn’t move to Santa Fe until after 1868, I was hoping that the photographs fell into that later period. These photos also appear more than halfway into the album so were perhaps later than those 1863 to 1870 Philadelphia photographs Ava had already analyzed.

The three photographs of children were all taken by the same photographer, H.T. Hiester. Ava’s research of Hiester revealed that “Henry T. Hiester came to Santa Fe from Texas in the summer of 1871 at the request of Dr. Enos Andrews. Hiester was active in Santa Fe from 1871-1878. He had a studio in West Side Plaza from 1871-1874 and one on Main Street from September, 1874 to March, 1875.”1

Although Ava believed that two of these photographs were taken at the same studio given that they have the same set, back drop, and chair, she concluded that they were not taken at the same time. She opined that they were both of the same child, possibly James Seligman, Bernard and Frances’ older son who was born in 1868 in Philadelphia. She thought the photo on the upper right could be James at three or four and the photo on the lower right James at six or seven.

The baby in the first photograph cannot be James Seligman since he was born in 1868 in Philadelphia before the family moved to Santa Fe. Thus, that baby has to be Arthur Seligman—if it is of one of the children of Bernard and Frances Seligman—as he was the only child of theirs born in Santa Fe, and he was in fact born in 1871, the year that Ava dated the photograph. Perhaps one of the other photographs is of James or perhaps is Arthur as he grew older.

I can see by looking at the coloring on the reverse of these three photos that they might have been taken years apart as they have faded in different ways. (It’s hard to see in the scan below, but they were slightly different shades.) But nevertheless, I can’t imagine why Frances and Bernard would have three photographs of one of their three living children and none of the other two—including my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen, their oldest child. I was so disappointed that there was no photograph of her.

Moving on to the two men photographed in Santa Fe, the one on the same page as the three children (or the three photographs of the one child) was taken by a different Santa Fe photographer, Dr. Enos Andrews (1833-1910). Ava wrote that Andrews had a photography studio in Santa Fe from the end of the 1860s until the early 1870s. Based on her analysis of Santa Fe directory and census listings for Enos Andrews and other factors, Ava concluded this photograph was taken sometime between 1866 and 1871. Since she estimated that the man was about fifty years old, that would mean he was born between 1816 and 1821.2

But who was he? Although the birth year might led me to believe it was John Nusbaum, who was born in 1818, Ava pointed out that in the late 1860s, John (as well as Frances and Bernard until at least 1868) was living in Philadelphia. But it was possible that John went to Santa Fe and had his photograph taken there. After comparing this photograph with the one we thought could be John Nusbaum on the first page, Ava and I both thought it could be the same man and both could be my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum.

What about the other photograph of a man taken in Santa Fe on the following page? That photo was taken by Nicholas Brown, who once partnered with Enos Andrews. Ava provided the following background on Nicholas Brown and his son William Henry Brown, who took the photograph of the couple on the same page.

Nicholas Brown (born 1830) was the father of William Henry Brown. Nicholas was active in Santa Fe in 1864-1865. In August of 1866, Nicholas announced the opening of a studio with his son, William. Between 1866 and 1867, William was in partnership with his father in Santa Fe and they advertised the studio as N. Brown & Son and N. Brown E Hijo (1860s in Mexico). At the end of 1870, William was in Mexico. At the beginning of 1871, Nicholas re-opened his studio in Santa Fe but this time it was located on West Side Plaza. Because there is no address on [the reverse of the Nicholas Brown photograph of the bearded man], I am placing this image before 1871.3

Ava dated this photograph as 1866-1867 and estimated the man’s age as 45 to 50, meaning he was born between 1816 and 1822.

I could speculate that maybe this is Bernard’s brother Sigmund Seligman, who lived in Santa Fe from at least 1860 until his death in 1874. Sigmund was born in 1829, so later than the 1816-1821 time frame Ava posited. Could this man be younger than fifty? Could he be in his forties? The beard does make it hard to tell. But it’s possible. So could this be Sigmund? Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea. Maybe he was a friend of Bernard’s, not his brother. I have no way to know.

