Tag Archives: civil war

The Legacy of H.H. Mansbach: Motherless Boy, Civil War Hero, Father of Eight, and Successful Merchant

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We saw in the last post how the first decade presented some sad challenges and losses for the family of H.H. Mansbach.  The family matriarch Nannie Hirsch Mansbach died unexpectedly in 1907, the youngest son Isaac was institutionalized, and Louis Mansbach’s wife Clara died at age 36.

The family’s losses continued in 1912 when the family patriarch, H.H. Mansbach, died April 1, 1912, in Norfolk; he was 71 years old.   The Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch (April 1, 1912) published this obituary:

H.H. Mansbach, father of Louis, Charles, and George Mansbach, proprietors of “The Hub,” died this morning at 12:20 o’clock in the home of his son-in-law, D.R. Broh, 140 Main Street, Berkley ward.  Mr. Mansbach was 72 years of age [sic: he was 71] and while he had been in failing health for more than a year, his death was unexpected and came as a shock to his family.  Tomorrow evening on the Washington steamer his body will be conveyed to Cumberland, Md., where the funeral will be held and the deceased laid in his last resting place beside his wife, who preceded him to the grave about five and a half years ago.  The body will be accompanied to Cumberland by the members of his family.

H.H. Mansbach was born in Maden, Germany, but came to his country when nine years old. [There is no record to support this assertion; records instead show that he came in 1856 with his uncle Gerson Katzenstein when he was sixteen; even his older brother was not in the US in 1849 when H.H. would have been nine.]  A resident of Americus, Ga., and a member of the State militia when the war between the States began, he enlisted in the Confederate army and served gallantly until the close of hostilities under Generals Beauregard and Chalmers.  He was wounded at the battle of Murfreesboro and at Shiloh and after the war became a member of the Confederate Cap at Romney, W.Va.  His name is still on the roster of that camp.

After the surrender of General Lee, Mr. Mansbach engaged in the mercantile business in Piedmont, W.Va., where he was a leading and very prosperous merchant for forty-one years, and up to the time of his retirement about five years ago, when he came to Norfolk and has since lived with his daughter, Mrs. D. R. Broh.  He was one of the best known business men in West Virginia and was widely known throughout Virginia and Maryland.

Mr. Mansbach is survived by seven children, four daughters and three sons. [Once again Isaac is not included in the list of survivors; the rest of the children were named and their residence locations as indicated above were identified.]

Mr. Mansbach was a Royal Arch Mason and had the distinction of being a Mason fifty years ago in the same lodge that conferred the degree on the late President William McKinley at Winchester, Va.  He also was a member of Ohef [sic: Oheb] Shalom Temple.

H.H. was survived by his eight children and (eventually) seven grandchildren. He was buried next to his wife Nannie at Eastview Cemetery in Cumberland, Maryland.

His children carried on his business and his name.

H.H. and Nannie’s youngest child, May, married in 1914; her husband was Sigmund Louis Emanuel, who was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1876, but had lived most of his life in New York City.  In 1910, when he was 33, he was living with his parents and some of his siblings in Queens, New York, and owned a clothing manufacturing business with his father.

How did he meet May, who was living in Virginia? My guess—the Emanuels supplied clothing to the retail clothing business owned by the Mansbach family, and a connection was made.  Or possibly May’s two sisters Hattie and Bertha who lived in New York set her up with Sigmund.  May and Sigmund would have one child, a daughter Nanette born in 1916 in New York City.

In 1920, four of the Mansbach siblings were living in Norfolk: Louis, Charles, Bertha, and Fannie. In fact, Louis, Fannie, and Bertha were all living in one household, along with Fannie and Bertha’s husbands and children.

Mansbach siblings on 1920 census in Norfolk, VA Year: 1920; Census Place: Norfolk Madison Ward, Norfolk (Independent City), Virginia; Roll: T625_1902; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 101; Image: 279

Mansbach siblings on 1920 census in Norfolk, VA
Year: 1920; Census Place: Norfolk Madison Ward, Norfolk (Independent City), Virginia; Roll: T625_1902; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 101; Image: 279

Their brother George was living in Baltimore, sisters May and Hattie in New York, and brother Isaac in the state hospital in Sykesville, Maryland.

