The Long Depression: The Family of Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Amy



Embed from Getty Images

If the 1860s were mostly a decade of good things—weddings, babies, prosperity, and little impact from the Civil War, the 1870s were in contrast a more difficult decade for the extended Nusbaum-Dreyfuss-Dinkelspiel-Simon clan, both personally and economically. This post will focus on the family of Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock, and the next will focus on the family of Caroline Dreyfuss Wiler, my two three-times great grand aunts, sisters of Jeanette Dreyfuss. The posts that follow will focus on the family of my three times great-grandparents John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum and the families of John’s siblings Ernst Nusbaum, Leopold Nusbaum, and Mathilde (Nusbaum) Dinkelspiel during the 1870s.

First, the Pollocks. Mathilde (Dreyfuss Nusbaum) and Moses Pollock had relocated from Harrisburg to Philadelphia in the mid-1860s. Moses was engaged in the retail dry goods business. In June 1870 when the census was taken, the Pollocks had a very full house. Mathilde’s daughter Flora and her new husband Samuel were living with them along with their new baby Meyer. Samuel was working on the wholesale side of clothing sales. In addition, Mathilde’s son Albert Nusbaum, now 19 and working as a clerk in a dry goods store (presumably his stepfather’s business), was living with them as well as Mathilde and Moses’ children, Emanuel (14) and Miriam (11), who were both in school. In addition, there were three domestic servants living with them. Moses must have been doing quite well.

It’s a good thing they had those servants because there were also three young children living with them, Annie (5), Alice (4), and Wilhelmina Jastrow (seven months old) plus another young woman, Augusta Wolfsohn, who was 22 years old. Annie and Alice were born in Hesse-Darmstadt, but their baby sister Wilhelmina had been born in Pennsylvania in September, 1869. Who were they? Where were their parents? Augusta was born in Prussia and does not appear to be the mother of the three young girls. Who was she? None of these girls was living with the Pollocks as of the 1880 census.

Fortunately, this was a mystery that did not take long to solve. A little research on Ancestry.com, and I was able to find a happy ending to the story. The Jastrow girls had parents, Marcus and Bertha (Wolfsohn) Jastrow. By the second enumeration of the 1870 census in Philadelphia, they and their aunt Augusta Wolfsohn were all under the same roof as their parents and other siblings. I don’t know why they were with the Pollocks during the earlier enumeration, but I assume that they were very recent immigrants who did not have enough room to accommodate everyone, and Moses and Mathilde were kind enough to take in the three youngest children and their aunt.

But fate was not kind to Moses and Mathilde despite their kindness to the Jastrows. In September 1870, they had a third child together (a fifth for Mathilde), Rosia, but Rosia did not live long. On February 26, 1871, she died, only five months old, from diarrhea. Mathilde was 45 years old when Rosia was born, making me doubt my skepticism about the parentage of Lottie Nusbaum. Perhaps women just kept having babies into the mid to late 40s back then with more frequency than I would have thought.

Rosia Pollock death certificate 1871

What makes this late birth seem even stranger is that Mathilde had become a grandmother just nine months before Rosia was born when her grandson Meyer was born in January, 1870. Meyer and his parents Flora and Samuel Simon were living with the Pollocks in June of 1870 when Mathilde was pregnant with Rosia. It is hard to imagine being pregnant and a grandmother, but times were different then.

Flora (Nusbaum) and Samuel Simon were still living with Flora’s family at 911 Franklin Street in 1871, but seem to have moved to their own place in 1872, and I say “seemed to” because their address was 909 Franklin Street, so right next door to Mathilde and Moses Pollock. Then in 1873, they are back at 911 Franklin. Samuel was in business with his brother Leman in 1871, but seems to be on his own after that. He has no occupation listed in 1873 in the directory. Perhaps Flora and Simon could no longer afford to have their own place and returned to the Pollock residence.

According to the 1871 and 1872 Philadelphia directories, Moses Pollock had gone into business with his brother-in-law Moses Wiler, husband of Caroline Dreyfuss, Mathilde’s sister. By 1873 it also appears that Moses Pollock and Moses Wiler were no longer in business together. Moses Wiler is listed in the directories for 1873 and 1875 without an occupation, and Moses Pollock is listed in one as a salesman and another as a clerk.

What was going on around them? Why had these two family business partnerships ended? It’s always important to keep the historical and socioeconomic context in mind when doing family research, and perhaps the most important development both in the US and worldwide in the 1870s was the so-called “Long Depression.” The period after the Civil War brought widespread economic growth with railroad construction, technological developments, and expansion of exports to European markets. However, in a way not dissimilar to more recent economic crashes, the economy tumbled in 1873 when banks and investment firms did not realize the profits they had expected from investing in the railroads and could no longer cover the loans they had made in the frenzy of the post-Civil War boom.[1] In addition, an economic crisis abroad resulted in decreased demand for American exports.

The credit crisis led to panic with many investors withdrawing their money from the banks, thus worsening the precarious position of the banks. Although the government intervened to try and stop the crisis, the overall confidence in the economy was gone, jobs dried up, people stopped buying, and railroad construction came to a halt. There was also evidence of a great deal of corruption that was uncovered during this time. The effects of this crisis were felt across the United States for at least five years with widespread unemployment, poverty, and social unrest.

Panic of 1873 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APanic_of_1873_bank_run.jpg

It could very well have been this economic downturn that caused Moses Pollock and Moses Wiler to end this business partnership and also caused Leman and Samuel Simon to end their business partnership.

Moses Pollock continued to have some inconsistency in his occupation for the rest of the decade. In 1876 Mathilde and Moses Pollock are listed in business together selling “gentlemen’s furnishings” at 107 North 9^th Street and were still living at 911 Franklin Street. By 1878, they had moved to 934 North 8^th Street, where they remained for many years. Moses is listed as a salesman in the 1878, 1879, and 1880 Philadelphia directories, and according to the 1880 census he was working in a cloak store. In 1880 he and Mathilde still had Albert Nusbaum, now 28, as well as Emanuel (24) and Miriam (21) living with them at home as well as one servant. Albert had been working as a liquor salesman since 1873 when he was 21. Emanuel had been in dry goods sales since 1877 when he was 21. Miriam and her mother Mathilde were “keeping house.”

Mathilde’s other daughter, Flora (Nusbaum) Simon and her husband Samuel meanwhile had had a second child. Their daughter Minnie was born in 1873 or 1874 (documents vary). Flora and Samuel seem to have moved out of the Pollock household sometime shortly thereafter and out of Philadelphia altogether by the end of the decade and perhaps even earlier. It’s hard to know for sure because Samuel Simon was not an uncommon name.