Finally, the last photograph from Santa Fe is the one of the couple taken by Nicholas Brown’s son, William Henry Brown. Ava dated this photograph far later than the one taken by Nicholas Brown because William was a partner in his father’s studio in Santa Fe from 1866-1867. By 1870, he was in Mexico. Then he returned to Santa Fe between 1880 and 1884 where he was a partner with George C. Bennett in a photographer studio on West Side Plaza. After 1884 William Henry Brown was no longer living or working in Santa Fe. Based on these facts, Ava dated this photograph at about 1882-1883.4

Ava thought that both the man and the woman were somewhere between 25 and 30 years old, meaning they were born between roughly 1852 and 1858, making them too young to be Bernard and Frances, who were born in 1838 and 1845, respectively. Thus, I have no idea who they are.

The fact that I could not identify the people in these Santa Fe photographs was disappointing. Ava reminded me again about the nature of CDVs—literally, “cartes de visite” or visiting cards. People gave them away, for example, when they came for a visit. And maybe they were taken while visiting and not in their hometown. That meant even those taken in Santa Fe or Philadelphia or elsewhere could be of people who didn’t live in those places. That meant the universe of people who might be in these photographs was anyone who lived during this time period. No wonder we couldn’t identify anyone with any degree of certainty without known photos of them.

The last portion of Ava’s work on this project was devoted to trying to identify the people in some of the photographs taken in Bingen and Mainz, Germany.

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #3, January 24, 2024 ↩
  2. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  3. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  4. See Note 1, supra. ↩

John Nusbaum Album: Will the real Frances Nusbaum please identify herself?

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As I wrote in my last post, I learned from Ava’s information and analysis of the photograph that might be John Nusbaum that without a photograph that was labeled “John Nusbaum” to use for comparison, there was no way to know for sure who that man really was.

Turning to the two photographs of women on the first page, I had hoped that the woman at the bottom of the page would be Frances Nusbaum. Let’s look at Ava’s analysis of this photograph:

It was taken by Keely, the Philadelphia photographer who took the photographs of the two men on this page, and, according to Ava, likely in the same time frame (if not at the same time) as those first two photographs, i.e., 1863 to 1864. Ava estimated that the young woman in the photograph would be 20-22 years old, meaning she was born in the early 1840s.1 Frances Nusbaum was born in 1845. She had no older sister, only older brothers. So this could be Frances.

But I have no other photograph of Frances, just a very blurry still from a video taken of a portrait made when she was much older. Ava didn’t find enough similarity between that blurry image and this photograph to conclude with certainty that this was Frances. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The placement on the first page adds weight to the conclusion that this could be Frances, but there is no certainty.

I was further confused about whether this could be Frances when I asked Ava to analyze a different Keely photograph later in the project but worth discussing now. That photograph appears much later in the album, close to the end of the album. But it had a specific inscription on it, one of the very few in the album that did.

The inscription reads “Miss Nusbaum” in one handwriting, and then in a separate hand someone wrote, “Joan’s Great-great-grandmother.” The reference to Joan is almost definitely Joan Seligman, the granddaughter of Arthur Seligman and one of the last people to own the album, according to her granddaughter Jhette. Joan was the great-granddaughter of Frances Nusbaum. Her great-great grandmother with a Nusbaum surname would have been Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum. Could this be either Frances or Jeanette?

Since this was a Keely photograph with no tax stamp, Ava dated it as either before August 1864 or after August 1866; based on the clothing and furniture, she narrowed it down to the earlier period, roughly 1861-1863. She also estimated that the woman in the photograph was a teenager between fifteen and eighteen years old, meaning a birth date between 1843 and 1848.

That meant it could not be Jeanette, who would have been much older than that by 1861, but it could be Frances, who was born in 1845. That seemed the logical answer to me, given the inscription on the back. The misidentification of her as Joan’s great-great-grandmother rather than her great-grandmother seemed minor.

But Ava was skeptical. She did not see a similarity to the woman she thought was Frances on the first page in the album. And she did not see a similarity to the woman in the blurred image from a video of a portrait supposedly of Frances. And she thought it unlikely that if Frances owned the album that her photograph would appear so late in the album.

But what if someone moved the photographs around? What if the photograph on that first page is not Frances? In my mind, the inscription carries more weight than the location in the album, but it’s also possible that the inscription is wrong. Maybe it was a different Miss Nusbaum. Maybe it wasn’t Joan’s ancestor. I don’t know.