The siblings appear to have remained close. In 1920, Louis traveled to St. John’s Newfoundland with Fannie and her family.  In 1923, Louis, Hattie and her family, and Fannie all traveled to England together.   Fannie’s husband Daniel Broh did not travel with them, and three years later he died of stomach cancer at age 60.  According to his death certificate, he had been ill for eight years, so presumably he was not well enough in 1923 to travel with Fannie and her siblings.

Daniel Broh death certificate Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

Daniel Broh death certificate
Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

Charles and Louis traveled to Key West together in 1928.  A year later Charles’ wife Regina died at age 47 of heart disease caused by rheumatic endocarditis, which she had contracted thirty years earlier, according to her death certificate.

Regina Rosenbaum Mansbach death certificate Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

Regina Rosenbaum Mansbach death certificate
Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

Thus, by 1930, three of the eight Mansbach children had lost their spouses: Louis, Charles, and Fannie. Fannie and Louis were living in the same household in Norfolk with their sister Bertha and her husband David Loewenstein and their son in 1930.  None of them was working at that point. Although the census record lists Fannie as “Deborah Danial,” it is evident to me that this is Fannie based on the fact that “Deborah” is described as the sister of the head of household (Louis), is the same age that Fannie would have been in 1930, and was born in West Virginia.  My guess is that the census enumerator heard “Fannie Broh” as “Danial Deborah” and wrote it that way on the form.

Mansbach siblings on 1930 census Norfolk, VA Year: 1930; Census Place: Norfolk, Norfolk (Independent City), Virginia; Roll: 2470; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0050; Image: 888.0; FHL microfilm: 2342204

Mansbach siblings on 1930 census Norfolk, VA
Year: 1930; Census Place: Norfolk, Norfolk (Independent City), Virginia; Roll: 2470; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0050; Image: 888.0; FHL microfilm: 2342204

 

Charles, also a widower, was living with his son in Norfolk in 1930, running the department store. Also, by 1930 May and her husband Sigmund Emanuel and their daughter had moved to Norfolk, where Sigmund was working as the treasurer of the department store.  Thus, in 1930 five of the eight siblings were living in Norfolk.

Isaac remained institutionalized, Hattie was still in New York, and George was in Baltimore.  George was living with his wife Bessie, her brother Arthur, and her mother; both he and Arthur listed their occupations as retail clothing merchants.

In 1936, another Mansbach sibling lost a spouse when David Loewenstein, Bertha’s husband, died at age 68 from heart disease; his death certificate also notes that he had suffered from locomotor ataxia for 27 years.

David Loewenstein death certificate Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

David Loewenstein death certificate
Ancestry.com. Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Virginia, Deaths, 1912–2014. Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia.

As the Mansbach siblings and their spouses entered their seventies in the 1940s, more and more of them passed away.  Louis died November 9, 1940; he was 72 and died from stomach cancer.  His brother-in-law Milton Hirschman, Hattie’s husband, died on April 29, 1942, in New York; he was 78. George Mansbach died August 13, 1946; he was 74.  The Cumberland News (August 15, 1946, p.20), ran this obituary:

George Mansbach obituary

George Mansbach obituary

 

Again, Isaac is not mentioned as a survivor although he was still living at that time.

Charles Mansbach died four years later on April 4, 1950; he was 75.

charles-mansbach-obit

 

That left just the four sisters and Isaac still living, and three of the four sisters were widows.  They died in the 1950s: Bertha (1952), Fannie (1958), and Hattie (1959).  They were 76, 85, and 90, respectively.  Isaac died in 1963 at age 84.  May outlived all her siblings and her husband Sigmund, who had died in 1963.  She was 89 when she died in 1976. Unfortunately I was unable to locate obituaries for any of them.

When I think about the life and legacy of my cousin H.H. Mansbach, nephew of my great-great-grandfather Gerson Katzenstein, it is quite remarkable. From the beginning his life was filled with challenges.  His mother died on the day he was born (July 3, 1840).  He came to America as a sixteen year old, sailing with his uncle Gerson and family.  He moved far from the family, living in several states including Georgia, where he joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and was injured twice in his four years of service in the Civil War.