There are three Samuel Simons listed in the 1874 Philadelphia directory: one was a laborer, one a restaurant worker, and a third was working in the ladies’ furnishings business. None of the addresses line up with other members of the family, so I cannot tell which, if any of these Samuel Simons were married to Flora. The ladies’ furnishings Samuel seems like the most likely, given the family’s pre-existing businesses, but I cannot be sure. In 1875, there are two Samuel Simons, a laborer and a gardener. Neither one seems likely to be Flora’s Samuel.

In 1876, there is only one Samuel Simon listed, a superintendent, and in 1877 again only one, a furrier. In 1878 there was only Samuel the laborer, but in 1879 there were three Samuels: the laborer, the gardener, and a third selling produce. My best hunch is that Samuel and Flora (Nusbaum) Simon had left Philadelphia by 1875. According to the 1880 census, they were then living in Elkton, Maryland, about 50 miles from Philadelphia and 60 miles from Baltimore. Samuel was working at a hotel there. Again, my assumption is that the economic slowdown had contributed to this move away from their families in Philadelphia.

As will be evident as I examine each of the families, the Pollock line was not the only one that felt the impact of the Long Depression of the 1870s.

[1] I am greatly oversimplifying the causes and the effects of the Long Depression that began in 1873. For more information, see http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/eras/the-long-depression/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873 http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2010/05/about-that-long-depression-of-1870s_27.html

Four Weddings and a Funeral: More Twists and Turns

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Amy

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.

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.

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.

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 6^th 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 4^th 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Great Fire of San Francisco 1851 and My Twisted Family Tree

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Amy

By 1850, as I wrote previously, John Nusbaum and his siblings Mathilde, Leopold, Ernst, and Maxwell were all settled somewhere in Pennsylvania and involved in selling merchandise (except for Leopold, who was a butcher). In the next decade the family would move around a bit, see their families grow, and endure some terrible tragedies.

The first of those tragedies involved Maxwell. In 1850 Maxwell was living in Lewistown, working as a merchant in a store that carried his name, M. Nusbaum’s. He and his wife, Mathilde nee Dreyfuss, the sister of my three-times great-grandmother Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum, had a daughter Flora who was born in 1848. And Mathilde must have been pregnant in 1850 because on January 30, 1851, their son Albert was born. Maxwell and Mathilde must have moved to Harrisburg by then because Albert’s birth took place in Harrisburg.

When I searched for Maxwell and his family on the 1860 census, I could not find Maxwell or Mathilde at all, but I did find Albert and Flora Newsbaum, living with an M. Pollock, a Swiss born merchant in Harrisburg. Unfortunately, the census was barely legible, and the transcriber had had a lot of difficulty recording the names on the census, but by searching generally for M. Pollock born in Switzerland and living in Harrisburg, I was eventually able to find out that M. Pollock was Moses Pollock and that he was married to Mathilde. The other names on that 1860 census, although transcribed as Mary Pollock, Michael Pollock, and Mary Pollock, were really Mathilde, Emanuel, and Miriam Pollock. Emanuel and Miriam were Mathilde’s children with Moses, born in 1856 and 1859 respectively.

Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock and family 1860 census

But what had happened to Maxwell? I could find no record of him after the 1850 census, not a directory, census, or death record. So I turned to newspapers.com and found this terrible news item:

Sunbury (PA) American, July 5, 1851, p. 2

Maxwell had died in San Francisco while trying to protect the property of another business from the raging fires that destroyed much of San Francisco in the spring and summer of 1851.

San Francisco before the 1851 fires Library of Congress CALL NUMBER: DAG no. 1331

The first 1851 fire was described graphically on the website honoring the San Francisco Fire Department, GuardiansoftheCity.org:

The great fire on this day actually began after 11:00 PM on May 3rd, in a store on the south side of Portsmouth Plaza. A known habitue of villainous Sydney-Town was seen running from the store moments before it exploded in flame and simultaneous fires erupted in the business district. Water evaporated to steam as swift winds sent the roaring flames everywhere through the great blow-pipe-like hollows beneath the plank streets. Men in their anguish, ran for shelter within new, fancied “fireproof” brick and iron buildings, only to perish miserably when the metal shutters and doors expanded and couldn’t be opened. Three-fourths of the city was lost, yet, in ten days, San Franciscans rebuilt one-fifth of their city.

Six weeks later, there was a second horrendous fire:

On June 22, 1851, just before 11:00 AM, a fire, clearly the work of an incendiary, broke out in a frame house on Pacific Street near Powell. Strong summer sea-breezes drove the flames south and east. Firefighter’s fearless battles were of no avail against the fire’s intense heat and speed. Ten blocks and portions of six others were destroyed between Powell, Sansome, Clay and Broadway. The raging demon swept away relics of an older time. City Hall was consumed, born in 1846, and the Jenny Lind Theatre burned for the sixth time. The Old Adobe Custom House burned, and Sam Brannan’s House, in which were exhibited the first specimens of gold brought from the Placers, met the same fate. San Franciscans quickly rebuilt again, this time, with water tanks on many roofs.

June 1851 fire in San Francisco http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/calher/letter/figures/I0041779A.jpg 

After the June 1851 fire in San Francisco http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf4j49p3ww/

For some reason, neither of these reports indicates how many people were killed in the fire, nor have I yet found any other source that reveals that information. I have to believe that there were many people killed in addition to my third great-grand uncle Maxwell Nusbaum and his clerk Rosenthal.

I was surprised to learn that Maxwell was all the way in San Francisco, presumably for business. Was he transporting merchandise to this other merchant in San Francisco? How did he get all the way there? His wife was home with a three year old daughter and a five month old son. How long would he have been away? How long did it take in 1851 for the news to get back to Mathilde that her husband had died in the fire? Unfortunately, I cannot find the answers to these questions, but I can imagine how dreadful it must have been for her, a relatively recent immigrant with two very young children, losing her husband.