Finally, the remaining photograph on the first page, the one I’d hoped was Jeanette Dreyfuss, my three-times great-grandmother, turned out to be the most confusing one of all to identify. It is the very first photograph in the album; it should be of someone very important, you would think. I sure was hoping so.

This photograph was not taken by Keely, who took all the other photographs on the first page, and it was not taken in Philadelphia, but in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My three-times great-grandparents John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum had lived in Harrisburg from about 1843 until about 1858. Frances Nusbaum, my great-great-grandmother, was born in Harrisburg in 1845. But by 1860 and thereafter, John and Jeanette and their children were living in Philadelphia. Thus, if this photograph was taken when my Nusbaum ancestors were living in Harrisburg, it had to be taken before 1860.

But Ava concluded that this photograph was taken after 1866. The photographer who took this photograph was Christian S. Roshon, located at “No. 424 (Old No. 110) Market Street Harrisburg, Penna.” By tracing the succession of photographers who worked at this location, Ava found that Roshon succeeded a photographer named Robert S. Henderson, who came after David C. Burnite.  Burnite (Burnite and Weldon’s) had been at 110 Market between 1864 and 1866, and Henderson was there with a photographer named Rogers from 1865-1866. That meant that Roshon didn’t occupy that address until 1866 or later, meaning that the first photograph in the album was taken after 1866. My Nusbaum ancestors were in Philadelphia by then, not in Harrisburg.

Since Ava estimated that the woman in the photograph was in her early 20s (20-22), she could not be Jeanette, who would have been far older than that by 1866. She might be Frances, who was 21 in 1866, but since Frances was no longer living in Harrisburg and was married to Bernard by 1866, that seemed unlikely.

So who could this young woman who holds the first spot in the album be? I searched my tree for a relative born in about 1845 who would have been living in Harrisburg in 1866. I could only find two women who came close to fitting into those parameters: Paulina and Sophia Dinkelspiel, daughters of Mathilde Nusbaum (John’s sister) and Isaac Dinkelspiel. Paulina was born in Germany in 1840, and Sophia was also born in Germany in 1849. Both were living in Harrisburg in the late 1860s. They were first cousins to Frances Nusbaum and John Nusbaum’s nieces.

Could that photograph be of Paulina or Sophia? Sure. But is the photo of either one of them? I have no idea. And if it is one of Frances’ cousins/John’s nieces, why would she be the first one in the album? It really doesn’t make much sense to me, but I also can’t disagree with Ava’s expert analysis of the dates of the photograph or the age of its subject.

Also, it’s important to remember that these CDVs could have been taken when someone was visiting from another town. Maybe Frances or someone else went to Harrisburg to visit her cousins and had her photograph taken while there. Of course, once you factor in that possibility, the photographer’s location becomes a less defining factor for identifying who was who in any of the photographs.

I decided to try a different approach with the next set of photographs.

  1. The references to Ava’s analysis in this post all come from her first report, Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #1, December 16, 2023 ↩

Nusbaum Album: Is this John Nusbaum? Is that Bernard Seligman?

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After retaining Ava Cohn’s services to help me with the album of photos (“the Nusbaum album”) I’d obtained from an antique dealer in Santa Fe and selecting, with Ava’s advice, where to begin, I waited anxiously to see what Ava could tell me about the album and the first four photos we’d decided to start with, the ones on the very first page:

First page in the Nusbaum album

I had been staring at these over and over while waiting to hear back from Ava. Could the two on top be my three-times great-grandparents Jeanette Dreyfuss and John Nusbaum? Could the two on the bottom be my great-great-grandparents Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum? I was hoping so. Wouldn’t that be a logical assumption to make?

But alas, I quickly learned that hopes and assumptions are not a reliable method for identifying photographs.

Ava started her analysis by providing some background on the album itself. She wrote, “The album was manufactured and sold by Henry Altemus Company of Philadelphia. Altemus and Company first published photographic albums in 1862 and remained in business until 1936….The album is one of Altemus’ larger albums, holding four cartes de visite (CDV) photographs per page.  The photographs are CDVs measuring 2 3/8” x 4.”1

One thing that Ava explained is that cartes de visite, as their name suggests, were used as calling cards. When someone visited, they would leave their photograph as a memento of that visit. That meant that, unlike a modern photograph album where most of the photographs are likely to be of family members and close friends, this album could include photographs of anyone who stopped in to visit the Nusbaums and the Seligmans.

