Matches 201 to 250 of 2,256
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(Medical):Kalamazoo County Clerk's Death Record Book 3, page 54, #6883. Samuel ROSENBAUM; age 64 yrs 4 mos 27 days; sex Male; race White; DOD 9 Jan 1902; POD City of Kalamazoo; POB West Phalia; marital status Married; occ Manufacturer; cause Cancer of stomach;; father Susman ROSENBAUM; mother Caroline BERMAN (Posted by a VOLUNTEER-NO family connection) | Rosenbaum, Samuel (I4787)
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(Medical):Manic-depressive from youth | Loeb, Carolyn Barauch "Carrie" (I4523)
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(Medical):per Henry Frohsin e-mail 3/04/03:
"I believe Lewis died of cancer..." | Frohsin, Lewis (I6028)
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(Medical):Secondary: Arteriosclerosis
Per L.B. Allen, M.D., Alexander City, Alabama on Certified copy of death certificate, dated January 3, 1923
Died while addressing the Alexander City Kiwanis Club. | Frohsin, Isaac ("Ike") (I5969)
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(Medical):See attached sources. | Luria, Albert Moses C. S. A. (I3543)
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(Medical):See attached sources. | Lopez, Son (I2058)
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(Medical):See attached sources. | Cardozo, Sarah (I1070)
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(Medical):Stern shows death date as 29 Feb 1867 but 1867 was not a leap year. | Oppenheim, Martha (I273)
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(Medical):Three years' duration Contributory - exhaustion (six months) Per death certificate, signed by Louis Jurist, M.D. 916 N. Broad St. March 3, 1910 | Frohsin, Samuel (I4756)
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(Research):1735 marriage to Isaac Rivera [ 2036] deleted per Stern page 331 third edition | Pardo, Judith (I2037)
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(Research):a. 1881 British Census 143 Piccadilly London, Middlesex, England RG 11/0096 folio 8 page 9 FHL film #1341022 Ferdinand (Baron) De Rothschild head widow male 41 Paris Gentleman | Rothschild, Baron Ferdinand James A. (I11286)
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(Research):Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Is Dead; Central Figure in Times's History
Published: February 27, 1990 - NY Times
LEAD: Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, who shaped the history of The New York Times throughout a long and active life, died of respiratory failure in her sleep yesterday morning at her home in Stamford, Conn. She was 97 years old. Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, who shaped the history of The New York Times throughout a long and active life, died of respiratory failure in her sleep yesterday morning at her home in Stamford, Conn. She was 97 years old. Mrs. Sulzberger nurtured and bridged the generations of the family that has controlled The Times since 1896, when her father, Adolph S. Ochs, acquired it as a small and ailing property. She played an important role in selecting the succeeding publishers -her husband, Arthur Hays Sulzberger; her son-in-law Orvil E. Dryfoos, and her son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. From all of them, Mrs. Sulzberger gained a unique view of the great events and personalities of the 20th century and of the paper's growth in covering them. To all of them, she conveyed the traditions of The Times and its dedication to serious journalism, to good taste and to progressive values. Mrs. Sulzberger also served the paper as a director and as a trustee for the stock left by her father. And she strove to preserve the family ties among her 4 children, 13 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren. At her request, cremation and interment will be private. A public memorial service will be held tomorrow at 1 P.M. at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th Street. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund or to Mrs. Sulzberger's alma mater, Barnard College. Besides cherishing the values of The Times, Mrs. Sulzberger read the paper diligently and regularly, but only modestly offered the editors ideas and news tips. She also wrote droll letters to the editor on issues great and small, asking that they be thrown out if judged foolish, or published with only a pseudonym, usually the name of a dead relative or friend.
Devotion to the Parks A woman of energy, social conscience and impish humor, Mrs. Sulzberger pursued a variety of other interests, notably those devoted to parks and the environment, to Barnard, education and libraries, and to the welfare of animals. She once inspired a series of articles that demonstrated the public's low interest and competence in history, a series that won The Times a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1944 and provoked curriculum changes in many states. She also encouraged the paper to develop its potential as a classroom aid to teachers, which helped to make it the most widely circulated daily newspaper in schools and colleges. Mrs. Sulzberger's own history of her experiences, a largely anecdotal memoir as told to her granddaughter Susan W. Dryfoos, was privately printed for friends and family in 1979 and then published by Dodd, Mead & Company in 1981 under the title ''Iphigene.'' In a foreword, the historian Barbara W. Tuchman said of Mrs. Sulzberger, ''She is high-class in every way a woman can function - in devotion to family, in strong social conscience, in elegance of person and winning ways that gain her ends, in alert intelligence and irreverent humor, in energy and unfailing curiosity, in friendship and a welcoming home.''
Quiet but Decided Influence Throughout her life, Mrs. Sulzberger had a quiet but decided influence on The Times. Perhaps the first time was at the age of 13, when her father discovered that she was using her weekly allowance to buy newspapers that carried comics. Mr. Ochs relented in his own opposition and decided to publish a Timesian strip, called ''The Roosevelt Bears.'' It ran for only six months, in 1906; Iphigene pronounced it boring. When her husband was publisher, Mrs. Sulzberger's influence on The Times went beyond encouraging wider news coverage, to advocating divergent editorial views. She disagreed with Mr. Sulzberger by siding with the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War against the Franco forces, by favoring statehood for Israel to provide a home for displaced European Jews and by preferring Adlai E. Stevenson instead of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower for President. When The Times endorsed Eisenhower in 1952, Mrs. Sulzberger told her husband she would vote for the general ''out of love for you and loyalty to The Times.'' But in 1956 she deserted the newspaper's position and voted for Stevenson. ''I felt I had discharged my obligation to the paper four years earlier,'' she explained in her memoirs. Encouraged by her parents to be curious and undogmatic about the world around her, Mrs. Sulzberger cultivated a well-stocked mind. She read and traveled extensively all her life, from the time her parents took her with them on their first grand tour of Europe when she was 8 years old. One of her most joyous trips was a three-week visit to China in 1973, an experience she considered a high point of her life. Her 81st birthday fell during her stay in Beijing, where her Chinese hosts insisted on giving a banquet in her honor. She was also received by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, who expressed his regard for Mrs. Sulzberger by inviting her to dinner and by talking with her at length about China and world issues. She was the matriarch of the family and, according to one of her children, ''the glue that held us all together.'' When she was nearing 80, she began spending several days annually with grandchildren at schools in the Boston area, an effort to understand the outlook and life style of young people.
Chess for Central Park Although Mrs. Sulzberger's major interests were her family and The Times, she embraced a number of civic and educational institutions. In 1928 she joined the Park Association, a volunteer group devoted to improving the city's parks. She became its president in 1934 and held the office until 1950, when she was elected chairman. She gave up that post in 1957 but kept her active membership. Two results of her work for the parks particularly pleased her: getting the financier Bernard M. Baruch to contribute a chess and checkers house to Central Park and helping to restore Joseph Rodman Drake Park in the Bronx. In 1976 Mrs. Sulzberger received the annual award of the Parks Council - a citizens' group into which the Park Association had merged - for her continuing work on environmental issues. In particular the award cited a work-study program she had founded in Central Park several years earlier, which was duplicated in other parks. Four years later Mrs. Sulzberger was named honorary chairman of the newly formed Central Park Conservancy, a group of private citizens who raise funds for Central Park. She also received the Distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard College and the gold medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences for distinguished service to humanity. At the Jewish Theological Seminary she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1968 for her work in public, philanthropic and educational activities. Another of Mrs. Sulzberger's avocations involved the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Her zeal reflected the delight she took in gardening and in flowers. She was a keen supporter of the institution's program to train student gardeners in cooperation with nearby Christopher Columbus High School. The garden honored her in 1965 with its distinguished service award. Mrs. Sulzberger was also active in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she backed programs to train young people in restoring furniture and paintings. Educational opportunity for youth was the thread that bound together Mrs. Sulzberger's ''outside'' interests. The chief example of this was Barnard College, on whose board she sat from 1937 to 1968, when she became a trustee emeritus. Her happiest achievement in this work was gathering funds for a library. The building, called the Adele Lehman Hall-Wollman Library, cost $2.15 million and was dedicated in 1960. The alumnae citation in 1972 spoke of ''excellence and service, intelligence and old-fashioned hard work.'' Columbia University, at its 1951 commencement, gave Mrs. Sulzberger a Doctor of Laws degree, citing her as the ''distinguished daughter of a distinguished father'' and praising her civic involvement as well as her role at The Times. In addition to her occupation with Barnard affairs, she served at various times as a trustee of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which gave her an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 1973, and of the University of Chattanooga. She was on the committee for the Dictionary of American Biography and on the advisory committee for publication of the works of Thomas Jefferson, a Princeton University project.
Honor From a Black College She was also on the boards of the Cedar Knolls School (where she had once worked) and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, and on the board of managers of Inwood House, a home for unmarried mothers. Mrs. Sulzberger had been a director of Yaddo, a colony for artists and writers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., that inherited a block of Times stock. In addition, she was involved with the State Communities Aid Association, the National Urban League, the Association on American Indian Affairs and the New York Girl Scout Council. The council at one time met at her home because it could not find a suitable interracial gathering place. In January 1978, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Bishop College of Dallas, then the largest predominantly black private college in the Southwest, and was commended for having been the largest single private donor in the history of the United Negro College Fund. ''She has contributed more than $35,000 a year in the past decade,'' the citation said. Later that year Mrs. Sulzberger, a prime mover in setting up a program that let high school students alternate classroom studies with store and business jobs, received an award from the New York City Board of Education; it cited her as ''an outstanding friend of cooperative education.'' Amid these activities she found time to be interested in polar explorations, an interest shared with her husband. One result was Adm. Richard E. Byrd's naming of a body of water Sulzberger Bay; it is in Antarctica, off Marie Byrd Land. Its cold blue surface reflects a mountain, Mount Iphigene.
