The years from 1880 through 1900 were years of continued growth for the children of Moses and Adeline Cohen, as their children had more children and as their grandchildren grew and had families of their own as well.  It was also a time of change, as some of the family members left the Washington, DC, area for other parts of the country.

I will focus first on the family of Moses, Jr. and Henrietta (Loeb) Cohen since he was the oldest of Moses and Adeline’s children by more than ten years. As I wrote last time, by 1880 he and Henrietta already had a large family of eight children, the oldest being Augusta who was already a teenager and the youngest being Solomon, who was just born in 1879. (There also were apparently two other children who died in infancy, but I have no documentation of their births, names, or deaths.)  They would have one more child, Mabel, who was born in 1883 when Henrietta was already 41 years old.  As reported to me by a direct descendant of Moses, Jr. and Henrietta, Mabel had Down’s syndrome, perhaps not all that surprising given the age of her mother when she was born. Sometime after 1880, Moses had switched from selling clothing to being a sexton for his synagogue and also a collector (a bill collector, I assume), according to city directories for Washington, DC, during that period.

The year after their last child Mabel was born, Moses and Henrietta saw their first child get married.  Augusta married Julius Selinger on June 10, 1884, when she was only eighteen years old.  Although I do not yet have any record to prove it, my hunch is that Julius was a brother or cousin of Frederick Selinger, the husband of Augusta’s aunt Rachel, her father’s sister.  Like Frederick, Julius was born in Hubern, Germany, according to his passport application. Julius had emigrated only a year or so before marrying Augusta. The two Selinger men were only three years apart in age.    By 1900, Augusta and Julius had five children: Sidney (1885), Harry (1888), Jerome (1889), Maurice (1893), and Eleanor (1894).  Julius was working as a jeweler, and his oldest son Sidney was an apprentice watchmaker.  The family was living in DC at 1157 8^th Street, NW. [All addresses in this post are in the NW section of DC.]

During this same time period, Moses and Henrietta’s second child, Myer, was obtaining an education and building his career as well as his family.  Myer might be the very first Cohen to get a law degree (or the first I’ve found so far).  According to a 1917 alumni directory for George Washington University, Myer Cohen received an LL.B. in 1886 as well as an LL. M. in 1887, and was a lawyer in Washington, DC.

Myer married Helen Wolf on January 14, 1890.  Helen was also a DC native, and her father Simon Wolf  had been president of Washington Hebrew congregation where Moses Cohen was a member and the shammes for many years.  Helen and Myer must have known each other for years before marrying.

Simon Wolf was a very well-known and well-regarded lawyer known for advocating for Jews and Jewish causes; one source described him as “a friend of Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson.”[1] Myer joined his father-in-law’s practice, which became known as Wolf and Cohen; Simon Wolf had also started an insurance business in 1878, which also became known as Wolf and Cohen.[2]  It was the first insurance brokerage business in the Washington, DC, area.

Between 1890 and 1900, Myer and Helen had four children: Ruth (1891), Edith (1893), Marjorie (1896), and Roger (1898).  Another son, Myer, Jr., would be born in 1907.  The family was living at 1711 S Street in DC in 1900.

The third child of Moses and Henrietta was Jacob G. Cohen.  He married Ida Slegh in 1894; she was also a DC native. They had a daughter, Aimee, born in 1895, perhaps the first ever “Amy Cohen” in the family (although they spelled it the French way).  In 1900, their son Gerson was born. The family was living at 1 West 115^th Street in New York City, and Jacob was employed as a bookkeeper.

A third Selinger joined the family in 1893 when Fannie Cohen, the fourth child, married Alfred Selinger.  Like Julius and Frederick, Alfred was born in Germany.  He immigrated to the US in October, 1888, and in 1891, he and Julius were both living at the same address, 810 I Street, according to a DC directory for that year, certainly an indication that the two were related and probably brothers.  In 1892, Julius and his family traveled abroad along with Alfred, according to a society item in the Washington Evening Star on June 17, 1892.  (Friday, June 17, 1892, Evening Star (Washington (DC), DC)   Page 3)  Fannie Cohen married Alfred a year later on June 10, 1893. Alfred and Fannie had one child, Selma, who was born in March, 1894.  According to the 1900 census, Alfred was a tailor, and the family was living at 711 I Street in DC.

Moses, Jr. and Henrietta must have had quite a wedding budget because in 1895 their fifth child, Ella, married Jacob Bernard Greenberg.  Ella and Jacob had a daughter Marjorie Ruth the following year, and in 1900 they were living in New York City at 140 West 100^th Street, not too far from Ella’s brother Jacob G. Cohen. Her husband Jacob was employed as a freight clerk.

The weddings did not end there.  In 1898, Florence, the sixth child, married Harry Panitz.  Harry was a salesman from Baltimore, where the couple lived in 1898 and thereafter.  I thought that they did not have a child until 1902 when their daughter Aline was born, but when my brother visited Washington Hebrew Cemetery to look for the headstones for Moses Cohen, Sr., and his family, he saw one overturned headstone in the same area as other Cohen graves and picked it up.  It was very hard to read even in person, but he was able to edit the photo below to highlight the dates.

From those dates, I was able to search the death indices and found that Helen Panitz, less than one year old, had died in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on May 12, 1900, and was buried in Washington, DC, on May 14, 1900.  I do not know what they were doing in Fayetteville, nor do I know why Helen died so young. They were not living in Fayetteville as of December 27, 1899, because the Washington Evening Star reported on that day that Grace Cohen, Florence’s sister, had just returned from a visit to Baltimore to see Florence and Harry Panitz perhaps to see the ill-fated baby Helen.  (Wednesday, December 27, 1899, Evening Star (Washington (DC), DC), Page 7)

As of the 1900 census, Grace and her sister Mabel were still living with their parents, Moses, Jr. and Henrietta, at 1130 8^th Street, just down the street from Augusta and Julius and their five children, some of whom were not much younger than their two aunts.

Moses and Henrietta’s youngest son Solomon was living on his own in New York City in 1900; he was 20 years old and working as a clerk.  He was living at 20 West 115^th Street and boarding with a family named Pawel.  Solomon’s brother Jacob was living at 1 West 115^th Street, the building across the street, and his sister Ella just a mile away, so Solomon had plenty of family to look after him in New York.

So by 1900, almost all of Moses, Jr’s nine children had married and/or moved out on their own.  Several had left Washington, DC—three to New York City and one to Baltimore.  There were many births and not too many deaths or other tragedies.  Moses and Henrietta had a son who was a lawyer and many grandchildren and more to come.  From the outside, it looks like life was very good for the entire clan.

There was, however, one major loss suffered by the family during this period. On January 15, 1895, the family matriarch, Adeline Himmel Cohen, died.  She had survived the loss of her husband Moses 35 years earlier and had essentially raised the four younger children on her own and perhaps Moses, Jr., as well before she married Moses, Sr. Adeline had worked outside the home to support her children, selling second hand clothing and carrying on the work that her husband Moses, Sr., had been doing before his death.   She must have been a very strong and determined woman to have weathered so many storms in her life.

 

[1] Website of the Goethe Institute at http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/lp/kul/mag/deu/ewy/per/en6791595.htm

[2] The insurance business still exists today and was partially acquired by the Meltzer Group. See Related articleshttp://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-meltzer-group-inc-acquires-certain-assets-of-wolf–cohen-life-insurance-inc-55350942.html

• Cohens in the Nation’s Capital: 1860-1880
• Science versus Inference: Was Moses Cohen the Brother of Jacob Cohen?