Fortunately, Mathilde had lots of family around for support. Her sister Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandmother, was also in Harrisburg, as was her other sister Caroline Dreyfuss, who was married to Moses Wiler, and her mother, Mary Dreyfuss, aged 65, born in Germany. I cannot be completely certain that Mary Dreyfuss was the mother of Jeanette, Mathilde, and Caroline, but given the name, age, place of birth, and the fact that she was living with Caroline, I believe that she was in fact their mother. Research by others indicated that their mother was named Miriam (Marianna) Samson nee Bernheim Dreyfuss, and the similarity in the name and age to Mary Dreyfuss seems fairly persuasive evidence that Mary Dreyfuss had come with or followed her three daughters to Pennsylvania. (When I first saw the names Mathilde Pollock and Caroline Wiler in the Nusbaum family bible, I assumed they were John’s sisters; only after a lot of research did I finally realize that they were both sisters of Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum.)

Caroline Dreyfuss Wiler and family 1850 US census

Also living in Caroline and Moses Wiler’s household, in addition to Mary Dreyfuss and the Wiler’s four children, Eliza (1842), Simon (1843), Fanny (1846), and Clara (1850), was an eighteen year old man named Leopold Pollock, reportedly born in Germany, according to the 1850 census. I do not know what his connection to the household was, but further research revealed that he, like Moses Pollock, was born in Switzerland, not Germany. My hunch is that Leopold and Moses Pollock were brothers. Moses Wiler, who was about ten to fifteen years older than the two Pollocks and also born in Switzerland, was probably either a relative or friend from back in Switzerland. The Pollock brothers likely came to Harrisburg in order to be near Moses Wiler, and the Wilers had taken in the teenaged Leopold when he arrived.

When Mathilde was suddenly a widow after Maxwell was killed in the 1851 fire, perhaps her sister Caroline introduced her to Moses Pollock. Mathilde and Moses must have been married within a few years after Maxwell’s death, given that their first child Emanuel was born in 1856. I cannot locate Moses Pollock on the 1850 census, so perhaps he arrived after his brother Leopold and then soon thereafter married Mathilde.

These relationships get rather unwieldy since two branches of my family are entwined. Jeannette Dreyfuss was my three-times great-grandmother, making her two sisters Mathilde and Caroline, my three-times great-grand aunts (or four-times great-aunt, as some prefer). Since Mathilde married Maxwell, who was the brother of my three-times great-grandfather, that means that my three-times great-grand aunt married my three-times great-grand uncle. That makes their children, Flora Nusbaum and Albert Nusbaum, my first cousins four times removed both on the Nusbaum side through Maxwell and on the Dreyfuss side through Mathilde. And so on through their descendants.

A_twisted_tree_on_Craigneston_Hill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1705700

Walter Baxter [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

And then it gets even more twisted a generation later when Flora Nusbaum, my double first cousin four times removed, married Samuel Simon. Samuel Simon had a brother named Moses Simon. Moses Simon married Paulina Dinkelspiel, who was the daughter of Mathilde Nusbaum Dinkelspiel, another of my three-times great-grand aunts, another sister of John Nusbaum. So Flora and Paulina were both first cousins (since Maxwell Nusbaum and Mathilde Nusbaum Dinkelspiel were siblings) and sisters-in-law.

And, of course, the children that Mathilde Dreyfuss had with Moses Pollock and the children that Caroline Dreyfuss had with Moses Wiler are also my first cousins four times removed, but only on the Dreyfuss side.

I know. It’s confusing. I’d make a chart, but would it help?

It was a small and somewhat twisted world. No wonder they say DNA testing for Ashkenazi Jews is not terribly accurate. We are all cousins of each other of some kind or another.

Caps for Sale: Peddlers and Merchants

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Amy

As I wrote in my last post, by 1852 or before, five of the eight children of Amson and Voegele Nusbaum had settled in Pennsylvania. Two of the siblings had settled in Harrisburg, one in Lewistown, one in Blythe, and one in Philadelphia. According to the 1850 census, John Nusbaum was a merchant in Harrisburg, and his brother-in-law Isaac Dinkelspiel was a peddler there, married to John’s sister Mathilde. Leopold Nusbaum was a butcher in Blythe, Maxwell was a merchant in Lewistown, and Ernst was a merchant in Philadelphia.

It is not surprising to me that Ernst would have settled in Philadelphia, which, as I have written about in the context of my Cohen ancestors, had a fairly large German Jewish community by the mid 1800s. But why were John Nusbaum and Isaac Dinkelspiel and their families in Harrisburg? Even more surprising, what were Leopold and Maxwell doing in relatively small towns like Lewistown and Blythe? What would have taken these new German Jewish immigrants away from the big cities and to smaller towns and cities in Pennsylvania?

The choice of Harrisburg is not really that surprising. By the time John Nusbaum arrived in the US, perhaps as early as 1840 or even before but certainly by 1850, Harrisburg had been the Pennsylvania state capital for many years already, i.e., since 1812. It had been settled in the early 18^th century and because of its location on the Susquehanna River where there was an opening between the mountains, it had developed into an important trading post for trade and expansion to the west. By the 1830s the railroad and the Pennsylvania Canal passed through Harrisburg, further increasing its economic importance for westward expansion. By 1840 the population of Harrisburg was almost six thousand people. By comparison, the population of Philadelphia in 1840 was over 93,000 people.

Capitol. (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.), by A. G. Keet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jewish immigrants began to arrive in Harrisburg in the 1840s, primarily from Germany and England. The first synagogue, Ohev Sholom, was begun in 1853, first as an Orthodox congregation, and then in 1867 it became a Reform congregation. The Jewish population, however, was not very large. There were sixteen members of the congregation in 1853, and even as late as 1900 there were only 35 members.

So how would my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum have ended up here? I do not know for sure, but I can speculate that like many German Jewish immigrants, he arrived in Harrisburg as a peddler and, once finding a strong and stable economic base there, eventually opened his own store. Harrisburg was obviously an important location for trade not only for its residents but also for those who stopped there as they moved westward in the United States. It was likely an ideal location for a merchant. Unlike his three-times great-granddaughter (and her immediate relatives), he must have been a very able entrepreneur.

This pathway to economic success—from peddler to merchant—was quite common among German Jewish immigrants. According to Hasia Diner in “German Jews and Peddling in America,” (hereinafter “Peddling”) located here:

In Nashville, 23 percent of the adult male Jews in 1860 peddled, as did 25 percent of those in Boston between 1845 and 1861. In Easton, Pennsylvania, a town which occupied the strategic meeting point of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, 46 percent peddled in 1840, but just five years later, the number jumped to 70 percent. By 1850 the number had dropped to 55 percent, still a significant figure for any one occupation among a relatively small number of people. Of the 125 Jewish residents in Iowa in the 1850s, 100 peddled around the state, as did two-thirds of all the Jews in Syracuse, New York in that same decade before the Civil War.