A Rabbi's Granddaughter Born on Sept. 19, 1892, Iphigene Bertha Ochs grew up as the only child of Adolph S. and Iphigenia Wise Ochs. Her father was then proprietor of The Chattanooga Times, a growing Tennessee newspaper. Her mother was the daughter of Isaac Mayer Wise, rabbi of the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati and founder of American Reform Judaism. Iphigene's classical name, often shortened by her family to Iffy or If, proved a boon. Anyone who met her could forever greet her by name. ''Who could ever forget a name like Iphigene?'' she once asked. On Aug. 13, 1896, Mr. Ochs bought the faltering New York Times, and soon the family moved from Chattanooga to New York. The child was educated at home until she was 8, when she was sent to Dr. Sachs's School for Girls. Her schooling at home, which Mrs. Sulzberger later called ''rather haphazard,'' nonetheless gave her a good grounding in history and literature. When she learned to read, she said, her parents supplied her with ''one-syllable history books on Rome and Greece and France and the United States,'' along with fiction. Her mother also took her regularly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, and to the theater. Mr. Ochs introduced his daughter to other worlds - the pleasures of walking, the mysteries of the newspaper business and delight in the ideas of other people. ''Unquestionably, the high point of my week was Sunday, when my father stayed home and took me to Central Park,'' Mrs. Sulzberger said of her girlhood. ''He was a great walker. I learned to enjoy it, too.'' These walks were for fun and education. One of their Sunday trips was to the cemetery in the tiny Joseph Rodman Drake Park in the Bronx. Mr. Ochs walked his daughter to the grave of the poet for whom the park was named and pointed to the tombstone inscription composed by Fitz-Greene Halleck for his friend in 1820:
Green be the turf above thee Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. Mr. Ochs told Iphigene that he wanted the last two lines placed on his gravestone. The request was quite premature: Mr. Ochs lived until 1935. But his daughter then complied with the wish. Mr. Ochs also took her to the newspaper office. ''What I remember best about The Times of those days was its composing room, where they were very nice and let me push buttons,'' she recalled much later. When she was older, she was often a guest at luncheons her father gave for figures in business, the professions or politics.
'Are You Sure of Your Facts?' At home, Mr. Ochs was an indulgent yet perfectionist father. He strove to help his daughter buttress her opinions with facts. ''He always used to say to me: 'What is your authority? Where did you read it? Are you sure of your facts?' '' Mrs. Sulzberger recalled. Her father persuaded her to memorize a passage from Benjamin Franklin's ''Autobiography'' that described how Franklin had cultivated humility by avoiding dogmatic statements. ''I think this helped me form the habit of qualifying my remarks; it's become almost second nature,'' she said in later years, ''and I've endeavored to hand this wisdom on to my children and grandchildren.'' Young Iphigene took to travel. Starting in 1900, she made trips every year with her parents, either to Europe or in the United States. These were usually planned learning experiences, adjuncts to school and college. Her attendance at Dr. Sachs's School was followed by four years at the Benjamin-Dean School, from which, in 1910, she entered Barnard. ''I discovered that learning could be a joy,'' she recounted of her years on the Morningside Heights campus. ''I was absolutely happy.'' In her school years she worked in the Henry Street Settlement, the Jewish Big Sisters Program and the Cedar Knolls School for disturbed children, experiences that contributed to a lifelong social awareness. At Barnard, she was attracted to journalism as a career and in her senior year took a course in the School of Journalism at Columbia. But Mr. Ochs held that a newspaper office was no place for women, especially not for his daughter, of whom he felt protective.
Publisher Gets a Son-in-Law At college she ''very casually'' met Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the son of a cotton merchant; later she was reintroduced to him by her cousin Julius Ochs Adler, with whom Mr. Sulzberger was in military training at Plattsburgh, N.Y. The couple fell in love during Mr. Sulzberger's visits to the Ochs home on Lake George, but Mr. Sulzberger was obliged to propose twice before he was accepted - the successful occasion taking place, as she recalled with a twinkle, ''on the grounds of the local lunatic asylum'' in Spartanburg, S.C. He was stationed nearby as an Army lieutenant. They were married at her parents' home in New York on Nov. 17, 1917, while Mr. Sulzberger was on a 10-day leave. Although Mr. Ochs first had reservations about his daughter's choice, ''within a few years his devotion to Arthur became boundless,'' she said. World War I ended just as Mr. Sulzberger was to be sent abroad. So the couple settled in New York, where Mr. Sulzberger joined The Times. The early years of Mrs. Sulzberger's marriage were given to making a home and rearing her children - Marian, born in 1918; Ruth, in 1921; Judith, in 1923, and Arthur Ochs, who was born in 1926. With her family well started, she began to take an active role in education and philanthropy.
Offstage Figure at Paper In 1935, after the death of her father, Mrs. Sulzberger became a trustee under his will along with her husband and her cousin Julius Ochs Adler; her husband was elected president and publisher of The Times. As the publisher's wife, Mrs. Sulzberger shared her husband's concerns and problems but remained steadfastly an offstage figure in the operation of the paper. Her memoirs note, though, that at least one news beat - a scoop - came about ''because I had made eyes at a handsome young man in journalism school'' back in 1912 at Columbia. The man was Hollington Tong, who eventually became China's Ambassador to the United States. The beat, on Aug. 23, 1944, was an account by James Reston of secret decisions by four major powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and China - on the future structure of the United Nations, including the concept of veto power in the Security Council. Years later Mrs. Sulzberger revealed that the documents had come from the Chinese delegation, and Mr. Reston confirmed that they had been provided by a young diplomat, Joseph Ku, as a result of Mrs. Sulzberger's friendship with Ambassador Tong. During World War II, she became director of special events for The Times, working with the promotion department. In this job, she furthered programs to assist the war effort, civilian defense, conservation and the use of The Times in schools and colleges. Among other things, Mrs. Sulzberger suggested supplements and booklets for students on the war and on world affairs. She instituted forums for young people, which became a weekly event broadcast by WQXR, the radio station of The Times, and were later carried on television. She was also a tireless hostess at lectures that staff members of The Times gave for teachers, and she had a hand in Musical Talent in Our Schools, a project aimed at stimulating student musicians. After the war, Mrs. Sulzberger quietly phased herself out of her Times job. Her children began to marry and establish homes of their own. Grandchildren were born. This all drew on her sense of family. At the same time, she wanted to devote more attention to domestic concerns, including gardening. Before 1949, the Sulzbergers had a country home, called Hillandale, in White Plains. They sold it and bought a house near Stamford, Conn., which they also named Hillandale.
A Change of Generations In 1957, the process of shifting daily management of The Times to younger shoulders began. Mr. Sulzberger, who had been president and publisher for 22 years, turned his presidency over to Orvil E. Dryfoos, then 44, husband of the Sulzbergers' daughter Marian. A next step was taken in 1961, when Mr. Sulzberger gave the publisher's post to Mr. Dryfoos and became chairman. He kept that position until his death, on Dec. 11, 1968. Enfeebled by a stroke in his last years, Mr. Sulzberger relied almost completely on his wife as his contact with the world. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1963, after a long newspaper strike in New York, Mr. Dryfoos died. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the youngest Sulzberger child and the only son, was named president and publisher. Along with her son, Mrs. Sulzberger's three other children are now directors of the Times Company - Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg, and Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger. Mrs. Sulzberger herself was a director of the Times Company from 1917 until 1973, when she became a director emeritus. She was among those who voted to alter the company structure fundamentally, granting limited voting rights to the Class A stock and listing it on the American Stock Exchange. At her death she was a trustee of the stock trust established by her father that exercised effective control of the enterprise. After her husband's death, Mrs. Sulzberger continued to live mostly in New York, at 1115 Fifth Avenue, staying in touch with her growing family and carrying on community and educational pursuits. She still traveled, went to the theater, ballet and concerts, and spent weekends in Stamford. In 1982, when she turned 90, there were a number of celebrations. One was given by Barnard to honor her many contributions. Another was held at the New York Botanical Garden, where 165 friends and relatives put on skits, sang songs and poured forth affection. Barbara Tuchman, in the foreword to ''Iphigene,'' notes that Mrs. Sulzberger was appointed by her father to the board of The Times when she was in her 20's and had the longest connection of anyone with the paper. ''Through her, the continuity of family control from father to husband to son-in-law to son has been maintained for over 60 years and, through her, it will be passed on to the next generation - her grandchildren,'' Mrs. Tuchman wrote. ''Through Iphigene's steady companionship and interest in their lives, her influence makes itself felt and will endure at the paper after the source is gone.'' | Ochs, Iphigene Bertha (I1188)
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(Research):Joseph F. Cullman 3rd, Who Made Philip Morris a Tobacco Power, Dies at 92
By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN
NY Times, Published: May 1, 2004
Joseph F. Cullman 3rd, an urbane tobacco man who in the face of rising health concerns about smoking led a relatively lackluster cigarette company called Philip Morris through Marlboro Country to become one of the largest corporations in America and the maker of the best-selling product in the world, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 92 and lived in Manhattan.
His death was announced by the Cullman family.
Mr. Cullman retired as chairman and chief executive in 1978. But 21 years before that and well into the 80's and 90's, he continued to come in regularly to the Philip Morris headquarters in Manhattan, serving as chairman emeritus and playing a crucial role in a multipronged defense of the tobacco industry known as the ''cigarette wars.''
His dealings involved legions of lobbyists, lawyers, public relations experts and legislators. For many years he contended with and often deflected and delayed calls to curb cigarette smoking and advertising by scientists, public health specialists, legislators, lung-damaged plaintiffs and personal injury lawyers.
When the battles intensified, it was Mr. Cullman, who as chief spokesman for the industry, often appeared at Congressional hearings testifying that cigarettes were not a proven health hazard and that manufacturers should not be forced to include warnings on cigarette packages or in their advertisements. Similarly, Mr. Cullman took the lead in efforts to block a ban on cigarette advertising on radio and television, and it was his signature that was affixed to letters to editors pleading for ''objectivity,'' and opposing any rush to judgment on the dangers of tobacco.
In Jan. 3, 1971, the day that the federal ban on cigarette advertising on television went into effect, Mr. Cullman, who by then had become chairman of the Tobacco Institute's Executive Committee, appeared on the program ''Face the Nation,'' saying, ''I do not believe that cigarettes are hazardous to one's health.''
In response to a question on the same program about a study that concluded that smoking mothers gave birth to smaller babies than nonsmoking mothers, Mr. Cullman replied, ''Some women would prefer having smaller babies.''
Mr. Cullman smoked for many years but eventually tapered off and quit. But in his memoir, ''I'm a Lucky Guy,'' published privately in 1998, Mr. Cullman did not dwell very much on the issues of smoking and health and revealed nothing at all about what may have been his private responses to assertions that cigarette smoke hastens mortality. He declared that the book was not intended to address the smoking-and- health question, which, he wrote, had ''no simple, easy answer.''
