Our Ancestral Towns Seen Through My Cousin’s Eyes

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Amy

My newly-discovered cousin Wolfgang Seligmann lives close to our shared ancestral towns of Gau-Algesheim and Erbes-Budesheim. Erbes-Budesheim is where Babetta Schoenfeld was born and raised; Babetta is my 3-x great-grandmother and Wolfgang’s great-great-grandmother. Babetta married Moritz Seligmann, and together they settled in Gau-Algesheim where they had a number of children, including Bernard Seligmann, my great-great-grandfather, and August Seligmann, Wolfgang’s great-grandfather.

Here is a recent photo of Wolfgang with his wife Barbela and daughter Milena—my beautiful German cousins.

Wolfgang went to both Gau-Algesheim and Erbes-Budesheim recently to take some photographs of the towns and to look for the houses where our ancestors lived. In Erbes-Budesheim, he looked for the houses at 77 and 80 Hauptstrasse where the Schoenfelds lived almost 200 years ago, but unfortunately those houses must have been torn down, and now a new street and a factory stand where those houses must have stood. But Wolfgang took some photographs of other houses, including one at 50 Hauptstrasse, to capture what the Schoenfeld house might have looked like and also to depict the type of homes they saw on their street.

Wolfgang also visited the Jewish cemetery in Erbes-Budesheim. He reported that there were only a few headstones left and none for the Schoenfelds. Here are some photographs he took of the cemetery. It looks like such a peaceful and scenic spot.

Although Wolfgang did not locate any Schoenfeld headstones there, this older video taken in 2010 does show some headstones with the Schoenfeld name, so I wonder whether these have been destroyed since that video was taken.

Wolfgang also visited Gau-Algesheim and took some photographs there. First is a photo of Flosserstrasse, one of the main streets in Gau-Algesheim. Our ancestors Moritz and Babetta and their children lived on Flossergasse, which no longer seems to exist, but must have either been a prior name or a smaller street off of the main street.

Flosserstrasse

The other main street in Gau-Algesheim is Langgasse. The store owned by Wolfgang’s great-grandfather August and his grandfather Julius was on this street, and the house where Julius and his wife Magdalena lived until relocating to Bingen was also located on Langgasse. Because the original building is no longer there, Wolfgang also sent me this newspaper clipping which depicts on the left what Langgasse looked like in 1900 and when Julius lived and worked there.

Langgasse in 1900

Langgasse today

This is the town center where Langgasse and Flosserstrasse meet.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Langgasse,+55435+Gau-Algesheim,+Germany/Fl%C3%B6sserstra%C3%9Fe+76,+55435+Gau-Algesheim,+Germany/@49.9574551,8.0144112,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x47bdec382bb3051b:0xd8466ae590c4339d!2m2!1d8.0146779!2d49.958238!1m5!1m1!1s0x47bdec480ef7e4e5:0xd7558e28ec302b8b!2m2!1d8.0185524!2d49.9572361

Finally, Wolfgang also visited the Jewish cemetery in Gau-Algesheim.

Jewish cemetery in Gau-Algesheim

There was only one headstone with the Seligmann name on it, and it was for Rosa Bergmann Seligmann, the wife of August Seligmann and Wolfgang’s great-grandmother. He must have been quite disturbed by what he saw there. Here are two photographs of Rosa’s headstone taken in the 1950s and posted on the alemannia-judaica website:

http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/gau_algesheim_friedhof.htm

http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/gau_algesheim_friedhof.htm

This is what the headstone looks like today as captured by Wolfgang, Rosa’s great-grandson:

According to Wolfgang, the cemetery was vandalized in 1998 by “some idiots,” as Wolfgang described them. He commented that even today there is some anti-Semitism in Germany. Although Wolfgang noted that there are not many who feel this way, it only takes a few to do damage like this.

I am so very grateful to my cousin Wolfgang for taking these photographs. There is something very touching and special about seeing these towns through the eyes of my cousin, a fellow descendant of Moritz Seligmann and Babetta Schoenfeld. I know he looks at these places with the same sense of connection that I would feel if I were standing in those places, and I look forward to standing there with him in the hopefully not too far off future.

All photographs on this post except the two from alemannia-judaica are courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann.

Passover 2015: The American Jewish Story

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Amy

Handmade shmura matzo used at the Passover Seder especially for the mitzvot of eating matzo and afikoman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A year ago I was feeling disconnected from Passover until I heard my grandson tell us the story of Passover in a way that made it feel new and exciting and different all over again. This year his little brother will experience his first seder, though at only ten months, that experience will likely be short and quite unfocused. Just a lot of really noisy people sitting around a table eating food that he neither can nor would want to eat. But it’s a new reminder that every generation and every child experiences Passover as a new experience, allowing all of us who are jaded and detached to be able to relive our own early experiences with this special holiday.

Last year I entered into Passover thinking about my mother’s ancestors, the Brotmans, the Goldschlagers, and the Rosenzweigs. I focused on their exodus from the oppression and poverty and anti-Semitism of Galicia and Romania and their courage and the desire for freedom that led them to leave all they knew to cross the continent and then the ocean and come to New York City, where they again lived in poverty but with greater hopes for a life of freedom and economic opportunity. And they attained their goals if not in that first generation, certainly by the third and fourth generations.

Poor Jews taking home free matzohs, New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the last year now, I have been researching, studying and writing about my father’s paternal relatives. It has taken just about a full year to cover the Cohens, the Jacobs (with whom I actually need to do more work), the Seligmans, the Schoenfelds, the Nusbaums, and the Dreyfusses. Soon I will start my father’s maternal relatives—the Schoenthals and Katzensteins and whatever other surnames pop up along the way. Researching my father’s families has been so different from my mother’s, and I can go so much further back. I can’t get back much before 1840 with my mother’s family and have absolutely no records before 1885 or so for any of them. Although I have a number of Romanian records for my Rosenzweig and Goldschlager relatives, I have no records at all from Europe for my great-grandparents Joseph and Bessie Brotman, despite hours and hours of searching and even DNA testing.

In contrast, my father’s ancestors have provided me with a rich opportunity to learn about Jews in Amsterdam, London, and especially the towns of Gau-Algesheim, Erbes-Budesheim, Bingen, and Schopfloch, Germany. I have been able to find records all the way back to 1800 or so for almost every line. I’ve had amazing help along the way on both sides of the Atlantic, and I’ve even learned a little German to boot. My father’s families were pawnbrokers and peddlers and clothing merchants; they were pioneers and politicians and war heroes.



http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/182866324

Harrisburg Market Square with Leo Nusbaum store

They came to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, and most of them suffered terrible heartbreaks, economic struggles, and early deaths. Most of them settled in Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but there were those who went to places that I’d never think a Jewish immigrant would go: Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, California, and, of course, New Mexico. Many married outside the Jewish community and assimilated into American culture far more so than my mother’s relatives. Ultimately, the Cohens/Jacobs and Seligmans/Schoenfelds and Nusbaums/Dreyfusses were successful; they found the American dream, and they embraced it.

But there is a very sad underside to this story of American success. It’s the story of those who did not leave Europe. For the first time in my life I confronted the reality that the Holocaust did not just happen to other families, to other Jews. Not that I have not been deeply affected by the Holocaust all my life; ever since I read Anne Frank’s diary as a child, I’ve identified with and cried for all those who were murdered by the Nazis. But I never knew that I had relatives left behind in Germany who were part of that slaughter. I am still finding more, and I will write about them soon. The list of names of my cousins who died in the Holocaust grows longer and longer, and I realize more than ever how grateful I should be to Bernard Seligman, John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum, and Jacob and Sarah (Jacobs) Cohen for leaving Europe and taking a chance on the new country across the ocean.

So this year for Passover I will be thinking about that first major migration of Jews from Europe to America. I will be feeling thankful for the risks my ancestors took, and I will be feeling the loss of not only all those who were killed in the Holocaust, but the loss of all the children and grandchildren who would have been born but for those deaths.

And overall I will be celebrating family, freedom, and faith—faith that the world can be a better place and that human beings can be their best selves and live good and meaningful lives. May all of you have a wonderful weekend—be it Passover or Easter or perhaps just another weekend in April for you. Celebrate all the good things in life in whatever way you can.



Embed from Getty Images

My Cousin Wolfgang and The Lessons of History: Will We Ever Learn Those Lessons?

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Amy

When I started this blog back in October, 2013, I never anticipated that it would help family members find me. But that has proven to be an incredible unexpected benefit of publishing this blog. This is one of those stories.

Several weeks ago, I received a comment on the blog from a man named Wolfgang Seligmann, saying he was the son of Walter Seligmann, that he lived near Gau-Algesheim, and that he had found my blog while doing some research on his family. He asked me to email him, which I did immediately, and we have since exchanged many emails and learned that we are third cousins, once removed: his great-great-grandparents were Moritz Seligmann and Babetta Schoenfeld, my great-great-great-grandparents. His great-grandfather August was the brother of Sigmund, Adolph and Bernard Seligman, the three who had settled in Santa Fe in the mid-19^th century. Wolfgang sent me a copy of August’s death certificate.

August Seligmann death certificate

(Translations in this post courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann except where noted: Registry-Office Gau-Algesheim: August Seligmann, living in Gau-Algesheim died the 14^th of May 1909 at 8 a.m. in Gau-Algesheim. He was 67 years old and born in Gau-Algesheim. He was a widower.)

Our families had probably not been in touch since Bernard died in 1902 (or perhaps when Adolph died in 1920). And now through the miracle of the internet and Google, Wolfgang had found my blog with his family’s names in it and had contacted me. What would our mutual ancestors think of that? It even seems miraculous to me, and I live in the 21^st century.

Fortunately, Wolfgang’s English is excellent (since my knowledge of German is…well, about five words), and so we have been able to exchange some information about our families, and I have learned some answers to questions I had about the Seligmanns who stayed in Germany. With Wolfgang’s permission, I would like to share some of those stories.