See also Rudolf Glanz, “Notes on Early Jewish Peddling in America,” Jewish Social Studies ( Indiana University Press, Vol. 7, No. 2, April, 1945) located here.

In a different article, “German Immigrant Period in the United States,” (hereinafter “German Immigrant”) located here in the Jewish Women’s Archive, Hasia Diner explained why peddling was so widespread among German Jewish immigrants.

Americans in the hinterlands had little access to finished goods of all sorts, since few retail establishments existed outside the large cities. Jewish men overwhelmingly came to these remote areas as peddlers, an occupation that required little capital for start-up and that fit the life of the single man. In the large regional cities, Jewish immigrant men would load themselves up with a pack of goods, weighing sometimes as much as one hundred pounds, and then embark on a journey by foot, or eventually, if a peddler succeeded, by horse and wagon.

In “German Immigrant,” Diner opined that because many of these German Jewish immigrants came as single men, they were not tied down to families in a particular location when they first arrived and could thus take on the itinerant life of the peddler. In her “Peddling” article, Diner further explained the popularity of peddling, pointing out that many of these German Jewish men came from families in Germany where their fathers had been peddlers. That was certainly true for John Nusbaum and his brothers; their father Amson had been a peddler. This was an occupation with which they were familiar. Diner also stated that the Jewish German immigrants had networks of families and friends who could extend credit and help them get started on a peddling business.

19th century etching of a peddler by Granger found at http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-peddler-19th-century-granger.html

In “Peddling,” Diner provided this vivid description of the life of the peddler:

The peddlers operated on a weekly cycle. They left their base on Sunday or Monday, depending on how far they had to go. They would, if necessary, take the railroad or canal barges to get to their territories. They peddled all week and on Friday headed back to the town from which they had gotten their goods. Here on the Jewish Sabbath and, depending on geography, on Sundays as well, they rested, experiencing fellowship with the other immigrant Jewish peddlers who also operated out of this town. The peddlers engaged with the settled Jewish families, some of whom either operated boarding houses for peddlers or merely extended home hospitality to the men during their brief respites off the road. On the weekends the peddlers could partake of Sabbath religious services and consume some of the good food associated with Jewish holy time, food prepared in the distinctive manners of the various central European regions. Saturday night, after sundown, when the restrictions of the Sabbath lifted, the peddlers came to the shopkeepers and or other creditors to whom they owed money, paid up from the goods they had sold that week, and then filled up their bags, ready for another week on the road.

Rudolf Glanz wrote in “Notes on Early Jewish Peddling in America,” Jewish Social Studies ( Indiana University Press, Vol. 7, No. 2, April, 1945) located here, that these that peddlers played a crucial role in the economic growth and population growth in the unsettled parts of the United States in the 19^th century because they provided the pioneers with access to goods that they otherwise would not have had. This freed the pioneers from having to carry or manufacture these products themselves as they migrated west, thus enabling them to survive and adapt to the frontier conditions. Glanz, pp. 121-122. Diner described in “Peddling” the types of goods these peddlers generally sold:

The peddlers did not sell food or fuel. Rather they sold a jumble of goods that might be considered quasi-luxuries. In their bags they carried needles, threads, lace, ribbons, mirrors, pictures and picture frames, watches, jewelry, eye glasses, linens, bedding, and other sundry goods, sometimes called “Yankee notions.” They carried some clothing and cloth, as well as patterns for women to sew their own clothes, and other items to be worn. At times they carried samples of clothes and shoes, measured their customers, and then on return visits brought the finished products with them. When the peddlers graduated from selling from packs on their backs to selling from horse and wagon, they offered more in the way of heavy items, such as stoves and sewing machines.

As Diner points out, often these peddlers were the first Jews in a particular town or village. Once a peddler had saved enough money to start a permanent store and become a merchant, they would often pick one of these towns where they had had success as peddlers, gotten to know the residents, and established a rapport and a reputation. Both Diner and Glanz discuss this evolution from peddler to merchant. According to Diner in “Peddling,” most peddlers did not peddle for long periods, but were able to become storeowners, marry, and start families within a reasonably short period of time. Most became at least moderately successful, and some became the owners of some of the biggest department stores in the US, such as Gimbel’s and Macy’s.

My hypothesis is that John Nusbaum also started out as a peddler. He must have started from Philadelphia or perhaps New York as a single man and peddled goods through Pennsylvania until he accumulated enough capital and was able to settle in Harrisburg, a prime location for a merchant for the reasons stated above. Perhaps it was only once he had done so that he married Jeanette and started a family in the 1840s.

When his brother-in-law Isaac Dinkelspiel arrived with his wife Mathilde Nusbaum Dinkelspiel sometime later, it would have made sense for them to settle in Harrisburg. Since Isaac also started out as a peddler, as seen on the 1850 census, as a married peddler with children, it is not surprising that they would have moved to a place where Mathilde would have had family nearby while her husband Isaac was on the road. In addition, it is very likely that John was supplying Isaac with the products he was peddling. According to Diner, it was Jewish merchants who supplied the peddlers with the goods that they then carried out to the less settled regions to sell to those who lived there. Jewish peddlers needed Jewish merchants for their inventory, and Jewish merchants benefited from the increased market they could reach through the peddlers.

Maxwell, John’s youngest brother, was also a merchant by 1850, but he was in Lewistown, sixty miles from Harrisburg and about 160 miles from Philadelphia. What was he doing there? Unlike Harrisburg, it was not the state capital, and unlike Philadelphia, it was not a major seaport city. But it was by 1850 itself an important trading center based on its location near the Pennsylvania Canal and the railroads. Mifflin County, where Lewistown is located, had a population of close to 15,000 people in 1850 so it was not an insignificant location. I assume that Maxwell, arriving after his brother John, had also started as a peddler, selling the wares he obtained from his brother, and traveling around the state, until he was able to save enough money and establish a store in his own territory, close enough to his brothers, but not so close as to compete for business.

Lewistown Narrows http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PRR(1893)_p092_LEWISTOWN_NARROWS.jpg

According to the JewishGen KehillaLinks page for Lewistown, Pennsylvania, found here , the Mifflin County Historical Society had no records of Jews before 1862, but obviously Maxwell was already there. In fact, there was a street named for him:

A map of Lewistown in 1870 shows that Nathan Frank had a store at Brown and Market Streets, listed in a business directory of the time as Franks — Dry Goods, Carpets, Clothing, Furnishings, Goods, Etc.” Spruce Street was at that time listed as Nusbaum Street and in April, 1880 M. Nusbaum — Clothing & Gents Furnishings was advertised. By 1907 however Nusbaum & Co. was no longer listed in the directory.