In the book he sidestepped the debate by writing, ''to me, smoking is a personal choice that adults should be able to make when they have been adequately informed of the possible risks of smoking -- and they have been.''
He added: ''We have changed our product to meet changing demand. We are changing our marketing.''
Mr. Cullman, in his time at the helm and even after he left day-to-day operations, proved to be an expert not only at defending his company but also at planning for its future growth beyond cigarettes.
He set the stage for diversification in 1969, when Philip Morris expanded outside the tobacco business for the first time by acquiring a majority stake in Miller Brewing (now part of SABMiller).
The Philip Morris Companies, the parent organized in 1985, went on to buy General Foods, Kraft and Nabisco Holdings, adding brands like Maxwell House, Oreo and Oscar Meyer to its portfolio.
He also helped lead the company into wide-ranging support for tennis (a lifelong personal interest) and the arts, with millions spent each year to underwrite concerts, ballets and exhibitions -- provoking criticism that such sponsorship was a subtle and unethical advertising ploy.
Last year, the Altria Group, as the parent company was renamed, reported net earnings of $9.2 billion on revenue of $81.8 billion. Global tobacco produced most of the revenue, $50.3 billion.
Perhaps most striking, the Philip Morris USA division of Altria now sponsors television announcements that remind viewers about risks posed by tobacco use and suggest that they visit the company Web site, which contains links to sections like ''quitting smoking'' and ''smoking and pregnancy.''
Mr. Cullman was born into the tobacco business, but his background differed significantly from that of the Lorillards, the Dukes and the Liggetts of the Southern tobacco elite whose fortunes derived from a rural-based plantation culture.
He was a politically liberal northerner, the descendant of immigrants from Germany, and his tobacco background grew out of cigars rather than cigarettes. His great-grandfather, Ferdinand Kullman, a cigar maker from Germany, settled in New York in 1848. His son, the first Joseph Cullman, became a dealer in Ohio leaf. An occasional musician, he was known as Piano Joe. His son, eventually called Joe Junior within the trade, went to Yale. He came to lead the General Cigar Company, which produced brands like White Owl, William Penn, Van Dyck and Robert Burns; at one time he owned 1,800 acres of tobacco fields in Connecticut.
Joe Junior, had four sons, and the oldest of them, Joseph Ferdinand Cullman 3rd, grew to be designated as Joe Third. He attended the Ethical Culture primary school in New York and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and went on to Yale. His grandfather promised him a car if he would not smoke cigarettes until he turned 21 but when he held off until then all he received was a motorcycle. After graduation, he spent a short time working as a clerk in a Schulte Cigar store in New York and then was sent to Havana to work at the H. Upmann cigar factory in Havana.
In 1935 he married Susan Lehman, the grandniece of Herbert H. Lehman, who was then the governor of New York. They had a daughter, Dorothy. They were divorced in 1974, and he married Joan Paley Straus, whom he later divorced and remarried. The first Mrs. Cullman died in 1994, and Joan Cullman died in March. In addition to his daughter, Dorothy Cullman Treisman, of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., Mr. Cullman is survived by his brothers, Edgar M. Cullman and Lewis B. Cullman, both of New York; two stepchildren, Tracy Straus, of New York, and Barnard S. Straus, of Chicago; two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
During World War II, Mr. Cullman spent three years as a gunnery officer aboard a cruiser that fought its way up the Coral Sea to Guadalcanal. Returning to civilian life, Mr. Cullman took over the management of a small company that his father purchased in 1941.
It was called Benson & Hedges, an offshoot of an old British establishment and its principal place of business was a shop on Fifth Avenue that sold monogrammed, gold-tipped and hand-rolled cigarettes to the carriage trade. Mr. Cullman's father thought the place a suitable outlet for his cigars and bought control for $850,000. For this amount, he also acquired a luxury cigarette produced by Benson & Hedges called Parliament, with a recessed mouthpiece and a cotton filter.
As Mr. Cullman took over, the sales of Parliaments surged despite or perhaps because of their high price and snob appeal.
But this was a time that filter-tipped cigarettes were just being introduced by other companies. Philip Morris had no filters and its management thought that Parliaments might prove useful, particularly if health concerns with cigarette smoke were to intensify. In 1954 the company turned over stock valued at $22.4 million to Mr. Cullman's father for his interest in Benson & Hedges. Philip Morris obtained Parliaments and Benson & Hedges. It also acquired Mr. Cullman, who joined the company as a vice president.
The next year he was named executive vice president and at the end of 1957, he was chosen president and chief executive. He held both titles until 1967 when he was named chairman and chief executive, staying on in that capacity until 1978.
As for the company he joined, its fortunes were to rise even more steeply under his direction. In 1961, Philip Morris was dead last in sales among the six major American producers. By 1972 it was in second place and in 1983 it overtook Reynolds Tobacco, which had been the industry leader for the previous 25 years. It earned so much cash that it was driven to use its huge cigarette profits to seriously diversify, acquiring giants like Jacobs Suchard, Miller Beer and Kraft General Foods and becoming the largest consumer products company in the world. It sold the most popular cigarette in the world and the second most popular beer in America.
It expanded abroad, establishing itself and its red, black and white Marlboro logo as one of the most universally recognized of commercial symbols. From 1964 to 1969, its cigarette sales increased a remarkable 63 percent and they kept climbing.
All of this was set in motion when the rugged cowboy replaced the Lilliputian bellhop as the icon and mascot on the company's advertising. When Mr. Cullman took over Philip Morris, the company and its flagship cigarette of the same name were represented by a 43-inch-tall Brooklynite named Johnny Roventini. Beginning in 1933, when an advertising agency discovered him working at the New Yorker Hotel, the uniformed man in the pillbox hat stretched out the phrase ''Call for Philip Morris,'' as if he were paging someone in a hotel lobby.
Mr. Cullman, in 1958, went looking for something fresher.
As the company worked to develop a filter cigarette to challenge Winston, the runaway best seller that Reynolds had introduced, Mr. Cullman presided over a quest that involved not only the right mixture of tobacco, the appropriate filter, a new flip-top box, but also the right image that would attract smokers to Marlboros, a new cigarette to be marketed under an old brand that in the 20's had been aimed at women.
Under Mr. Cullman's supervision, the Chicago-based Leo Burnett advertising agency created something approaching a national identity for smokers, inviting them ''to come to where the flavor is . . . come to Marlboro Country.'' Set against dramatic scenery, rugged wranglers with weathered faces lived intensely, played hard and smoked contentedly. A score from the Western film ''The Magnificent Seven'' written by Elmer Bernstein and drawing on music by Aaron Copland, Ferde Grofé and Rossini was acquired and provided Marlboro Country with its own national anthem.
As Mr. Cullman recalled in his memoir, ''What was needed was a full-flavored filter brand that had a virile image.'' By 1983, with his help, Marlboro had become the best-selling product in the world.
But as the company grew, the basic product upon which it had built its riches, the cigarette, was coming under increasing attack as a menace to health. In 1953 an epidemiologist named Ernest L. Wynder showed that more than half the mice that had their backs painted with cigarette tar distillate developed cancerous tumors. That year The Journal of the American Medical Association stopped taking cigarette ads.
Three years later, a study of 200,000 smokers by the American Cancer Society showed that smokers had a 68 percent higher mortality rate than nonsmokers. In 1962, the surgeon general, Dr. Luther L. Terry, organized a panel to review the growing research and in 1964 released a 150,000-word report that seven cancer-causing compounds had been found in tobacco smoke and that there was ''a significant health hazard'' posed by smoking. After the report, calls were raised to force cigarette companies to include health warnings on the packages, on their printed advertisements and to limit such advertisements.
As the leader of the most dynamically growing cigarette company, Mr. Cullman could hardly ignore the claims. In 1963, as Dr. Terry's experts were gathering evidence, Mr. Cullman told Philip Morris shareholders, ''There is increasing evidence that indicates factors other than smoking'' to be the causes of cancer. He said that the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, which had been set up by the cigarette manufacturers was sponsoring research in this area.
In September 1969, The New York Times announced that it would not accept cigarette advertisements unless they contained health warnings and listed the tar and nicotine content. Mr. Cullman took out a full-page ad to protest. In it, he cited his own Congressional testimony opposing the mandatory inclusion of warnings in cigarette advertising, writing: ''The public is unquestionably cognizant of the charges that smoking may be hazardous to health. A warning in advertising cannot, therefore, be defended as necessary to inform the public. This insistence on a warning in advertising -- in addition to the existing warning on the package label -- is punitive in spirit. The right to advertise -- an essential commercial right -- is destroyed if a manufacturer is required in every advertisement to disparage his product. No businessman will spend his company's money for a self-defeating purpose.''
When such warnings were required and after waging a losing fight against even tougher warnings later demanded by Surgeon General Everett Koop, Mr. Cullman learned to live with the kind of advertising he deplored in his testimony, especially as sales boomed. Indeed, years later, when families of cancer victims sued cigarette manufacturers, lawyers for companies including Philip Morris, took the position that the warnings on the packages and the ads spared manufacturers from any liability.
Mr. Cullman involved Philip Morris in philanthropic endeavors, particularly in sports and the arts. He was a leader in creating the women's professional tennis tour, the Virginia Slims circuit, in 1970, which was initially sponsored by the company's cigarette brand. The company spent millions each year to back dance and art organizations like the Dance Theater of Harlem, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Guggenheim and Metropolitan art museums as well as the Whitney; Philip Morris donated the first floor of its headquarters at 42nd Street and Park Avenue to the Whitney.
An active conservationist, Mr. Cullman was a former trustee of the New York State Nature and Historical Preserve Trust and of the American Museum of National History. He also served on the national board of the Smithsonian Institution and was a past president of what is now the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
In addition, he served as a member of the board of the World Wildlife Fund and director of the American Folk Art Museum.
In August 1976, Hugh L. Carey, then governor of New York, appointed Mr. Cullman a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and he served in that capacity until November 1983.
Mr. Cullman was elected president and director of the Whitney Young Jr. Memorial Foundation in July 1971, and served as honorary president for several years. In November 1972, he received the National Urban League's Equal Employment Opportunity Award.
At one point in the 1960's while Mr. Cullman led the company, its products were boycotted in parts of the South where whispering campaigns labeled the Philip Morris management as racial integrationists. In fact the company did contribute to black colleges and the Urban League and had been been first among tobacco companies to recruit blacks to executives positions.
