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.

More Gifts from Doing Genealogy: The Gau-Algesheim Seligmanns and New Friends in Germany

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Amy

As I’ve been researching and writing about my American Seligman relatives, I’ve also been busy trying to learn more about my German ancestors. I wrote to about five different people in Gau-Algesheim, names I found on websites or through contacts from JewishGen or two Facebook groups, Tracing the Tribe and German Genealogy, including Klaus Cook. I’d been trying since September 7 to find someone to help me learn whether there were any records of Jewish births, marriages and/or deaths from the town where I knew Sigmund, Bernard and Adolph Seligman were born. I had gotten no responses—not even one saying that they had no such records.

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

I also contacted a woman named Dorothee Lottman-Kaeseler. I had found her name on the website describing the restoration of the Gau-Algesheim cemetery, and she did write back to me. She was very helpful and eventually she managed to find someone to pay attention to my emails. Imagine my delight when the other morning I woke up to this email:

On behalf of our registrar, Frau Hemmkeppler, I am hereby replying to your genealogy request, which we have received on 15. Oct. 2014 via email.

At first, please note, that due to age, we do not have any electronic archives of our historical records. However, we have put in extra efforts and were able to manually trace the following information related to the name of Seligmann:

Siegesmund Seligmann, DOB: 24. Dec.1829 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 67/1829

Salomon Seligmann, DOB: 15. Mar.1832 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 19/1832

Carolina Seligmann, DOB: 18. Mar.1833 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 25/1833

Benjamin Seligmann, DOB: 10. May 1835 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 36/1835

Bernhard Seligmann, DOB: 23. Nov.1837 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 49/1837

Hyronimus Seligmann, DOB: 14. Dec.1839 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 75/1839

August Seligmann, DOB: 10. Dec.1841 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 88/1841

Adolph Seligmann, DOB: 29. Sep. 1843 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 52/1843

Mathilde Seligmann, DOB: 31. Jan. 1845 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 4/1845

Paulina Seligmann, DOB: 29.01.1847 in Gau-Algesheim, Reg-Nr. 5/1847

All the beforementioned persons are the children of Moritz and Eva Seligmann (born as Eva Schoenfeld). ….

Sincerely,

B. Brettschneider

IT-Administrator

There was the birth record of my great-great-grandfather Bernard, his brothers Sigmund and Adolph, and seven other siblings, all born in Gau-Algesheim, all the children of Moritz and Eva Schoenfeld Seligmann. I was so excited. I now had seven more relatives to learn about and, most importantly, the names of my great-great-great-grandparents, Moritz Seligmann and Eva Schoenfeld.

I have now been in touch again with Bernie Brettschneider and hope to obtain copies of these records and also to learn if there are any other records of these individuals or of others who might be their children, spouses, and so on.

Gau-Algesheim in MZ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am deeply grateful to Klaus Cook and the other people in the Facebook groups and JewishGen, to Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler and to Bernie Brettschneider for their assistance, and I am excited to see what else I can learn about this part of my family. I am also in touch with Walter Nathan, who was the man behind the cemetery restoration in Gau-Algesheim. Walter and I are trying to find what connections there may be between my Seligmanns and his Seligmann family, and I am learning more and more about how Jews lived in Germany in the 19^th century.

When I started down this path less than three years ago, I never imagined how much I would learn about the world and its history by simply researching my own little family. I never imagined I would make contact with people in Germany and Romania and Poland, have cousins all over the world and talk to people whose lives have been so interesting. The gifts I receive from genealogy continue to surprise me and warm my heart.

And I now am thinking that someday in the not too distant future I will visit Gau-Algesheim and see where my Seligmann ancestors lived. And Iasi to see where my Goldschlager and Rosenzweig ancestors lived. And Tarnobrzeg, Poland, to see where my Brotman ancestors lived. In fact, that last one is being planned for this coming spring. And then there are all the places right here in the US where I can go to walk in the places where my ancestors lived—New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Santa Fe, Colorado, and who knows where else? The adventures continue.

Gau-Algesheim and the Seligmans: My Great-great-grandfather’s Birthplace and What I Learned

“Brothers and Sisters in England and in Germany” and My Lost Inheritance

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Amy

When Bernard Seligman died in 1903, his obituary listed among his survivors not only his brother Adolph, but also “other brothers and sisters in England and in Germany.” Thus far, I have only found one other definite sibling, a brother named James, and one possible sibling, a brother named August. I am still working on locating records from Gau-Algesheim to see if I can locate any other siblings or other relatives of my great-great-grandfather.

My belief that August may be a sibling is based on two records I found on ancestry.com. One is a birth record for August Seligmann, born on December 10, 1841, in Algesheim, Rheinhessen, Germany, to Maritz Seligmann and Barbara Schonfeld. The second is a marriage record for August Seligmann to Rosa Bergmann on March 5, 1875, in Frankfort-Main. I know that this record is for the same August Seligmann as the birth record because the birth date and the parents’ names match those on the birth record. Why do I think that August Seligmann was Bernard’s brother? Because Adolph’s death certificate said his father’s name was Morris and because other sources state that Bernard’s parents’ names were Moritz and Babette. The place of birth and the date of birth also make it likely that August was my great-great-great-uncle and that Maritz Seligmann and Barbara Schonfeld were my three-times great-grandparents. Now if I could only get access to Gau-Algesheim records, I might find the other missing family members. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Meanwhile, I will continue to scour the resources I have to see if I can find them.

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

The one other brother I know of for certain I only know about because of my cousin Pete. Pete informed me about James Seligman, our English relative, and he himself only had known about James because of an estate settlement back in the 1980s involving James’ estate. (I do not know whether my father or my aunt Eva or my cousin Marjorie ever were contacted about this inheritance, but given the amount at stake and how much time has passed, it’s not worth the trouble of finding out. Pete said his share was a little more than $100, and it took years before he received payment.)

James Seligman was born in about 1853 in Germany, and by 1881 he had settled in Kilpin, Yorkshire, England and was living as a “visitor” in Kilpin Lodge, according to the 1881 England and Wales census. (England and Wales Census, 1881,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/X3FK-ZVF : accessed 30 Sep 2014), James Seligmare in household of George H Anderton, Kilpin, Yorkshire (East Riding), England; citing “1881 England, Scotland and Wales census,” index and images, findmypast.co.uk (www.findmypast.co.uk : Brightsolid, n.d.); PRO RG 11/, p. , The National Archives of the UK, Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey) The census listed his occupation as a wine merchant. On May 21, 1886, James became a naturalized British citizen. He was residing in Lewisham, Kent County, England at that time, unmarried, and employed as wine merchant.

The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; Duplicate Certificates of Naturalisation, Declarations of British Nationality, and Declarations of Alienage; Class: HO 334; Piece: 13.

James married Henrietta Walker Templeton in 1887 in the Marylebone district of London. In 1901 they were living on Buchanan Street in Glasgow, Scotland, where James was now employed as a “hotel keeper,” according to the 1901 Scotland census. From the census record it appears that there were about thirty people residing in this hotel. James and Henrietta did not have any children listed as living with them, and according to Pete, they never did have any children, and I did not find any children listed on the BMD index who might have been their children.

Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t have another record for James after 1901 until 1922 when he and Henrietta are listed as residing at 11 Woodbourne Road in Birmingham, England, on the Midlands, England, Electoral Register for that year. They also appear at the same address on the 1925 and 1927 electoral registers.

11 Woodbourne Road, Birmingham, England https://www.google.com/maps/@52.470453,-1.952537,3a,90y,235h,93.94t/data=!3m3!1e1!3m1!2e0!6m1!1e1

Henrietta died on October 4, 1928, and is buried in Harborne, Stafford, England. About a year later, James married Clara Elizabeth Parry. He was seventy-six at that time, and his new bride was thirty years old, so like his brother Adolph in Santa Fe, James also married a much younger woman in this second marriage. He died less than six months later on March 31, 1930, in Birmingham, and, like his first wife Henrietta, was buried in Harborne.

Clara, his young widow, did not die until about 1977. It was after then that a search was made for James’ heirs, as Clara and James had not had any children, and James had died intestate. Here is a copy of the letter that Pete’s sister received in January, 1980, regarding the estate of James Seligman.

An investigation was done to find James’ heirs, and a family tree was created that included my father, his sister, and his cousin Marjorie as well as the other grandchildren of Bernard Seligman and the descendants of Adolph Seligman as the potential heirs to this estate. There are several errors and omissions on this tree, which makes me wonder about the thoroughness of the search. I would post the tree except that there are references to living people with their birth dates and other identifying information and so out of concern for their privacy, I am not posting it.

That, unfortunately, is all I know about James Seligman and about August Seligman. I have nothing specific to tie James to Bernard aside from this estate settlement and only those two German records to connect August with Bernard. I remain hopeful that I will at some point find more records for the other Seligman(n)s who were my great-great-grandfather’s siblings and parents and other relatives.

Bernard Seligman: His Political Career and His Family 1870-1890

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Amy

I want to thank my cousin Arthur “Pete” Scott for all his help with finding newspaper clippings (including some of the ones appearing in this post) and other information to try and fill in the timeline for Bernard and the other Seligmans. He has also contributed a great deal of information about our family at the Voces de Santa Fe website. Like my father, Pete is a great-grandson of Bernard Seligman and thus my second cousin once removed.

I have been having a hard time tracking the whereabouts of my great-great-grandfather Bernard in the 1870s. Although I know that Bernard and his family had moved back to Santa Fe sometime before their youngest child Arthur was born in June, 1871, it seems that Bernard was in and out of town during the 1870s. In 1873, he withdrew from the Seligman Brothers partnership:

Date: Thursday, January 2, 1873 Paper: Santa Fe Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) Page: 1

The firm of S. Seligman and Brother was dissolved, and a new firm owned by Sigmund and Adolph Seligman and Julius Nusbaum was created named Seligman Bros. and Company. Who was Julius Nusbaum? He was Bernard’s brother-in-law, the brother of Frances Nusbaum, Bernard’s wife.

Daily New Mexican, January 13, 1873

I cannot find an explanation for Bernard’s withdrawal, and he certainly was involved in the business again in later years. He had applied for a passport on April 3, 1873, and he served as a representative to the Vienna Exposition of 1873, so maybe that prompted his withdrawal.

Bernard Seligman passport application 1873

Maybe it’s my modern skepticism that is coloring my perception, but it also seems possible that Bernard withdrew only in name, placing his wife’s brother in the firm in his stead. Was this done for political purposes to avoid at least the appearance of any conflicts of interest?

Henry Tobias, author of The History of the Jews of New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 1990), writing about New Mexico in the 1880s and 1890s, described Bernard Seligman as “probably the most political of all the Santa Fe Jews” during that era (Tobias, p. 117). Ralph Emerson Twitchell, author of Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico’s Ancient Capital (Rio Grande Press, 1925), wrote, “A public speaker of great force and convincing power, [Bernard Seligman] found time to engage in the public affairs of the country of his adoption and was elected and appointed to many positions of profit and trust.” (Twitchell, p. 477) Twitchell also pointed out that Bernard “was a linguist of rare ability; speaking with fluency the English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew idioms.” (Ibid.) Bernard must have been well suited for a career in politics and government in bilingual New Mexico.

Tobias wrote that Bernard became a member of the territorial legislature in 1880. (Tobias, p. 117) Both Bernard’s obituary (“A Good and True Man called Home,” Santa Fe New Mexican, February 3, 1903, p. 1) and Twitchell (p. 477 ) also state that Bernard served several terms in the Legislative Assembly for New Mexico. Another source reported that Bernard was instrumental in the passage of the mechanic’s lien law while he served in the territorial government, a law considered to be very important at that time. (George B. Anderson, History of New Mexico: Its Resources and Its People, Vol. 2 (Pacific States Pub. Co. 1907)).

One newspaper clipping shows that Bernard was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Santa Fe County Commissioner in 1884.(Las Vegas Daily Gazette., October 22, 1884, Image 2, at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90051703/1884-10-22/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1873&index=5&rows=20&words=Bernard+Seligman&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=New+Mexico&date2=1903&proxtext=bernard+seligman&y=4&x=6&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1 ). Twitchell wrote that Bernard was chairman of the board of the Santa Fe County Commission for three terms, presumably in the mid-1880s. (Twitchell, p. 477)

Bernard and the Santa Fe County Commission ran into some legal trouble when a local resident and attorney, Thomas Catron, sued the Commission, alleging fraud. Catron claimed that in 1886 the Commission had issued warrants to raise money for a new courthouse that would increase the county debt beyond the limits set by a new federal statute; he alleged that to avoid that new limitation, the Commission had falsely stated the issuance date of the warrants so that they predated the effective date of that new law. Bernard Seligman is named in the case as the chair of the Commission at the time of this alleged fraud. The Supreme Court of the Territory of New Mexico found that Catron had stated sufficient facts, if proven, to support a claim against the Commission and remanded the case for trial. Unfortunately, I cannot find any report on the final outcome of the case on the merits.[1] Given Bernard’s future political success, perhaps Catron lost the case.

Bernard also encountered some controversy when the Governor of the New Mexico Territory, Edmund Ross, named him as his choice to be the treasurer of the territory. Thomas Catron was again involved in the fight against Bernard. Catron was himself a political leader in New Mexico, having served as Attorney General and US Attorney for the territory and later serving as one of its first US Senators when New Mexico became a state.

English: Thomas Benton Catron, Senator of the United States from New Mexico (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In July, 1886, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Governor Ross might appoint Bernard as treasurer:

Bernard Seligman medicine man to be treasurer

Date: Friday, July 16, 1886 Paper: New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) Page: 2

I am curious about the reference to Bernard as a “medicine man;” I have no idea what it means in this context.

Governor Ross did in fact appoint Bernard Seligman to be territorial treasurer, but that appointment was then resisted by a man who claimed to be the sitting treasurer, Antonio Ortiz y Salazar, who refused to turn over his office to Seligman. Ortiz, represented by the same Thomas Catron who was suing Bernard for fraud in his role as County Commissioner, argued that the governor had not had authority to appoint Seligman because there was no vacancy to fill as Ortiz still held the seat and had not resigned or died.