The biggest mystery to me is why Leopold Nusbaum ended up in Blythe as a butcher. Blythe is sixty miles from Harrisburg and a hundred miles from Philadelphia. Like Lewistown, it was also located near railroads and the canals. I cannot find anything about its population in 1850, but even today its population is under a thousand. Schuykill County, where Blythe is located, however, had an overall population of over sixty thousand in 1850, which was a doubling of its 1840 population. Something must have been happening there, but I’ve not yet been able to figure out why its population exploded in that ten year period. Perhaps that explains why Leopold was living there with his wife Rosa and two young sons in 1850. But why was he a butcher? Certainly he could not have been a kosher butcher; even today the Jewish population of Blythe is 0%. At any rate, by 1860, as we will see, Leopold and his family had left Blythe and moved to Harrisburg, where Leopold also followed in his brother’s footsteps and became a merchant.

Thus, the Nusbaum story is not unlike the story of many of those German Jewish immigrants who came to the US, started off as peddlers, and then became merchants, owning stores all over the United States. It must have taken a lot of hard work and a courageous spirit to move to this new country, carrying a heavy pack hundreds of miles through undeveloped territory, dealing with strangers who spoke a strange language, on your own and alone for most of the week. It must have taken much determination and persistence to do this week after week, maybe for a few years or more, until you had made enough money to find one town to settle in and establish a store. And then it must have been a hard life, living as perhaps the only Jewish family in that town far away from other family members and other Jews. In my posts to follow, I will trace the lives of my Nusbaum peddler and merchant relatives and how they progressed in America.

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.

I Am My Own Grandma, or It’s A Small World After All

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Amy

No, it’s not quite that incestuous or circular, but it’s pretty confusing.

Here’s the story, and I will try to keep this simple. Or as simple as I can.

Almost two years ago I received a message out of the blue from a fellow ancestry.com member named Nancy Hano. Attached to her message was a photograph of my grandfather and great-grandparents’ headstone, i.e., John Nusbaum Cohen, Sr., and Emanuel and Eva Cohen.

headstone for emanuel, eva and john n cohen

Courtesy of Nancy Hano

Nancy had seen my tree on ancestry.com and wanted to know whether these were my relatives, and if so, she thought we might be related because her grandparents, Samuel and Louise Lydia Cohen, were buried nearby. After some back and forth and some looking at each other’s trees, we concluded that her Cohens and my Cohens were not genetically related.

However, we did find a different connection. With the help of Nancy’s cousin, Gil Weeder, we found that Samuel Cohen and Louise Lydia Hano had a daughter named Flora. Flora had married a man named Jacob Weil. Jacob Weil was the son of Lewis Weil and Rachel Cohen. Rachel Cohen was the sister of my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen. So in fact, Nancy and Gil were related to be my marriage—their relative Flora had married my relative Jacob Weil.

Lydia and Samuel Cohen and granddaughter Helen

Louise Lydia Hano and Samuel Cohen with their granddaughter Helen c. 1913 Courtesy of Gil Weeder

We exchanged pictures and information, and we all continued to do our own research.

Fast forward to this past week, almost two years later. I am now researching my Nusbaum relatives. As I was putting together lists of the descendants of my Nusbaum ancestors, I saw the name Jacob Hano appear as the husband of one of my relatives, Fanny Nusbaum, the daughter of Ernst Nusbaum, who is my 4x great-uncle, brother of John Nusbaum.

Since the Hanos, like the Cohens and the Nusbaums, were Pennsylvania Jews, I wondered whether there was a connection. So I did some research on Jacob Hano, and I soon found out that he was the brother of the Louise Lydia Hano who had married Samuel Cohen, Nancy and Gil’s ancestors. That is, Jacob Hano was Flora Cohen’s uncle, the same Flora Cohen who married Jacob Weil,the son of Rachel Cohen.

Home of Samuel Cohen and Louisa Lydia Hano
Courtesy of Gil Weeder

Are you still with me? There’s a quiz at the end. (No, not really.)

Thus, Nancy, Gil and I are related both through my Nusbaum family and through my Cohen family.

Did they all know each other? Jacob Hano married my relative Fanny Nusbaum in 1877. My great-grandparents Emanuel Cohen and Eva May Seligman (a Nusbaum) were married in 1886. Flora Cohen wasn’t married to my relative Jacob Weil until 1908, over twenty years later. So…here’s one possible scenario:

Eva May Seligman Cohen’s sister-in-law Rachel Cohen Weil says to Eva, “Do you know a nice Jewish girl for my son Jacob?”

Eva says, “Well, my mother’s first cousin Fanny is married to a man named Jacob Hano. His sister Louise Lydia is married to Samuel Cohen. A very nice family, also happened to be named Cohen. They have a daughter Flora. Perhaps Jacob would like to meet her?”

Flora Cohen and Jacob Weil with their daughter Maizie and unknown other Courtesy of Nancy Hano/Gil Weeder

And poof! My Nusbaum and Cohen relatives are married to each other, and Gil and Nancy and I get all excited about a new connection, and my family tree starts twisting around on its own axis so badly that it just might fall down!

To state it most succinctly, my father’s maternal first cousin three times removed, Fanny Nusbaum, was married to Jacob Hano, who was the uncle of the wife (Flora Cohen) of my father’s paternal first cousin once removed, Jacob Weil.

This is a simple family tree that illustrates the definitions of various types of cousins (e.g. “second cousin twice removed”). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: The usual European kinship system with English text. Note that “Thrice-removed” on the chart more commonly occurs as “Three times removed”… Deutsch: Das gebräuchliche europäische Verwandschaftssystem (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Follow up on Schopfloch: Who Replaced My 4x-Great-Grandfather Amson Nussbaum

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Amy

In my last post, I wrote about the Jews Edict of 1813 in Bavaria and the impact it had on Jewish families. To recap, since the law prohibited the increase in the number of Jewish families in a particular town, children would have to leave town to start their own families.

Yesterday I was very fortunate to receive the following document from a very generous fellow researcher named Ralph Baer.

1826 Matrikel left side of page

1826 Matrikel right side of page

This is from the census or Matrikel of 1826 for the town of Schopfloch, and the second name listed is the entry for my 4x-great-grandfather, Amson Meier Nussbaum, father of John Nusbaum. It reports that he was born 1777 and matriculated on September 26, 1809. His occupation was “Handel mit alten Kleidern” or trade with old clothes. [Thank you, Ralph, for sending me this and for the translation.]