In his memoir, Mr. Cullman mused about his legacy:
''I suppose that when my obituaries are written they will stress my work at Philip Morris, and I have no quarrel with that. But a person is more than his work.''
He stressed his love of family, friends and the outdoors, and concluded, ''Thinking back about my life and looking back on the pages and pictures in this book, I realize what a lucky guy I have been.''
Correction: May 14, 2004, Friday An obituary on May 1 about Joseph F. Cullman 3rd, a former chairman and chief executive of Philip Morris, misspelled the name of a subsidiary. It is Oscar Mayer, not Oscar Meyer. | Cullman, Joseph Ferdinand III (I1151)
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(Research):Susan L. Cullman, 79, Decoder and an Editor
NY Times Published: January 4, 1994
Susan Lehman Cullman, a New York philanthropist who served as a Navy cryptographer in World War II, died on Sunday at her home in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. She was 79 and also had a home in Manhattan.
The cause was cancer, her family said.
Mrs. Cullman graduated from Horace Mann School in 1932, then attended Vassar College for two years and graduated from New York University in 1962. During the war, she worked in the office of Adm. Thomas A. Hart as a decoder of Japanese messages. For many years, she edited the Cipher Exchange for Cryptogram Magazine.
Mrs. Cullman was the grandniece of the late Herbert H. Lehman, former New York State Governor and Senator, and a grandniece of Irving Lehman, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. She was the granddaughter of Sigmund Lehman, the eldest of the founders of Lehman Brothers Investment Bankers early in the century. Her parents were Harold and Cecile Seligman Lehman. Her father was a partner in Lehman Brothers. Her stepfather was Dr. Edgar Meyer.
Mrs. Cullman is survived by her daughter, Dorothy Cullman Treisman of Scarsdale, N.Y.; a sister, Betty Asiel of White Plains, and two grandsons. Her former husband is Joseph F. Cullman 3d of Manhattan.
A memorial service is scheduled for Jan. 22 at 11 A.M. at the Ethical Culture Society, 2 West 64th Street at Central Park West. | Lehman, Susan (I1152)
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(Research):http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/LUNEN-LINKS/2003-04/1051564761
From: "Sheila/Mark" <mlevy@nsis.com >
Subject: [LL] Jewish Connections: Samuel Hart
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 18:19:21 -0300
References: <200304281938.h3SJceOx003592@lists5.rootsweb.com>
Descendants of Jacob Hart
Generation No. 1
1. JACOB2 HART (MOSES1) died November 03, 1784. He married ESTHER LEVY,
daughter of MOSES LEVY and GRACE MEARS.
More About JACOB HART:
Event 1: Of Stamford, Conn.
Event 2: Tory, in Newport, R.I.
Children of JACOB HART and ESTHER LEVY are:
i. MOSES3 HART, b. May 03, 1748.
More About MOSES HART:
Occupation: Newport merchant
ii. SAMUEL HART, b. October 15, 1749, Newport, R.I..
More About SAMUEL HART:
Comment 1: Elected to the Nova Scotia Assembly in 1793, representing
Liverpool.
Comment 2: Purchased the large estate, Maroon Hall, on the Dartmouth side of
Halifax Hbr.
Comment 3: First Jew anywhere in the British Empire to hold a seat in a
legislature.
iii. MIRIAM HART, b. August 28, 1753; m. MONTAGUE BLACKWELL.
More About MONTAGUE BLACKWELL:
Comment 1: Lt. in the British Army
You shouldn't be surprised by all the Levy connections.
More to come,
Mark Levy mlevy@pchg.net | Hart, Jacob of Stamford, Conn. (I408)
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(Research):Newport, 9 October, 1771. BY Order of the Honourable Metcalf Bowler, Esq; one of thi: Assistant Justices of the Superior Court of Judicature, in and throghout the Colony of Rhode-Island, &c. to me directed, the Creditors o£ Naphtali Hart and Isaac Hart of Ncwporrt, iu the County of Newportt, Merchants, in Company, are hereby advertised that the said Naphtali Hart and lsaac Heart have preferred their Petition ro the said Justice, praying the Benefit of the Law for the.Relief of Insolvent Debtors, and leave to surrender all their Estate, both real and perfonal, for the Use of their Creditors, and have thereto annexed an Inventory of their Estate, togeth:r with a List of their Debts, and to whom due, and have, as Merchants in Company, and each. in his private Character, taken the Oath by Law prcscribed, all wh1ch is fi!cd of Record : And the said Crcditors are hereby notified to appear, by thcmfelves or Attornies, before the Justices of sa1d Court at Newport, on the 7th Day of January next, there to afcertain their Demands, and nominate and appoint Commissioners or Assignees, or shew Cause, if any they have, why the Prayer of the said Petition should not be granted.
JOHN GR.ELEA, jun. Clerk.. | Hart, Isaac (I1979)
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(Research):Mordecai Gomez - The Peopling of New York City | Gomez, Mordicia (I3182)
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(Research):a. He was the editor of a newspaper as well as being a turtle exporter. | Levien, Sydney Lindo (I11424)
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(Research):a. He was warden of the North London Synagogue. | Flatau, W. (I11418)
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(Research):a. Jewish Chronicle 5 Jun 1874 Mr. H.P. Mendes son of Rev. A. P. Mendes of Northwick College, and brother of Rev. Dr. DeSola Mendes of New York, has been unanimously elected minister and preacher of the New Spanish & Portuguese Congrgation of Manchester. | Mendes, Rabbi Henry Pereira (I4391)
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(Research):a. Jewish Chronicle 16 Jan 1874 Mr. I.P. Mendes has been elected minister and preacher to the Portuguese Congregation, Richmond, US. Mr Mendes is a nephew of Rev. A. P. Mendes, principal at Northwick College. | Mendes, Rabbi Isaac Philipe Pereira (I2141)
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(Research):a. Jewish Chronicle 6 Jan 1871 The late Mrs. Abraham Henry- The lady was daughter of the late Rev. Solomon Lyon, Hebrew Professor of Cambridge, and widow of the late Abraham Henry of London and Ramsgate. She was born 17th September, 1788 and died on Friday last. Enjoying in early life advantages of a high education and the society of learned men connected with the University, when her father's failing sight threatened the family with poverty, she devoted her talents to their support. Soon after publication of a volume of her poems, she married. Her devotion to her husband's many years of declining health was equal to the exemplary conduct which she had proceeded toward her parents; when her husbands death left her with the cares and responsibilities of a large family, she discharged the duties of her position wisely. Her death was caused by natural decline of vital power, and she died without suffering from exhaustion, surrounded by the majority of her children. Her funeral was attended by a large circle of friends and by a number of pupils of Stepney School- an institution watched over by one of her sons. | Lyon, Emma (I11357)
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(Research):a. Jewish Chronicle Marriage 17 Nov 1875, at the residence of the bride's parents, Lusan House, Highbury Quadrant, by the Cheif Rabbi, assisted by Revs. Wasserzug & I. Harris, eldest daughter of W. Flatau Esq., to Adolf Zappart of Cotham Lodge, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington. | Flatau, Rebecca (I11420)
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(Research):a. Jewish Chronicle Marriage 24 Nov 1880 at Freemason's Tavern, by Revs. H. Wasserzug & I. Harris, eldest son of W. Flatau of Lusan House, Highbury, Quadrant, to Rosetta, daughter of Ed. Salman, Kingsland Crescent. b. 1881 British Census 61 Carlton Hill London, Middlesex, England FHl film #1341036 RG11/0164 folio 85 page 4 John N. Flatau head married male 26 London Poplar Merchant Rosetta wife m f 18 Marylebone Also included in the household were 2 servants. | Flatau, John Nathaniel (I11416)
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(Research):a.1881 British Census 36 First Avenue Hove, Sussex, England RG11/1096 folio #44 FHL film #1341258 Nathan M. Adler Head married male 78 born in Hanover Chief Rabbi of the United Congregation of the British Empire(minister). Celestine wife m f 59 Berlin Ida R. d u f 21 London,London,Middlesex Elkan N. s u m 19 " " Law student Rebecca J. d u f 16 " " scholar Sarah Soloman d m f 50 Hanover wife of merchant also listed in the household were five servants. | Adler, Dr. Nathan Marcus (I11201)
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(Research):Abraham Mitchell immigrated to the United States from Leszno in Poland in the early 19th century, and his wife, Esther Allen Mitchell, came from England during those same years. They were married in 1821 in New York where they would raise their six children. The second of these was Frances, known as Fanny to friends and family. In 1848 Fanny married Jonas Phillips Levy, son of Rachel Machado Phillips Levy and brother of Uriah P. Levy and Benjamin Levy. Jonas was a merchant ship captain who commanded the USS America during the Mexican American War, transporting troops to the port of Veracruz. After the successful invasion by US troops, General Winfield Scott appointed Levy the port's captain. It was there that Fanny and Jonas' first child, Isabella, was born. She would be followed by four more children, including future congressman Jefferson Monroe Levy. | Mitchell, Frances Allen (I2721)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database
Richea Myers Marx was the daughter of Myer Myers and his second wife, Elkalah Mears Myers. She was one of thirteen including half siblings. She married Merchant and German immigrant Joseph Marx with whom she had ten children. They moved to Richmond family enjoyed great affluence and influence in both in the Jewish community and at large. | Myers, Richea (I1584)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database
Miriam Levy was the youngest of six born to Simeon and Hetty Levy. Her siblings included Benjamin Levy and Julia Levy Solomons. Like her sister Julia, she moved to Washington, where she died in 1880. She never married. | Levy, Miriam (I3315)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Abraham Rodriguez Brandon was born in Barbados, and though at the end of his life his body would rest in that same British island colony, the Brandon family story speaks of the networks that stretched across the Atlantic and the mobility that defined the lives of Jewish merchants.
His wife, Sarah Esther Lopez Brandon, was also Barbados born, and together they had seven children. Like nearly all Jewish families in Barbados, where there had been a growing Jewish presence since the mid-seventeenth century, the Brandons were involved in the sugar trade. Indeed, synagogue dues at Nidhe Israel, where Brandon served as parnas, could be paid in sugar.
As in trade, the synagogue maintained strong ties to Europe throughout the eighteenth century, especially to Amsterdam and London. However, there also existed for Barbadian Jews numerous connections to other parts of the Caribbean and to North America. In 1819 Brandon presented Shearith Israel with a brass chandelier, which, incidentally, was passed along fifteen years later to the synagogue then being built in Cincinnati, as Shearith Israel was converting to gas lighting.