Wolfgang’s grandfather was Julius Seligmann, the second child and oldest son of August Seligmann and his wife Rosa Bergmann. Julius was born in 1877 in Gau-Algesheim. As I wrote about here, Julius was one of the Seligmanns written about in Ludwig Hellriegel’s book about the Jews of Gau-Algesheim. He had been a merchant in the town. On December 1, 1922, Julius had married a Catholic woman named Magdalena Kleisinger, who was born in Gau-Algesheim on July 9, 1882, and had himself converted to Catholicism. Julius and Magdalena had two sons, Walter, who was born February 10, 1925, and Herbert, born July 27, 1927. Julius and his family had left Gau-Algesheim for Bingen in 1939 after closing the store in 1935.

I had wondered why Julius had closed the store and then relocated to Bingen, and I asked Wolfgang what he knew about his grandfather’s life. According to Wolfgang, his father Walter and uncle Herbert did not like to talk about the past, but Wolfgang knew that when Julius married and converted to Catholicism, his Jewish family was very upset and did not want to associate with him any longer. In fact, Julius was forced to pay his siblings a substantial amount of money for some reason relating to his store in Gau-Algesheim, and that payment caused him and his family a great deal of financial hardship. According to Wolfgang, Julius no longer had enough money to pay for his own home, and thus he and his family moved to Bingen in 1939 where they lived with Magdalena’s family or friends for some time.

Julius and Magdalena Seligmann 1960s Courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann

The Hellriegel book also made some puzzling (to me) references to the military records of Wolfgang’s father and uncle, saying that they had been “allowed” to enlist in the army, but then were soon after dismissed. Wolfgang explained that the German authorities did not know how to treat Catholic citizens with Jewish roots. Wolfgang said that his father Walter had trained to be a pharmacist, but the Nazis would not allow him to work with anything poisonous. In addition, his father was not permitted to be in the army; instead he was ordered by the authorities to work on the Siegfried Line, which was originally built as a defensive line by the Germans during World War I. In August 1944, Hitler ordered that it be strengthened and rebuilt, and according to Wikipedia, “20,000 forced labourers and members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), most of whom were 14–16-year-old boys, attempted to re-equip the line for defence purposes.” Walter Seligmann was one of those forced laborers.

Map of the Siegfried line. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is a photograph of Walter Seligmann, Wolfgang’s father:

Walter Seligmann Photo courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann

As for Wolfgang’s uncle Herbert, he was sent by the local police to the army, but the army would not accept him. He was dismissed and sent back to Bingen, where he was required to work in a warehouse until the war ended.

Herbert Seligmann courtesy of Christoph Seligmann

Julius Seligmann died in 1967, and his wife Magdalena died the following year. Walter Seligmann died in 1993, and his brother Herbert died in 2001.

Julius Seligmann death notice

There are some very bitter ironies in these stories. Julius and his family were not accepted by his Jewish family because they were Catholic, but the Nazis did not accept them either because they had Jewish roots. As I commented to Wolfgang, prejudice of any sort is so destructive and unacceptable. His family experienced it from two different directions.

Not that the two examples here can be equated in any way. Although all prejudice is wrong, prejudice that leads to genocide is utterly reprehensible, an evil beyond comprehension for anyone who has a moral compass. I have already written about my own personal horror and pain when I realized that I had family who had been murdered by the Nazis. Wolfgang told me more about some of those who lost their lives to Hitler and his evil forces.

One victim was his great-uncle Moritz Seligmann (the grandson of Moritz Seligmann, my 3x-great-grandfather, and a son of August Seligmann). My information about his fate comes from two websites that Wolfgang shared with me. According to these two sites, Moritz Seligmann, Julius’ younger brother, was born on June 25, 1881. He fought in World War I for Germany, spent two years in captivity, and was honored with the Hindenburg Cross or Cross of Honor for his service. Despite this, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, on November 11, 1938, Moritz was arrested in Konigstein, where he had been living since 1925. He was sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

German Cross of Honour 1914-1918 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Moritz wrote to the authorities in Konigstein, pointing out that he was the recipient of the Hindenburg Cross. He was released from Buchenwald in December on the condition that he emigrate by March 31, 1939. He was required to report to the police in Konigstein twice a week until then, and if he had not emigrated by the deadline, he was to be arrested. On March 28, 1939, however, the Gestapo lifted the emigration order and the reporting requirement in light of Moritz’s service during World War I.

Here is a copy of the Gestapo letter, lifting the emigration order. I found this a particularly chilling document to see.

Wolfgang helped me translate this letter as follows: Frankfort, March 20, 1939. Concerning: the “Aktionsjude” Moritz Seligmann born June 25, 1881, Gau-Algesheim, residing in Konigstein. Seligmann has provided proof that he was a soldier in the World War as a combatant. Therefore the reporting obligation and emigration order is lifted for him. I would ask the emigration (?) to supervise and notify us here.

As explained to me by Wolfgang and by Wikipedia, the “Aktionsjude” referred to 26,000 Jews who were deported in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, as was Moritz Seligmann, as part of an effort to frighten other Jews to leave Germany. Unfortunately, not enough of them did.

Despite the lifting of the order to emigrate, Moritz had hoped to immigrate to the US. For various bureaucratic reasons described here, he was unable to get clearance to emigrate. On June 10, 1942, he was picked up by the Nazis and transported somewhere to the east. Exactly where and when he died is not known.

Wolfgang and his family, after researching the fate of Moritz, informed the town of Konigstein of their findings, and the town agreed to place a “stolperstein” in memory of Moritz Seligmann near his home in Konigstein. A stolperstein (literally, a stumbling blog) is a memorial stone embedded in the ground to memorialize a victim of the Holocaust. Here is a photograph of Wolfgang at the ceremony when Moritz Seligmann’s stolperstein was installed in Konigstein.

Wolfgang Seligmann Courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann

Behind him is a man who knew Moritz and remembered when Moritz was initially arrested in 1938, clinging to his Hindenburg Cross, believing it would save him from the murderous forces of the Nazis. It may have stalled his murder, but it did not save him.

http://www.stolpersteine-koenigstein.de/index.php/seligmann-moritz

Wolfgang also told me about the fate of another sibling of his grandfather Julius, his younger sister Anna. Anna, born in Gau-Algesheim in 1889, had married Hugo Goldmann, and they had a daughter Ruth, born in 1924 in Neunkirchen, a town about 80 miles southwest of Gau-Algesheim, where Anna and Hugo had settled. Between 1939 and 1940, many people from this area near the border with France were evacuated to locations in central Germany, and Anna, Hugo, and Ruth ended up in Halle, Germany, 350 miles to the northeast of Neunkirchen. On June 1, 1942, they were all deported from Halle to the Sobibor concentration camp where they were all killed. Click on each name to see the memorial pages established by the town of Halle in memory of Anna, Hugo, and Ruth.

Finally, Wolfgang told me about another member of the family. Moritz Seligmann (the elder) had had a daughter Caroline with his first wife, Eva Schoenfeld. Caroline was the half-sister of my great-great-grandfather Bernard. She had married a man named Siegfried Seligmann, perhaps a cousin. Their son, Emil, died in Wiesbaden on August 9, 1942, when he was 78 years old.

Death record of Emil Seligmann, husband of Carolina Seligmann

(Wiesbaden: The Emil Jakob Israel Seligmann, without profession, “israelitisch” [presumably meaning Jewish], living in Wiesbaden, Gothestraße Nr. 5, died on 9^th of August 1942 in his Apartment. He was born on 23th of December 1863 in Mainz.

Father: Siegfried Seligmann, deceased. Mother: Karoline Seligmann, nee Seligmann, deceased. He was widower of Anna Maria Angelika born as Illien. The death was announced by Emil Seligmann, his son, living Goethestraße Nr.5.

The stamp in the left hand margin says: Wiesbaden, 31th of May 1949. The “Zwangsvorname”Israel is deleted. Zwangsvorname translates as “forced first name,” meaning that the name Israel had been required by the Nazis, I assume as a way to identify him as Jewish.

Emil had a son, also named Emil, who died in Buchenwald, as this record attests.

(To: Miss Christine Seligmann, Wiesbaden, Goethestr. Nr. 5,1

From: Special registry-office in Arolsen-Waldeck, department Buchenwald

Subject: death-certification for Emil-Jakob Seligmann, Your letter from the 1. of March 1950

Based on the documents of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen it is proved, that your brother died on 14^th of February 1945 in the Concentration Camp Buchenwald. )

I imagine that this is not the end of the list of the Seligmanns who were murdered during the Holocaust, and I imagine that there are also many other family members I never knew about who were killed by the Nazis, whether they were named Schoenfeld, Nussbaum, Dreyfuss, Goldschlager, Rosenzweig, Cohen, or Brotman or something else. I just haven’t found them yet.

Wolfgang and I plan to keep on exchanging stories, pictures, documents, and other information. We have also already talked about meeting someday and walking in the footsteps of our mutual ancestors. What an honor it will be to be with him as we share our family’s story.

The Schoenfelds and Erbes-Budesheim: Part II

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Amy

Author: Elisabeth Dauscher Location: 55234 Erbes-Büdesheim, Rhineland-Palatinate
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erbes_Buedesheim_Rheinhessen_ed.JPG

In my last post, I wrote about Erbes-Budesheim, the German town where my Schoenfeld ancestors lived, where my 3x-great-grandmother was born, and where my 4x- and 5x-great-grandparents lived. From the records I was able to obtain, I know that my 4x-great-grandparents Bernhard Schoenfeld and Rosina Goldmann were married and living in Erbes-Budesheim by 1804 when their first child Benedict Baehr was born.

As explained to me by Gerd Braun, the man in Erbes-Budesheim who sent me the documents, when the French took over control of the region, one thing that they did in 1808 was order the Jewish residents to adopt surnames akin to those used by the Christian population. Before that, Jews used patronymics. Thus, before 1808, Bernhard Schoenfeld was named Baer (ben) Salomon[1] and Rosina was Rosina (bat) Benjamin. The two children born before 1808 were named Benedict (ben) Baer and Taubchen (bat) Baer. Taubchen was renamed Eva Schoenfeld after 1808.

Here is the birth record for Benedict. (All the records before 1816 are in French, and my high school French classes came in handy.) The translations for all of the documents below are in italics.

Benedict Baer birth record 1804

Act of birth of Benedict Baer born the 15^th of Frimaire [2] at 10 in the morning, the legitimate son of Baer Salomon, merchant, living in Erbesbudesheim, and of Rosine nee Benjamin of Munchweiler. The sex of the child has been recognized as masculine. [Witnesses and signatures]

Benedict died just eight months later.

Benedict Baer death record 1805

Act of death of Benedict Baer, died the 17^th of Messidor[3] at 7 in the evening, eight months old, born in Erbesbudesheim and living in Erbesbudesheim. Son of Baer Salomon and Roes nee Benjamin. On the declaration made by Baer Salomon, his father, resident of Erbesbudesheim and a merchant, and Francois Colin, resident of Erbesbudeshem, a barber and a neighbor.

A year later, Taubechen (who became Eva) was born:

Birth record of Taubchen Baer/Eva Schoenfeld 1806

Act of birth: In the year 1806 on the 2d of June in the afternoon appeared before the mayor of Erbesbudesheim… Baehr Salomon, a merchant, 34 years old, living in Erbesbudesheim, No. 66, and presented to us a female child of him and his legal wife Rosine nee Benjamin born the 2dof June at 5 in the morning and also stated that he wanted to give the child the name Taubchen. [Witnesses and signatures.]

The children born after 1808 were given the name Schoenfeld, including my 3-x great-grandmother, Babetta. You will see that on this record, Bernard and Rosine are referred to with surnames.

Babete Schoenfeld birth record 1806

In the year 1810, the 28^th of February, at nine in the morning, Bernard Schoenfeld, 37 years old, a merchant, and a resident of Erbesbudesheim,appeared before Andre Cronenberger, Mayor of Erbesbudesheim and presented a female child born the 28^th of February in the morning of himself and Rosine nee Goldmann, his wife, and also declared that he wanted to give the child the name of Babet. [Witnesses and signatures]

In addition, I received records for other children of Bernard and Rosina Schoenfeld, ancestors I’d not known about before. The first two are in French, but the last two are in German because they occurred when the region was back under German control. The two in French follow the format and content of those above and evidence the births of a daughter Marianne, born June 29, 1812, and a daughter Rebecque, born July 20, 1814.

Birth record of Marianna Schoenfled 1812

Birth record of Rebecque Schoenfeld 1814

The last two are in German. Thank you to Matthias Steinke for the translations. The first record is for the birth of another daughter, Zibora, in 1818.

Birtn record of Zibora Schoenfeld 1818

In the year 1818, the 23rd of May came to me, the mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity of Erbesbuedesheim, county of Alzey, Bernhard Schoenfeld, 45 years old, merchant, residing in Erbesbuedesheim, who reported, that at the 22^nd of May at 11 o´clock in the night a child of female sex, which he showed me, was born and whom he intends to give the first name Zibora, and which he declared to have fathered with his wife Rosina Goldmann, 35 old, residing in Erbesbuedesheim. The child was born in the Hauptstr. nr. 77. This declaration and presentation happened in presence of the witnesses Johannes Knobloch, 55 years old, farmer, in Erbesbuedesheim residing and Jacob Landesberg, 29 years old, farmer, in Erbesbuedesheim residing, and have the father and the witnesses signed his birth-record and it was read to them. Signatures

The last child of Bernard and Rosine for whom I have a record was their daughter Saara, born in 1820:

Birth Record of Saara Schoenfeld 1820

In the year 1820 the fifteenth of October at twelve o´clock midday came to me, mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim Bernhard Schoenfeld, 51 years old, merchant, residing in Erbes-Buedesheim, who reported, that at the fifteenth October at two o´clock in the morning a child of female sex, whom he showed me, was born and whom he intends to give the name Saara, and he also reported, that he fathered the child with Rosina Goldmann, 41 years old, residing in Erbes-Buedesheim, his legal wife. This declaration and showing happened in presence of the witness Johannes Knobloch, 57 years old, farmer, and Jakob Landsberg, 28 years old, merchant, both residing in Erbes-Buedesheim, and have the father and the witnesses with me this present birth-certificate after it was read to them, signed. Signatures

In the midst of all these births, there was also a death. On February 16, 1813, Salomon Schoenfeld, father of Bernard Schoenfeld, died at age 63 (or is that soixant treize meaning 73?). His occupation was given as “cultivateur,” or cultivator, which I assume means that he was a farmer. The witnesses to his death included Benoit Schoenfeld, his son, age 23, a “propietaire” or owner, but no indication of what he owned. This must have been a younger brother of Bernard since in 1813 Bernard would have been at least 40 years old. (His age seems to vary from birth record to birth record.)

Death Record of Salomon Schoenfeld 1813

There is also a record for the birth of the child of an Isaac Schoenfeld and a Barbe Goldmann who is probably also a family member, though I am not sure what the exact connection was between these Goldmanns and Schoenfelds and Bernhard and Rosina, my 4x great-grandparents. But the number of marriages between a Schoenfeld man and a Goldmann woman are somewhat revealing. Here is a third such marriage, this one between Rebeka (Rebecque) Schoenfeld, the daughter of Bernhard and Rosina, and Salomon Goldmann. Is it any surprise that Ashkenazi Jews come up with thousands of matches when DNA testing is done? We are all interrelated at so many different levels.

Marriage Record for Rebecque/Rebkah Schoenfeld and Salomon Goldmann

In the year 1834 on the fifteenth October at ten o´clock pre midday came to me, Andreas Cronenberger mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim, county of Alzey:

Salomon Goldmann, 42 years old, merchant, residing in Kirchheimbolanden, Rhein-county, Bavaria, born in …thal, like it was presented to me by a certificate of the district-court Kirchheimbolanden from the 24th of December 1807, which was certified by the district-court in Mainz, the adult son of 1. Joseph Goldmann, 75 years old, during his lifetime a merchant in Kirchheimbolanden, deceased there the 8^th of November, 1800 (some parts here were cut off) 2. Friederike Goldmann, widow, nee Goldmann, 62 years old, without profession residing in Kirchheimbolanden and here present and giving her confirmation and who declared to be unable to write.

And on the other hand, Rebeka Schoenfeld (Schönfeld), 20 years old, born in Erbebudesheim in 1814, like I have seen in the present birth-register of the year 1814, without profession, in Erbes-Buedsheim residing.

Minor daughter of 1. Bernhard Schoenfeld, 62 years old, merchant and owner of a manor, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing. 2. Rosina Schoenfeld nee Goldmann, 55 years old, without profession, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, both are present and giving their confirmation.

The appearing people asked me to do the marriage. The proclamation was published at the main-door of the comunity-building the September 24, 1834 at noon and the second the September 26 at noon in Erbes-Buedesheim and in Kirchheimbolanden the 14^th of September the first time and the 21^st of September of the same year the second time was made.

Due to the case, that no objections against this marriage appeared, and after reading the sixth chapter of the civil-rights-lawbook which is titled „about the marriage“ I asked them whether they want to marry each other. Both confirmed this question and I declared that Salomon Goldmann, widower from Kirchheimbolanden and the maiden Rebeka Schoenfeld of Erbes-Buedesheim are from now on connected by the matrimony.

About this act this certificate was made in presence of the following witnesses:

Georg Peter Erbach, 54 years old, member of the regional council and manor-owner in Erbes-Buedesheim, a neighbour of the bride, not related. Johannes Klippel, 45 years old, farmer in Erbes-Buedesheim, not related, a neighbour of the bride, Christoph Zopf, 49 years old, farmer in Erbes-Buedesheim, not related, a neighbour of the bride, Johannes Härter, 82 years old, comunity-servant in Erbes-Buedesheim, not related, a neighbour of the bride. After happened reading have all parts this document with me signed. Signatures

I have a couple of observations about this marriage certificate. First, the groom was a widower and 24 years older than the bride. Also, Rebeka was younger than her sister Babete or Babetta, my 3x-great-grandmother, yet married before her, even though this would appear to have been an arranged marriage. Did Babetta object to marrying Salomon? Or did Salomon choose Rebeka over her older sister?

Also, I was struck by the fact that Bernard was described not just as a merchant, as he had been in the records of his children’s births, but as the owner of a manor. Perhaps this explains why my Schoenfeld relatives were living in this small village with almost no Jewish residents. Bernard must have been quite successful to be a manor owner.

Two years after this wedding, Bernard Schoenfeld died.

Death record of Bernard Schoenfeld 1836

In the year 1836 November 20^th, at eight o´clock pre midday came to me, Andreas Cronenberger, mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim, county of Alzey, 1. the Jakob Landsberg, 46 years old, merchant in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, related as uncle of the below named deceased, and 2. Leopold Schoenfeld, 42 years old, merchant, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, related as sibling of the below named deceased, and have reported to me that Bernhard Schoenfeld, 67 years old, merchant and manor-owner, born and residing in Erbes-Bueresheim, married to Rosina Schoenfeld, nee Goldmann ,56 years old, without profession, residing in Erbes-Buedesheim. Parents were: Salomon Schoenfeld, during lifetime merchant and manor-owner in Erbes-Buedesheim, 2. Gertrude Schoenfeld nee Judah, during lifetime also residing in Erbes-Buedesheim.

Died November 1836 at three o´clock past midday in house nr 85 in the Hauptstrasse (Mainstreet) here is deceased and have the here present this certificate after it was read to them with me undersigned.

In this record, Bernard’s father Salomon is described as a merchant and manor owner, not a cultivator. I am not sure how to reconcile that with the earlier record of Salomon’s death. The above record also reveals two more relatives: Leopold Schoenfeld, another brother of Bernard, and Jakob Landsberg, an uncle. But Jakob Landsberg was over 20 years younger than Bernard. Perhaps he was a nephew? Leopold Schoenfeld’s headstone appeared in the video I posted in the last post. Here’s a screenshot from that video:

Leopold Schoenfeld headstone

Just a few months after Bernard Schoenfeld died, his daughter Babete, my 3-x great-grandmother, married Moritz Seligmann on February 14, 1837.

Marriage record of Babete Schoenfeld and Moritz Seligmann 1837

In the year 1837 the 14th of the month February, at three o´clock past midday to me, Peter Cronenberger, mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim, county of Alzey came:

Moritz Seligmann, 38 years old, widower of Eva Seligmann, nee Schoenfeld, deceased in Gaulsheim the 12^th of May 1835 as it is written in the death-register of the comunity Gaulsheim of the year 1835, merchant, in Gau Algesheim residing, like it is in the birth-records of the community Gau Algesheim to find, adult son of 1. Jacob Seligmann, 63 years old, merchant, in Gaulsheim residing, 2. Martha Seligmann nee Mayer, 63 years old, in Gaulsheim residing, both not present, but giving their permission to this marriage according a notary-certificate of the notary Wieger in Gaulsheim from the 6^th of February, 1837,

and on the other hand, Babete Schoenfeld, 26 years old, without profession, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, born the February 28, 1810, like it is stated in the birth-register of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim of the year 1810, adult daughter of 1. Bernhard Schoenfeld, during lifetime merchant, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, deceased 19^th of November 1836, as it is stated in the death-register of the comunity Erbes-Buedesheim, 2. Rosina Schoenfeld, nee Goldmann , 56 years old, in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, last named here present and consenting to the marriage. ….

Due to the case, that no objections against this marriage appeared, and after reading the sixth chapter of the civil-rights-lawbook which is titled ‘about the marriage,“ I asked them whether they want to marry each other. Both confirmed this question and I declared that Moritz Seligmann, merchant in Gau Algesheim residing and Babete Schoenfeld, without profession in Erbes-Buedesheim residing, are from now on legally connected by the matrimony.

About this act I made this certificate in the presence of the following witnesses: [Witnesses and signatures]

This marriage record answered a question that I had had about the two sisters both marrying Moritz Seligmann. According to this record, Eva Schoenfeld had died on May 12, 1835. Eva died in the aftermath of giving birth to her fourth child, Benjamin, who was born on May 10, 1835.

Her sister Babetta (as it was later spelled) became the instant mother of Eva’s four children, who then ranged in age from Benjamin, not yet two years old, to eight year old Sigmund, who would be the first to come to the US and settle in Santa Fe. Babetta not only had these four children to care for; she must also have become pregnant almost immediately after the wedding because my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman, obviously named for Babetta’s father Bernard Schoenfeld who had died the year before, was born on November 23, 1837, just nine months and nine days after the marriage.

The last record I received from Erbes-Budesheim was the death record for Rosina Goldmann Schoenfeld, dated July 19, 1862. She was 84 years old. She was my 4-x great-grandmother. All I know about her is where she was born, her father’s name, her husband’s name, and the names of her children and some of her grandchildren. I know that she lost one child at eight months old, an adult daughter in the aftermath of childbirth, and her husband almost thirty years before she died. It’s not a lot, but it is remarkable to me that I know even that much about a woman who was born in the 18^th century in Germany.

Death record of Rosina Goldmann Schoenfeld 1862

So what have I learned about my Schoenfeld ancestors and their lives in Erbes-Budesheim from all these documents? First, they must have been one of only a very few Jewish families in Erbes-Budesheim if the total Jewish population was just 23 people. Second, they must have been fairly comfortable living in that small town, living as merchants and manor owners. But there was no future for their family in the town. Bernard Schoenfeld and Rosina Goldmann had only daughters who survived to adulthood. To find marriage partners for their daughters, Bernard and Rosina had to look outside of Erbes-Budesheim. Their 20 year old daughter Rebeka Schoenfeld married a 44 year old widower from a town in Bavaria, about ten miles from Erbes-Budesheim. Their daughter Eva married Moritz Seligmann and moved to Gau-Algesheim. Then their daughter Babetta, my 3-x great-grandmother, married Moritz after her sister died. These young women must have had no choice but to marry and move away from Erbes-Budesheim. No wonder the town’s Jewish population never grew and eventually declined and disappeared.

But the cemetery still exists, and Erbes-Budesheim is one more town to add to my list of ancestral towns I’d like to visit one day.

[1] Gerd Braun did not use the Hebrew terms “ben” or “bat” for son or daughter of, but simply referred to them as, for example, Baehr Salomon. I am assuming, however, based on Jewish practice, that the second name would have been the father’s first name. Thus, Baehr Salomon is really Baehr son of (ben) Salomon.

[2] According to Wikipedia, Frimaire “was the third month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the French word frimas, which means frost. Frimaire was the third month of the autumn quarter (mois d’automne). It started between November 21 and November 23. It ended between December 20 and December 22. It follows the Brumaire and precedes the Nivôse.” Benedict was thus born about December 6.

[3] Messidor in the French Republic Calendar was equivalent to June 19 to July 18. The 17^th would be equivalent to July 6.

New Seligmann Discoveries: Erbes-Budesheim and the Schoenfelds, Part I

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Amy

While you all may have thought that for the last several months I was obsessed with Nusbaums and Dreyfusses (and I guess I was), there were several other things happening in my genealogy life (not to mention my actual life) that I haven’t had a chance to blog about yet. One of the biggest things was the discovery of documents and information about another line of my family, the Schoenfelds, and another ancestral town, Erbes-Budesheim.

Erbes-Büdesheim in January 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who are the Schoenfelds? Moritz Seligmann, my 3-x great-grandfather from Gau Algesheim, married two Schoenfeld sisters (not at the same time, of course). First, he married Eva Schoenfeld and had four children with her, and then he married her younger sister, Babetta, my 3-x great-grandmother, the mother of Bernard Seligman, my great-great-grandfather. Moritz and Babetta had seven children together in addition to the four born to Eva.

Because the birth names of women often disappear, it is all too easy to overlook the family names and lines that end when a woman changes her name to that of her husband. Although I was always aware of the family names of Goldschlager, Brotman, Cohen, Nusbaum, and Seligman (as well as those from my paternal grandmother’s side, not yet covered on the blog), I had no awareness of a family connection to the names Rosenzweig, Dreyfuss, Jacobs, and Schoenfeld. Discovering the Schoenfeld name, like discovering those others, was an exciting revelation and addition to my extended family tree.

So how did this happen? As I wrote back on December 1, Ludwig Hellriegel’s book about the Jews of Gau Algesheim revealed that Moritz Seligmann was born in Gaulsheim and had moved to Gau Algesheim as an adult. That discovery had led me to the Arbeitskreis Jüdisches Bingen and a woman named Beate Goetz. Beate sent me the marriage record for Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld, which revealed that Eva was the daughter of Bernhard Schoenfeld and Rosina Goldmann from Erbes-Budesheim. (Now I also know another maternal name—Goldmann.)

Marriage record for Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld February 27, 1829 Gaulsheim, Germany

From there I contacted the registry in Erbes-Budesheim to ask about records for my Schoenfeld ancestors, and within a short period of time, I received several emails from a man named Gerd Braun with an incredible treasure trove of information and records about my Schoenfeld ancestors.

But first, a little about Erbes-Budesheim. Erbes-Budseheim is a municipality in the Alzey-Worms district of the Rhineland-Palatine state in Germany. It is located about 25 miles south of Gaulsheim where Moritz Seligmann was born and grew up and about 27 miles south of Gau Algesheim where Moritz and his family eventually settled. The closest major city is Frankfort, about 46 miles away.

Erbes-Büdesheim in AZ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The town has an ancient history, dating back to the Stone Age, according to Wikipedia. Like many regions in Germany, it was subject to various wars and conquerors throughout much of its history. During the Napoleonic era in the late 18^th, early 19^th century, Erbes-Budesheim and the entire Alzey region were annexed as part of France; after 1815 it was under the control of the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

Although originally a Catholic community, after the Reformation Erbes-Budesheim became a predominantly Protestant community. Some sources say that there was a small Jewish community in Erbes-Budesheim as early as the 16^th century, but as of 1701, there were only 15 Jews (two families) living in the town. A third family lived there in 1733, but even as late as 1824 and throughout the entire 19^th century, the population did not exceed 23 people. The Jews in Erbes-Budesheim for much of that history joined with Jews from neighboring communities for prayer, education, and burial.

By 1849, however, one Jewish resident named Strauss had dedicated the first floor of his home for prayer services, and it was furnished with the essential elements for a synagogue: Torah scrolls, an ark, a yad, and a shofar, for example. Perhaps this is where my 4-x great-grandfather Bernhard Schoenfeld went to daven [pray] when he and his family lived in Erbes-Budesheim.

Strauss home where the Erbes-Budesheim Synagogue was located
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/erbes_buedesheim_synagoge.htm

There is also a Jewish cemetery in Erbes-Budesheim.

Erbes-Budesheim cemetery http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2059/ErbesBuedesheim%20Friedhof%20102.jpg

On this video you can some headstones with the name Schoenfeld from the Erbes-Budesheim cemetery.

By 1939, there were only eight Jews left in the town, and it would appear from the allemannia-judaica website that none of these survived the Holocaust.

Thus, Erbes-Budesheim was never a place where a substantial Jewish community existed, and it makes me wonder what would have brought my ancestors there. Why would anyone want to be one of a handful of Jews in a community? In my next post, I will consider that question and share the documents I received from Erbes-Budesheim.

The First Chapter: The Dreyfuss Family

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Amy

Yeah, I know. My last post said it was the FINAL chapter of the Dreyfuss family. How could this one be the first?

Way back on November 18, 2014, I wrote, “More on the Dreyfuss family in a later post.” Then I proceeded to write about the Nusbaum family and the Dreyfuss family together. Since two Dreyfuss sisters (Jeanette and Mathilde) had married two Nusbaum brothers (John and Maxwell), it just made sense to follow the stories of the three Dreyfuss sisters (Jeanette, Mathilde and Caroline) along with the stories of the Nusbaum siblings. But what I never got back to doing was what I had promised back on November 18. I never got back to the beginning of the Dreyfuss story as I moved forward from the 1840s in America through to the 20^th century. So although my last post was called the “Final Chapter” of the Dreyfuss family, I need to go back and write the first chapter before I can complete the story (as far as I currently know it).

So I need to step backwards in time—both in my time and in the times of the Dreyfuss family before 1840. Back in the fall when I was researching the family of John Nusbaum, I had a wonderful resource in the family bible owned by my father. My father had photocopied several pages of handwritten entries for births, deaths, and marriages from the bible , and most of those entries related to the Nusbaum family. From studying the page for marriages, I learned that John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather, had married Jeanette Dreyfus (as it was spelled there). And that was the first time I knew the birth name of my three-times great-grandmother. On the page for births, the second entry after the one for John Nusbaum was one for Jeanette Nusbaum, giving her birth date and her place of birth. It took me a while to figure out what it said because of the handwriting, but eventually I was able to decipher it and learned that Jeanette was born in “Hechingen in Wurttemberg, Prussia,” as it is inscribed in the bible.

But there was no other Dreyfus(s) on any of the pages in the bible, and I was at that point in time focused on the Nusbaum line. It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized that the bible’s death entry for Mathilde Pollock was not an entry for a sister of John Nusbaum, but an entry for a sister of Jeanette Dreyfuss (who happened to marry a brother of John Nusbaum) and that the entry for Caroline Wiler was also not a sister of John Nusbaum but another Dreyfuss sister. The big clue was finding 65 year old Mary Dreyfuss on the 1850 census living with Caroline and Moses Wiler: a head-slapping moment when it occurred to me that it was Jeanette who was keeping the family bible and that, of course, she would record her sisters as well as her husband’s siblings in the family bible.

And then in mid-November I went on JewishGen’s Family Finder page and found Ralph Baer, who was also researching the Dreyfuss family from Hechingen. I have mentioned Ralph before in the context of the Nusbaum/Dreyfuss family and his generous help with research and translation, but what I had forgotten to write about in my telling of the story of the Nusbaum/Dreyfuss family in the US was what Ralph had helped me learn about my Dreyfuss roots in Hechingen, Germany.

Hechingen, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, a little about Hechingen. Today it is in the German state of Baden-Wurttemburg, located about 56 miles north of the Swiss border in southern Germany. It is about 40 miles from Stuttgart, the state capital. Although inhabited long before, the city was founded as the capital city of the Counts of Hohenzollern in 1255. It remained during the Middle Ages a provincial and agricultural community. During the 16^th century, it became a center for art, architecture and music. Even after the Reformation, it remained a largely Catholic community. Throughout its pre-19^th century history, Hechingen was subjected to many sieges and attacks by other German states as well as by Sweden.

de: Burg Hohenzollern bei Hechingen, Baden-Württemberg, Deutschland en:Castle Hohenzollern near Hechingen, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “There was a small Jewish settlement in Hechingen in the early 16th century, and a house was bought for use as a synagogue by the community of 10 families in 1546. In 1592 the burghers refused to conduct any commercial or financial transactions with Jews, who therefore left the town. There is no trace of Jewish settlement in the town during the next century. In 1701 Prince Frederick William I gave letters of protection lasting 10 years to six Jewish families in the neighboring villages; soon there were Jews living in the city as well. By 1737 there were 30 households, and a synagogue was built in 1761 which existed until 1870.”

Hechingen Synagogue
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2050/Hechingen%20Synagoge%20533.jpg

The Jewish community blossomed in Hechingen in the late 18^th and early 19^th century through the efforts of a woman named Chaile Raphael Kaulla. Her father was a successful entrepreneur and banker, and he provided Chaile with a good education. She even learned German, not something girls were usually taught in those times. When her father died, Chaile, being much older than her oldest brother, took over her father’s business; she managed the business very successfully while also raising six children. Her husband, a Talmudic scholar, did not work. Chaile and her brother Jacob developed a very good relationship with the authorities in Hechingen and became the leaders of the Jewish community there. Here is more about Chaile from the Jewish Women’s Archive:

Chaile developed an aristocratic lifestyle, owning an elegant house and a horse-drawn carriage, but she continued to live according to Jewish law. She never forgot the mitzvot and cared for the Jewish community together with her brother, using her connections to the prince. The Kaulla family had their own private synagogue and rabbi. Both sister and brother gave generously to the Jewish as well as to the Christian poor and founded a hostel for needy and migrating Jews in Hechingen. In 1803, they donated a Bet Midrash, a Talmud school, with three rabbinical scholars whom they supported, together with their students and an important library.

Interior of Hechingen Synagogue
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2022/Hechingen%20Synagoge%20003.jpg

The 19^th century was a time of economic and industrial growth for the town of Hechingen and for its Jewish residents. Wikipedia states that “By 1850, Hechingen had started to industrialize, primarily with Jewish enterprises. By 1871 the city had become one of the most important economic centres in the region, with textiles and machine shops among the major industries.” According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Jewish community in Hechingen was “prosperous and owned most of the local industries.” The Jewish population reached 809 people in 1842, which was about a quarter of the total population of the town. This was also around the time that my three-times great-grandmother Jeanette and her sisters and mother would have left, which might seem strange, given how favorable the conditions there seemed to have been.

The Alemannia-Judaica, however, reports that there were some anti-Semitic “disturbances” in the 1840s, and the Dreyfuss sisters were not the only ones to leave. By 1880, the Jewish population had dropped to 340; by the 1930s it had dropped to only 101. Like so many other Europeans, Jews and non-Jews, the lure of opportunities elsewhere must have been irresistible. The Dreyfuss sisters were wise to leave Hechingen because it was no more immune to the destruction and genocide of the Nazis than any other place during the Holocaust. The synagogue was heavily damaged on Kristallnacht in November, 1938, and most of the Jewish men were sent to Dachau. In the aftermath, 53 Jews emigrated successfully; the remaining 32 Jewish residents of Hechingen were sent to concentration camps where all but one were murdered by the Nazis.

Syngague after Kristallnacht http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2022/Hechingen%20Synagoge%20071.jpg

Synagogue after Kristallnacht
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2022/Hechingen%20Synagoge%20071.jpg

According to another source, “In 1991, the synagogue building was rebuilt as a cultural center, housing an exhibition on Hechingen’s Jewish history. A new Jewish community was founded in Hechingen in 2003.” More pictures can be found here.

The Synagogue after Renovations http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2050/Hechingen%20Synagoge%20531.jpg

Where did my ancestors fit into this story of Hechingen? I was very, very lucky to find Ralph Baer on the JewishGen Family Finder because Ralph had already done extensive research on all the Hechingen Dreyfuss families years before I stumbled onto the name in the old family bible. Even though he had not been able to find a connection between his Dreyfuss ancestors and mine, he had included my line in his tree when he’d done his research years ago. Thus, my first email from Ralph in response to my inquiry as to his Hechingen Dreyfuss family included the following names:

A)3. Samuel (Sanwil) DREYFUß (ZELLER) 25 May 1776 Hechingen – 3 July 1859
Hechingen, married about 1805 to Miriam (Marianna) Samson BERNHEIM 17 May
1787 – 1841

A)31. Jeanette DREYFUß 20 May 1817 Hechingen, married to … NUßBAUM

A)32. Moses DREYFUß 10 February 1819 Hechingen

A)33. Goldel (Golde, Auguste) DREYFUß 16 October 1822 Hechingen,
married to … WEILER

A)34. Mathilde (Magdalena) DREYFUß 30 March 1825 Hechingen, married
to … POLLAK

A)35. Samson DREYFUß about 1827 Hechingen

A)36. Auguste DREYFUß about 1829 Hechingen[1]

There were my 3x-great-grandparents right at line 31, and there at line 33 was Caroline (born Golde) “Weiler” and at line 34 Mathilde “Pollak.” I knew immediately that Ralph had found the three Dreyfuss sisters listed in my family bible. Not only did the names line up, but so did the birth dates. Thus, I now also knew that Jeanette, Caroline, and Mathilde were the daughters of Samuel Dreyfuss Zeller (later documents, as I found, indicated he had changed his surname to Zeller) and Miriam (Marianna) Samson Bernheim, that is, the Mary Dreyfuss I had found on the 1850 census living with her daughter Caroline in Pennsylvania. (The death date of 1841 given for Miriam Ralph and I later discovered was not correct. I have not, however, found a death record for Miriam, though with two grandchildren named Miriam, one (Miriam Nusbaum, daughter of John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss) in 1858, and one in 1859 (Miriam Pollock, daughter of Mathilde Dreyfuss and Moses Pollock, it would appear that Miriam died before 1858.) In addition, I now had evidence of three other siblings: Moses, Samson, and Auguste.

But, of course, I wanted to see the actual records where Ralph had long ago found my relatives while researching his own. With his patient assistance, I was able to locate a number of records relating to my Dreyfuss ancestors. Fortunately, many of the Jewish vital records from the Baden-Wurttemburg region are digitized and available on line, and Ralph walked me step by step through the process of researching those archives and then helped me translate what I had found. Once again, I struggled with the German script, but with Ralph’s help, I was able to find a number of relevant records.

I am now including the links to them here with a transcription of what is on each record so that I have a record later when I once again have trouble reading the script. If you are interested in seeing the underlying documents, just click on the links. The JPG versions were too blurry to read, so I am only posting links to the PDF versions, with two exceptions that were more legible.

Dreyfuss births (1) Birth Registry for Hechingen 1800-1905

Line 132 Moses Dreyfuss Father Samuel Mother Miriam geb Bernheim

Line 186 Golde (Augusta) Dreyfuss Father Samuel Mother Miriam geb Bernheim

Line 223 Mathilde Dreyfuss SAME

Dreyfuss Family on Archives film 240 bild 31 (Census 1831)

#192 Samuel Dreyfuss 56 and Marianna 44. Six children: Jeanette 14, Magdalena 6, Golde 10, Moses 12, Samson 4, and Auguste 2.

Golde Auguste Caroline Dreyfuss birth record

First line: October 16, 1822 Golde (Augusta) Samuel Dreyfuss Miriam geb Bernheim

Mathilde Dreyfuss birth record

Sixth line: March 30 1825 Mathilde Samuel Dreyfuss Miriam geb Bernheim

Meier Dreyfuss brother of Samuel Death Record

Parents Samson Dreyfuss and Jeanette

Moses Dreyfuss birth record

Seventh line: February 10, 1819 Moses Dreyfuss Samuel Dreyfuss Miriam geb Bernheim

Moses Zeller ne Dreyfuss death record Hechingen

Son of Samuel Zeller and Marie geb Bernheimer

Samuel Dreyfuss and family on Hechingen Family Records

Film J 386 Bü 241 Bild 13 https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de/ofs21/bild_zoom/zoom.php?bestand=5632&id=1171657&gewaehlteSeite=01_0000445296_0013_1-445296-13.jpg&ausgangspunkt=thumbnails&groesseThumbnails=150&thumbnailsProSeite=5&screenbreite=1366&screenhoehe=728

Ralph helped me decipher this; otherwise, it would have meant nothing to me: The name DREYFUSS is underlined with Samuel next to it. Below Samuel is written Zeller. Below that it says Eltern (parents) Samson, and below that Jeanette(Scheile). To the right is geb. (born) and below that get. (married). The birth date for Samuel is on the right 1776 25 Mai. Between that is written “63 alt geworden” (became 63 years old, his age at the time of the compilation). For marriage it says angebl. (apparently) 1805 with also something in Hebrew. Samuel’s wife is on the right: Miriam, daughter of Samson Bern…and Golde. It also mentions a sister name Sussen right below that. The birth date for Miriam is listed as 17 Merz (March) 1787. On the bottom are the children. The first one on the left is r Jeanette. In parentheses after her name is NUSSBAUM and below that 20 years old. To the left it states ca. 1817 20 Mai. Also listed are Moses, Mathilde Madel (Pollak), and Auguste (Golde) Weiler with birthdates. (This was obviously compiled after 1851 since all three sisters are married and Mathilde is already married to Moses Pollock, whom she did not marry until after Maxwell Nusbaum died in 1851.)

Samuel Dreyfuss death record bild 143 (second on page)

Samuel Zeller death p 1 Samuel Zeller death p 2

Bottom of both pages: Samuel Zeller Hechingen Samson Dreyfuss and Jeanette Alterschwaeche (old age)

There are some missing records. I do not have a separate birth record for Jeanette. Nor can I find a death record for her mother, my 4x-great-grandmother Miriam Bernheim. I cannot find any records for the two youngest of the siblings, Samson and Auguste. I also do not understand why there are two children with the name Auguste. Perhaps one was a child of a family member who died? There is also a huge gap between the recorded marriage date for Samuel Dreyfuss and Miriam Bernheim of 1806 and the birth date of their oldest child, Jeanette, in 1817. Did Samuel and Miriam have other children who died, or is their marriage date incorrect? Samuel would have been 41 in 1817, Miriam would have been 30. Both Samuel and Miriam had fathers named Samson. Were both alive in 1819 when Moses was born? If not, it seems odd that their first son would not have been named Samson, unless there had been an earlier born son named Samson who had died.

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I have answers to so many more questions than I ever expected, thanks to Ralph. I know the names of my 4x-great-grandparents, Samuel Dreyfuss Zeller and Miriam Bernheim, and the names of my 5x-great-grandparents, Samson and Jeanette Dreyfuss and Samson and Golde Bernheim. I have the names of the three other siblings of my 3-x great-grandmother Jeanette: Moses, Samson, and Auguste. And I am not yet done looking for more about my Dreyfuss ancestors and now, my Bernheim ancestors as well.

Once again, I am deeply grateful to Ralph Baer. Without him, none of this would have been possible.

[1] Together Ralph and I filled in many of the blanks here, enabling both of us to have a more complete record.

More Blessings and More Insight into My Seligmann Ancestors

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Amy

This morning I woke up to another email that made me smile to start my day. But to understand why, I need to backtrack a bit.

One of the passages that was translated by Ralph Baer from Ludwig Hellriegel’s book on the history of the Jews of Gau-Algesheim indicated that Moritz Seligmann had originally come from Gaulsheim, a town that is only five miles from Gau-Algesheim. In this passage, Hellriegel described Moritz Seligmann’s attempt to get permission to move to Gau-Algesheim in 1828. He was denied permission the first time because the mayor concluded that there were already too many Jews in the town. He then appealed, and although the mayor still wanted to deny him permission, Seligmann prevailed because he was legally entitled to move to the town.

This passage gave me a clue as to where Moritz, my three-times great-grandfather, might have been born, and Ralph suggested I contact the archives in Gaulsheim for more information. I found an organization called Arbeitskreis Judische Bingen, or a study group of Jews in Bingen. (Bingen now includes the town of Gaulsheim.) I wrote to the organization, asking for any information that they might have on Moritz Seligmann or his family.

And that brings me to my happy morning email. A woman from the Arbeitskreis named Beate Goetz sent me a copy of the marriage record for Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld. Not only did this email confirm that Moritz was born in Gaulsheim (on January 10, 1800) and that he married Eva Schoenfeld (on February 27, 1829), it told me the names of my four-times great-grandparents, Jacob Seligmann and Martha nee Jacob/Mayer (my guess is that Mayer was the surname adopted by her father Jacob when surnames were required in the early 19th century).

In addition, I know now when Eva Schoenfeld was born (June 2, 1806) and where she was born (in Erbes-Budenheim), and I know her parents’ names: Bernhard Schoenfeld and Rosina Goldmann. Assuming that Eva and Babetta, Moritz’s second wife, were sisters, Bernhard and Rosina were also my four-times great-grandparents. Now I need to see what records I can find in Erbes-Budenheim to determine if in fact Eva and Babetta were sisters. Beate said that she would also continue to look for a birth record for Moritz (who was born Moises) and any other relevant records.

Marriage record for Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld February 27, 1829 Gaulsheim, Germany

I also know from Ralph’s additional translation of the marriage record that Jacob Seligmann and Bernhard Schoenfeld were both traders as was Moritz. The record also indicated that the bride’s parents did not attend the wedding; as Ralph explained, this was probably a second ceremony for purposes of civil law and thus not as important as the religious wedding ceremony, which presumably the couple’s parents did attend.

Thus, thanks to Ralph Baer’s translation of a passage in the Hellriegel book, I now have learned the names of four more of my ancestors.

The Hellriegel book just continues to be a treasure chest of information. Thanks to Matthias Steinke, I also have a translation of another few passages of Ludwig Hellriegel’s book, which shed some additional light on the character of my ancestor Moritz Seligmann.

In one passage, Hellriegel discussed the education of Jewish children in Gau-Algesheim. He reported that until 1841, Jewish boys were taught Hebrew and other important subjects by their fathers, but in 1841 they were permitted to attend the Christian school in town. Apparently, this was difficult for the Jewish children, so Moritz Seligmann applied in 1850 to remove his children from the school. He then hired a private teacher named Benjamin Mayer from Essenheim to come to Gau-Algesheim to teach the children. (Essenheim is about ten miles from Gau-Algesheim.)

Apparently, however, Mayer ran into trouble in Gau-Algesheim for speaking badly about the Catholic Church, saying in front of the children and two other witnesses that those who believe in the Catholic faith are “downright stupid.” He reportedly left Gau-Algesheim shortly after this incident.

I found this passage interesting in many ways, but mostly for what it told me about my great-great-great-grandfather Moritz. He was a man who was determined to see that his children received a good education and in a setting where they were comfortable. That is a value that has certainly been passed down the generations in my family. Moritz also was apparently a man of some means since he had the money to hire a private teacher.

Coat of arms of Gau-Algesheim (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Matthias also helped me better understand a passage about Moritz and his knowledge of German. According to Matthias’ reading of this paragraph, Moritz had some role in the synagogue as an educated man. He was in charge of writing the lists of Hebrew prayers to be assigned to those who made contributions to the synagogue. (This is somewhat unclear to me. Perhaps these were prayers for certain members to lead or perhaps these were prayers for the benefit of certain members, or maybe the book is referring to payment in order to receive the honor of reading Torah in synagogue.)

A man from Mainz, Mr. Landauer, commented that Moritz was able to write German very well in compiling these lists, but that he had trouble with “unpunctured” Hebrew. I asked Ralph Baer what he thought unpunctured would mean in this context, and he explained that the German word could also be translated as undotted and that the reference to undotted Hebrew most likely meant that Moritz had a hard time reading Hebrew without vowel markings. So Moritz was more fluent in writing and reading in German than he was in Hebrew.

By Assyrio (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The final passage that Matthias helped me understand involved Julius Seligmann, the grandson of Moritz and son of August Seligmann, discussed previously. He was the Seligmann who converted to Catholicism upon marrying a Catholic woman. What I had not been able to understand before were references to Julius closing his business in 1935 in Gau-Algesheim and being the last Jew in Gau-Algesheim when he and his family left in 1939. He and his family moved to Bingen, and the book states that there the police chief did nothing against him and that his two sons Herbert and Walter were even allowed to enlist in the army, although dismissed shortly afterwards.

With a better idea of what the words say, I now think that I understand the significance of this passage. It seems that Julius, despite converting, was still seen as a Jew when the Nazis came to power and thus was forced to close his business. However, once he relocated to Bingen, he was not harassed by the police, perhaps because they did not know he was Jewish. And perhaps the significance of the sons being able to enlist also relates to this ability to deny their Jewish roots, at least for a short time.

I am obviously still reading between the lines, and without being able to read the entire book and read everything in context, I fear that I may be misreading some of these isolated passages. It’s a long term project to be able to understand the whole book and the whole story of the Jews of Gau-Algesheim. But already this little book has enabled me to learn so much more about my Seligmann ancestors.

By the way, Seligmann means “blessed man” in German. The more I learn about the Seligman(n)s, both German and American, the more it seems to be an appropriate surname for the family to have adopted, especially for those Seligmans who were fortunate enough to have left Germany before the Holocaust.

A Package from Germany, Part II: Did Moritz Seligmann Have Two Wives?

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Amy

Gau-Algesheim, Rathaus am Marktplatz (Photo credit: Wikipedia) (Town Hall)

As I mentioned in my last post, the package I received from Germany included both a book about Gau-Algesheim and photocopies of the birth records for Bernard Seligman and his siblings. Unfortunately for me, the birth records were all in German and were half in Germanic font and half in handwritten old German script. I could pick out names, and most meaningfully, I could see the signature of my great-great-great-grandfather Moritz Seligmann on all the records. But I could not read any of the text. Not the typeface print on the form, and certainly not the handwritten script.

Bernard Seligman’s birth record

JewishGen has a function called ViewMate where you can upload documents and ask JewishGen members for help in translation. I decided to try that first. Unfortunately, ViewMate limits the size of the documents you can upload to a relatively small size, and once I reduced the records to the requisite size, they were hardly legible. Plus ViewMate takes several days; your document has to be submitted to the site, approved, and then it will be posted. Then you have to send an email to the listserv and ask for help in translating the documents up uploaded. Then you have to wait for someone to see your email and respond. And you can only do five documents in a week. This seemed a bit frustrating for me in this day of instant communications.

So I turned once again to Facebook. There is a group on Facebook for German Genealogy, and I asked a question about obtaining translations of German records. Someone there referred me to a different group that exists just for that purpose: German Genealogy Transcriptions. I joined the group, and I posted the record for Bernhard Seligmann depicted above, asking if anyone could help me translate it and other records like it.

Within two hours, I heard from a group member, Matthias Steinke, who translated that first document and then spent the next couple of hours—no exaggeration—helping me with all the others. I was just blown away by his generosity as well as his ability to decipher that script from a small scanned photograph of the document. Matthias, if you are reading this, once again I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So what does that birth record for Bernhard Seligmann say? This is the translation Matthias provided, as modified based on some of the later records he reviewed:

In the year thousand eighteen hundred thirtyandseven, the twentythird November at eleven o´clock pre midday came to me, Quirin Ewen, mayor and official for the civil registration of the comunity Gau-Algesheim, county Ober-Ingelheim, Moritz Seligmann, thirtyseven years old, merchant, residing in Gau-Algesheim and declared, that at the twentythird November Eighteen hundred thirtyseven at one o´clock in the morning in the Blosselgasse nr. 98, Babetta nee Schönfeld, twentyseven years old, wife of the named Moritz Seligmann, here residing gave birth to a child of male sex, who was showed to me and who got the first name Bernhard. The declaration and showing happened in presence of the witnesses: 1. Johann Kleissinger, thirty years old, church-clerk in Gau-Algesheim residing 2. Johann Wessel (?), thirtyfive years old, tax-messenger in Gau-Algesheim residing. [signatures]

There were nine records all together, and for the others I only needed the basic data: names, ages, dates, and addresses, since I now knew what the form template was asking based on this first translation. All the basic dates and names for the children were consistent with the information I had been originally provided by Bernie Brettschneider from Gau-Algesheim, but now I had copies of the actual records to verify that information.

Plus I now had an address for where the family was living during the years from Sigmund’s birth in 1829 until Paulina’s birth in 1847. Although the house numbers vary, throughout all those years the Seligmann family was living on Flossergasse (apparently rafter alley). (Bernard’s said Blossergasse, but all the others said Flossergasse.) I was able to locate Flosserstrasse on the map as well as Langgasse where August and Hyronimus later lived. I assume Flossergasse was either off of Flosserstrasse or the street was renamed at some point.

But the records also revealed a mystery. For Sigmund (1829), Carolina (1833), and Benjamin (1835), the mother’s name is Eva nee Schonfeld. But starting with Bernhard in 1837, the mother’s name is given as Babetta or Barbara nee Schonfeld for Bernhard (1837), Hyronimus (1839), August (1841), Adolph (1843), Mathilde (1845), and Paulina (1847).

At first I thought that Eva had changed her name, but Matthias pointed out that the ages did not quite line up. Not all the birth records included a reference to the age of the mother, but in March, 1833 Eva was 26, meaning a birth year of 1806/7, depending on the month of her birthday. In May, 1835, she was 28, so that is consistent with the same birth year range. But on Bernhard’s birth record, Babette nee Schonfeld is 27 in 1837, meaning a birth year of 1809 or 1810. Two years later on December 14, 1839, she was 30, meaning her birth year was most likely in 1809. The other birth records are also consistent with a birth year for Babette in 1809.

So unless Eva both changed her name and lied about her age on the later birth records, it would appear that Sigmund, Carolina, and Benjamin had a different mother than their younger siblings and also perhaps that Moritz married Eva’s younger sister sometime between 1835 when Benjamin was born and 1837 when my great-great-grandfather was born.

Thanks again to Matthias Steinke for his incredible generosity and great skills in transcribing and translating from German to English. Thank you also to Ralph Baer who has also been a tremendous help. Ralph is the JewishGenner who has been helping me with my Nussbaum/Dreyfuss relatives as well as generally with German records and German translations. Both Ralph and Matthias are also helping me with the Gau-Algesheim book as I try and confirm and understand the passages about the Seligmanns.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am filled with gratitude for all the help I have received as I continue on this path to find my family—from the readers who comment and send me helpful suggestions to the people on Facebook who jump in to help, to the people at various libraries and historical societies who respond to my inquiries, and to the people at JewishGen who have helped me solve many mysteries. As I’ve said several times, the generosity of the genealogy community is an inspiration. If only the whole world was as giving and helpful as the people I have met in the genealogy world.

A Package from Germany and More Sobering Revelations: A Seligmann Update

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Amy

Coat of arms of Gau-Algesheim (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few days ago I received a package from Gau-Algesheim with photocopies of the birth records of Bernard Seligman and his siblings as well as a book about the Jews of Gau-Algesheim, Die Geschichte der Gau-Algesheimer Juden by Ludwig Hellriegel (1986, revised 2008)[The History of the Jews of Gau-Algesheim]. Of course, the records were in German, as is the book. And the documents were also in Germanic font and in the old German script. Completely unintelligible to me. Here is an example, the birth certificate of my great-great-grandfather, Bernard Seligman or Bernhard Seligmann, as it was originally spelled.

Bernard Seligman’s birth record

And so I started with the book, which is at least printed in regular font. I first went through the entire book (about 110 pages), looking for the name Seligmann, not really expecting to find it. But there on page 52 was the name Moritz Seligmann, and there again a few pages later, and then a list of Seligmanns a few pages after that, and then a few paragraphs here and a few paragraphs there. But I can’t read German.

I painstakingly entered the passages that mention Seligmann into Google Translate and mostly got gibberish. Google Translate does not like umlauts or those funny double S symbols used in German, and typing in German is very hard when you do not know the language. Google Translate can do a word, but putting down a whole sentence leads to verbs and nouns and prepositions in places that just make it almost impossible to know what you are reading.

For example, what does this sentence mean?

Mr. Landauer of the Israelite Religious Community in Mainz has found that Moritz Seligmann who has led this protocol , although writes excellent German , but his burden with the Hebrew has unpunctured .

That is how Google Translate translated this sentence: Herr Landauer von der israelitischen Religionsgemeinde in Mainz hat festgestellt, dass Moritz seligmann, der dieses protokoll gefuhrt hat, zwar ausgezeichnet deutsch schreibt, aber seine Last mit dem unpunktierten Hebraisch hat.

So if there are any readers out there who can help me with translation, please let me know. I have no clue what that means except that perhaps my great-great-great-grandfather was very proficient in German. The sentence that follows discusses the fact that the Jews in Gau-Algesheim did not speak or read Hebrew except for religious purposes.

Now I am working on getting a better translation program or finding someone to translate the book for me. But here are a few random tidbits of information that I am pretty sure I did understand from my very poor translation of some of the passages.

Perhaps the most informative section revealed the livelihoods of two of my great-great-grandfather’s brothers, August and Hyronimus, and a third Seligmann whose name was Jacob, for whom I have no earlier record. August opened a business in October, 1891, for iron and also spices and playing cards. (That’s what Google Translate says anyway.) August died on May 14, 1909. Hyronimus also was in the iron and spice business as well in the wine trade; he opened his business on May 22, 1892. Jacob was also in the iron trade and the wine and spirits trade; his business opened June 5, 1898.

I also know from the book that at one time August and Hyronimus both lived and/or did business on Langgasse or Long Alley. I had posted this photo before without realizing that this was the street were some of my family lived or worked.

Gau-Algesheim. Langgasse. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The paragraph that follows the one about the three Seligmanns and their businesses was a bit hard to follow with Google Translate, but from what I can decipher, August had a son named Julius born in 1877. Julius married a Catholic woman and converted to Catholicism. He had a hardware store in Gau-Algesheim as well as a spice business. If I am reading the German correctly, he closed the store on December 9, 1935 and moved with his family to Bingen on September 15, 1939. He had two sons, Herbert and Walter, who were both apparently still alive when the book was written. Julius also survived the war, but was killed in a fatal car accident on his way to church on March 28, 1967.

Burg Klopp in Bingen am Rhein, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Julius had an older sister Frances, born on December 26, 1875, who married Max Michel, but divorced him and moved to Bingen. Frances died on December 19, 1933; her son Fred escaped to the United States in 1937.

The third child of August Seligmann was named Moritz, and he participated in the town’s cycling association. Moritz Seligmann, his grandfather’s namesake, was born in June 25, 1881. The book seems to be describing the skills of various members and seems to be praising the skills of young Moritz, who was nineteen when he joined the club. The end of this passage about Moritz says that he was single and had moved to Koenigsberg and that it was believed he was killed in 1941 in Theresienstadt.

The fourth child of August Seligmann was his daughter Anna. She was born on November 30, 1889, in Gau-Algesheim. She had moved with her husband Hugo Goldmann to Neunkirchen in Saarland. They and their three children, Ruth, Heinz, and Gretel, were all killed in the Holocaust.

There is also an entry for Elizabeth nee Seligman Arnfeld, who was born March 17, 1875. She had moved to Mulheim on the Ruhr in 1938 and wanted to emigrate to the United States. A woman named Leonara Morreau[1] had vouched for them, but for unknown reasons they were never able to emigrate. Elizabeth died on January 23, 1943 at Theresienstadt. Her son Heinz survived the war. The book did not identify the parents of Elizabeth Seligman Arnfeld, but she could have been the daughter of Salomon or Benjamin, who unfortunately are not mentioned in the book, or of Hyronimus or Jacob.

Theresienstadt concentration camp

Now that I have more names and more recent relatives, I am hoping that perhaps I can find out more about these people. I also now know that many of them moved to Bingen, so there may be records from that larger town that will tell me more about the Seligmanns who stayed in Germany. And from several other entries in the book, I know where they lived in Gau-Algesheim.

I would love to be able to read the entire book and learn more about the history and lives of Jews in Gau-Algesheim, but it took me a good part of two days just to translate these few passages, and those translations are not very reliable. It seems hiring someone to translate the whole book could cost me as much as $1000, and that is not in my genealogy budget by a long shot. If someone has any brilliant ideas on how to get the book translated for free or for a really reasonable price, please let me know.

What I did learn from the passages I struggled to translate is that my family was not untouched by the Holocaust, as I once believed, but that we lost many people just from Gau-Algesheim alone. I am hoping that I can find the descendants of the few who seem to have survived—Heinz Arnfeld and Fred Michel and Herbert and Walter Seligmann—and learn more.

In my next post I will discuss the birth records I received for the Seligmanns and how I was able to translate them. Then I will return to the Nusbaums.

Holocaust Memorial plaque in Gau-Algesheim

[1] I found Leonara Morreau’s obituary and researched her a bit, but know of no reason that she would have had a connection to the Seligmanns in Germany. She was born, married, and lived in Cleveland. Her husband died in 1933, and she died in 1947. As far as I can tell, they never traveled to Germany. Leonara’s brother was Isaac Heller, who was also born in Cleveland, as was their father, Charles Heller. Although their grandfather was born in Germany, it was not even in the same region as the Seligmanns. Perhaps Leonara was active in trying to bring German Jews to the United States during Hitler’s reign, but I can find no evidence of that. Her obituary only states that she was active in charitable and religious causes.

The Nusbaums Come to America

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Amy

PA Harrisburg 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am having a hard time finding a place to start the rest of the story of my Nusbaum ancestors. I just keep going in circles and hitting walls. I have been able to locate most of the children of Amson and Voegele Nusbaum in the US, but for some have not been able to find very much about them. I am still searching and hoping more will turn up, but the Nusbaums seem so far to have stayed pretty much under the radar, unlike the Seligmans for sure and even more so than the Cohens, about whom I found a number of newspaper articles.

So I will start with what I have and hope that as I go along, I will find more and learn more about the elusive Nusbaums. From the report compiled by Rolf Hofmann based on the research of Angelika Brosig, I know that Amson and Voegele had eight children. Guetel, the oldest, reportedly born in 1805, I have not had any luck finding either in Germany or in the United States. I assume she married in Germany since she would have been in her mid-thirties by the time her other siblings left Germany in the 1840s. Without access to marriage records or death records in Schopfloch, I have hit a dead end on Guetel. At least for now.

I also have had no luck finding anything about Amson and Voegele’s fifth child, Sara, for what I assume are the same reasons. Sara, born July 8, 1812, according to Angelika Brosig’s research, also was probably married before her siblings left Schopfloch. Neither Guetel nor Sara appear in the Nusbaum family bible that belongs to my father, so I have to assume that they did not ever move to the United States.

On the other hand, I was able to find all five of Amson and Voegel’s sons in the United States without too much trouble, and I even was able to find their other daughter, Madel or Mathilde. She was born on July 20, 1806, according to Angelika Brosig. My search for Mathilde was more successful than those for her two sisters because once again I was very fortunate to find someone who is related to me (and to Mathilde) by marriage.

I had posted a question on JewishGen seeking help in researching my Nus(s)baum ancestors from Schopfloch, and I received an email from a fellow researcher, Ned Lewison, who said that he doubted that he had anything helpful, but that one of his relatives, Isaac Dinkelspiel, also with ancestral ties to Schopfloch, had married someone named Mathilde Nusbaum, and that they had lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (He also said that another relative had married another Nusbaum, but more on that in a later post.) I knew right away that that could not be just coincidence since I already knew that John Nusbaum had settled also in Harrisburg. Further research (to be described later) confirmed that Mathilde Nusbaum Dinkelspiel was John’s sister.

So I know of six Nusbaum children who came to the United States: Mathilde, Leopold, Isaac, John, Ernst, and Maxwell. The earliest record I have found that might relate to my Nusbaum ancestors is an entry for a John Nussbaum on the 1840 census living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

John Nussbaum 1840 US Census Harrisburg, PA

Unfortunately, the 1840 census does not provide a lot of information. It only lists the male heads of household with check marks indicating the numbers of males and females within certain age ranges living in that household. The entry for John Nussbaum has check marks for one male between 30 and 40 years old, one female between 20 and 30 years old, and one female between five and ten years old. My three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum would have been 36 in 1850, his wife Jeanette would have been 33, and they did not yet have any children that I am aware of. In fact, the family bible lists their marriage date as July 1, 1841 and their first child, Adolphus, born in 1842.

Could this be my ancestor on the 1840 census? I am not sure. His wife’s age could be wrong, the family bible could be wrong about the marriage date, but who was the five to ten year old daughter? Could John have had another wife and a child before Jeanette? I cannot be sure. There are no birth records or death records on file in Pennsylvania before 1877 except for scattered church records and some local civil records. There are some marriage records, but they are not complete, and I cannot find any Nusbaum marriage recorded that early. I do know, however, that John was in Harrisburg by 1850. So maybe this is my ancestor on the 1840 census, maybe not. I have written to the local historical society in Harrisburg and hope to get some answers.

I cannot find any of the other Nusbaum siblings on the 1840 census. The next document I have that may relate to my Nusbaum ancestors is an immigration record for Leopold, John’s older brother. Since I only so far have the index entry and not the full ship manifest, this is also not a very helpful record. According to the index, a Leopold Nussbaum, aged 35, arrived from Germany to New York on June 9, 1847. The family bible does not have a birthdate for Leopold (though it does have his date of death). The Brosig records indicated that Leopold (Loew) was born on April 26, 1808, and the census records for Leopold in America conflict with each other, but suggest he was born between 1810 and 1812. I do not know for sure, therefore, whether this is the same Leopold Nussbaum, and perhaps seeing the full ship manifest will tell me more. But 1847 seems to be a reasonable date for the arrival of Leopold.

Although I have not been able to find any immigration records for any of the other Nusbaum siblings, I know that by 1850 four of them were already in the US because they appear on the 1850 census. John was living in Harrisburg’s South Ward and working as a merchant. He and his wife (listed as Shamet here) had four children: Adolphus (8), Simon (6), Frances (my great-great-grandmother, 4), and Julius (2), all born in Pennsylvania.[1] They also had eight other unrelated adults living with them, two servants and six whose occupation was given as “clerk,” presumably in John’s store. So by 1850 John Nusbaum was quite comfortably settled in Harrisburg.

John Nusbaum 1850 census Harrisburg, PA

As I indicated above, his older sister Mathilde was also living in Harrisburg with her husband Isaac Dinkelspiel. Isaac was working as a peddler, and he and Mathilde had three children: Paulina (8), Adolph (6), and Sophia (2). Since all three children were listed as born in Germany, this would suggest that Isaac and Mathilde had been in the United States for less than two years at the time of the 1850 census. Mathilde and her husband Isaac had no servants living with them and presumably were not yet as comfortable as her brother John and his family, who may have been in Harrisburg for ten years at that point.

Mathilde and Isaac Dinkelspiel 1850 US census Harrisburg, PA

I did not find a definite listing for Leopold Nusbaum on the 1850 census, but I believe that this listing for L. Nussbaum is the right person.

L. Nusbaum 1850 census Blythe, PA

L. Nusbaum is listed as a butcher, 38 years old (which would give him a birth year of 1812), and married to Rosannah, both born in Germany, with two children: Adolph (2) and Francis (seven months), as well as a non-related person, perhaps a servant. Both children were born in Pennsylvania, meaning that Leopold and Rosannah had been in Pennsylvania since at least 1847, consistent with the ship manifest. They were living in Blythe, Pennsylvania, a town about seventy miles from Harrisburg.

Why do I believe this is Leopold? Because I know from later documents that Leopold’s wife was Rosa and that he had a son named Francis and a son named Adolph. Both John and Leopold had children named Adolph/us and Francis/Frances. Perhaps the two Adolphs were for Amson, the two Francis/Frances for Voegele. (Mathilde and Isaac Dinkelspiel also had a child named Adolph.)

The fourth sibling listed on the 1850 census is Maxwell (Meier) Nusbaum, the youngest of the Nusbaum siblings, born September 14, 1819. In 1850, he was living with his wife Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum and their two year old daughter Flora in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, which is about sixty miles from Harrisburg. Flora might also have been named for Voegele. Maxwell was a merchant, and he had a clerk living in his household. His wife Mathilde was the sister of Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum, the wife of Maxwell’s brother John Nusbaum. (More on the Dreyfuss family in a later post.)

Maxwell Nusbaum 1850 US census Lewistown, PA

Although I cannot find Ernst Nusbaum on the 1850 census, I did find a listing for an Ernest Nusbaum, a merchant in Philadelphia, on the 1852, 1854, and 1859 city directories for Philadelphia. Given the name and the occupation and the fact that Ernst and his family show up on the 1860 census living in Philadelphia, I think it is reasonable to assume that Ernst was in Philadelphia by 1852. (Unfortunately, the 1860 census did not include street address information so I cannot compare it to the 1850s directories.)

Ernest Nusbaum in the 1852 Philadelphia city directory located at https://archive.org/details/mcelroysphiladel1852amce

As for Isaac Nusbaum, the remaining sibling who emigrated to the US, I have no record for him before 1865 in Peoria, Illinois. I do not know when he arrived or where he was in 1850.

Thus, what I know with a reasonable degree of certainty is that by 1850 (1852 for Ernst), John, Mathilde, Leopold, Maxwell, and Ernst Nusbaum had settled in Pennsylvania, John and Mathilde in Harrisburg, Leopold in Blythe, Maxwell in Lewistown, and Ernst in Philadelphia. What were they doing living in these places spread out miles from each other? In my next post I will address that question.

Google Maps

[1] The family bible says that Adolphus was born in Newville, Pennsylvania, which is about 32 miles from Harrisburg. Simon, Frances, and Julius were all born in Harrisburg.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Category Archives: Germany

Our Ancestral Towns Seen Through My Cousin’s Eyes

Passover 2015: The American Jewish Story

My Cousin Wolfgang and The Lessons of History: Will We Ever Learn Those Lessons?

The Schoenfelds and Erbes-Budesheim: Part II

New Seligmann Discoveries: Erbes-Budesheim and the Schoenfelds, Part I

The First Chapter: The Dreyfuss Family

More Blessings and More Insight into My Seligmann Ancestors

A Package from Germany, Part II: Did Moritz Seligmann Have Two Wives?

A Package from Germany and More Sobering Revelations: A Seligmann Update

The Nusbaums Come to America

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