Then he settled in West Virginia, married, and had eight children, meanwhile establishing himself as a very successful merchant.  He lost his father and siblings all within a ten year period from 1883-1893, and then lost his wife Nannie in 1907.  Five years later he was buried beside her at Eastview Cemetery in Cumberland, Maryland, the town where his wife had first lived in the US and where H.H. himself had lived for many years.

H.H. Mansbach Courtesy of John Fazenbaker at FindAGrave http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=85694927&PIpi=56133066

H.H. Mansbach
Courtesy of John Fazenbaker at FindAGrave
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=85694927&PIpi=56133066

His eight children benefited from his remarkable success as a merchant.  Almost all of them were involved in some way in the family’s department store business.  They all lived well.  Many of them lived close to if not with each other in Norfolk, Virginia.  Sadly, many of them also suffered losses— Louis had a child who died as a baby and then lost his wife Clara when she was in her thirties.  Charles also was widowed at a young age as was Fannie.  Isaac lived his entire adult life in a psychiatric facility.

But overall H.H. lived a good life with many successes and accomplishments.  In addition, he was survived by seven grandchildren who continued his legacy.

 

 

 

 

 

The Grandchildren of John and Jeanette Nusbaum: First Cousins, Four Times Removed

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When I last wrote about the direct descendants of my three-times great-grandparents, John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum, I left off saying that I would return to their surviving grandchildren in a later post.  Having already written about the children of their daughter Frances Nusbaum Seligman, Eva, James, and Arthur, there were four other grandchildren to discuss: the two children of Gustavus and Miriam Nusbaum Josephs, Florence and Jean, and the two children of Simon and Dora Rutledge Nusbaum, Nellie Rogers and John Bernard Nusbaum.  I was hoping that I’d be able to find answers to some remaining questions before posting, but I’ve run into a few tough ones.

Florence Joseph’s story is still incomplete as I hit a brick wall around 1925, but I will share what I do know.  Florence married Louis Siegel in 1903 when she was 23 years old.  Louis, the son of Abraham Siegel and Minnie Rosenthal, was born in Philadelphia on January 11, 1870, making him ten years older than Florence.  In 1910, Florence and Louis were living in New York City, and Louis was working as a traveling salesman, selling athletic goods.

Sometime thereafter, Louis must have become ill.  He died on September 30, 1915, at the State Hospital for the Insane in Norristown, Pennsylvania.  According to his death certificate, he had been ill for three years and had been hospitalized since November 19, 1913.  His cause of death was general paralysis of the insane or paresis.  He was only 43 years old.

Although I only have one document to support this, it appears that in 1913, Florence and Louis had had a child, a daughter Marion.  On the 1920 census, Florence Siegel was living with her father Gustavus Josephs and her brother Jean Josephs, both of whom were working at a mill as manufacturers, presumably of fabrics, as discussed in an earlier post.  Included in the household was a seven year old girl named Marion Siegel.  Although she is described as the daughter of the head of household, it seems apparent that Marion was Florence’s daughter, given her age and her surname.

Gustavus Josephs 1920 census

When her father Gustavus died in May 1924, Florence continued to live in the home at 2020 North Park Avenue; she is listed as a dressmaker in the 1925 Philadelphia directory residing at that address.  Unfortunately, that is the last document I have for Florence.  I cannot find a marriage record or a death record for her, nor can I find any definitive document for her daughter Marion.

There were two other Marion Siegels in the Philadelphia area, but after tracing them both, I had to accept that neither was the right Marion.  One, Marion Siegele, even had a mother named Florence, but that Florence was married to Harry Siegele and that Marion was born in 1918.  The second Marion Siegel seemed more likely, but I was able to find her parents and brother, and they were again not Florence and Louis Siegel.  Maybe my Marion died outside of Pennsylvania before 1930 (she would have been about 17 years old at the time of the census), maybe her mother remarried and Marion took the new husband’s surname.  But I have searched for every Florence and Marion living together as mother and daughter on the 1930 census, and I’ve come up empty.

In searching for Florence and Marion Siegel, however, I did find this obituary of Gustavus Josephs that reveals more about his military service in the Civil War as a musician:

Philadelphia Inquirer May 25, 1924 p. 18

Philadelphia Inquirer May 25, 1924 p. 18

Although I did hit some roadblocks researching Florence, I had better luck with her brother Jean.  Jean was much younger than his sister Florence.  He was born in 1893 and presumably named for his recently deceased grandfather, John Nusbaum.  In fact, Jean’s middle initial is N, perhaps for Nusbaum.  As noted above, Jean worked with his father Gustavus as a mill owner and listed himself as a self-employed manufacturer on his World War I draft registration in 1917.  He married Ruth Breidenbach on March 4, 1920.  Ruth was the daughter of Lazarus and Sophia Breidenback, and her father was an engraver in Philadelphia.  Ruth was born on March 11, 1900, in Pennsylvania.

By 1930, Ruth and Jean had two children, Janet and Jean, Jr.  Jean was still a manufacturer, and the census report for 1930 is more specific as to what he was manufacturing: draperies.  The family was living at 1531 Lindley Avenue in Philadelphia.  The following year Jean and Ruth had a third child, Jay.

In 1940, Jean and Ruth were still living at 1531 Lindley with their three children, and Jean’s occupation was recorded as general manager, textile manufacturer.  Less than a year later, on February 4, 1941, Jean Josephs died from an intestinal obstruction and peritonitis.  He was 47 years old, and his children were still living at home.  Jean’s widow Ruth was 40 years old

Ruth remarried in 1946.  Just six years later, Ruth was widowed once again when her second husband died from heart failure at age 47 on October 3, 1952.  By that time her children were grown.

As for the two children of Simon and Dora Nusbaum, Nellie Rogers Nusbaum was Dora’s daughter from her first marriage.  In about 1921, Nellie married Ellis B. Healy, who owned the Santa Fe Book and Stationery Company.  Nellie’s life was cut short on May 9, 1932, when she died giving birth to her daughter.

simon nusbaum daughter obit

The Santa Fe New Mexican, May 9, 1932

In 1940, Nellie’s widower Ellis and her young daughter were living in Santa Fe with a servant and a lodger.  Ellis listed his occupation as an office supply merchant.  By 1942, Ellis must have remarried as he is listed as “Healy EB (Mildred)” in the 1942 Santa Fe directory, indicating that he had a wife named Mildred.  He still owned the Santa Fe Book and Stationery Company.  He and Mildred were still listed together in 1960.

Although Nellie was not the biological child of Simon Nusbaum, and I do not know whether he ever adopted her legally as she was still listed as his stepdaughter on the 1920 census, she must have adopted his name since her name on her headstone is Nellie Nusbaum Healy.  She is buried at Fairview Cemetery in Santa Fe.

Simon and Dora’s other child, John Bernard Nusbaum, was only sixteen when his father died in 1921.   In 1930, he married Esther Maltby.  They settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where John was the vice-president of the Albuquerque Stationery Company.   John was listed as the manager of the stationery store in 1940 and continued to be associated with the company at least as late as 1954.  John and Esther had two daughters.  John died on July 25, 1976, in Albuquerque, but is buried at Fairview Cemetery in Santa Fe where both of his parents are buried.  His wife Esther died in 2002 and is buried there as well.  I have tried contacting some of their descendants, but have not had any responses.

So I am going to focus on finding a descendant of these four cousins of mine in order to fill in some of the gaps and tie up those loose ends.

 

 

 

Four Weddings and a Funeral: More Twists and Turns

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My last post covered the migration of several Nusbaum/Dreyfuss family members to Peoria, Illinois in the 1860s. Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, the rest of the Nusbaum/Dreyfuss clan was growing during the 1860s.  In Philadelphia, two of the Nusbaum brothers and two of the Dreyfuss sisters were seeing their families grow and their children grow.  Other family members were still in Harrisburg. By the end of the decade, even more of the family would have relocated to Philadelphia.

The Civil War was having at least some minor financial impact on the family.  For example, John Nusbaum was liable for $26.79 in income tax to the federal government in 1862 under the terms of the Internal Revenue Act of 1862.  That law was enacted to raise money to help pay for the expenses incurred by the Union in fighting the Civil War.  It was the first progressive income tax imposed by the federal government.  For anyone whose income exceeded $600 a year, a tax was imposed based on the level of income.

For John Nusbaum, whose income was valued at $892.96 in 1862, that meant a tax of $26.79.  According to one inflation calculator, $892.96 in 1862 would be worth about $20,000 in 2014.     For someone with stores in Philadelphia and Peoria (and possibly still some interest in a store in Harrisburg) and who reported $6000 in real estate and $20,000 in personal property in 1860,[1] that does not seem like a lot of income, but I have no idea how that was determined back then.

Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

By 1863 John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandparents, had seen their two older sons move to Peoria, but they still had one son, Julius, and two daughters at home in 1863: Frances, my great-great-grandmother, who was eighteen, and Miriam, who was only five years old in 1863.  Plus 1863 had started off with another new baby in the family.  Lottie Nusbaum was born on January 1, 1863.  Jeanette would have been almost 46 years old, and her first born child Adolphus was going on 23.

I have to admit that I have some questions about whether Lottie was actually the child of John and Jeanette.  Jeanette must have been close to the end of her child-bearing years.  They had not had a child in five years.  Could Lottie have been a child of one of their sons, raised as the child of her actual grandparents?  Or a child they adopted?  I have no way of knowing.  Lottie had no children, so even if I could figure out some way to use DNA to answer my doubts, there are no descendants to use for DNA testing.

On Lottie’s death certificate, the informant was Mrs. E. Cohen, that is, my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen, Lottie Nusbaum’s niece and Frances Nusbaum Seligman’s daughter.  Eva filled in the father’s name as John, but put unknown for the mother’s maiden name.  Eva certainly knew her grandmother Jeanette’s name.  (Eva is the one who held and maintained the family bible for many years.) Did she not know her grandmother’s maiden name? Was she too grief-stricken to remember? Or was she suggesting that Jeanette was not in fact Lottie’s real mother?  I do not know, and there is no one left to ask.  But it did not do anything to resolve my doubts about the identity of Lottie’s parents.   Maybe I am too skeptical.  Maybe she was just a menopause baby. Maybe John and Jeanette were missing their boys so much that they decided to have one more child. Or maybe not.  What do you all think?

Lottie Nusbaum death certificate Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

Lottie Nusbaum death certificate
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

In any event, just as John and Jeanette were emptying their household of their sons, they had a new baby to raise.  The family was still living at 433 Vine Street in 1862, according to the Philadelphia city directory, but in 1864 they are listed at 455 York Avenue.  That address is about two and a half miles north of Vine Street, and as I’ve discussed earlier, Jews began to move north in Philadelphia as their socioeconomic status improved.

By 1865, John and Jeanette’s house on York Avenue was a little emptier.  By that time Julius had joined his brothers in Peoria, and on March 28, 1865, my great-great-grandmother Frances married Bernard Seligman.  For several years they lived in Philadelphia, and Bernard was apparently in business with his brothers-in-law in a firm called Nusbaum Brothers and Company.  They had four children between 1866 and 1869, including my great-grandmother Eva.  Then in 1870, Bernard returned full time to Santa Fe with Frances and their children where Frances and Bernard lived for almost all of the rest of their lives, as discussed in my Seligman blog posts.

Nusbaum Brothers and Company 1867 Philadelphia Directory Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

Nusbaum Brothers and Company 1867 Philadelphia Directory
Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

John’s brother Ernst was also in Philadelphia during the early 1860s.  He was a clothier, working at 55 North Third Street and living at 626 North 6th Street.  He and his wife Clarissa had another child in 1861, Frank, bringing their family up to six children ranging in age from newborn to ten years old.  So both Ernest, who was 45 when Frank was born, and John, who was 49 when Lottie was born, had new babies in their homes in the 1860s.

Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum also had a sibling living in Philadelphia.  Her sister Caroline (Dreyfuss) Wiler had also moved from Harrisburg to Philadelphia by 1860.  She and her husband Moses Wiler were living at 466 North 4th Street in 1862 with their four children, who ranged in age from Eliza who was twenty to Clara who was twelve.  Moses was in the cloak business.

The following year the Wiler household became a bit smaller when Eliza Wiler married Leman Simon on September 9, 1863, in Philadelphia.  Yes, Leman Simon.  Do you remember that name? He was the brother of Moses Simon, who married Paulina Dinkelspiel and started the migration of Nusbaums to Peoria.  So once again, my family tree groans and twists a bit.  Eliza and Paulina were already related, at least by marriage.  Eliza’s mother Caroline Dreyfuss was the sister-in-law of John Nusbaum, Paulina Dinkelspiel’s uncle.  Sometimes these people make me want to pull out my hair!  Imagine, I am casually researching Eliza, and I see her husband’s name and think, “Leman Simon.  Hmmm, that sounds familiar.”

So by 1863 the Simons, Nusbaums, Dinkelspiels, and Dreyfusses were all somehow interrelated, often in more than one way.

But it gets worse.

By 1866, Moses Pollock and Mathilde (Dreyfuss Nusbaum) Pollock had also moved to Philadelphia from Harrisburg. In 1868, Flora Nusbaum, the daughter of Mathilde Dreyfuss and Maxwell Nusbaum and step-daughter of Moses Pollock, married Samuel Simon.  I have mentioned this before because Flora Nusbaum is my double first cousin four times removed since both of her parents were siblings of one of my three times great-grandparents, Flora’s father being John Nusbaum’s brother, her mother being Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum’s sister.  Now Flora was marrying her first cousin Paulina’s brother-in-law Samuel Simon, who was also her cousin Eliza’s brother-in law.

Groan…. Maybe this chart will help.

chart_NEW

So all three Simon brothers were now married to someone in the clan: Samuel to Flora Nusbaum, Leman to Eliza Wiler, and Moses to Paulina Dinkenspiel.

The wedding of Samuel Simon to Flora Nusbaum (Pollock) seems to have been a celebration worthy of all that interconnectedness.  Here is an article from the Harrisburg Telegraph of October 20, 1868, republishing an article from the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury that described their Philadelphia wedding.  It’s really worth reading to get the full flavor of both the wedding and “social media” in the 1860s.

flora pollock wedding part 1

flora pollock wedding part 2

flora pollock part 3

The strangest part of this article is not the detailed description of the lavish, extravagant wedding celebration, but the reporter’s mistaken assertion that Flora was not Jewish.  Certainly her parents were both Jewish, and even her stepfather Moses Pollock was Jewish.  The reporter’s statement that “the pure religion of love had broken down all sectarian barriers” seems a bit strange for a wedding announcement, even if it had been an interfaith wedding.  But why would the reporter have thought Flora wasn’t Jewish?

The overlapping branches of the family were well represented in the bridal party: Clara Wiler and Simon Wiler, the children of Moses and Caroline (Dreyfuss) Wiler; Frances Nusbaum, the daughter of John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum; Arthur Nusbaum, son of Ernst and Clara Nusbaum; and Albert Nusbaum, son of Maxwell and Mathilde (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum and brother of the bride.  I do not know who the Schloss family is or the Goldsmiths, at least not yet, but I fear more double twists yet to be uncovered.

So the extended family was doing quite well, and there were lots of new families being formed and babies born, but unfortunately there also was one big loss in the 1860s.  Leopold Nusbaum, who was still living in Harrisburg in the 1860s, died on December 24, 1866.  He was buried at Mt. Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.  His widow Rosa and sixteen year old daughter Francis moved shortly thereafter to Philadelphia, where they moved in with John and Jeanette Nusbaum, whose household had been reduced by two when Julius moved to Peoria and Frances married.

Below is a photo I found while searching for old images of Harrisburg.  I was so excited when I saw the name on the store at the far upper right—Leo Nusbaum!  Although this photo was dated 1889, Leopold Nusbaum’s name was still on the store even though he had died almost 25 years earlier.

Harrisburg Market Square with Leo Nusbaum store

Harrisburg Market Square with Leo Nusbaum store http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-EC

The only Nusbaum family members left in Harrisburg by the end of the 1860s were Mathilde (Nusbaum) Dinkenspiel, her husband Isaac, and their daughter Sophia.  Their daughter Paulina (Dinkenspiel) Simon was living in Baltimore, and their son Adolph was in Peoria.  Their youngest child Sophia married Herman Marks, a Prussian born clothing merchant, in 1869, and they settled in Harrisburg as well.  Perhaps they were the ones to keep Mathilde’s brother’s name on the store.

Thus, by the end of the 1860s, most of the extended family was living in Philadelphia, with a small number living in Peoria, a few in Harrisburg, and a few in Baltimore.

 

 

[1] $600 in 1860 would be worth about $17,000 today, and $20,000 in 1860 would be worth about $571,000 today.  Not too shabby for someone who had come to America around 1840.