Ava shared this poem that illustrates how CDVs were used:

Ashford, Brothers & Co, Album Filler Poem, c. 1865

Ava’s report continued with some observations about the photographs and some of the issues involved in analyzing them, including the fact that most of the photographs in the album show only heads or heads and shoulders of their subjects. Because Ava did not have the ability to see other details of what they were wearing, it would be more challenging to provide exact dating of the photographs.

Nevertheless, Ava was able to reach several conclusions about the dates when the photographs on the first page were taken. She concluded that the three from Philadelphia were taken in the Civil War era, but not between August, 1864, and August, 1866. As she explained, “Tax stamps were issued by Union states and were required to be placed on the backs of photographs from August, 1864 to August, 1866 to raise money for the war effort.”2 Since these photographs did not have tax stamps on them, they had to have been taken either before August, 1864, or after August, 1866.

With that time period in mind, Ava then focused on the specific photographers who took these first four photographs. Three of the photographs on the first page of the album were taken by Robert N. Keely; his address, as indicated on the back of these three photographs, was “N.W. cor. Fifth & Coates Sts., Philadelphia.” Ava found Keely listed in Philadelphia directories at that address or at nearby addresses throughout the 1850s and 1860s and into the 1870s.

Knowing that these three photographs were taken during that era, Ava then focused on the three individual photographs on that first page that were taken by Keely. First, she looked at this one:

Based on her estimate of his age (50 years old) and the possible dating of the photograph between 1863 and 1864, Ava concluded that the man in the photograph was likely born around 1813-1814. John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather was born on November 26, 1814, according to the family bible. Ava and I speculated that the man in the photograph could be John Nusbaum, given those dates and given the placement of the photograph on the first page.

I was excited by this analysis, but also realized that nothing could be certain. Without another photograph of John, we had no truly definitive way of being sure this was in fact John Nusbaum. That was an important first lesson I learned from Ava’s work on the album.

Another photo taken by Keely that appears on the first page of the album is this one:

Philadelphia c 1863, born about 25 years, could be Bernard or a Nusbaum son

I had hoped this was Bernard Seligman. But Ava was not convinced. She dated this photograph in that same 1863-1864 time frame and found that the man was 20-25 years old, meaning the man was born roughly between 1838 and 1844; Bernard was born in 1837 so within some reasonable margin of error of that estimate. But Bernard and Frances didn’t marry until 1865. Would they have had their photographs taken before they were married?

Possibly, but there was another obstacle. When I shared the photographs I do have of Bernard as a young man and as an older man as well as the blurry still from a video taken of his supposed portrait, I could see similarities, but Ava was certain that the man in the album was not Bernard.

 

Bernard Seligman

So who was he? Maybe one of John and Jeanette’s sons? Adolphus was born in 1842, Simon in 1843, and Julius in 1848. It could be any one of them, but I have no photographs of any of them. So who knows… It would make sense that John and Jeanette would have put one of their sons on the first page, but I can’t be certain.

What about the two women on that first page? Were they Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum Seligman? That will be discussed in the next post.

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #1, December 16, 2023 ↩
  2. See note 1, supra. ↩

The Nusbaum Album: An Introduction

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Some of you may recall that last fall I received a call from an antique dealer in Santa Fe who had in her shop a photograph album with the names John Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum engraved on the front and rear covers, respectively. I immediately knew that this album had belonged to my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum and his daughter Frances, my great-great-grandmother. Frances had married my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman and moved from Philadelphia to Sante Fe, where they raised their children, as I told in my family history novel, Santa Fe Love Song.

I agreed to purchase the album and when it arrived, I marveled at the collection of almost two hundred photographs of people I hoped were my relatives—or at least I hoped that some of them would be. But except for a handful of those photographs, there were no labels or names to identify the people in them. Almost all, however, had a photographers’ stamp that indicated where they were taken.

The largest group of photographs (43) were taken in Philadelphia, where John Nusbaum had settled after immigrating from Schopfloch, Germany, in about 1840. He had initially been a peddler traveling throughout Pennsylvania, but eventually settled in Philadelphia and established a dry goods store there. He married Jeanette Dreyfuss, another German immigrant, and had six children, my great-grandmother Frances being the third child and oldest daughter. Thus, I assumed many of the Philadelphia photographs were of John and his family as well as of other family members and friends. But who was who? I had no idea.