I was curious about the name under Amson’s name, Hayum Kronheimer, and Ralph explained to me that he was Amson’s replacement on the Matrikel. In other words, after Amson died, Hayum Kronheimer replaced him in the count of permitted Jewish families in Schopfloch.

I’ve not yet had a chance to research Hayum Kronheimer. Perhaps he was an in-law, or maybe just a stranger to the family. [UPDATE: Further research led me to a family tree for Hayum Kronheimer; it does not appear that he married anyone in the Nussbaum family.] Either way, I found it rather chilling to see the actual name of the person who replaced my ancestor on the list of Jews allowed in the town.

A Town with A Secret Language: Schopfloch and the Nusbaums

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Amy

I thought I should outline my connection to the Nusbaums before I began writing about them. The chain between Amson Nusbaum and me is as follows, with the Nusbaum descendants all on the left side of each couple:

Amson Nusbaum—Voegele Welsch (my 4x-great-grandparents)

John (Josua) Nusbaum—Jeannette (Shamet) Dreyfuss (my 3x-great-grandparents)

Frances Nusbaum—-Bernard Seligman (my great-great-grandparents)

Eva May Seligman—-Emanuel Cohen (my great-grandparents)

John Nusbaum Cohen, Sr. — Eva Schoenthal (my grandparents)

John Nusbaum Cohen, Jr. —- Florence Goldschlager (my parents)

Amy Cohen (me)

(Although the Nusbaums spelled their name with two S’s in Germany as in NUSSBAUM, the family dropped the second S once they got to the US, just as the Seligmanns dropped the second N when they immigrated.)

So where do I start telling this Nusbaum story? I have already talked about my grandfather John Nusbaum Cohen’s life and his mother Eva Seligman Cohen’s life in telling the stories of the Cohens and the Seligmans. So I could start with my great-great-grandmother, Frances Nusbaum, who married Bernard Seligman. I’ve also written a little about her. But I prefer to start at the earliest point and move forward in time. Right now the earliest Nusbaum ancestors I have found date back to the 18^th century with Amson Nusbaum and Voegele Welsch.

This is the first branch that I have been able to take back as far as my 4x-great-grandparents. Although I know very little about Amson Nusbaum and Voegele Welsch, I am hoping that I can learn more if I can obtain more records from Schopfloch. But for now, here is what I know.

Amson Meier Nusbaum was born around 1777 possibly in Schopfloch, a small town in the Ansbach region of Bavaria. He married Voegele Welsch, who was born March 7, 1782, somewhere in Germany. They were married around 1804, and they had eight children born between 1805 and 1819, all born in Schopfloch. Amson was a peddler.

Schopfloch

Although I do not have much specific information about Amson and Voegele, I was interested in learning more about the town where they lived and raised their children in order to glean something about what their lives might have been like.

First, I read a little bit about Bavaria. I really know almost nothing about Germany’s history, but I do know that it was not a unified country until 1871. Before that, there were a number of separate duchys and kingdoms controlled by various aristocrats and noblemen, fighting over their borders for many hundreds of years. From the tenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the land that we know as Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648, which started as a conflict between Protestants and Catholics and grew to a much larger regional conflict, was perhaps the most destructive of the wars that occurred during this pre-unification era in the area we now call Germany.

Map of the Imperial Circles of the Holy Roman Empire (c. 1512) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bavaria was one of those regions within what is now Germany. It is located in the southeastern part of the country, bordering the Czech Republic and Austria to the east and south. The official website for what is now the state of Bavaria within the Federated Republic of Germany said this about the history of Bavaria:

Bavaria is one of the oldest states in Europe. Its origins go back to the 6th century AD. In the Middle Ages, Bavaria (until the start of the 19th century Old Bavaria) was a powerful dukedom, first under the Guelphs and then under the Wittelsbachs. … Cities like Regensburg developed into cultural and economic centres of European rank. After the Thirty Years War, the Electorate of Bavaria played an important role in the political deliberations of the major powers. In the 19th century Bavaria became a constitutional monarchy and the scene of a great cultural blossoming and of political and social reforms.

Schopfloch is a small town of three thousand people located near the western boundary of Bavaria. It is about sixty miles west of Nuremberg, about one hundred miles northwest of Munich, and about eighty miles northeast of Stuttgart.

Schopfloch in AN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the official town website, the earliest mention of the town dates from March 11, 1260, on a land deed witnessed by someone named Ulricis de Schopfloch. (Schopf loch apparently means “ crested hole” or “tuft hole,” and perhaps this is a reference to the fact that the town is located in a small valley). During the Thirty Years War, many Protestants moved from Salzburg to Schopfloch. They were primarily tradesman in the building trades—masons and bricklayers– and the town was known for its many families in the construction business.

The history of the Jews in Bavaria is, like the history of Jews in most countries in Europe, one of oppression, discrimination, unfair taxation, and frequent pogroms with occasional periods of greater tolerance and civil rights. There is evidence of Jews living in Bavaria as early as the 900s, and numerous towns and cities in Bavaria had Jewish communities by the 12^th century. Jews were limited in their livelihoods in many locations; in many places, they were prohibited from most trades other than moneylending. Beginning in the 14^th century and continuing through the 17^th century, the Jews were subjected to widespread orders of expulsion and deportation from many Bavarian communities. A good summary of the history of Jews in Bavaria can be found here at H. Peter Sinclair’s “Chronology of the History of the Jews in Bavaria 906-1945,” .

As for Schopfloch specifically, the first Jews settled there in the fourteenth century. According to The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust: K-Sered (Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., 2001, NYU Press), p.1151, Jews moved to Schopfloch after being expelled from the nearby town of Dinkelsbuehl. Another source suggests that Jews were welcomed to Schopfloch by rival nobles who took in Jews to increase their strength. Jews were able to do well, engaging in cattle trade in Schopfloch and in several communities near Schopfloch.

A Jewish cemetery was created around 1612 and served not only the Jewish residents of Schopfloch but also those of surrounding towns.

Jewish cemetery in Schopfloch
at http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20231/Schopfloch%20ETJK%202009014.jpg

A synagogue was built in 1679, and there was also a ritual bath and a school. According to the website “Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities” :

The Jews of Schopfloch established a synagogue in 1679 and enlarged it in 1712 and again in 1715. Rabbis served the community during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and the village was home to a regional rabbinate during the years 1841 to 1872. In 1877, a new synagogue was built on the Judengasse, or “Jews’ alley” (later renamed Bahnhofstrasse).