The movements of the Brandon children are telling. Of the five whose fates we know, a daughter, Sara, was married in London to Joshua Moses, an American; another daughter, Lavinia, married Judah S. Abecassis, a Gibralter-born Englishman; while their son Isaac married Joshua Moses' sister Lavinia in New York. Three children would be buried in New York, one in California, and only one, Alfred, was buried beside his father in Barbados, having died the same week. Even Brandon's wife, Sarah, would be laid to rest in New York, having died during an unseasonable blizzard in late March 1823. So tremendous was the snowstorm that her funeral had to be postponed several days, a contravention of the Jewish obligation to quickly bury dead. | Brandon, Abraham Rodriguez (I2522)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Born at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Kitty Etting Cohen spent her brief life amidst the bustle of the shaping of Baltimore. One of the youngest children of Solomon and Rachel Gratz Etting, Kitty had sisters Richea and Miriam to look up to as a child. Hers was one of Baltimore's leading Jewish families in business and civic life. The only family that rivaled the Ettings for place of prominence was the Cohens. Indeed it was her father and Jacob I. Cohen who led the fight for Jewish liberties in Maryland and served as the first Jewish members of the city council.
On December 15, 1819, when Kitty married Jacob's younger brother Benjamin I. Cohen, these two families established their first link. Benjamin was a banker and a founder of the Baltimore Stock Exchange. Together they had eleven children before Kitty's death at thirty-seven. | Etting, Kitty (I4334)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Her eight children accompanying her, Judith I. Solomon Cohen moved from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore in 1808. The oldest of them, Jacob, was no longer a child. His father had died five years earlier, and there was now great pressure on the eldest to earn for the family. His first venture, in which he was joined by his brothers, as he would be so often in the future, was a lottery. This was soon parlayed into banking, and eventually a firm bearing his name— Jacob I. Cohen, Jr. and Brothers. His brothers, including Mendes and Benjamin, worked for some time at the firm. In the mid-nineteenth century it was one of the premier financial institutions in the country, and the American financial representatives of the Rothschilds. Cohen served as a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as president of the Baltimore-Philadelphia Railroad and president of the Baltimore Insurance Company.
Along with Solomon Etting, Cohen became deeply involved in the Jewish struggle for liberty in Maryland. At the time Jews were barred from holding elected office in the state, and Cohen lobbied extensively to change the wording of the state constitution to include full Jewish political participation. In 1818 as the state legislature was considering the issue, he wrote a letter assuring them that Jews felt safe in Maryland and objected only to those "obnoxious parts of the State's constitution produced only in times of darkness and prejudice [which are] blots on the present enlightened period, on the honor of the State, in direct opposition to the features and principles of the Constitution of the United States." Though the bill for broader religious inclusion was defeated, it did pass seven years later. And after its passage, Cohen was elected to the Baltimore City Council. | Cohen, Jacob I. (I837)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Joseph Bensadon was born in New York, the oldest of Jacob Bensadon and Abigail Jacobs Bensadon's three children. Brought up in Charleston, he studied medicine at the Medical Society of South Carolina. In 1838 he was awarded an MD and a few years later enlisted in the Army to serve in the Mexican-American War.
Following his service, Bensadon settled in New Orleans, where he became acquainted with philanthropist Judah Touro. In 1852 Touro founded the hospital that would bear his name, initially to care for seamen, though it later served the whole community. The infirmary originally housed 28 patients in a converted waterfront plantation house, and Bensadon served as chief, and often sole, physician from its opening until his enlistment in the Confederate Army in 1861. After the war Bensadon returned to New Orleans where he set up a private a practice.
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http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=BE&GSfn=j&GSpartial=1&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=20&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GSsr=1161&GRid=33281928&df=all&
Son of Jacob and Abigail Bensadon; brother of Judah P. Bensadon. Dr. Joseph Bensadon was educated at the College of Charleston. He was physician and practiced in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He served in the Mexican War. He was the first medical director of Touro Infirmary (1854)in New Orleans and was a surgeon in the Confederate army from 1862 to 1865. He died at age 53.
by Pauline Cramer | Bensadon, Joseph of New Orleans (I3302)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Pioneering daguerreotypist, "the Pathfinder's photographer," memoirist, presidential portraitist, and active in Jewish communities as far a field as Bridgetown, Barbados and Los Angeles, the life of Solomon Nunes Carvalho contained equal parts ambition and wanderlust.
Born in Charleston, Solomon was the eldest child of David Nunes Carvalho and Sarah D'Azevedo Carvalho, both English-born from Sephardic families with merchant ties through the Caribbean and North America. His father worked in marble paper manufacturing and helped defend Charleston during the War of 1812. In 1829 the family moved north to Baltimore, though they maintained connections with Charleston. Indeed, the family moved freely between these two cities, Philadelphia and Barbados.
It is unclear where Carvalho studied painting, however his earliest known works date from his early twenties— a portrait of David Camden DeLeon, and a painting of the interior of congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of Charleston, that Carvalho painted from memory after the building had burned down.
It was also around this time that we find one of the principal Carvalho legends, a story of selfless bravery that is supported in his obituary years later in American Hebrew. Having taken a post working for an uncle involved in shipping, Carvalho got caught in a sea storm on a merchant vessel carrying numerous passengers. Carvalho was the one to dive into the water, swim ashore, and set up a safety line for the other passengers, who made it to safety before the ship sank. Then, according to the obituary, "All were cast ashore without money. It was here his knowledge of art came in good stead, and by drawing crayon portraits of people in the village where he was cast away he raised enough money to return to his home."
At thirty Solomon fell in love with Sarah Solis of New York. At twenty both of her parents had already died, and so Carvalho addressed the following letter to her brother:
"For your esteemed sister, Sarah, I have conceived other than mere commonplace feelings. Her amiability, sweetness of temper, together with a congeniality of disposition and I dare hope a reciprocity of sentiment, have awakened in my bosom feelings of a deep and ardent affection and as her guardian and Elder Brother, I deem it a duty I owe you, to acquaint you with my pretensions, and to obtain your sanction, that I may make her Honorable proposals of Marriage, the consummation of which would render me most happy.
To my family connections, you can make no reasonable objections. My personal character, altho not entirely free from all the little piccadeleos of youth still I hope displays some remains of those honorable feelings which have won for myself an honorable standing in Society… Should I be so fortunate as to receive your sanction to my suit, I need hardly say I will cherish for your Sister those feelings which I should wish a Husband to have for my own sisters."
They were married on October 15th of that year, and the young couple made Philadelphia, the center of the arts in America, their home. While he continued painting oil portraits and miniatures, displaying work in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art's annual exhibition in 1849, Carvalho also began experimenting with daguerreotypes.
Carvalho was deeply invested in questions of Jewish life and practice, and brought this sense of participation with him when he moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Charleston and back. He served on the Philadelphia Hebrew Education Society in 1850, while his wife studied the teaching methods and Hebrew pedagogy of Rebecca Gratz. In Baltimore, along with Samuel Etting, he established a short-lived Sephardic synagogue. In Charleston he became embroiled in the struggle over questions of reform that divided the Jewish community there. Carvalho was very close with Issac Leeser, of whom he painted one of his most famous portraits, and frequently contributed to his publication the Occident.
In 1853, now living in New York, Carvalho was approached by John Charles Fremont, the celebrated general who had led four expeditions across the Rockies. Fremont hired Carvalho to serve as the daguerreotypist for his fifth and final westward voyage, as he sought to track a path that could serve as the route of the transcontinental railroad. With photography such a new medium, and field photography even less certain, there arose significant doubt as to Carvalho's chances of successfully producing daguerreotypes in the Rocky Mountains in winter. Although in the end, Carvalho proved wrong his detractors, all of the images from the trip were subsequently lost.
He left his wife and three children for what would prove a significantly longer journey than anyone had planned. Serious difficulties beset the party and in the Utah territory they found themselves isolated and on the verge of starvation. They were rescued by a group of Mormons, but Carvalho had to remain in Salt Lake City after the rest of his party had moved on because he had become so ill. During this period of recuperation he painted Brigham Young's portrait.
When finally revitalized, he continued alone on the same route his party traveled to California, all the way taking pictures. Once he reached Los Angeles, Carvalho ended up spending several months in the city, painting portraits of notable Californians and helping to found the Hebrew Benevolent Society there.
When he returned east, he campaigned for Fremont, an 1856 presidential candidate. In 1858 he published Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West, a work that not only describes his experiences with Fremont and gave America an important early portrait of the life and practices of Mormons, but serves still as a valuable document of the West in the mid-nineteenth century.
Carvalho would write other smaller travel pieces. He continued to work as a photographer and painter, most famously painting a portrait of Lincoln. He supported his family largely through inventions and patents. He painted the portraits of many of the leading figures in American Jewry of his day, including Frances Tobias and Uriah Hendricks, and Judah Touro. | Carvalho, Solomon Nunes (I4011)
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(Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Surely the most controversial figure in the annals of early American Jewry, Judah P. Benjamin was portrayed in his lifetime in strikingly varied tones— the "brains of the confederacy" and the cause of the South's defeat, a brilliant intellect or a conniving crook.
Judah P. Benjamin was the eldest son Philip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes Benjamin, a London dried fruit vendor and the daughter of a prominent Dutch Sephardic family. On both sides, family had been settling throughout the West Indies and in the United States, and the young couple followed too crossed the Atlantic not long after their marriage. Judah was born on the island of St. Croix, then part of the British West Indies, now the U.S. Virgin Islands. Two years later the family sailed for Fayetteville, North Carolina, finally settling in Charleston in 1821 where Philip set up a fruit shop.
The family struggled financially in South Carolina, and young Benjamin, precocious and ambitious, served as a source of hope for his parents. At 14, he headed north to study law at Yale. A Southerner, a Jew and poor, he was certainly an outsider in New Haven, but his academic performance was a stellar. Of his first four semesters, Benjamin twice had the highest average in his class, and twice tied with another student for that distinction. He was active in debate clubs, and known for his eloquence and wit. He was awarded the Berkeley Prize for academic achievement. Then, after two years, Benjamin left Yale under mysterious circumstances, about which there would be extensive public speculation and accusations in later years.
In 1828 Benjamin arrived in New Orleans. He worked a series of jobs, finally landing a position assisting a notary, essential training if he was to follow his dream of becoming a lawyer. Around this time, Benjamin also began giving English lessons to the daughter of an insurance official from New Orleans' Creole elite, Natalie St. Martin. In 1833 they were married, a coup for the social-climbing Benjamin. Though his religion proved somewhat problematic, Benjamin refused to convert, agreeing, however, to raise their children as Catholics. Theirs would prove a difficult marriage, though for entirely other reasons— loneliness, for Natalie, would be the cost of her husband's ambitions.
As a young lawyer, Benjamin could only secure minor contracts and petty cases, and so he simultaneously dedicated himself to composing a book on Louisiana law. Coauthored with future Louisiana Chief Justice Tom Slidell, the work analyzed over 6,000 cases, upon completion emerged as a standard legal text in the state, and helped advance Benjamin's career. As his legal reputation grew, he found himself increasingly involved in local politics.
By the 1840s Benjamin was successful enough to afford a plantation, Bellchasse, outside of New Orleans. The purchase had a dual purpose— giving Benjamin a new level of respectability as a "gentleman farmer" (essential for a career in Louisiana politics), and removing Natalie from New Orleans society, where her infidelities were becoming notorious. The former of these aims, it turned out, was more easily accomplished than the latter. Bellechasse pioneered sugar production in Louisiana, and Benjamin had the "distinction" of owning 140 slaves. However, he was often gone from Bellechasse, dedicating himself thoroughly to his practice, and Natalie's feelings of abandonment and depression increased, even after their daughter Ninette was born in 1843. The following year she announced her intention to leave Louisiana all together and settle in Paris.
In 1842 Benjamin won his first race for public office, elected to the Louisiana legislature. A decade later he was elected to the U.S. Senate. By some counts Benjamin was the first Jew to serve as a U.S. senator, for though David (Levy) Yulee served earlier, he converted and denied ever having been Jewish. In the fall of 1852, the same year that Benjamin was elected to his first term in the Senate, outgoing president, Millard Fillmore, offered Benjamin a seat on the Supreme Court. Benjamin turned down the nomination, and his subsequent senatorial career was a dazzling one. While he did end up in the Supreme Court, it was as lawyer arguing cases, not on the bench.
He was known for his oratorical prowess, perhaps the most eloquent defender of Southern interests. "Benjamin was collected and self-possessed in debates," remarked Representative J.L.M. Curry, "did not use notes and had a memory like Macaulay's." He quickly developed a close association with fellow southerner Jefferson Davis, a relationship that was marked by competition as much as friendship, and that would prove decisive for both men. A famous, and most likely apocryphal, story has Benjamin responding to an anti-Semitic comment on the floor of the Senate (from Ben Wade of Ohio, it is often told, though several variations on the tale can be found) by saying, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate hand of the Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."
Natalie returned from France to accompany her husband to Washington upon his reelection in 1858. They set up in mansion with plans for extensive entertaining and hosting lavish balls. However, rumors followed her to the capital. As one Washington society lady described it, "Mrs. Benjamin was very gay and very happy. My father and mother condemned her strongly because of the treatment of her husband. [Benjamin] idolized her and gave her everything she wanted. I do not think he knew what was going on. It came as a terrible shock to him." Again she departed for Paris, this time it really would be for good. Benjamin would visit her once a year.
Meanwhile, the course of American politics was growing more and more tumultuous. The threat of secession, spoken of for years, became a reality, starting with South Carolina on December 20, 1860. As late as December 11, 1860, the New Orleans Picayune reported, "Benjamin opposes secession, except in last resort." However, anger and tensions boiled over. On New Years Eve, Benjamin delivered his famous farewell speech to the Senate. Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis' wife, wrote of the address, "his voice rose over the vast audience distinct and clear…he held his audience spellbound for over an hour and so still were they that a whisper could have been heard." Before an overflowing gallery, Benjamin warned:
What may be the fate of this horrible contest no man can tell…but this much I will say: the fortunes of war may be adverse to our arms, you may carry desolation into our peaceful land, and with torch and fire you may set our cities in flame…you may, under protection of your advancing armies, give shelter to the furious fanatics who desire, and profess to desire, nothing more than to add all the horrors of a servile insurrection to the calamities of civil war; you may do all this— and more too, if more there be— but you never can subjugate us; you never can convert the free sons of the soil into vassals, paying tribute to your power; and you never, never can degrade them to the level of an inferior and servile race. Never! Never!
The speech, of course, drew reactions as fiercely divergent as the political and ethical convictions of the times. Louisiana seceded on January 26, 1861, and on February 4 Benjamin officially withdrew his seat.
Such a prominent figure in the secession drama, Benjamin found himself the object of extensive, if often unpleasant, national attention. For instance, his departure from Yale, an obscure incident from the past, suddenly became the focus of public debate when an article written by a classmate claimed that Benjamin had been forced out after stealing from other students. The article, not surprisingly, appeared in the Independent, an abolitionist paper. Meanwhile, the New Orleans Delta came to Benjamin's defense. Similarly, Benjamin's religion became a point seized on by many infuriated northerners. The Boston Transcript published an article entitled "The Children of Israel" which impugned the disloyalty of American Jews, pointing to the support of the secession by Benjamin and other Southern Jews. Isaac Mayer Wise wrote an incensed response in which he drew attention the vast numbers of Republican Jews. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, who would later serve as Vice President, said of Benjamin that, "his heart was in this foul wicked plot to dismember the Union, to overthrow the government of his adopted country which gives equality of rights even to that race that stoned prophets and crucified the Redeemer of the world."
Benjamin was appointed Attorney General by Jefferson Davis under the provisional government of the Confederate States in February 1861. In August of the same year he was appointed Acting Secretary of War, replacing the inept Leroy Walker of Alabama. Though early Confederate victories were a cause of great joy for Benjamin, he soon found himself in conflict with some of the generals and governors as things turned for the South. Ultimately, Benjamin did not fare much better than his predecessor and resigned in February 1862 to take up the post of Secretary of State.
In his new position, Benjamin became obsessed with trying to lure France and Britain into the war. Though unsuccessful, Benjamin was able to secure loans from France. He and Davis grew very close, each relying on the other's judgment more than any one else's. Meanwhile, Benjamin was subjected to anti-Semitic attacks in the South and the North alike.
During the final days of the Confederacy, Benjamin brought before the Confederate Congress, the idea of using slaves as soldiers. His suggestion, though practical perhaps, elicited a furious response from the Congress, for it undermined the logic behind the Southern defense of slavery.
When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865, Davis and Benjamin were suspected of having plotted the act and, as the martyred Lincoln was compared to Christ in the Northern press, Benjamin was pilloried as Judas. With the South's ultimate defeat, Benjamin, fearing that he could never receive a fair trial if charged with Lincoln's murder, fled to England.
Upon his arrival in London, Benjamin briefly studied English law and was admitted to the bar in 1866. He made a career as a barrister, published a classic legal text on the sale of personal property, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1872.
A solitary man, estranged from his wife, Benjamin died alone in England, and his daughter arranged to have him buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Until 1938, when the Paris chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy provided an inscription with his American name, his simple tombstone was engraved with the name "Philippe Benjamin."
Surely the best-known posthumous depiction of Benjamin— and a caricature at that— appears in the epic poem "John Brown's Body" by Stephen Vincent Benet. Describing him as a "dark prince," Benet depicts Judah Benjamin as outsider in the inner circles of the Confederacy:
Judah P. Benjamin, the dapper Jew,?Seal-sleek, black-eyed, lawyer and epicure,?Able, well-hated, face alive with life,?Looked round the council-chamber with the slight?Perpetual smile he held before himself?continually like a silk-ribbed fan.?. . . [His] quick, shrewd fluid mind?Weighed Gentiles in an old balance . . .?The eyes stared, searching.?"I am a Jew. What am I doing here?" | Benjamin, Judah Philip (I4017)
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The German-born Moses Levy— the name Raphael (God heals) was bestowed on him as he lay on his deathbed— moved with his brother Samuel to London as young men. In the late-eighteenth century they had made their way New York, although strong business and family connections to London were maintained, and Levy would return England on business.
The brothers married a pair of sisters, the daughters of Asher Michalls de Paul, Moses marrying Rycha and his brother Rachel. Levy emerged as a very successful merchant in New York, involved in shipping and trade with Europe and the Caribbean. In 1695 he was made a freeman in New York. His attentions turned as well to the city's small Jewish community, and he served as parnas of Shearith Israel. He is also on record as having contributed to the fund to build a spire for Trinity Church.
With Rycha he had five children, including daughter Bilhah Abigail. In 1716 Rycha died, and two years later he married Grace Mears in London. They would have another seven children together. | Levy, Moses Raphael (I389)
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The German-born Moses Levy— the name Raphael (God heals) was bestowed on him as he lay on his deathbed— moved with his brother Samuel to London as young men. In the late-eighteenth century they had made their way New York, although strong business and family connections to London were maintained, and Levy would return England on business.
The brothers married a pair of sisters, the daughters of Asher Michalls de Paul, Moses marrying Rycha and his brother Rachel. Levy emerged as a very successful merchant in New York, involved in shipping and trade with Europe and the Caribbean. In 1695 he was made a freeman in New York. His attentions turned as well to the city's small Jewish community, and he served as parnas of Shearith Israel. He is also on record as having contributed to the fund to build a spire for Trinity Church.
With Rycha he had five children, including daughter Bilhah Abigail. In 1716 Rycha died, and two years later he married Grace Mears in London. They would have another seven children together.
| Levy, Moses Raphael (I389)
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The son of Israel I. Cohen and Judith I. Solomon Cohen, Mendes was born into a family with extensive ties to finance and civic life. A brother, Jacob, founded a bank, J.I. Cohen and Brothers, and another brother, Benjamin, founded the Baltimore Stock Exchange. Though Mendes too would spend some time in the world of finance, his calling lay elsewhere, indeed it lay overseas.
At eighteen he fought in the War of 1812, serving at the battle of Fort McHenry alongside Samuel Etting. After the war he took up a position at the New York branch of his brothers' firm, and remained there for more than a decade. By 1829 he had had enough and departed for England. The following year, as Jewish rights were being discussed in Parliament, Cohen wrote his mother asking her to send him copies of the letters and speeches of his brother Jacob and other supporters of the recently won Jewish fight for political participation in Maryland.
The next six years were spent traveling through Europe and the Middle East, where Cohen became the first American to explore the Nile Valley. Throughout his travels he wrote extensively to his mother, describing in great detail his encounters in Russia, Turkey, Palestine, and every country in Europe.
Upon his return, Cohen served as a member of the Maryland Historical Society, vice president of the Hebrew Benevolent Society, and as a member of the Maryland State Legislature for 1847-48. Cohen never married, and upon his death, his collection of artifacts brought back from Egypt was donated to create the Cohen Collection of Antiquities at Johns Hopkins University. | Cohen, Mendes I. (I4010)
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Therese Cahn was from a prominent Philadelphia family. Her daughter?Emma Cahn married Adolph Lewisohn of New York City. Therese Cahn was?the grandmother of Adele Lewisohn Lehman, who was the grandmother of?Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. | Cahn, Therese (I4015)
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Previously identified as Phila Franks, the young woman represented in this portrait is now believed to be her sister Richa. Although fewer details are available from Richa's life than some of her siblings, we do find some descriptions of her from around this time in the letters of her mother, Abigail Levy Franks, to her brother Naphtali in England. For instance, in 1834 Abigail wrote her son, "Your Sister Richa has bin out of town this three weeks at huntington & Oyster Bay. She will Not be at home this fortnight. She has Learned to ride horseback and intends to come down in that Manner." Skeptical of her daughter's intentions to ride from their property on Long Island to Manhattan, she continues, "but I hardly believe She rides well enough to make a Jurney of fourty Mile."
The following year she wrote, "Your sister Richa has begun to learn the harpsichord and playas three Very good tunes in a months Teaching." She then goes on to write, "Richa is Like'd by all that know her. And I hope she will Allways have that happyness."
Like the rest of her family, Loyalists who found it uncomfortable or impossible to remain in America after the Revolution, Richa moved to England where she married Abraham de Fries. | Franks, Richa (I443)
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An immigrant from Langendorf in Upper Silesia, Barnard Gratz arrived in America in 1754, at the age of seventeen. With Jews barred from most business, he had set out at a young age for London where a cousin, Solomon Henry, had established himself as an import-export merchant. Young Gratz worked in his cousin's counting house for several years before setting heading for Philadelphia to apprentice with his cousin's American partner, David Franks. A salaried employee of the Franks Company, Gratz also began investing in ventures of his own.
Gratz received some troubling news in 1758— his brother Michael was returning from India, another in a series of failed business opportunities, beginning to look more and more like adventures. Something of a dilettante, Michael had traveled to Berlin, Amsterdam, London and India, and each time came back with nothing to show for himself. Sure enough, Michael followed his brother to Philadelphia. He took over Barnard's position with the Franks, and Barnard went into business for himself. Michael soon joined him, marking the beginnings of a hugely successful firm. Their partnership would not only entail vast international trade, land acquisition in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, and running boats on the Ohio River.
In 1760 Gratz married Richea Myers-Cohen. Their first daughter, Fanny, died in infancy. They would have only one other child, Rachel who would marry Solomon Etting.
Both Gratz brothers signed the Non-Importation Agreement protesting the Stamp Act, and aided the patriot cause during the Revolution by smuggling supplies through the British blockade.
Gratz was a founder and the first parnas of Philadelphia's synagogue, Mikveh Israel. Built in 1782, it was only the second in America.
Two years earlier, Gratz was among those appointed to argue against the limits on Jewish liberties recently passed in Pennsylvania. The newborn state had made it a requirement that for any citizen to vote he had to take an oath that stated, "I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration." Gratz, along Hyam Salomon, Gershom Mendes Seixas, Jonas Phillips and Simon Nathan, addressed the Pennsylvania Council of Censors protesting this provision, which was removed from the state constitution in 1790. | Gratz, Barnard (I1784)
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At thirty years old, Isarel Baer Kursheedt arrived in the United States from Germany, where he had been attending the yeshiva of Rabbi Nathan Ben Simeon Adler of Frankfurt, a famed cabalist, Talmudist, and ascetic. Adler used to call Kursheedt chakham, wise man, and indeed it has been suggested that Kursheedt was probably the most Talmudically knowledgeable person in the United States at that time. He was certainly the first Ashkenazi to arrive with such an impressive textual mastery.
While his understanding of Jewish law was to play a significant role throughout his life, it was success in business that he was seeking across the Atlantic. He arrived in Boston with letters of introduction to Moses Micahel Hays, wealthy merchant and the leader of the city's Jewish community.
He soon left Boston for New York with letters now to Isaac Moses, parnas of Shearith Israel, who helped get Kursheedt started as a merchant. He quickly became close with Shearith Israel's hazzan, Gershom Mednes Seixas, who was, no doubt, enthralled by Kursheedt's Jewish learning.
In 1804 he married Seixas' daughter Sarah Abigail, who some believe was her father's favorite. The couple had he nine children, including future leaders of American Jewry Asher and Gershom.
Kursheedt became increasingly involved in Jewish communal institutional life, helping in the upkeep of the cemetery and with Jewish education. Despite his traditional education, Kursheedt was reform minded, and found himself at odds with a number of influential members of Shearith Israel's elite. And though his learning was widely respected, this did not mean that he won every battle. For instance, in 1809 Kursheedt and a number of other congregants attempted to pass a rule limiting the number of Mi she-Berakh prayers to three per person. These are prayers said for those called to the torah, for which it was customary to make a donation, and which was linked to an elaborate system of public displays of wealth. His attempts were in vein, the old system remained.
In1812 the family moved to Richmond where had been given a post as a hazzan, which he held for the next twelve years. During this period, Sarah communicated extensively with her father, an epistolary record in the possession of the American Jewish Historcial Society. Meanwhile, Kursheedt developed something of a friendship with Thomas Jefferson and visited him at Monticello.
When he returned to New York, Kursheedt became caught in the middle of the Ashkenazi-Sephardi tensions within New York's Jewish community, coming to the fore as increasing numbers of German Jews arrived. He helped establish an Ashkenazi minyan, or prayer group. When the adjunto, or Sephardi board of elders, tried to prevent them from meeting, Kursheedt and fifteen other members sent a letter to the board, informing them that they were splitting off. This was the birth of B'nai Jeshurun, New York's second synagogue, where, again, Kursheedt dedicated himself to institutional and educational development. | Kursheedt, Israel Baer (I3686)
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At thirty years old, Isarel Baer Kursheedt arrived in the United States from Germany, where he had been attending the yeshiva of Rabbi Nathan Ben Simeon Adler of Frankfurt, a famed cabalist, Talmudist, and ascetic. Adler used to call Kursheedt chakham, wise man, and indeed it has been suggested that Kursheedt was probably the most Talmudically knowledgeable person in the United States at that time. He was certainly the first Ashkenazi to arrive with such an impressive textual mastery.
While his understanding of Jewish law was to play a significant role throughout his life, it was success in business that he was seeking across the Atlantic. He arrived in Boston with letters of introduction to Moses Micahel Hays, wealthy merchant and the leader of the city's Jewish community.
He soon left Boston for New York with letters now to Isaac Moses, parnas of Shearith Israel, who helped get Kursheedt started as a merchant. He quickly became close with Shearith Israel's hazzan, Gershom Mednes Seixas, who was, no doubt, enthralled by Kursheedt's Jewish learning.
In 1804 he married Seixas' daughter Sarah Abigail, who some believe was her father's favorite. The couple had he nine children, including future leaders of American Jewry Asher and Gershom.
Kursheedt became increasingly involved in Jewish communal institutional life, helping in the upkeep of the cemetery and with Jewish education. Despite his traditional education, Kursheedt was reform minded, and found himself at odds with a number of influential members of Shearith Israel's elite. And though his learning was widely respected, this did not mean that he won every battle. For instance, in 1809 Kursheedt and a number of other congregants attempted to pass a rule limiting the number of Mi she-Berakh prayers to three per person. These are prayers said for those called to the torah, for which it was customary to make a donation, and which was linked to an elaborate system of public displays of wealth. His attempts were in vein, the old system remained.
In1812 the family moved to Richmond where had been given a post as a hazzan, which he held for the next twelve years. During this period, Sarah communicated extensively with her father, an epistolary record in the possession of the American Jewish Historcial Society. Meanwhile, Kursheedt developed something of a friendship with Thomas Jefferson and visited him at Monticello.
When he returned to New York, Kursheedt became caught in the middle of the Ashkenazi-Sephardi tensions within New York's Jewish community, coming to the fore as increasing numbers of German Jews arrived. He helped establish an Ashkenazi minyan, or prayer group. When the adjunto, or Sephardi board of elders, tried to prevent them from meeting, Kursheedt and fifteen other members sent a letter to the board, informing them that they were splitting off. This was the birth of B'nai Jeshurun, New York's second synagogue, where, again, Kursheedt dedicated himself to institutional and educational development.
| Kursheedt, Israel Baer (I3686)
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Benjamin I. Cohen was born in Richmond, Virginia to Israel I. Cohen and Judith I. Solomon Cohen in 1797. His father and his uncle had come over from Oberdorff, Germany in the middle years of the eighteenth century and established themselves in business and civic life while climbing the ranks of the Masonic order. Several years after Israel's death in 1803, Judith moved with her seven children, including Benjamin, Mendes and Jacob to Baltimore.
Benjamin, like his older brother Jacob, went into banking, and in 1837 established the Baltimore Stock Exchange with his younger brother David. He became very active in the German Society of Maryland, serving as its treasurer for twenty years and as co-chairman of the celebration committee for the revolution of 1848.
In 1819 he married Kitty Etting, daughter of Solomon Etting and Rachel Gratz Etting, from Baltimore's other leading Jewish family. His son Israel followed in his footsteps with active participation in the German Society of Maryland, serving as treasurer for over thirty years. | Cohen, Benjamin I. (I4335)
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Benjamin was the youngest of Michael and Miriam Simon Gratz's twelve children, which included older sisters Frances and Rebecca.
With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Gratz put aside his studies and enlisted to fight under General Thomas Cadwalader. By the end of the war he had reached the rank of first lieutenant. In 1815 he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and was soon after admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, making him one of just a handful of Jewish lawyers in America at the time. He also joined a Federalist organization called the Washington Association of Philadelphia, where he served as vice president.
In 1822 Gratz married Maria Gist, and the couple moved to Lexington, Kentucky, initially to look after family interests in the region. Gratz became one of the leading businessmen in the growing town and was elected trustee of Transylvania University. The couple would remain in Lexington for the rest of their lives. They had five children, and when Maria died in 1841, Gratz remarried to Ana Maria Boswell, with whom he had two more children. His name lives on in Gratz Park, the historic district of Lexington. Gratz's home stands at the edge of the neighborhood, on the corner of Mill and New streets. | Gratz, Benjamin of Lexington, Kentucky (I1847)
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Born in Amsterdam in 1742, Aaron Levy reached America around the time he was eighteen. Upon his arrival, Levy headed west for the frontier opportunities and land grab in central Pennsylvania. The earliest document in which appears has him buying a lot in Sunbury, Northumberland County. In business with Joseph Simon and Michael and Barnard Gratz, Levy not only speculated on land, but was involved in the Indian trade.
A story is told that he met his wife, Rachel Phillips, when, walking through the streets of Philadelphia, he came upon a young women crying at the steps of a house. When asked what was wrong, she told Levy that she was a Jewish indentured servant, and that her master was making her work on the Sabbath. Levy, the story goes, immediately paid her indenture. During the Revolution he and Rachel moved to Lancaster.
Levy's most ambitious business plan, and that for which he is best remembered, was his quixotic dream of Aaronsburg. Levy purchased 334 acres to the west of Northumberland, in the center of Pennsylvania. His idea was to create a city on this land that would become the state capital. In 1786 he advertised that he had laid out the town "in that beautiful, healthy and fertile settlement, called Penn's Valley," and that lots were to be sold by lottery. Of course, things didn't work out for Aaronsburg; it never grew beyond a small town.
Childless, and without any Jewish community around in Aaronsburg, Levy and his wife moved to Philadelphia in 1790. Around this time he befriended Simon Gratz, son Michael and Miriam Simon Gratz, brother of Frances Gratz Etting, Rebecca Gratz and Benjamin Gratz. Simon became something of a surrogate son for Levy, and Levy left nearly all of his land to Gratz. In 1805 Simon Gratz created out of this land the Borough of Gratz in Dauphin County. This was the second American town named for a Jew; the first, more than twenty years earlier, had of course been Aaronsburg. | Levy, Aaron (I3373)
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Born in Langendorf in Upper Silesia Silesia, Michael Gratz would see a significant portion of the world before ending up in Philadelphia. The restless youngest brother of a family of ambitious merchants, Michael had gone to first Berlin in an attempt to make it in business. When that failed, he found himself in Amsterdam, and then London. Finally, he sailed off for English trading posts in India, but again returned without success.
Much to his brother Barnard's concern, Michael's next move was to follow him to the English colonies in America. Barnard had a salaried position working with David Franks. When Michael arrived, his brother set him up in his now vacated position with the Franks, while he, Barnard, set out on his own in business. Less than a year later, Michael followed, and so the firm of B & M Gratz was born.
The two engaged in every type of trade, lucrative land speculation in the West and fur trade in the Ohio River Valley. In 1765 Michael had sailed to the Caribbean on a business trip when he got the idea to ship kosher meat to the Jewish communities on the islands. A number of Caribbean islands had large Jewish populations, but often the only locally produced agriculture was sugar for export.
One of the Gratz brothers' chief business partners was Joseph Simon, founder of the Jewish community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1769 Gratz married Simon's oldest daughter, Miriam. Together they had ten surviving children, including Frances, Rebecca, and Benjamin. | Gratz, Michael (I1785)
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Born in Mannheim, Germany, Daniel Hart made his way to Charleston in 1783. He helped establish the chamber of commerce there and proved instrumental in resuscitating the economy of the city, devastated by the Revolution. He married the English-born Bella Levy, and they had they had seven children. Hart was a frequent contributor to Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. | Hart, Daniel (I2374)
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Born in Mount Pleasant, New York, Sarah Solis was the daughter of Jacob Da Silva Solis and Charity Hays. Her father was a London-born Sephardi who had arrived in America in 1803. The story is told that Jacob was descended from Solomon da Silva Solis and Donna Isabel da Fonseca, the daughter of the Marquis of Turin and Count of Villa Real and Monterey, both refuges from the Inquisition, married in Amsterdam around 1640. In the mid-eighteenth century, the story continues, the Catholic branch of the House of Turin and Villa Real had died out, and so the succession was offered to Sarah Solis' great grandfather. He rejected the offer, as one of the conditions was a Catholic conversion.
Charity Hays, from Bedford New York, was a member of Westchester County's most distinguished Jewish family. Her grandfather Jacob Hays had settled in the town of Rye in 1721, upon arrival from Amsterdam. The couple was married in 1811, and made their home in Mount Pleasant, New York. However, they spent some time in Wilmington, Delaware, where Jacob had established an auction house. Jacob also purchased land and maintained strong economic ties to New Orleans. The family's strongest connection, however, was to Shearith Israel and its community in New York City. By the time Sarah and her brother David were born, her parents had settled back in Mount Pleasant, where they would remain the rest of their lives.
In 1845 the beautiful Sarah caught the eye of a young man. And it was not just any eye; it was that of Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who as a portraitist would become known for that discerning eye. Carvalho addressed a letter to her brother Solomon, since her father had passed away when she was fourteen, and asked for her hand:
For your esteemed sister, Sarah, I have conceived other than mere commonplace feelings. Her amiability, sweetness of temper, together with a congeniality of disposition and I dare hope a reciprocity of sentiment, have awakened in my bosom feelings of a deep and ardent affection and as her guardian and Elder Brother, I deem it a duty I owe you, to acquaint you with my pretensions, and to obtain your sanction, that I may make her Honorable proposals of Marriage, the consummation of which would render me most happy.
To my family connections, you can make no reasonable objections. My personal character, altho not entirely free from all the little piccadeleos of youth still I hope displays some remains of those honorable feelings which have won for myself an honorable standing in Society… Should I be so fortunate as to receive your sanction to my suit, I need hardly say I will cherish for your Sister those feelings which I should wish a Husband to have for my own sisters.
The couple was married in October of that year in Philadelphia. Isaac Leeser performed the ceremony. They took a honeymoon to the Caribbean and upon their return made Philadelphia their home. Sarah studied the pedagogy and methodology of Rebecca Gratz, and became involved in Jewish education. Over the next several years they would live in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York.
In 1853 Solomon was approached to serve as an expedition photographer for John Charles Fremont, as he embarked on his final transcontinental journey. On September 5, Sarah was left with the three children, as Solomon departed for what would become more than a year's absence. Upon his return they had one more child. | Solis, Sarah Miriam (I4012)
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Born in Philadelphia in 1771, Frances Gratz was the second child of Miriam Simon Gratz and Michael Gratz. She was one of a brood of twelve that included Rebecca Gratz and Benjamin Gratz.
Her mother was the oldest surviving child of Joseph Simon, trader, merchant and founder of the Jewish community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her Father was the fun loving younger half of the successful Gratz brothers of Philadelphia.
Two years following the marriage of Frances's cousin Rachel Gratz to Solomon Etting, Frances married his brother Reuben Etting, strengthening the ties between these two wealthy Philadelphia families. Reuben pursued various business opportunities, and the couple moved back and forth between Philadelphia and Baltimore. They had eight children. Among their grandchildren were Charles Edward Etting and Reuben Etting. | Gratz, Frances (I1830)
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Born in Strasbourg, Alsace, Abraham Moise left home in his youth, and had already seen most of Europe when his boat docked in Cape Francois in the French settlement of San-Domingue. This was a period of rapid economic expansion for the island of Hispaniola— divided into French and Spanish colonies— and Moise successfully set himself up in trade, profiting handsomely from the frenzied interchange of sugar and slaves.
In 1779 he was married to a young woman, 29 years his junior, whom history has recorded only as Sarah. They initially lived on the small Caribbean island St Eustatia. This free port served as an important source of trade for the embattled colonies during the Revolutionary War, and most likely Moise was involved in just such an enterprise. In 1781 the British captured St. Eustatia, and Moise moved back with his family to Hispaniola.
Running a plantation and bringing up four sons— Cheri, Hyam, Cadet and Bien aimé— history again uprooted the Moise family in 1791. Revolution broke out in San-Domingue, and the colony saw the largest and most successful African slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere, eventually resulting in the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic. Family legend has it that Moise was roused in the middle of the night and warned of coming danger by one of his slaves, leaving the family just time enough to pack up a few possessions and escape the fate of so many other plantation owners on a boat bound for Charleston. What's more, the story's slave was to become one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, the beloved General Moise. Victor of several key battles, General Moise would become the adopted nephew of revolutionary leader (and later self-appointed governor-for-life) Toussaint L'Ouverture, who eventually turned on the general, having him executed on charges of mutiny.
Though he tried to make it as a merchant in Charleston, Abraham found it difficult to recover financially. In 1795 the following notice appeared in the Daily Adevrtiser:
Mr. and Mrs. Moise
Unfortunate sufferers from the Cape present their compliments to the ladies of this city and take the liberty to inform them that they have for sale, at their house on Queen-street, three doors from King-street, and opposite to Mr. Nixon's school, a few pieces of india, japan, and plain muslins; hum-hum threads, tapes, white chapple needles, and fine linens, &c. &c.
Also just opened one chest of
HYSON TEA:
Equal to any in this city, which they will sell
7 shillings per pound.
As Mr. and Mrs. Moise mean to sell at a very small profit, they hope for the encouragement of the generous public, wh. Will enable them to support a large family.
And indeed the large family continued to grow. In addition to the four boys, three of whom now bore newly anglicized names— Cheri had been redubbed Cherry, Bien amie Benjamin, and Cadet Aaron— Rachel, Penina, Jacob, Abraham Jr. and Isaac now augmented the Moise family in Charleston.
While Abraham was never able to recreate the financial success he had known in the Carribbean, he involved hiself with Charleston's Jewish community and with Jewish charities— a member of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim and founder of the Hebrew Orphan Society. Among his children, two would mark out particularly prominent places within the annals of American Jewish history: Penina was to become a famed poet, hymnalist and educator. Abraham, Jr. helped found Charleston's Reformed Society of Israelistes, the first American manifestation of reform Judaism, and wrote a biogrpahy of cofounder Isaac Harby. Among his other children were Charleston painter Theodore Sydney Moise whose portrait of Abrham's great-granddaughter Caroline is featured in this collection. | Moise, Abraham (I3899)
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