Not surprisingly, the next largest group of photographs were taken in Germany, including some taken in Mainz and some in Bingen, the two larger cities closest to Gau-Algesheim where Bernard Seligman and his siblings were born and raised. There were also photographs taken in other German cities, such as Stuttgart, Berlin, and Wiesbaden.

There were eight photographs taken in Santa Fe, where Frances Nusbaum had moved with her husband Bernard and their three older children in about 1870. Their youngest child Arthur Seligman was born in Santa Fe, but my great-grandmother Eva Seligman was born in 1866 in Philadelphia.

Three photographs were taken in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and several were taken in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, two locations where John and Jeanette’s siblings lived in Pennsylvania, so I assumed that those photographs were likely of those Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. The remaining photographs were taken in other places such as New York City; Montgomery, Alabama; Wheeling, West Virginia; Peoria, Illinois; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Each page in the album has four slots for photographs. On the first four pages of the album, there are two photos, back-to-back, in each slot so that you cannot see the reverse of the photos without pulling them out of the slots. Then starting on the fifth page in the album, there are only four photos on each page, and the reverse of those photos shows through on the back of the slot on the back of the page.

What it took me a long time to realize is that all the photos squeezed into the back of those on the first four pages are photographs from Germany. I think that these photographs from Germany may have been added once all the other slots were filled. They likely belonged to Bernard Seligman and were added after he married Frances. I will get to these photographs in a later post, but my reason for mentioning this here is to indicate that I think that aside from those German photos, the others were probably placed by John, Jeanette, or Frances Nusbaum.

The photographs appear to be somewhat grouped together by the location where the photographs were taken and by photographer. The photographs seem to follow roughly this geographical order: Pennsylvania, including many from Philadelphia, but also Harrisburg and Lewistown; then two pages from Peoria, Illinois; then three pages of Santa Fe photographs; then some from New York City and other places; and then photographs from Germany (plus the ones on the reverse of the first few pages). There are also some that appear in random places within the album, but overall this is how the album is arranged.

Since I only had names on a handful of photographs and since I had no idea when the photographs were taken, I decided to retain the expert services of Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photo Genealogist. Long time readers of my blog know that I have had great success hiring Ava in the past to help me identify people in old photographs.

With the financial support of my brother and my cousins Marcia and Terry, I asked Ava to help me with this new project. I also agreed to sell the album after Ava and I were done with it to my cousin Jhette for the price I paid to the antique dealer; that way I had more money to hire Ava. Although I was sad to think that I would not be able to keep the album, I knew that Jhette, another descendant of Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum, would take good care of it.

Because of the large number of photographs and my limited resources, I had to limit the scope of Ava’s work. I asked her only to date the photographs and to estimate the ages of the people in them. I was not asking her to do any identification of the people. I was hoping that with those two bits of dating information, I’d be able to deduce who the people were in the photographs—or at least narrow down the possibilities—by studying my family tree.

I also had to limit her work to about 20-25 of the almost two hundred photographs in the album. I decided to focus on those taken in Philadelphia, Santa Fe, Mainz, and Bingen because I knew that those would most likely be of my direct ancestors. As noted above, I figured that the Harrisburg, Peoria, and Lewistown photographs were of Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. I had no idea who in the family (if anyone) lived in Berlin, Stuttgart, or Wiesbaden, Germany, or for that matter in St. Louis, Wheeling, or Montgomery. I knew of one branch that lived in New York, but not direct ancestors.

But because there were so many photographs taken in Philadelphia, I had to find some way to narrow down Ava’s work so that she could have the best chance of identifying the people in the photographs I chose. Based on her suggestions, we started with the photographs on the first page, figuring that those would most likely be the closest relatives if not the owners of the album; three of those were taken by the same photographer in Philadelphia. The fourth and the very first photograph in the album was taken in Harrisburg. There were two men and two women. In my wildest dreams, I was hoping that they were of John and Jeanette and Frances and Bernard.

Here are those first four photographs:

In my next two posts I will share what I learned from Ava about these four photographs and how I decided to choose the remaining 15-20 photographs for her to analyze. This will be a multipart series of posts devoted to the Nusbaum album.