According to the town website, the Jewish residents played an important role in the social history of the town, and the long history of co-existence between the Christians and Jews in Schopfloch made it less susceptible to anti-Semitism even in the Nazi period. Perhaps there were no pogroms or expulsion orders in Schopfloch. None were mentioned in H. Peter Sinclair’s “Chronology of the History of the Jews in Bavaria 906-1945,” cited above and found here.

Overall, it would seem that Schopfloch would have been a relatively comfortable place for Jews to live when my ancestors Amson and Voegele Nussbaum were having children between 1805 and 1819 and the years following when their children were growing up. Amson died June 7, 1836, and Voegele died October 2, 1842. From what I can find in immigration records, my three-times great grandfather John (Josua) Nusbaum emigrated in 1843, the year after his mother died. It appears that at least some of his siblings emigrated around the same time. What would have motivated them to leave once their parents had died if in fact conditions for Jews were relatively good in Schopfloch?

The Nussbaum family was growing up in an era of significant change in Bavaria and in Europe generally. Napoleon had risen to power in France as the 18^th century ended, and the Holy Roman Empire crumbled. His armies invaded the lands in what is now Germany, and eventually he defeated the Austrian army and took over much of German land. His emancipation of the Jews in France in 1806 had an impact on those in Bavaria, and in 1813 Bavaria adopted the Jews Edict of 1813. Although Napoleon was defeated shortly after, the Jews Edict of 1813 remained the law in Bavaria.

The Jews Edict was a mixed blessing. As described by one source, “Jews now could acquire land and participate in trade but they were forced to adopt German surnames and to list the head of the household’s name and occupation as shown in the Matrikellisten (census) of 1817.” This registry (while a good thing for genealogy research), which may seem benign, had a negative impact on Jews because it forced many Jews to leave their homeland. Section 12 of the Edict provided that the number of Jewish families in any community could not increase. That meant that a child in a Jewish family could not establish his or her own family, but had to leave the community. Section 13 provided some exceptions, but they were quite restrictive. In addition, Section 14 prohibited the issuance of a marriage permit even if the marriage would not result in an overall increase in Jewish families unless the man could demonstrate that he was going to engage in a legal occupation other than being a peddler. http://www.rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf/EN_BY_JU_edikt_e.pdf

Thus, not all of Amson and Voegele’s children could stay in Schopfloch. To do so would have created eight new Jewish families in the town. Moreover, since Amson had been a peddler, chances are at least some of his sons had planned to engage in a similar trade. So they had to leave Schopfloch, and since the neighboring towns were under the same restrictions, they could not even settle nearby. They had to emigrate, and I am sure that America, a new country with a democratic form of government, must have been very appealing to these young people who were being denied the right to stay in the town where they were born.

The Jewish population in Schopfloch hit its peak in 1867 with 393 Jewish residents out of a total population of 1,788. Although a new synagogue was built in 1877, by 1880 the Jewish population had dropped to 147 people. It continued to drop so that by the early 1930s there were fewer than forty Jews in the town. Nevertheless, the synagogue was renovated in 1932, and there was a large celebration rededicating the synagogue, attended by many Jews and non-Jews, including members of the Christian clergy, the mayor, and other town officials and residents. One pastor spoke about the good relations between the Christian and Jewish residents of Schopfloch.

Schopfloch synagogue 1910 Source: Wallersteiner Kalendar, 1983 found at http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/schopfloch_synagoge.htm

Tragically, just five years later on November 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, this newly renovated synagogue was destroyed by fire. As described on the “Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities” website:

In 1938, in the wake of virulent anti-Jewish incitement, Schopfloch’s mayor advised the Jews to leave. All of them did so within months, and the synagogue was eventually sold (its ritual objects were transferred to Munich). Schopfloch’s last Jews left in October 1938. Although the synagogue was set on fire on Pogrom Night, the blaze was extinguished by the fire brigade. The building’s interior was completely destroyed, as were the ritual objects in Munich. Three Schopfloch Jews emigrated; the others relocated within Germany. Forty-eight perished in the Shoah. The synagogue building was demolished in 1939.

The cemetery, however, still exists, and a woman named Angelika Brosig began a project to restore the cemetery and to record all the names of those buried in the cemetery. Sadly, Ms. Brosig died in 2013, and not all of the headstones have yet been translated and recorded, but the work is supposed to be continuing by others. Thus far, I have not found any Nussbaums on the list, but I have to believe that my four-times great-grandparents Amson and Voegele are buried there.

Although Schopfloch is and was a small town without any particular historical significance of its own, it has been recognized for an interesting reason. The Jews of Schopfloch developed a dialect of their own to be used in the course of cattle trade as a way of communicating without being understood. It was a dialect combining Hebrew terms with German, and eventually it was used not only by the Jewish residents of Schopfloch but also by the non-Jewish residents. In fact, the dialect, called Lachoudish, a shortened version of Lachon Kodesh, or “holy language” in Hebrew, continued to be used by the residents of Schopfloch long after all the Jews left the town in the 1930s. The New York Times published an article about this secret language on February 10, 1984, giving some examples of the use of Hebrew terms in the dialect:

Lachoudisch is replete with words that bespeak the Jews’ wary relationship to Christian authority. The word for ”church” in Lachoudisch is ”tum” – from the Hebrew word for ”religiously unclean.” The word ”police” is ”sinem”- from the Hebrew for ”hated.” A priest is a ”gallach” or, in Hebrew, ”one who shaves.”

(James M. Markham, “Dialect of Lost Jews Lingers in a Bavarian Town,” The New York Times (February 10, 1984) found at http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/10/world/dialect-of-lost-jews-lingers-in-a-bavarian-town.html The article also provides historical and current information about the town.)

This website provides further examples of Hebrew terms used in Lachoudish. http://www.medine-schopfloch.de/Lachoudisch/lachoudisch.html Although Lachoudish is disappearing as there are fewer Schopfloch residents who remember it, there has been some effort to remember and revive the dialect. This video, which unfortunately for me is in German, is about Lachoudish and also provides some images of Schopfloch today. If anyone wishes to translate this for me, please let me know.

Coat of arms of Schopfloch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Nusbaums: Were They Jewish? Learning from Rookie Mistakes

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Amy

English: Postcard, dated 2.9.1917. Title: &quo...