Seligman brought a mandamus action against Ortiz, seeking to have him hand over the incidents of the treasurer’s office. Seligman claimed that the oath taken by Ortiz when sworn in for a second term in 1884 was void because of some irregularities. Ortiz responded that he had been properly sworn into office in 1882 for his first term, and thus he still had a valid claim to the treasurer’s office despite the governor’s appointment of Seligman. The trial court judge disagreed and ruled that Seligman’s appointment was valid and that Ortiz had to give up his seat. Ortiz requested a rehearing, and on review, a different judge reversed the first court’s decision and ruled in favor of Ortiz, concluding that the appointment of Seligman as treasurer was not valid because Ortiz still properly held the seat.

Date: Thursday, August 19, 1886 Paper: Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican and Livestock Journal (Santa Fe, NM) Page: 4

Henry Tobias saw this incident as an example of the resentment some New Mexico residents felt about the success of the Jewish merchants in New Mexico. In response to his appointment of Seligman, Ross was advised by one prominent resident that there were already too many Jews in Santa Fe politics and government. (Tobias, pp. 119-120.)

Edmund G. Ross. Library of Congress description: “Hon. E. G. Ross of Kansas” (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Governor of New Mexico Territory 1885-1889

In December 1886, Governor Ross made a statement explaining his choice of my great-great-grandfather that upset some residents of the territory because of the insulting and discriminatory assumptions underlying that statement:

governor ross appoints bernard seligman-page-001

Date: Wednesday, December 29, 1886 Paper: Santa Fe Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) Page: 2

Perhaps there was prejudice on both sides: anti-Mexican prejudice by Ross and anti-Semitic prejudice on the part of those opposing the appointment of my great-great-grandfather.

Several sources, however, state that Bernard Seligman did serve as territorial treasurer: his obituary, Twitchell, and Tobias all refer to the fact that he served as treasurer. The Legislative Blue Book of the Territory of New Mexico (1911) lists Bernard Seligman as territorial treasurer from 1886 through 1891. None of these sources explain, however, what happened that allowed Seligman to continue in office after the court decision in favor of Ortiz in 1889.

Thus, for much of the 1880s Bernard was pursuing his political career. However, he also must have been somewhat involved in the Seligman Brothers business. This news clipping dated April 8, 1889, certainly suggests that Bernard was active in the business:

New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), Monday, April 8, 1889 , Volume: 26, Issue: 41,Page: 4

Meanwhile, at home his children were growing up. In 1881, my great-grandmother Eva, then fifteen years old, left Santa Fe for Philadelphia where she went to Swarthmore[2] and later married my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen in 1886. Her younger brother James also went to Swarthmore, where he was a member of the class of 1888 and a member of the literary society.

Bernard and Frances’ next child, Minnie, also followed in her siblings’ footsteps and enrolled at Swarthmore as did her younger Arthur. Although Arthur was two years younger than Minnie, they both enrolled at Swarthmore the same year—1885-1886. In that year James, Minnie and Arthur were all students at Swarthmore, James a sophomore in the college and Arthur and Minnie as juniors in the preparatory school. I am not sure where Eva was living that year as she appears to have finished her studies at Swarthmore in 1884 and did not marry Emanuel until 1886.

With at least three of their children living in Philadelphia and Bernard busy with politics, I wonder whether Frances had also returned to Philadelphia to be closer both to her Nusbaum family and her children and whether Eva was also living with her mother there. Although Eva and Frances are listed on the 1885 New Mexico Territorial Census, so are the other three children, despite the fact that those three were enrolled at school in Philadelphia that same year. The news clipping above reported that Frances had stayed behind in Philadelphia “with friends” in 1889 when Bernard had returned to Santa Fe.

The family suffered a tragic loss on January 14, 1887, when Minnie, only seventeen years old, died from meningitis while in Philadelphia. The address on the death certificate was 829 North 5^th Street, Philadelphia. Although I cannot find where the other Nusbaums were living in 1887, earlier Philadelphia directories list several members of the extended Nusbaum family living at residences nearby on North 6^th Street and North Marshall Street.

Minnie Seligman death certificate 1887

This note in a Quaker publication says that Minnie died at the home of a relative:

Friends’ Intelligencer United with the Friends’ Journal, Volume 44 (Google eBook), p. 59

Minnie was buried in Philadelphia at Mt Sinai cemetery, the same cemetery where her infant sister Florence had been buried in 1867 and where her uncle Sigmund Seligman had been buried in 1876 and where her parents and her sister Eva would later be buried. Although the family may have left Philadelphia for Santa Fe almost twenty years before, it is pretty clear to me that the ties back to Philadelphia remained very strong for the family of Bernard Seligman.

[1] Catron v. Board of Commissioners, 21 P. 60 (N.M. 1889)

[2] Swarthmore had a preparatory school as well as a college in those days, and my great-grandmother and her siblings all attended the preparatory school and then most attended the college for at least some time as well.

Sigmund Seligman: “A Beloved Friend to Humanity and an Uncompromising Lover of His Country”

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Amy

“La Ciudad de Santa Fe.” Engraving from “Report of Lt. J. W. Abert of his Examination of New Mexico in the Years 1846-1847.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My great-great-uncle Sigmund Seligman must have been an impressive human being. Born in 1830, he came by himself to the US from a small town in Germany before he was even twenty years old. Although I have no records of his arrival or where he might have settled first (although other facts suggest he first settled in Philadelphia), historical sources report that by 1849 he had settled in Santa Fe, first working as a photographer there and then joining up with Charles Clever to start the trading business that became Seligman and Clever and eventually Seligman Brothers, a business that flourished and eventually supported not only Sigmund, but also his two brothers, Bernard and Adolph, and their families.

By 1857, he had applied for US citizenship in Philadelphia, and by 1860 he reported on the US census that he had $20,000 worth of personal property and the same in 1870. According to two different websites I found for converting 1860 dollars to today’s money, that amount would be the equivalent of over $400,000 today. Not too bad for a thirty year old entrepreneur.

I found a number of interesting news articles about Sigmund, including one dated June 6, 1871, that announced Sigmund’s return to Santa Fe after being away for a year “in the states and Germany.” I would love to know what took Sigmund back to Germany in 1870-1871. There must have still been family members there, but I have no idea who he might have been visiting. Maybe he was looking for a wife—as Parish had said, many men traveled back east or to Germany to find a Jewish woman to marry. If that was the purpose of Sigmund’s travels, he seems not to have been successful as he never married.

Santa Fe Daily New Mexican June 6, 1871, p.1

I assume that his travels in the states included Philadelphia, where his brother Bernard and his family were living during at least some part of that time. Perhaps Bernard was traveling back and forth, as I suggested in an earlier post, to keep an eye on the business while Sigmund was away. Sigmund had applied for a US passport on April 26, 1870, in Philadelphia, presumably for this trip. Written across the letter are the words “Nat Dis Court Santa Fe, New Mexico, December 15, 1856. Paid.” I don’t know what the December 15, 1856 date refers to, but I assume that Sigmund applied for this passport in order to take his trip back to Germany. He also had become a US citizen on April 26, 1870, also in Philadelphia, signed by the same notary who wrote in support of his passport application.

Sigmund Seligman passport application 1870 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Passport Applications, 1795-1905; Collection Number: ARC Identifier 566612 / MLR Number A1 508; NARA Series: M1372; Roll #: 165.

Sigismund Seligman naturalization affidavit

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Passport Applications, 1795-1905; Collection Number: ARC Identifier 566612 / MLR Number A1 508; NARA Series: M1372; Roll #: 165.

A year is a long time to leave a thriving business, and Sigmund reportedly received a “hearty welcome from his numerous friends” when he returned. (Santa Fe Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), June 6, 1871, p. 1) Sigmund was apparently quite well liked. In an editorial dated May 21, 1875, the Santa Fe New Mexican singled out Sigmund for his generosity and civic-mindedness based on his support of a project to provide sprinklers for the streets of Santa Fe to control the dust that tended to develop there on what I assume were dirt roads.

(Santa Fe New Mexican, May 21, 1875, p. 1)

Unfortunately, Sigmund’s life was cut short when he was only 46 years old on October 4, 1876. He died at Fort Craig, New Mexico, a site that is 181 miles from Santa Fe, so quite a distance; it was a US Army fort, the largest in the Southwest. As his obituary described it, he was in a “far off portion of the Territory.”

English: Former officers’ quarters, Fort Craig, New Mexico, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He died of apoplexy, according to one death record, and his obituary indicated that he died “from a sudden and resistless stroke of disease.” According to MedlinePlus, “When the word apoplexy (with no organ specified) is used alone, it often refers to stroke symptoms that occur suddenly. Such symptoms can be caused by bleeding into the brain or by a blood clot in a brain blood vessel. Conditions such as subarachnoid hemorrhage or stroke are sometimes called apoplexy.” http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000328.htm

The public reaction to his death was described in expressive terms in Sigmund’s obituary in the Santa Fe New Mexican dated October 10, 1876. The paper reported, “At no time in the history of our citizens has there been a more spontaneous outpouring of the people to show a becoming respect to the memory of a departed fellow-citizen and friend.” A Jewish “burial service” was read by Lehman Spiegelberg, another Santa Fe merchant, and Sigmund was buried at Odd Fellows cemetery in Santa Fe on October 9, 1876. A eulogy was given by Edmund F. Dunne, “portraying in most affecting, generous and glowing terms the many virtues and excellent qualities of the deceased as a brother, friend, citizen and correct man of business.” The paper described him as “a beloved friend to humanity and an uncompromising lover of his country, her institutions and laws.”

Obituary of Sigmund Seligman 1876 Daily New Mexican page one Personal collection of Arthur Scott http://www.vocesdesantafe.org/index.php/explore-our-history/historical-documents2/item/301-the-daily-new-mexican-ocotober-10-1876

There was only one thing that puzzled me about this obituary. It does not mention Bernard or his family at all. In fact, the paper describes Adolph as “the surviving brother” as if there was no other. Since Arthur Seligman, Bernard’s son was born in Santa Fe in 1871 and since Bernard appears as living there on both the 1870 and 1880 US census reports as well as serving on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Academy in 1878, I would have assumed that Bernard would have been in Santa Fe in 1876.

Although Sigmund was initially buried in Santa Fe, his body was moved to Philadelphia in April, 1877, six months after his death, where he was buried at Mt Sinai cemetery, the same cemetery where his brother Bernard would later be buried as well as other members of Bernard’s family. Putting this information together with Bernard’s absence from Sigmund’s funeral makes me wonder whether Bernard had in fact moved back to Philadelphia between 1876 and 1877 and decided to have his brother buried in a proper Jewish cemetery rather than in Santa Fe’s Odd Fellows cemetery.

Sigmund Seligman death record, Philadelphia “Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915,” index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-266-11110-64044-12?cc=1320976 : accessed 29 Sep 2014), 004000970 > image 141 of 448; citing Department of Records.

I am sorry that I do not have any photographs of Sigmund. He must have been an interesting man—adventurous, courageous, generous, respected, and well-liked by his fellow Santa Fe citizens. His life may have been short, but by going to Santa Fe, he not only made a good life for himself, he helped out his community, and he provided a good foundation for his two younger brothers and their families.

Gau-Algesheim and the Seligmans: My Great-great-grandfather’s Birthplace and What I Learned

Jews on the Santa Fe Trail 1848-1871: My Great-Great-Grandfather Bernard Seligman and his Brothers

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Amy

Sign for Santa Fe National Historic Trail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman was born on November 23, 1837 in Gau-Algesheim, Germany. When I learned about the small town in Germany where my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman was born, I was not surprised that he had decided to move away when he reached adulthood. Gau-Algesheim was itself a very small town, and the Jewish population was tiny—perhaps 60-80 people during the 1840s and 1850s when Bernard was growing up. The opportunities for a young Jewish man must have been very limited—socially and economically. My research of the town indicated that by 1900 the Jewish population had declined dramatically. My great-great-grandfather and his brothers were therefore not unlike many others who moved out of their small hometown to seek greater opportunities.

Before leaving Germany, Bernard received what was described as a “first class education in the public and commercial schools of his native land where he also gained considerable actual business experience while employed a wholesale establishment there.”[1] According to a book written in 1925 by Ralph Emerson Twitchell, then the official state historian for New Mexico, Bernard Seligman had been associated with the Rothschild banking house in Frankfort-on-the-Main before coming to the US.[2]

Bernard was not the first of the Seligman brothers to arrive in the United States. His older brother Sigismund or Sigmund, born in 1830 in Gau-Algesheim, had arrived in Santa Fe in 1849. At first, Sigmund found work as a photographer, running a daguerreotype portrait studio for a few years.[3] But within a few years he and another recent German immigrant named Charles Clever “formed a business partnership … under the firm name and style of Seligman and Clever, engaging in general merchandizing and freighting over the old [Santa Fe] Trail.”[4]

This photo is claimed to be the oldest photograph of Santa Fe, taken about 1855. You can see the sign for Seligman and Clever on the right. At one time one of the streets in this photograph was called Seligman Street.

Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, Negative 10695 courtesy of http://www.vocesdesantafe.org/index.php/explore-our-history/santa-fe/item/1090-my-grandfathers-birthplace-on-the-santa-fe-plaza

Sigmund’s younger brother Bernard, my great-great-grandfather, arrived in the United States on March 23, 1857, coming aboard the ship Mercury and landing in New York. On the record for the passenger manifest it says that his occupation was a merchant.[5] Twitchell wrote that Bernard initially settled near Philadelphia and worked for a cotton manufacturing business.[6] He is said to have arrived in Santa Fe in 1858, taking a position in his brother Sigmund’s business, according to Bernard’s obituary. [7]

When Sigmund’s partner Charles Clever resigned from the business a few years later to become a lawyer, Bernard became a partner with his brother Sigmund in the business, and it was renamed S. Seligman and Bro. Some years later a third brother, Adolph, born in 1845, also settled in Santa Fe and joined his brothers’ business in the 1860s.[8]

As described by William J. Parish in “The German Jew and the Commercial Revolution in Territorial New Mexico 1850-1900,” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 35, p. 1 (1960), until the arrival of Jewish German immigrants like the Seligmans, the trade conditions in the New Mexico territory were quite rudimentary, a few small stands relying upon traveling merchants to provide them with merchandise. According to Parish, heavy taxes and the high cost and risk of travel made many reluctant to deal in the region. Storekeepers could not rely on these traveling merchants to supply an adequate inventory of goods. Thus, few merchants established permanent roots in the area.

English: “Arrival of the caravan at Santa Fe” — Copy of original lithograph ca. 1844 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These conditions provided a substantial opportunity for Jewish German immigrants like my ancestors, the Seligmans. Beginning in the 1840s around the time that Sigmund immigrated, there were a number of recent Jewish German immigrants who brought a thriving economic base to Santa Fe and other New Mexican cities based on transporting goods from the eastern United States over the Santa Fe trail to the New Mexican territory recently acquired by the US after the Mexican War ended.[9]

As postulated by Parish, German Jews came to the US with a particularly good background to take advantage of these entrepreneurial opportunities. Parish discusses how historically Jews in Western Europe, although foreclosed from entering many trades, had been allowed to take on the role of the moneylender, a livelihood to which Christians had an aversion and, in some cases, a religious opposition, thus leaving that unpopular job for their Jewish neighbors. Although this created some hostility and resentment (as seen, of course, in The Merchant of Venice and the character of Shylock), it also provided Jewish men with the opportunity to develop skills in banking, business, and capitalism. Jewish immigrants brought these skills with them to the US wherever they settled, and, as Parish points out, those who came to New Mexico had a profound impact on the fledgling economy that existed there.

This is a photograph of my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman (far left) with two other Santa Fe merchants, Zadoc Staab and Lehman Spiegelberg, and two Kiowa Indian scouts.

Freighters on the Santa Fe Trail, Bernard Seligman, Zadoc Staab, Lehman Spiegelberg and Kiowa Indian scouts Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe

The growth of the economy is illustrated by the growth in the number of Jewish merchants in Santa Fe from 1850 to 1870. In 1850 there were eight such merchants; by 1860 that number had doubled to sixteen.[10] By 1870 it had doubled again to 32; clearly, my relatives had arrived at the right place at the right time.[11] These merchants were not transient traveling merchants. They established permanent businesses and stayed in the community.

Twitchell provided this vivid description of the scale of the Seligman brothers’ business:

“A Fair exemplar of the magnitude of the business of this firm is recorded in the fact that one caravan, conducted by firm, loaded at the Missouri river eighty-three wagons of merchandise consigned to the firm at Santa Fé, each wagon carrying not less than three tons of high class freight. Another record in the books of the firm shows the payment of $30,000 in transportation charges on one caravan alone, all of the merchandise having been disposed of to New Mexican buyers within the brief period of three weeks after arrival in Santa Fé[. N]early three quarters of a century disclose an aggregate of more than fifteen millions of dollars.”[12]

Courtesy of Arthur Scott http://www.vocesdesantafe.org/index.php/explore-our-history/architecturebuildings/item/283-exchange-hotel-ca-1886

Thus, by the 1860s, the Seligman Brothers’ business was thriving. They and the other Jewish merchants had brought a reliable source of goods to Santa Fe for the first time.

These merchants, however, were not involved in any of the traditional practices of Jewish life. According to Henry J. Tobias, the author of The History of the Jews in New Mexico, although these men identified as Jews, there was no evidence of any regular Jewish observance in Santa Fe during those early days—no evidence of a synagogue or any form community prayer or celebration, no observance of dietary laws.[13] The Jewish population was less than five percent of one percent of the overall population at that time, and the Jews had to adapt to living in a culture where they were such a tiny segment of the community.

Most of the Jewish residents in the 1860s were single men, although a few women and families were starting to arrive. In 1860 there was a celebration of Yom Kippur at the home of Levi Spiegelberg, another Jewish merchant, who had recently married a Jewish woman from Germany. Tobias speculated that perhaps the arrival of Spiegelberg’s bride, one of only two Jewish women in the town at that time, made the others nostalgic for the traditions from back home and thus inspired this day long observance of fasting and prayer.[14]

After the Civil War[15] and after his younger brother Adolph had arrived in Santa Fe, Bernard moved back east to Philadelphia for several years. Parish pointed out that there were no Jewish single women in Santa Fe in the 1850s and 1860s, and that while some Jewish men intermarried, most went back east to find a Jewish woman to marry.[16] Sigmund never married, and Adolph did not marry until he was in his 60s, but Bernard went back east and found a Jewish woman from Pennsylvania, my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum. She was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1845, but by 1860 she and her family had moved to Philadelphia. Bernard and Frances married on March 28, 1865, and my great-grandmother Eva (named Evalynn at birth) was born the following year on May 27, 1866 in Philadelphia. According to the Philadelphia city directories for 1867, Bernard was in business with his Nusbaum in-laws at that time.

On August 17, 1867, Bernard and Frances had a second daughter, Florence; the baby only lived five weeks and died on September 26, 1867. She was buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia, along with many of the Nusbaum family members (and also many of my Cohen relatives). A third child, James Leon Seligman, was born on August 11, 1868, and then another daughter, Minnie, was born on October 31, 1869. All of these children were born in Philadelphia, and Bernard, Frances and the three surviving children are all listed in the 1870 census as living in Philadelphia in the 13^th Ward. Bernard is also listed in 1871 in the Philadelphia directory.

Bernard, however, must have been traveling back and forth between Santa Fe and Philadelphia because he is also listed in Santa Fe on the 1870 census, living with his brother Sigmund and two clerks. Bernard is listed as owning $25,000 worth of real estate and $20,000 in personal property. (Strangely, Sigmund only claimed $20,000 in personal property and no real estate, despite being the founder of the store and the full time resident.)

At some point, however, in 1871, Bernard and Frances and their children relocated to Santa Fe, and their last child, Arthur Seligman, was born on June 14, 1871, in Santa Fe, the first family member to be born in that city. According to Twitchell, Frances Nusbaum Seligman was one of only eight women living in Santa Fe at that time who did not come from a Spanish background. Twitchell described my great-great-grandmother as “a woman of rare beauty, great intelligence and charming personality.”[17] Although I will write about the Nusbaum family at a later time, for now I can say that they were a large and successful Philadelphia family with a German Jewish background; it must have been very difficult for Frances to leave her family behind and move all the way to Santa Fe, a frontier town far different from Philadelphia.

My great-grandmother Eva was only five years old when she made that cross-country trip with her parents and her siblings, leaving Philadelphia temporarily behind. She lived there for ten years, and when she was fifteen years old, she returned to Philadelphia for college and married my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen when she was twenty. She lived in Philadelphia for the rest of her life. But most of the Seligman family developed and maintained deep roots in Santa Fe, ties that still exist today for many of their descendants.

In my posts to follow, I will first write about the years that my great-grandmother lived in Santa Fe, 1871-1881, and about her family. Then I will write about the years that followed, including the story of my great-great-uncle Arthur Seligman and his career as a political leader and ultimately governor of New Mexico.

Santa Fe Trail around 1845 plus connecting trading routes to commercial hubs and ports in the USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[1] “A Good and True Man Called Home,” Santa Fe New Mexican, February 3, 1903.

[2] Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico’s Ancient Capital (The Rio Grande Press 1925), pp 476-478. I found a few errors in Twitchell’s account of Bernard Seligman, including the birth year of his brother Sigmund and the birth places of his first three children. I cannot independently verify some of his other assertions, unfortunately, but report them here as they were reported in Twitchell’s book.

[3] Arthur Scott, “My Grandfather’s Birthplace on the Santa Fe Plaza,” found at http://www.vocesdesantafe.org/index.php/explore-our-history/santa-fe/item/1090-my-grandfathers-birthplace-on-the-santa-fe-plaza

[4] Twitchell, p. 477. It is important to note that there was an entirely separate Seligman family that settled in Bernalillo, New Mexico around the same time that my Seligman ancestors were settling in Santa Fe. As far as I can tell, there is no familial relationship between the two families and the “other” Seligmans came from a different region in Germany, but one never knows. Henry Tobias and Sarah Payne, “Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico: The Seligman Family” (The New Mexico Jewish Historical Society, 2005).

[5] United States Germans to America Index, 1850-1897,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KDWS-R3N : accessed 20 Sep 2014), Bernhard Seligmann, 23 Mar 1857; citing Germans to America Passenger Data file, 1850-1897, ARC identifier 1746067; Ship Mercury, departed from Havre, arrived in New York, New York, New York, United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.)

[6] Twitchell, p. 477. Bernard’s obituary claimed that he had come to Santa Fe directly after immigrating, but it makes sense that he would have spent some time in the east since he arrived in NY in 1857 and is said to have arrived in Santa Fe in 1858. Also, perhaps it was that initial stay in Philadelphia that caused him to return to Philadelphia some years later and to meet and marry my great-great-grandmother.

[7] “A Good and True Man Called Home,” Santa Fe New Mexican, February 3, 1903.

[8] Arthur Scott, “Seligman Brothers—Pioneer Jewish Entrepreneurs of Santa Fe and the New Mexico Territory,” http://www.newmexicohistory.org/people/seligman-brothers-pioneer-jewish-entrepreneurs-of-santa-fe-and-the-new-mexi

[9] Parish; also, Gunther Paul Barth, Instant Cities: Urbanization and the Rise of San Francisco and Denver

(Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 71-73.

[10] Parish, p. 15. See also Henry J. Tobias, A History of the Jews of New Mexico (Univ. N. Mex. Press. 1990), p. 40-41.

[11] Parish, p. 15

[12] Twitchell, p.477.

[13] Tobias, pp. 43-44.

[14] Tobias, pp. 42-43.

[15] During the Civil War, Bernard served as a captain and quarter master for the Union Army. Arthur Scott, “Seligman Brothers—Pioneer Jewish Entrepreneurs of Santa Fe and the New Mexican Territory,” at http://www.newmexicohistory.org/people/seligman-brothers-pioneer-jewish-entrepreneurs-of-santa-fe-and-the-new-mexi See also Tobias, p. 54.

[16] Parish, p. 23, 129.

[17] Twitchell, p. 477.

Gau-Algesheim and the Seligmans: My Great-great-grandfather’s Birthplace and What I Learned

Gau-Algesheim and the Seligmans: My Great-great-grandfather’s Birthplace and What I Learned

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Amy

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

From several documents and historical references, I know that Bernard Seligman, my great-great-grandfather, and his brothers Adolph and Sigmund were born in a small town close to the Rhine River called Gau-Algesheim in what was then the Hesse Darmstadt region of Germany. Today it is located in the Mainz-Bingen district in the Rheinland-Pfalz state in Germany. Gau-Algesheim is about 15 miles southwest of Mainz and 40 miles southwest of Frankfort, Germany. Its population in 2012 was under seven thousand people, and it is less than five miles square in area.[1] From the photographs posted on the town’s official website, it appears to be a very charming and scenic location. There are wineries nearby, and tourism appears to be an important source of revenue for the town.[2]

What was Gau-Algesheim like almost 200 years ago when my ancestors were living there? How long had my Seligman ancestors been there, and were there any family members who remained behind after Bernard and his brothers left? How long had there been Jews living in Gau-Algesheim, and are there any left today? These were the questions that interested me the most about my great-great-grandfather’s birthplace.

There is a book about the history of Jews in Gau-Algesheim written by Ludwig Hellriegel in 1986, Die Geschichte der Gau-Algesheimer Juden, but unfortunately there is no copy available online, and the closest hard copy is in the New York Public Library. I tried to borrow it through my university’s interlibrary loan program, but was it was not available for lending. Thus, I’ve had to piece together bits of information from Wikipedia, JewishGen.org, the Gau-Algesheim website, and http://www.alemannia-judaica.de to get some answers to my questions, relying on Google Translate in order to read the sources written in German. What follows is a very brief skeletal history of Gau-Algesheim overall and in particular of the history of Jewish life there based on these limited secondary sources.

Gau-Algesheim has ancient roots. There is evidence of graves dating back as far as 1800 BCE, and evidence of a settlement during Roman times as well. In the 700s a church and a monastery were established. Gau-Algesheim was part of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, and during that time was under the control of various different officials and jurisdictions within the Empire and often the subject of disputes and battles for control. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gau-Algesheim http://www.gau-algesheim.de/category/stadt-gau-algesheim/geschichte/ It was part of Napoleon’s empire until 1812, and then eventually became part of the nation state of Germany in the mid-19^th century.

Gau-Algesheim. Rathaus am Marktplatz. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Its Jewish history dates back to at least the 14^th century. By the 14^th century, the town had developed into a commercial center. Many merchants and artisans lived in the town, including herring merchants, blacksmiths, bakers, barbers, coopers, tailors, and shopkeepers. The monasteries owned a lot of the land, and there was also a fairly large class of nobility. By 1334, there must have been a Jewish community in Gau-Algesheim because in that year a head tax was imposed upon the Jewish residents. According to Wikipedia, Jews were required to pay this additional tax because they were considered the property of the crown and under its protection.[3] There was also a Jewish cemetery in existence during the 14^th century. However, this community must have been a very small minority, and the Jews were certainly considered outsiders by the Catholic majority. In 1348 there was a flu pandemic in the region, and Jews were accused of poisoning the water, such accusations then leading to pogroms across the region.

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

My sources do not reveal anything about Jewish life in Gau-Algesheim between 1400 and 1800, but the population in 1790 was reportedly only nineteen (it’s not clear whether this refers to people or households, but I assume it refers to total people). In 1808 there were three Jewish families, and in 1819 only six Jewish families. In 1857, the Jewish population was fifty people, and the Jewish population peaked in Gau-Algesheim in 1880 when it reached eighty people or 2.6% of the total population of the town, according to the alemannia-judaica website. (JewishGen puts the 1880 population at only 66.[4]) According to alemannia-judaica, a synagogue is not mentioned as being in the town until 1838. It was described as very old and in poor condition in 1850 and was rebuilt in 1861 and renovated again in 1873-1874. There was also a mikveh and a religious school, although it seems that there was a joint school with the nearby town of Bingen. (Bingen, by comparison, had 542 Jews in 1880, amounting to almost eight percent of its overall population; it was only six miles away from Gau-Algesheim. By further comparison, Mainz had a Jewish population of about 3,000 in 1900, and Frankfurt had almost 12,000 Jews in 1900.)[5]

Drawing of the former synagogue in Gau-Algesheim http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2056/Gau%20Algesheim%20Synagoge%20010.jpg

The tiny size of the Jewish population in Gau-Algesheim in the 19^th century in the years when my ancestors were living there surprised me. How did my family end up there? And why did they leave? I don’t know the answers to the first question at all and can only speculate about the second and will write more generally about it in a later post. But what I want to focus on for now is what happened to the Jewish community in Gau-Algesheim after my great-great-grandfather Bernard and his brothers left in the middle of the 19^th century.

The former synagogue http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20185/Gau-Algesheim%20Synagoge%20290.jpg

It appears that my ancestors were not the only Jews to leave Gau-Algesheim. By 1900, the Jewish population had declined to 27 people; in 1931 there were only 31 Jewish residents. Presumably many of these Jews had immigrated to another country, and many may have moved to the larger cities in Germany. In the Reichstag elections of 1933, the Nazi Party only received 26.6% of the vote in Gau-Algesheim with the Center Party carrying almost half the vote. Unfortunately, that did not reflect the overall vote in Germany, and the Nazi Party took control of the country, soon dissolving the Reichstag and all other political parties, ultimately leading to World War II and the Holocaust. Whatever Jews were left in Gau-Algesheim before World War II either left the town or were killed by the Nazis.

There is no Jewish community there today. The Jewish cemetery remains, however, although it was desecrated during the Holocaust and has been vandalized several times since then. In 2006, Walter Nathan, whose father was born in Gau-Algesheim, visited the cemetery and was so disturbed by the condition of the cemetery that he decided to work to have it restored and to create a memorial to those who were buried there and also to those who had been killed in the Holocaust. On November 9, 2008, on the 70^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the memorial was dedicated by Nathan and many members of his extended family.[6] Included in the headstones remaining in the cemetery was this one for a woman named Rosa Gebmann Seligmann who was born in 1853 and died in 1899 and married someone who was probably my relative.

http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20185/Gau-Algesheim%20Friedhof%20303.jpg

With the help of two members of the Tracing the Tribe Facebook group, I can provide this translation of the German and the Hebrew on the headstone. The German says, “Here rests in peace my unforgettable wife and good mother Rosa Seligman, nee Bergman, born May 11, 1854, died Feb.1 8, 1899. Deeply missed by her husband and children. The Hebrew at the bottom says, “Here is buried Mrs. Roza wife of Alexander Seligman Died (on the) holy Shabbos 8(th day of) Adar 5659 by the small count. May her soul be bound in the bonds of life.”

There is also a plaque in town commemorating the Jewish citizens of Gau-Algesheim who were killed by the Nazis. It says, as translated by Google Translate, “The city of Gau-Algesheim commemorates their Jewish fellow citizens who were victims of Nazi violence and domination.”

http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20185/Gau-Algesheim%20Gedenken%20T01.jpg

There is another plaque hanging on the wall of the cemetery listing the Jews born in Gau-Algesheim who were murdered during the Holocaust according to Memorial Book: Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 – 1945. It says, “Standing in this sacred place our hearts turn to the memory of those who fell victim to the violence of the Nazis, and we vow to keep their memory alive. In solemn testimony of the unbroken faith that connects us with them, their names are referred to in profound awe. We say the Kaddish—the prayer for the dead— and remember the terrible tragedy of the Jewish people.”

Among the names listed on this second plaque were these individuals: Bettina Elisabeth Arnfeld born Seligmann (1875), Johanna Bielefeld born Seligmann (1881), Anna Goldmann born Seligmann (1889), and Moritz Seligmann (1881),.[7]

On the JewishGen.org site, I found two more Seligmanns born in Gau-Algesheim: Jacob Seligmann, born April 8, 1869, who became a resident of Neunkirche and emigrated in 1935 to Luxembourg, and Laura Seligmann Winter, born June 9, 1870, who was also a resident of Neunkirche and immigrated to Luxembourg in 1935. [8]

These may have been my relatives. Given the small size of the Jewish community that lived in Gau-Algesheim, I have to assume that at least some if not all of those named Seligmann were related to my great-great-grandfather Bernard and were thus related to me. When I saw those names, I was stunned. Because I have not found where my Brotman relatives lived in Galicia, because I have not found any Goldschlagers from Iasi who were killed in the Holocaust, because my Cohen relatives left Europe long before Hitler was even born, I had not ever before seen the names of possible relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. But Bettina, Johanna, Anna, Moritz, Jacob, and Laura Seligmann—they were likely the nieces and nephew or the cousins of Bernard, Sigmund, Adolph and James Seligman. They were likely my family.

Now I need to see what I can learn about them and what happened to them. I need to be sure that their names are not forgotten. This is what I know so far from the Yad Vashem names database:

Bettina Elizabeth Seligmann Arnfeld, born March 17, 1875, was residing in Muelheim Ruhr, Dusseldorf, Rhine Province, and was deported to Theresienstadt on July 21, 1942, and she died there on January 23, 1943.

Johanna Seligmann Bielefeld, born March 13, 1881, was living in Mainz during the war. She died in Auschwitz.

Anna Seligmann Goldmann, born November 30, 1889, was living in Halle der Saale, Merseburg, Saxony Province. She was deported from there May 30, 1942. Her husband Hugo Goldmann, born in 1885, and their daughter Ruth Sara, born in 1924, were also deported that same day. They were all murdered.

Moritz Seligmann, born in 1881, was not listed in the Yad Vashem database. On the memorial plaque placed at the cemetery in Gau-Algesheim the only notation after his name is Verschollen, which means “missing, lost without a trace,” according to one source.

Jacob Seligmann, despite escaping Germany in 1935 and moving to Luxemburg, did not escape the Nazis. He was killed in 1941 in Luxemburg, according to the Yad Vashem website.

Laura Seligmann Winter, who may have been Jacob’s sister, was a widow; on August 28, 1940, she also was killed in Luxemburg.

I will continue to look for more records that will tell something about the lives of these people and their families so that they can be remembered not only for how they died but also for how they lived.

“Dachau never again” by Forrest R. Whitesides – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dachau_never_again.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Dachau_never_again.jpg

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gau-Algesheim

[2] See http://www.gau-algesheim.de/category/stadt-gau-algesheim/geschichte/

[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibzoll

[4] See http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~community~-1774383

[5] See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synagogue_de_Bingen_am_Rhein_(1905-1938)

[6] See http://www.iit.edu/magazine/spring_2009/article_1.shtml#top

[8] ^[8] http://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/directory.html

The Flat: A film by Arnon Goldfinger

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Amy

The other night we watched a fascinating movie, The Flat. It is a documentary made by Arnon Goldfinger about what he learns about his grandparents after his grandmother dies and he and his family clean out their apartment in Tel Aviv. His grandparents had lived in Berlin until 1936 when they left for Israel. Goldfinger and his family, including his mother, had almost no knowledge of the grandparents’ lives before they left Germany.

I do not want to reveal too much about what they learn because each viewer should be able to experience the revelations as they are uncovered in the course of the film. But I will say that this is a film that anyone interested in family history and the ethical dilemmas that are created when you learn something surprising and perhaps troubling about the past should watch. What is our obligation to reveal the truths we learn to those left behind, even if they were innocent of the past actions of their family members? Why do people hide from the truth? Why do some of us ask questions and seek answers whereas others prefer to avoid uncovering the past?

But this is not only a film for genealogists. It is a film for everyone who has an interest in human nature. The film addresses important questions of identity and nationality. What makes people identify with a country, a religion, a family? How do we pick our friends? How does denial play into our sense of who we are?

Finally, this is also a film about our legacy. What will our families do and think after we are gone? When the family throws out bag after bag after bag of the treasured belongings of the grandparents, I couldn’t help but think about the way we all collect objects—clothing, books, jewelry, letters, photographs—that our descendants will toss away with barely a thought. We have to leave something else behind besides these material things—our good name, our good deeds, our stories, and our love. All else will vanish.

Did Eleanor Selinger Marry an English Cousin? And Did She Remember Her American Roots?

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Amy

In my post about the children of Julius and Augusta Selinger, I wrote about the marriage of their daughter Eleanor to an Englishman, Henry Abbot. Henry Abbot was the son of Hyams Auerbach (some members of the family changed the name to Abbot at some point) and Helen (or Ellen or Helena) Selinger. I had wondered whether there was any familial connection between Helen Selinger and Eleanor’s father, Julius Selinger. Both were born in Germany, and they were three years apart in age: Helen was born in 1850, Julius in 1853.

As I wrote then, I was in touch with one of Henry and Eleanor Abbot’s relatives on the Abbot side, Henry’s great-niece, Valentine Ann Abbot Collinson, and was hoping that she would be able to provide some clues to determine whether the two different Selingers were related. Over the last several days I received a number of documents about Helen Selinger and her family from Val that could help answer that question, including this photograph. Val believes that the woman seated in the center of the photograph is Eleanor Selinger Abbot with her husband Henry seated to her right. The others are other members of the Abbot/Auerbach family.

The oldest document is the English marriage certificate of Hyams Auerbach and Ellen Selinger, dated March 19, 1873. According to the certificate, Hyams was a furrier whose father was deceased, and Ellen was the daughter of Abraham Selinger, a teacher.

Hyams Auerbach and Ellen Selinger marriage certificate

Since Julius Selinger’s passport application indicated that his father’s name was Sigmund, I knew that Julius and Ellen/Helena did not have the same father. But could they still be cousins? I do not know Alfred or Frederick Selinger’s fathers’ names, so it still seemed possible that there was some familial connection among the various Selingers.

The next document was the 1881 English census for the Auerbach family.

Hyams Auerbach and family 1881 English census

This is definitely the right family; the page preceding this one includes as its last entry Hyams Auerbach, the furrier. His wife’s name was given as Lenchen, which is the German equivalent of Helen. Her place of birth was reported to be Baden. This was the second clue that there might not be any familial relationship between Helen Selinger and Julius Selinger. Julius and Frederick Selinger were both from Hurben in the region of Bavaria, not from Baden, an entirely separate region of what became united Germany in the late 19^th century, although perhaps no more than a few hours away. I then checked JewishGen.org and found that Selinger was not an uncommon name for Jews in Germany, especially if other spelling variations were included. This makes it harder to assume any family connection between the DC Selingers and Helen Selinger.

Map of Pre Unification Germany http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/map_german_unification.html

I do have the names of two other members of Helen’s family; in addition to her father Abraham, her mother’s name was Gali. She died in 1899, and her son, Helen’s brother, Sidney Selinger, was with her at her death. If I can find a way to research the family in Baden, I might find a possible link to the Hurben Selingers, though it seems unlikely.

Perhaps the most intriguing document that I received from Val was an account of the distribution of the estate of Eleanor Selinger Abbot. Eleanor died in 1979, and her will was probated on January 23, 1980. The executor’s report on the distribution of the estate listed seven named beneficiaries, including two whose names were familiar: Marjorie Christian and Ellen Kleinfeld.

Who were Marjorie Christian and Ellen Kleinfeld? They were born Marjorie and Ellen Rosenstock, daughters of Felix Rosenstock and Marjorie Greenberg. Marjorie Greenberg was the daughter of Jacob Greenberg and Ella Cohen. Ella Cohen was the daughter of Moses, Jr., and Henrietta Cohen. She died at age 29, leaving behind her eight year old daughter Marjorie and her husband Jacob. (Ellen Rosenstock Kleinfield was named in memory of her grandmother Ella.) I have just received Ella’s death certificate, and it says that she died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by an “extra uterus pregnancy,” which is what we would now call an ectopic pregnancy. How tragic it must have been for Marjorie and her father Jacob to lose Ella in such an awful way.

Ella Cohen Greenberg death certificate 1904

As I wrote earlier, Jacob remarried a few years after Ella died and had a son Theodore with his new wife Hattie. Since Jacob lived in New York, I had wondered whether he and Marjorie had maintained much contact with Ella’s family after Ella died. Well, Eleanor’s will would certainly indicate that there was a continuing relationship. Eleanor, who never had children of her own, left part of her estate to her Aunt Ella’s granddaughters. Her first cousin Marjorie Greenberg Rosenstock had died in 1964, but obviously despite living in England since 1926, Eleanor had enough of a relationship with her American family and in particular with her cousin Marjorie Greenberg to leave part of her estate to Marjorie’s daughters.

Marjorie Rosenstock Christian died on July 18, 2013. According to her obituary as published on July 24, 2013 in the Washington Post, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in math and chemistry from Hunter College and then earned her Master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Maryland. (See more at: http://search.ancestry.com/search/obit/viewbody.aspx?db=web-obituary&pid=219473182&kw=Rosenstock+Christian+Marjorie&cpp=2013%5c07%5c26%5ccp_12269788.html&bhr=http%3a%2f%2fwww.legacy.com%2fobituaries%2fwashingtonpost%2fobituary.aspx%3fn%3dmarjorie-christian%26pid%3d166008840#sthash.E4eCxeTg.dpuf .) She was married to Jack Christian, who died in 2011, and had three children.

I was very fortunate to speak with her sister Ellen Rosenstock Kleinfeld, my fourth cousin, who told me that she remembers Eleanor Selinger Abbot well and that Eleanor had visited with her family many times over the years, including one trip to Long Island during a hurricane after Ellen was married and had children. Unfortunately, I did not learn any more about how Eleanor met Henry or whether the various Selingers were related. Ellen was married to Herman Kleinfeld and had two children.

Thus, from one thread in one family I found a link to another part of the family, tying together the lives of Ella Cohen and her descendants with the life of her niece Eleanor, the daughter of Augusta Cohen Selinger. Eleanor may not have married a cousin, but she kept her ties to her American cousins. She also brought the Cohen family back to its prior home in London.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: Germany

A Town with A Secret Language: Schopfloch and the Nusbaums

The Nusbaums: Were They Jewish? Learning from Rookie Mistakes

More Gifts from Doing Genealogy: The Gau-Algesheim Seligmanns and New Friends in Germany

“Brothers and Sisters in England and in Germany” and My Lost Inheritance

Bernard Seligman: His Political Career and His Family 1870-1890

Sigmund Seligman: “A Beloved Friend to Humanity and an Uncompromising Lover of His Country”

Jews on the Santa Fe Trail 1848-1871: My Great-Great-Grandfather Bernard Seligman and his Brothers

Gau-Algesheim and the Seligmans: My Great-great-grandfather’s Birthplace and What I Learned

The Flat: A film by Arnon Goldfinger

Did Eleanor Selinger Marry an English Cousin? And Did She Remember Her American Roots?

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