English: Postcard, dated 2.9.1917. Title: “Schopfloch” Deutsch: Postkarte, datiert 2.9.1917. Titel: “Schopfloch” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before I started doing genealogy research, I knew only one thing about the Nusbaum name. I knew it was my father’s middle name, that it was also his father’s middle name, and that they were named for some ancestor named…John Nusbaum, my great-great-great-grandfather.

I had no idea who John Nusbaum was, although I think I did know he was from Germany. I didn’t know if he had ever lived in the United States. And I had no idea how he had gotten the name John. John is not a Jewish name. Jonathan, yes, but I do not think I have known more than one or two men named John who were Jewish, except for my father. In fact, there were some people who had questioned whether my father really was Jewish, given his first name.

Things got even more confusing when I first started doing genealogy research a couple of years ago. I was a real novice, and I did not know enough to know that people often put bad information on their family trees. I assumed, very naively, that if someone put a tree on ancestry, it had to be right. Like I said, I was a real novice. So as I was adding information (much of it from reliable sources like census reports), I found several ancestry trees with my ancestor John Nusbaum appearing on it—with his descendants included. I was excited—these trees linked my ancestor to a whole line of Nusbaums going back hundreds of years! I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I added all these people to my tree, thinking that I could now trace my family back centuries on the Nusbaum side.

I should have been more circumspect. I should have picked up on a few clues—too many people named Johann, too many people named Maria, Christian, Catherine—no Jewish sounding names. I began to think that in fact my Nusbaum ancestors had not been Jewish. But I was new and trusting and just accepted what I saw. It was the internet, after all. It had to be true. Right?

I had then turned to other things and put those Nusbaums aside. After all, they were all done, I thought. Someone else had found them all.

But then about a month ago I started looking again at those Nusbaums, an older and hopefully wiser researcher now. I went back to all those trees, and I realized they had no sources to support the claim that my John Nusbaum was the same person as the Johann Nusbaum that linked back to all those non-Jewish sounding Nusbaums. Only one tree had any sources at all for these earlier Nusbaums; the others had just somehow linked to that tree and added my ancestor to it, assuming John was the same as Johann.

I contacted the owner of that one sourced tree, and he and I had a good exchange and a few chuckles about all those other misleading trees. His ancestors were Christian, and he had no sources indicating a link to a John Nusbaum who settled in Pennsylvania, as my John Nusbaum had done back in the 1840s. I detached my ancestor from the other trees, sad to lose hundreds of years of ancestors, but happy to know that my Nusbaums could have been Jewish. (I also wrote to the owners of those other trees, pointing out the error, but not one of them responded nor did they take my Nusbaums off their trees.)

So now my Nusbaum line ended with John Nusbaum. I was able to find quite a bit in the US records, but had no hints as to his parents, siblings, or home town in Germany. And then my father provided me with some answers. He has the Nusbaum family bible, and it has entries for John and his siblings as well as his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It told me where he was born—Schopfloch, Ansbach, Bavaria, in 1814. I had names and birth dates for his siblings: Isaac (1812), Ernest (1816), Caroline (1822), Mathilde (1825).[1] It was a gold mine. And I was off and running to find the real Nusbaums.

A Map of Schopfloch im Landkreis Ansbach, Bayern, Germany. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now comes the best part. I contacted the registry in Schopfloch to ask whether there were any records for my ancestors, giving the names of the Nusbaums I knew about. And this is what I received in return from a man named Rolf Hofmann:

FAMILY SHEET AMSON MEIER NUSSBAUM

OF SCHOPFLOCH

compiled by Rolf Hofmann (HarburgProject@aol.com) VERSION 01

AMSON MEIER NUSSBAUM

peddler in Schopfloch

born ca 1777 (Schopfloch ?), died 07 Jun 1836 Schopfloch

father = Meier ?

married ca 1804 ?

VOEGELE WELSCH

born 07 Mar 1782 (where ?), died 02 Oct 1842 Schopfloch

father = ?

CHILDREN (all born in Schopfloch):

(01) GUETEL 10 Feb 1805 – ?

(02) MADEL 20 Jul 1806 – ?

(03) LOEW 26 Apr 1808 – ?

(04) ISAK 28 Mar 1810 – ? emigrated to USA in 1843

(05) SARA 08 Jul 1812 – ?

(06) JOSUA 29 Nov 1814 – ?

(JOHN in USA) emigrated to Philadelphia, USA around 1840

married ca 1852 [this is not correct]

JEANETTE NN from Hesse-Darmstadt (Germany)

20 May 1817 – 12 Jan 1908 (died in Philadelphia) parents = ?

so far known children = Millen * 1853 + Lottie * 1863

(07) SALOMON 24 Aug 1816 – ?

(08) MEIER 14 Sep 1819 – ?

I am now in touch with Mr. Hofmann and hope to get the sources for this information, but you can imagine the happy dance I did when I saw this. I had the names of my FOUR-times great-grandparents, Amson and Voegele. I had names for all their children, including some I had no records for and some who matched with the names I had from the family bible. Madel must be Mathilda, Isak is Isaac, and I assume Ernst is Salomon, based on the birth year. Also, I found other Nusbaums through research—Meier is Maxwell, Loew is Leopold.

And most importantly? Well, John, my three-times great-grandfather—his name was originally Josua. He did in fact have a Jewish name. He obviously Americanized it to John, just as many of his siblings Americanized their names to names that were less Jewish-sounding. My father and my grandfather could have been named Joshua Nusbaum Cohen if their namesake had not changed his name to John.

There is still much research to be done and much to learn about the Nusbaums. But one big mystery is solved. My Nusbaums were not descended from all those Johanns and Marias, but were from a Jewish family living in Schopfloch, Bavaria, in the early 19^th century.

Jewish cemetery in Schopfloch
at http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20231/Schopfloch%20ETJK%202009014.jpg

[1] Although Caroline and Mathilde were listed with different surnames, I was able to find US records that verified that they were John’s sisters. More on that later.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: genealogy

The Long Depression: The Family of Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock

Four Weddings and a Funeral: More Twists and Turns

More Blessings and More Insight into My Seligmann Ancestors

The Great Fire of San Francisco 1851 and My Twisted Family Tree

Caps for Sale: Peddlers and Merchants

The Nusbaums Come to America

I Am My Own Grandma, or It’s A Small World After All

Follow up on Schopfloch: Who Replaced My 4x-Great-Grandfather Amson Nussbaum

A Town with A Secret Language: Schopfloch and the Nusbaums

The Nusbaums: Were They Jewish? Learning from Rookie Mistakes

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: