THE TEXIANS
AND THE TEXANS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS
INSTITUTE OF
TEXAN CULTURES
AT SAN ANTONIO
THE
EWISH
TEXANS
THE JEWISH TEXANS
The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures
at San Antonio
THE TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS
A series dealing with the many peoples who have contributed to the history
and heritage of Texas. Now in print:
Pamphlets-The Afro-American Texans, The Anglo-American Texans, The Belgian
Texans, The Chinese Texans, The Czech Texans, The German Texans,
The Greek Texans, The Indian Texans, The Italian Texans, The jewish
Texans, The Lebanese Texans and the Syrian Texans, The Mexican
Texans, Los Tejanos Mexicanos (in Spanish), The Norwegian Texans,
The Spanish Texans and The Swiss Texans.
Books-The Danish Texans, The English Texans, The German Texans, The Irish
Texans, The japanese Texans, The Polish Texans, The Swedish Texans and
The Wendish Texans .
..
The jewish Texans
Principal Researcher: W. Phil Hewitt
©1974, 1996
The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
801 South Bowie Street, San Antonio, Texas 78205-3296
Rex H. Ball, Executive Director
International Standard Book Number 0-86701-058-4
Second edition, third printing, 1996
This publication was made possible in part by a grant from
the Houston Endowment, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Front cover: Mayer Half!
Back cover: jewish wedding in Fort Worth
THE JEWISH TEXANS
Jewish immigration to Texas was
spurred by economic disloca­tion,
political unrest, and fre­quently
by the prospect or
reality of religious persecution. The
1848 political upheavals in Germany
and Central Europe, the various wars
and rebellions between 1856 and
1867, and the Russian pogroms of
the 1890's and early 1900's all
contributed to the exodus of Jews
from Europe.
Unlike most immigrant groups,
Jews came from no particular geo­graphical
or political region and
represented a myriad of nationalities.
Immigration to Texas before the late
1880's came mainly from the German
principalities, the Low Countries and
France. The second wave of immigra­tion,
beginning about 1885 and
ending with the outbreak of World
Immigrants embarking at Hamburg for New York
War I, was comprised largely of Jews
from the ghettos of Russian Poland,
from the steppes of the Ukraine, and
from rural communities of East
Prussia and Russian Lithuania.
Only a handful were in Texas
prior to 1836. According to Galveston
historian J.O. Dyer, one Jao de la
Porta-a Portuguese MarranoJew­was
with Jean Laffite at Galveston
Island about 1816. Samuel Isaaks­whose
name is Jewish, but about
whom little else is known- came to
Texas with Stephen F. Austin in 1821.
Maurice Henry, a merchant and
native of England, settled at Velasco
in the late 1820's. Adolphus Sterne
came to Texas in 1826 and stayed to
become a prominent businessman
and statesman. In 1832 Dr. Joseph
Hertz and his brother Hyman settled
in Nacogdoches for about three
years. After Hyman was killed in an
accident, Dr. Hertz left Texas for the
more civilized clime of Natchez,
Mississippi. Several Jews fought in
the Texas Revolution- some with
Fannin at Goliad and others with
Sam Houston at San Jacinto.
Beginning about 1837, Jews
came to Texas in ever-increasing
numbers. Some settled in the com­mercial
centers of Galveston, Hous­ton
and San Antonio, others in the
small towns and at the crossroads of
rural Texas. As their strength
increased they began organizing the
traditional institutions of Jewish life:
benevolent societies, cemetery asso­ciations,
synagogues and community
centers. A great number of these
early immigrants brought with them
very little more than the clothes on
their backs and a desire to make the
3
~~--------------------
most of whatever opportunities befell
them. Virtually all became useful,
productive and responsible citizens
of their adopted homeland.
Adolphus Sterne
ADOLPHUS STERNE
1826
Adolphus Sterne was one of the
earliest Jewish settlers in Texas.
Lawyer, merchant, linguist and
financier, Sterne participated in the
Fredonian Rebellion, the Texas
Revolution and the Cherokee War.
He was born at Ki:iln, Germany,
in 1801, son of a Jewish father and
a Lutheran mother. In order to avoid
military service, the young man
immigrated to America. In 1824 he
landed at New Orleans, where he
clerked in a store and studied law.
During that time he joined the
Masonic order. Later he drifted to
Tennessee, where he met and became
friends with Sam Houston.
From Tennessee Sterne came to
Texas, arriving in Nacogdoches in
1826. During the Fredonian Rebel­lion
he sided with the Edwards party,
smuggling supplies and munitions
secreted in bales of dry goods and in
barrels of coffee. His trafficking was
soon discovered; he was tried by a
Mexican military court and sen­tenced
to be shot. Fortunately for
Sterne, as well as for Texas, the
4
internationally powerful Masonic
order interceded in his behalf and he
was paroled.
From 1831 to 1833 he held a
variety of public offices under the
Mexican government. He served suc­cessively
as regidor, alcalde and holder
of the municipal funds for the city of
Nacogdoches. It was in Adolphus
Sterne's home that Sam Houston was
baptised a Catholic, naming Mrs.
Sterne as his godmother.
During the war for indepen­dence
Sterne served as a Texas agent
in New Orleans. While there he
raised and equipped a company of
the New Orleans Greys. During the
years of the Texas Republic, he
became postmaster at Nacogdoches.
He also led a company of soldiers in
the Cherokee war and fought in the
battle of the Neches. He served in
both houses of the state legislature
and' was a member of the Texas
Senate when he died in March 1852.
Texas history buffs have long
.. delighted in Sterne's pungent and
. witty diary, first published in the
1920's, which affords an unexcelled
view of early Texas society.
DR. ALBERT M. LEVY
1835
Dr. Albert Moses Levy served in the
Texas Revolution with both scalpel
and sword- in December 1835 he
participated in the storming of Bexar;
in 1836 and 1837 he was a surgeon
in the Texas Navy.
No record of Levy's birth exists.
His parents, Dutch Jews from
Amsterdam, had immigrated to Lon­don
and then to Richmond, Virgin­ia,
in 1818. Albert M. Levy gradu­ated
from the medical department of
the University of Pennsylvania in
1832. He practiced in Richmond and
married a local girl. They became the
parents of a baby daughter. About six
months later Levy's wife died;
broken-hearted, he went to New
Orleans to visit relatives. Hearing of
the Texian struggle for independence,
he offered his services as a surgeon
to the New Orleans Greys.
He vividly described the storm­ing
of Bexar in a letter to his sister
in Richmond. "We got into some
strong houses in town and after a
regular storm of five days and four
"Albert M . L evy at the Siege of Bexar," by Bruce Marshall
nights duration, we forced them to
surrender. Our men fought like
devils (even I fought):' Levy recalled
that the men begged him not to
expose himself because of his value
as a surgeon.
In February 1836 he joined the
Texas Navy aboard the schooner
Brutus, transferring to Independence
early in 1837. Independence was cap­tured
by two Mexican men-of-war,
and the crew was thrown into a
Mexican prison. According to a
family tradition, Levy escaped by
swimming the Rio Grande and trav­eling
overland to Texas.
He settled in Matagorda, Texas,
to practice medicine and became
active in local affairs. In the early
1840's Dr. Levy served on the Repub­lic
ofTexas's Board of Medical Cen­sors.
During the hostilities with
Mexico in 1842, he once again
answered the call to arms. Dr. Albert
Moses Levy, surgeon and soldier,
died in the mid-1860's and was buried
at Matagorda.
EDWARD I. JOHNSON
1836
On March 27, 1836, many of Colo­nel
James Fannin's men were exe­cuted
by their Mexican captors at
Goliad. Among them was Edward
Isaac Johnson, son of a prominent
Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In the summer of 1835 Johnson
learned of the troubles in Texas and,
lured by the promise of exciting
adventure, joined a volunteer com­pany
going there.
He landed at Matagorda in No­vember
with Captain Thomas K .
Pearson's outfit. Pearson's men hauled
a cannon, which had been salvaged
from the wrecked schooner San Felipe,
to Burleson's army at Bexar. After the
occupation of Bexar in December,
Johnson joined Captain Burr H.
Duval's company at Goliad, where he
died with most of the command on
Palm Sunday 1836.
JACOB DE CORDOVA
1837
Jacob de Cordova settled at Galves­ton
in 183 7. Within a few years he
was a respected citizen, founder of
the International Order of Odd Fel­lows
in Texas, member of the legis­lature,
a widely known land locator
and a walking encyclopedia of knowl­edge
about the state. In 1858 he
controlled over a million acres of
Texas land.
Jacob de Cordova was born into
one of the old families at Spanish­town,
Jamaica, in 1808. He immi­grated
to the United States about
1830 and settled in Philadelphia,
where he learned the printing trade.
In 1833 he returned to Kingston,
Jamaica, and established The Gleaner,
a newspaper still published by the de
Cordova family. He operated an
Jacob de Cordova
import-export business in New
Orleans in 1835, then, in 1837, set­tled
permanently in Texas, first in
Galveston and later in Houston,
where he opened a real estate busi­ness.
In 1838 he secured the first
Texas charter for the International
Order of Odd Fellows and was ap­pointed
First Deputy Grand Master.
In 184 7 he was elected to the
lower house of the Texas Legislature.
That same year he became part
owner of the Waco village land tract
and was authorized to lay out the
town. In 184 7 he began publishing
a monthly newspaper, De Cordova's
Herald and Immigrant Guide, intended
to attract settlers to his lands. This
publication was supplemented with
his New Map of the State of Texas.
In 1858 de Cordova published
his major work, Texas: Her Resources
and Her Public Men. He compiled a
veritable encyclopedia on land laws,
data on the climate, biographies of
prominent men, and articles on rail­roads,
cotton growing and sheep
raising. He journeyed to Philadel­phia,
New York and England pro­moting
the book's sale and the sale
of his Texas lands.
In the 1860's de Cordova con­ceived
a plan for harnessing the
Brazos River. He was almost ready
to initiate the scheme when he died
in Bosque County in 1868. After his
death most of his holdings were sold
to pay debts. He was a visionary
Texan, just slightly ahead of his time.
ROSANNA OSTERMAN
1839
Rosanna Osterman was the guiding
force in the Galveston Jewish com­munity
in its early days. She and her
husband, Joseph, came to Texas in
1839. They opened a general store in
the island city and persuaded her
brother, Isidore Dyer, to join them.
Both families amassed wealth; Isidore
was later to become the titular head
of the Galveston Jewish community.
The first recorded Jewish death
in Galveston was that of H. Abra­hams,
who succumbed to yellow fever
in 1839. Much to Rosanna's dismay,
he was buried in a non :Jewish ceme­tery.
In 1852, at Rosanna's urging,
the little community established the
city's first Jewish cemetery. The
Osterman and Dyer families brought
Rabbi M.N. Nathan from New
Orleans for the consecration. It was
possibly the first time a Jewish cler­gyman
had officiated in Texas.
Four years later, as a direct
result of Rosanna's urging, the first
5
"Rosanna Osterman tending the wounded," by Bruce Marshall
Jewish services in Galveston were
held at the home of her brother,
Isidore. The occasion was Yom Kip­pur
in 1856.
During the Civil War Galveston
was blockaded. Business was at a
standstill. Virtually all the Jews in the
city joined the exodus to the main­land.
Rosanna Osterman remained
to nurse the sick and wounded of
both sides. After Galveston fell to
Union forces, she transmitted mili­tary
information to Confederate
officials in Houston, which later
aided the Confederates in retaking
the city on New Year's Day, 1863.
Rosanna died in the explosion
of a Mississippi River steamboat in
1866. In her will she left a fortune
to charities throughout America­$
3,000 each to the Jewish hospitals
in New York, New Orleans and Cin­cinnati;
$5,000 to build a synagogue
in Galveston; and $2,500 for a syna­gogue
in Houston. She left the reve­nue
from two buildings in Galveston
for the establishment and mainte­nance
of a nondenominational
widows' and orphans' home in that
city. These were only a few of her
many benefactions. Through her
words and deeds while living and her
bequests after death, Rosanna Oster-
6
man provided the impetus for the
orgf!nization of Jewish community
life in Galveston.
"THE SANGER BROTHERS
1857
Early in 1857 young Isaac Sanger
came to Texas to make his fortune.
By November he was operating a
Sanger Brothers Department Store at Waco
general store at McKinney. From this
small store grew a mercantile empire
with outlets in a dozen Texas cities.
Isaac, the eldest of ten children
from a Jewish family in Bavaria,
came to the United States in 1851. He
worked in New York and in New
Orleans before coming to Texas.
When he started his McKinney
store, Collin County had a popula­tion
larger than that of neighboring
Dallas County. A younger brother,
Lehman, arrived to help look after
the growing business. By 1860 Sanger
Brothers owned stores in Decatur,
Weatherford and McKinney.
Expansion was halted by the
Civil War when both brothers en­listed
in the Confederate army. After
the war Lehman and Isaac were
joined by Phillip Sanger. In the next
seven years stores were opened in
Bryan, Calvert, Kosse, Groesbeck
and Corsicana. Brother Isaac ran a
New York office for the firm. A
fourth brother, Alex, arrived in 1872
to open the Dallas store. In 1873 Sam
Sanger opened the store in Waco.
The Sanger brothers were lead­ers
in innovative merchandising. In
1880 they established a mail-order
department. In 1884 the firm issued
.l I
its first catalog, and by the mid-1890's
Sanger Brothers was doing a million­dollar
annual business.
All the brothers were active in
the civic and religious affairs of their
communities. In 1900 the Sangers
shipped bedding and clothing to the
Galveston flood victims. Alex Sanger,
the last surviving brother, died in
Dallas in 1925. Today none of the
smaller stores exist, but the Sanger­Harris
stores in Dallas stand as a
memorial to the mercantile empire
founded by five immigrant brothers.
CONGREGATION
BETH ISRAEL
1859
The first Jewish congregation m
Texas was formed at Houston. Con­gregation
Beth Israel received its
state charter in December 1859,
although an informal group may
have existed five years earlier. The
membership was derived primarily
from Western Europe-Alsace,
France, Bavaria and various German
principalities.
The synagogue was the center
of its members' lives. From the min­ute
books one can see the variety of
problems discussed in meetings.
Grudges, quarrels and problems with
wayward children appear along with
discussions of the care of the frame
synagogue building, and the con­struction
and maintenance of a fence
around the first cemetery. There
were frequent discussions concerning
changes in the ritual. From the
beginning Congregation Beth Israel
was groping its way from the Tradi­tional
ritual to the Reform.
Before 1870 services were held
in a frame building on La Branch
Street, between Texas and Prairie.
The congregation grew and, in 1874,
moved to a masonry building on
Franklin Avenue. In 1874 Beth Israel
joined the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations. As a result
of the shift to the Reform ritual, a
separate Traditional congregation
broke away in 1891. Most of the
founders of Congregation Adath
Yeshurun were recently immigrated
Russian and Polish Jews who disa­greed
with the Reform movement.
fn 1908 Congregation Beth
Israel moved south to Crawford
Street, following the general pattern
of residential change in the Jewish
n.eighborhoods. In the past 125 years
these neighborhoods have gradually
shifted to the southwest from the
original location near Crawford and
Franklin. In the 1920's a new syna­gogue
at Austin Street and Holman
Avenue was dedicated. The congre-
Congregation Beth Israel
gation grew so rapidly that, in 1967,
it made another move to 5600 North
Braeswood, where the temple is
situated today.
CAPTAIN LEVI HARBY
1863
At the battle of Galveston in January
1863, Captain Levi Harby of the
Confederate navy rammed his cot­ton-
clad steamboat, Neptune, into the
U.S.S. Harriet Lane. His action was
credited with winning this important
victory for the Confederacy.
Born in 1793 in Georgetown,
South Carolina, Harby joined the
United States Navy as a midshipman
in June 1812. When the war for Texas
independence began, he resigned his
commission in the U.S. Navy, came
to Texas and joined the navy of the
infant republic. Later he served in
the Mexican War and in the Semi­nole
Wars in Florida. During the
Civil War Harby became port cap­tain
in Galveston. Soon after, he and
his men engaged Harriet Lane, which
they captured, throwing the Union
forces into confusion and winning
the battle for the Confederates.
Harby was made a commodore in
the Confederate navy and given
command of a fleet of gunboats on
the Sabine River.
He died at Galveston in 1870.
On his tombstone is the inscription
''And with my last breath on the
threshold of death, I proclaim my
faith in Israel's God!'
THE HALFF FAMILY
1864
At one time Mayer and Solomon
Halff controlled more than 6,000,000
acres of ranchland. Their lives
spanned the rise and fall of the great
range cattle industry. Mayer Halff
was born in the French province of
Alsace in 1836; Solomon was born
two years later. In 1850 Mayer
arrived in Texas and opened a small
business in Liberty. In 1857 his
brother Solomon joined him, and the
7
two formed a partnership. Almost
immediately they began buying land
on which to graze cattle. Most of
their initial herd was received in
payment for merchandise.
In 1864 they moved to San
Antonio, where they founded a
wholesale dry goods company, M.
Halff and Brother. Their business
eventually became one of the largest
of its type in the Southwest. Mayer
was more interested in dealing with
cattle than with bolts of cloth; he
managed the ranches, while Solomon
tended the store.
In the 1870's the brothers
acquired the 50,000-acre Circle Dot
ranch in Brewster County. At that
time cattle were worth about $4 a
head in Texas but $40 to $50 in
Northern markets. The trick was to
get them to the Kansas railhead
through stampedes, hailstorms and
thieves. It was not a business for the
fainthearted. Mayer Halff succeeded
admirably, becoming one of the
largest stock raisers in the state. ..
Eventually Halff ranches were scat­tered
all the way from the Rio ·
Grande to Montana.
The Halffs were among the first
in Texas to import Hereford cattle.
For a time the 200,000-acre Quien
Sabe Ranch near Midland held the
largest number of Herefords in the
Southwest. Mayer Halff was a
founder of the City National Bank
in San Antonio, and both brothers
participated in founding the Alamo
National Bank. In 1902 Solomon
retired from M. Halff and Brother
to devote his time to duties as vice
president of the Alamo National
Bank. Solomon Halff died in May
1905, Mayer in December of the
same year.
MORRIS LASKER
1865
Morris Lasker arrived in Texas as a
peddler astride a one-eyed horse.
When he died he had made several
fortunes in flour milling, banking
and real estate. Born in 1840 in the
8
small East Prussian village of Lask,
he received a good education in
Greek and Latin, while preparing for
a career as a classical scholar.
In 1856 Lasker came to the
United States. For a time he clerked
in a store in Portsmouth, Virginia,
then came to Texas. He clerked in
Weatherford, but left to wander rest­lessly
over north central Texas until
he joined a band of Indian fighters.
Lasker quietly voted against seces­sion,
then prudently joined the Con­federate
army. He served in the 2nd
Texas Cavalry Regiment, fighting in
Louisiana, at Galveston and at
Sabine Pass. At the end of the war
he was broke. Unable to find a job,
he borrowed a team and wagon and
became a peddler again. To his
astonishment he made $1,500 in gold
within a few months. Finally, in 1872,
he settled at Galveston.
By 1880 Lasker owned a milling
business and was president of two
banks and a real estate company. His
interests were widespread; he made
money in some, lost it in others. He
was ruined in the panic of 1893,
largely because most of his capital
was tied up in real estate. He
rebounded, however, and, in 1895,
was elected to the 24th Texas Legis-lature
as a state senator from Galves­ton.
At his death in 1916 the city
honored Morris Lasker by halting all
activity for a five-minute silent trib­ute
to his memory.
HEBREW BENEVOLENT
SOCIETY OF GALVESTON
1866
For centuries, wherever Jews settled,
they formed benevolent societies.
They fed, clothed and sheltered the
impoverished, nursed the sick, dow­ered
the brides, buried the dead, and
performed merciful deeds for Jewish
and non :Jewish families alike. An
informal society had been operating
in Galveston since about 1839, but
1866 marked its formal incorpora­tion.
The immediate impetus was a
substantial legacy Rosanna Oster­man
had bequeathed for the forma­tion
of such a group.
Fifteen months later a particu­larly
disastrous yellow fever epidemic
wiped out Rosann<fs legacy and all
other money the Hebrew Benevolent
Society could scrape together. Forty
members of the Jewish community
died within two months, six in one
day. The epidemic filled the first
Jewish cemetery. In 1868 a second
"Morris Lasker making a sale," by Bruce Marshall
I
was purchased, followed by a third
in 1897 and a fourth in 1951. In more
recent years many of the society's
traditional functions have been
assumed by the federal, state and
local governments. Today the soci­ety's
primary function is caring for
the four Jewish cemeteries in and
around Galveston.
DANIEL AND ANTON
OPPENHEIMER
The gold lettering on the window of
the unpretentious building in down­town
San Antonio reads simply­D.
& A. Oppenheimer, Bankers
(Unincorporated). The Oppen­heimer
Bank, founded at Rusk,
Texas, in 1858 by brothers Daniel
and Anton, is the oldest private bank
west of the Mississippi and one of the
few remaining in America.
Daniel and Anton Oppen­heimer
were born in Bergkundstadt,
Bavaria, where their father, Jesse, was
a baker and confectioner. In 1854
17 -year-old Daniel immigrated to
America, landing first in New York,
then continuing by ship to Galveston.
From Galveston he made his way to
Palestine, where his uncle operated
a general store. In 1858 Daniel sent
for his brother Anton, and the two
moved to Rusk, a small town about
30 miles east of Palestine, where they
established their own store.
The brothers entered the Con­federate
army in 1861. Daniel served
in Ector's Brigade, and Anton in
Hood's Brigade. After Lee's surren­der
the brothers worked their way
separately back to Texas. They
moved to San Antonio, then the
largest city in the state, and reopened
their merchandising business. At first
banking was only a sideline. Daniel
and Anton began by financing some
of the early trail drives to Kansas.
Usually the only security given by the
cattlemen was a list of brands and
amounts due.
During the last quarter of the
19th century, there were few nation­ally
chartered banks in Texas, pri­marily
because $50,000 capital was
requir.ed for a charter. The Texas
Constitution of 1876 prohibited state­chartered
banks because of their long
record of failure. However, there was
no law prohibiting individuals from
banking- extending credit, granting
loans and providing a safe for the
deposit of cash.
After Anton's death in 1905 the
firm continued with Daniel as senior
The Oppenheimer Bank about 1900
partner. When he died in 1915 his son
Jesse became the senior partner, a
position that he held until his death
in 1964. Jesse carried on the firm's
policy of making loans based on
character judgment rather than col­lateral.
Once Jesse turned down a
would-be borrower. The man begged
him to take up the matter with the
loan committee the next day. Jesse
rose from behind his roll-top desk
and faced the wall for a moment.
Then he turned and said, "The loan
committee has decided. The answer
is still no."
At Jesse's death in 1964 Dan
Oppenheimer, a grandson of the
original Daniel, became the third
senior partner in the firm's history.
More than a hundred years after its
founding, the bank conducts business
almost as it did at the turn of the
century. The emphasis is on personal
service. In an era of conglomerates
and multinational corporations, the
D. & A. Oppenheimer Bank is
almost unique.
HARRIS AND
I.H. KEMPNER
1870
In 1870 Harris Kempner, from Rus­sian
Poland, established in Galveston
a family business empire that has
been an important factor in the
economic development of the Texas
Gulf Coast.
Kempner was born in Krzepitz,
Poland, in 183 7. To avoid serving in
the Russian army, he immigrated to
the United States at 17. In 1857 he
came to Texas and opened a small
general store at Cold Springs in San
Jacinto County. When Texas seceded
from the Union in 1861, Kempner,
though personally opposed to slavery,
joined the Confederate army. At the
end of the war he returned to Cold
Springs and reopened his store.
In 1870 he moved to Galveston
to open a wholesale grocery business.
He soon became one of the largest
cotton factors in the Southwest. The
firm advanced credit against the
9
Harris Kempner
forthcoming cotton crop. When the
crop was picked Kempner received
it at a predetermined price and sold
it overseas or to the cotton mills in
the Northeast at the prevailing
market rate.
During his career Harris Kemp­ner
was active in a variety of busi­nesses.
He was an organizer and
promoter of the Gulf, Colorado, and
Santa Fe Railroad. He served as a
director from 1877 to 1886 and was
at least partly responsible for the
line's eventual consolidation with the
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. He
was also an avid land investor. His
purchases of farmland in south Texas
provided a strong base for later
expansion. In the 1880's and early
1890's he served as director of ten
central Texas banks.
He died in 1894 after a brief ill­ness,
but the firm of H. Kempner
remained intact. Kempner was sur­vived
by his widow, four sons and
four daughters. His eldest son, I.H.,
assumed management of the firm .
I.H. was born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1873. When his father
became ill he was called home from
law school at Washington and Lee
University. He took charge of the
firm's cotton, banking and ranching
divisions and managed them until
shortly before his death in 1967.
Soon after his return to Galves­ton
young Kempner was elected a
director of the Galveston Cotton
Exchange. He served as director,
10
president or vice president almost
continuously for nearly half a cen­tury.
In 1907 Kempner and Colonel
W.T. Eldridge bought the Cunning­ham
Sugar Refinery at Sugar Land,
Texas. The company, then in finan­cial
trouble, was reorganized and
renamed the Imperial Sugar Com­pany.
It soon became a major asset.
Throughout his life I.H. Kemp­ner
was actively involved in Galveston
public affairs. After the 1900 storm
he served on the relief committee that
buried the dead and supervised the
rehabilitation and reconstruction of
the devastated city. The commission
form of municipal government was
originated in Galveston following this
disaster. Kempner was a member of
the first commission. For a number
of years he was finance commission­er,
and in 1917 and 1918 he served as
mayor of Galveston.
I. H. Kempner
In 1950 the family established
the Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund.
Through this private foundation it
has contributed to a variety of chari­table,
educational and religious orga­nizations.
The family has established
college scholarships, donated funds
for a new rabbinage at B'nai Israel
and funded a variety of medical re­search
projects at The University of
Texas Medical School in Galveston.
When I.H. Kempner died in
1967, leadership of the Kempner
trust fell to the third generation. The
investments of the firm have re-mained
centered in banking, rail­roads,
cotton and sugar refining. In
recent years the organization has
broadened its base by investing in
rice plantations and insurance.
ERNST AND
OLGA KOHLBERG
1884
When 18-year-old Ernst Kohlberg
arrived at El Paso in 1875, the village
was known as Franklin, and Juarez
was Paso del Norte. Kohl berg had
left his home in Westphalia to avoid
the draft. Part of his passage was paid
by Solomon Schutz, an early Jewish
settler in Franklin. In return, young
Kohlberg was to work for Schutz
without salary for a time. Schutz, in
turn, would teach Ernst the mer­chandising
business. At first sight
Ernst was unimpressed with the
adobe village, calling it "nearly the
end of the world and the last crea­tion!'
But he stayed on and contri­buted
greatly to the progress of what
became El Paso.
In 1884 Ernst Kohlberg married
Olga Bernstein and brought her to
live in west Texas. The young woman
had been reared in the finest tradi­tions
of European culture and gra­cious
living. Throughout her life in
El Paso she sought to bring civilizing
institutions to the frontier commu­nity,
and to a surprising degree she
succeeded. Two years after his mar­riage
Kohlberg and his brother,
Moritz, established the International
Cigar Company, the first cigar fac ­tory
in the Southwest. The deluxe
brand was called La lnternacional.
Ernst Kohlberg was also a founder
of the El Paso Electric Railway Com­pany,
a director of the Rio Grande
Valley Bank and Trust Company, and
operator of the St. Regis Hotel,
which was the site of the 1909 meet­ing
between U.S. President Howard
Taft and President Porfirio Dfaz of
Mexico. In 1893 he was elected to the
El Paso City Council.
Meanwhile, Olga Kohlberg and
several friends began to advance the
I
Ernst Kohlberg
idea of schooling for very young
children. This "Study Circle" pur­chased
equipment and materials and
brought a teacher from St. Louis. By
1892 the group had convinced the El
Paso Board of Education to make
kindergarten part of the public school
system. As a result of Olga's labors,
El Paso became first in the state to
have free public kindergarten.
Olga was the first to see the need
for a hospital in El Paso. Stirred by
the death of a sick man left to die on
a railroad platform, she formed the
Ladies Benevolent Association,
which was responsible for the town's
first hospital in 1892. She served on
the first board of directors of the El
Paso Public Library and continued
there for 25 years. She became its
president in 1903, and it was largely
through her efforts that the library
was built into one of excellence. In
1898 the Kohlbergs helped organize
the Temple Mt. Sinai.
Ernst Kohlberg was murdered
in his office by a drunken tenant in
June of 1910.
When Olga Kohlberg died in
1935 she had left her mark on virtu­ally
every civic project in the city.
In 1952 Tom Lea used Ernst
Kohlberg as the basis for the fictional
character of Ludwig Sterner in The
Wonderful Country, thus granting the
Jewish pioneer a measure of literary
immortality that he well deserved.
LEON. LEVI
1876
Leo N. Levi was one of the first
Texas-born Jews to achieve national
recognition. His father, a native of
Alsace, was a pioneer banker and
merchant who had settled in Victoria
in 1849. Leo graduated from the
University ofVirginia and began the
practice of law in Galveston in 1876.
He became a tireless worker for civic
betterment, often acting as unofficial
lobbyist for the city's interests before
the Texas Legislature. In 1887 he was
elected president of Congregation
B'nai Israel. In this capacity he was
instrumental in bringing Rabbi
Henry Cohen to Texas.
LeoN. Levi
While in Galveston Levi joined
the Independent Order of B'nai
B'rith and became president of the
order's Southern district. In 1900, a
year after he moved from Galveston
to New York, he was elected national
president of the order. After the par­ticularly
brutal Easter massacre of
Jews at Kishinev, Russia, in 1903,
Leo Levi framed the famous Kishi­nev
Petition sent by the U.S. govern­ment
to Czar Nicholas II. The peti­tion
deplored the riots and asked that
the czar publicly oppose religious
persecutions. President Theodore
Roosevelt ordered Levi's petition and
its 13,000 signatures cabled to the
American representative in St.
Petersburg, but the czar refused to
accept it. Levi died in New York in
1904, leaving his fortune to establish
the B'nai B'rith hospital at Hot
Springs, Arkansas.
RABBI HENRY COHEN
1888
During the 62 years he served his
community and his fellow man,
Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston
achieved a national reputation for
philanthropic and humanitarian
endeavor. He served Jew, Gentile,
black and white indiscriminately.
Anyone who needed help could go to
Dr. Cohen and find aid. Born in
London, England, in 1863, he was
educated at Jews' College and was
ordained a rabbi in 1884. His first
assignment was in Kingston, J amai­ca.
Next he was sent to the Jewish
congregation in Woodville, Missis­sippi,
where he served until being
called by Congregation B'nai Israel
in Galveston in 1888.
The rabbi soon became a famil­iar
sight on city streets as he sped
along on his bicycle, coattails flapping
behind him. Each morning he would
scribble the day's appointments on
his shirt cuff. The range of his activi­ties
was immense. In Galveston he
could always find a job, a hospital
bed, a square meal or a train ticket
for anyone who needed help. After
the 1900 Galveston storm he served
on the Central Relief Committee. In
1907 Cohen became the director and
guiding force behind the Jewish
Immigrants Information Bureau,
which funneled Jewish immigrants
through Galveston to new homes in
Texas and the Midwest. In 1914, at
the request of the American secretary
of state, he directed aid to American
citizens who were victims of the
Mexican Revolution. In World War
I Henry Cohen convinced President
11
Rabbi Henry Cohen
Woodrow Wilson to appoint Jewish
chaplains in the armed forces.
Throughout his life Cohen
stood in the front ranks of those
advocating prison reform. He sought
better medical facilities , vocational
training and more humane treatment
for prisoners, including the separa­tion
of hardened criminals from first
offenders. In 1928 Governor Dan
Moody appointed him to the State
Prison Board. The rabbi served until
1930, working for his reforms, all of
which were eventually adopted.
Cohen received many offers to
serve larger, more affluent congrega­tions,
but he preferred to stay in
Texas. He was honored many times
by groups ranging from Hebrew
Union College to Texas Christian
University. On one occasion, when
he was paid tribute by his community
and his congregation, he responded
to the accolades, saying, "I found
good clay when I came to Galveston
and Texas. It is not difficult for the
sculptor when he has good material!'
But the audience knew that it takes
a great sculptor to make an enduring
contribution, no matter how good
the material might be. Cohen retired
m 1949 and died three years later,
12
..
deeply mourned by the thousands he
had served so well.
ISAAC DAHLMAN
1889
The opening in 1889 of the Dahlman
Dressed Beef Company at Fort
Worth marked the beginning of a
new era in the Texas livestock indus­try.
Before local refrigerator plants
were established, cattlemen drove
their herds to railroad sidings, loaded
them in cars and shipped them to
packing plants in St. Louis, Omaha
and Chicago. They were at the mercy
of buyers, forced to take whatever
prices they were offered. With refrig­eration
plants near the sources of
supply, cattle could be shipped short
distances to the plant, slaughtered,
and the meat shipped in refrigerated
railroad cars directly to Eastern and
Northern markets.
Two Fort Worth refrigeration
plants had failed in the 1880's. In
1885 one of them was sold to Chicago
creditors, who intended to dismantle
and remove it from Texas. Isaac
Dahlman scraped together the money
to buy out the creditors. From the
beginning he was beset with over-whelming
problems. No one in Texas
would make up the additional capital
necessary to make the venture suc­cessful.
His supply ofbeefwas erratic.
And when he finally had cattle on
hand and a plant ready to operate,
he could not obtain refrigerated box­cars
from the railroad.
Finally, in 1889 the Dahlman
company contracted with an English
syndicate to ship refrigerated beef
through Galveston and New Orleans
to Liverpool, England. Unfortunate­ly,
some of the earlier shipments were
too long in transit. Large amounts
of the meat spoiled, and Dahlman's
undercapitalized company went
bankrupt. Nevertheless, he had
shown that his idea was basically
sound. His example persuaded other
men to solve the problems, and by
1916 Fort Worth was ranked as the
fifth largest cattle market in the
United States.
ANNA HERTZBERG
1901
During more than 50 years in San
Antonio, Anna Hertzberg earned
distinction as a patron of fine music,
a social leader and a philanthropist.
Born in New York, Mrs. Hertzberg
came to San Antonio in 1882 as the
young wife of jeweler Eli Hertzberg.
As a talented pianist and graduate of
Anna Hertzberg
the New York Conservatory of
Music, she soon became interested
in the musical life of the Alamo City.
In 1901 she organized the Tues­day
Musical Club with seven charter
members. The club sponsored per­formances
by nationally known art­ists
and spread an appreciation of
fine music throughout the San
Antonio area. Under her direction
the Tuesday Musical Club estab­lished
a scholarship fund to aid tal­ented
students in their studies at the
New York Conservatory of Music.
Before World War I Anna Hertzberg
also founded and served as president
of the original San Antonio Sym­phony
Orchestra.
From 1911 to 1913 she was presi­dent
of the Texas Federation of
Women's Clubs. During her tenure
she worked for laws to better protect
married women's property rights. In
1915 she was the first woman elected
to the San Antonio School Board.
While she was president of the San
Antonio Council of Jewish Women,
she organized the first night school
in the city; it was eventually absorbed
by the city system. At the time of her
death in 193 7, Anna Hertzberg had
materially improved both the cultural
and educational qualities of her
adopted city.
JOSEPH H. GOODMAN
1902
Many of the Jews who came to Texas
brought members of the family at a
later date. None, however, tackled the
problem with Joseph Goodman's
zeal. For years after he moved to El
Paso, he operated the equivalent of
a one-man immigration service.
Born Joseph Hillel Guttman in
a Lithuanian village, he served in the
Russian army of Czar Alexander III.
At the end offour years' duty, Joseph
immigrated to the United States. He
anglicized his name to Goodman and
began working in a New York City
sweatshop. About 1893 he became a
peddler. Carrying a 160-pound pack
on his back, he sold goods on the
joseph H. Goodman
Onondaga Indian reservation and
among the scattered farmhouses of
Upper New York State. After saving
enough money for a grubstake, he
journeyed to Vado in New Mexico
Territory. There he opened a general
store, worked hard and made money.
In 1902 he relocated in El Paso,
then. a town of 15,000, where he
started a fuel and grain business, He
warited to give his young son a prop­er
education and religious instruction
in the family's traditional Jewish
faith. After getting established Good­man
brought his five brothers to
America. Then he and his brothers
brought their sister and her husband
to Texas. They realized that other
family members in Lithuania faced
increasing religious and economic
persecution. Eventually 47 Good­mans
came to the El Paso area.
The project snowballed. Nieces,
nephews and friends in turn helped
others to make the voyage. As a result
of the Goodman immigration proj­ect,
there were very few of the early
arrivals whose children and grand­children
are not related into the third
and fourth generations. The man
who started it all, Joseph Goodman,
was active in Jewish community
affairs until shortly before his death
in 1958 at age 90.
JEWISH IMMIGRANTS
INFORMATION BUREAU
1907
Between 1907 and 1914 some 10,000
Jews entered the port of Galveston
en route to new homes in Texas, the
Southwest and the Midwest. Their
sponsor was the Jewish Immigrants
Information Bureau, popularly
known as the Galveston Movement.
The bureau was financed by a
$500,000 gift from New York philan­thropist
Jacob Schiff, and directed
locally by Rabbi Henry Cohen.
By 1905 there were almost a
million Jews in New York alone.
Arrival of first immigrants sponsored by the J.I.I.B.
1.3
Many lived in dirty, squalid tene­ments
not much better than the
ghettoes they had left in Poland,
Rumania and Russia. The ] ewish
Immigrants Information Bureau was
founded in an effort to relieve these
conditions. Mr. Schiff was convinced
that newly arrivedJews from South­ern
and Eastern Europe would have
better opportunities if they could be
induced to settle in the American
South, West and Midwest.
The operation resembled a trav­elers'
aid society. Immigrants were
met at the pier by Dr. Cohen or a
representative of the bureau. After a
short welcoming speech in Yiddish,
they cleared customs and were taken
to the bureau's office. There they
were fed, given a chance to bathe and
write letters home, and provided with
current reading materials. As soon
as possible all were sent to their new
homes. The bureau maintained a
network of committees in cities and
towns of the South and Midwest.
Immigrants' skills were matched with
available job openings, and the com­mittees
assisted the new arrivals in
finding housing and by teaching
them English. The flow of immi­grants
was halted by the outbreak of
war in 1914. Following the armistice,
America imposed strict immigration
quotas, whereupon the Galveston
Movement died.
NEIMAN-MARCUS
Stanley Marcus has a well-deserved
reputation as a merchandising ge­nius.
His natural showmanship and
almost infallible public relations
judgment, coupled with a desire to
run the world's finest department
store, have made Neiman-Marcus of
Dallas world-famous.
The enterprise was founded in
1907 by Herbert Marcus Sr., his
sister Carrie and her husband, A.L.
Neiman. Their ad in the Dallas Morn­ing
News on September 8 proclaimed
the opening of a store that would
carry exclusive lines of ladies' gar­ments,
most never before offered in
14
Carrie Marcus Neiman c. 1903
the"Southwest. The store prospered,
and in 1928 Herbert Marcus bought
ouf the Neiman interests and beCa.me
the majority stockholder. In time, his
four sons, Stanley, Herbert Jr.,
Original Neiman-Marcus store
Edward and Lawrence, entered the
business. To Stanley must go much
of the credit for the firm's extraordi­nary
merchandising success and
worldwide reputation.
Born in 1905, he entered the
firm fresh out of Harvard Business
School in 1926. During his early
months with the store, he developed
the first regularly scheduled weekly
fashion shows ever held by an Amer­ican
department store. These were
quickly followed by Neiman-Marcus
Fashion Expositions and Neiman­Marcus
fashion originals. By the
later 1930's Neiman-Marcus was a
national leader in women's fashions.
Neiman-Marcus special occa­sion
catalogs, such as its Christmas
annual, are always eagerly received.
In past years the catalog has offered
for sale such items as a team of
camels ("his" and "hers"), twin air­planes,
mink-covered pocket flasks,
Chinese fishing junks, emerald­studded
ladies' pipes, Mandarin silk
robes and a variety of name designer
fashion creations.
Stanley Marcus became presi­dent
of the firm in 1950, upon the
death of his father. Over the years he
Stanley Marcus
has been an active and outspoken
participant in a wide variety of cul­tural,
civic and social causes. He is
a collector of fine art and rare books,
and a noted gourmet. A number of
foreign governments and scores of
American organizations have hon­ored
him for his outstanding civic
and business contributions.
Stanley Marcus served as presi­dent
of the firm until December
1972. He then was elected chairman
of the board, and his son, Richard,
became president. Stanley Marcus
summed up the reasons for Neiman­Marcus's
success. In 1969 he said:
"I've been interested in many things
in my life, but actually there is noth­ing
better than a customer buying
something from you, taking it home
and liking it!'
SAM DREBEN
1911
Sam Dreben once was described by
an American general as the most
fearsome Jewish fighting man since
Joshua. Dreben was born in Poltroe,
Russia, in 1878. He came to America
as a young man and joined the
United States Army in 1899. He
served with American forces in the
Filipino Insurrection and partici­pated
in the international force that
relieved the beleaguered Westerners
holding Peking during the Boxer
Rebellion. But the United States ran
out of wars to fight, and Dreben,
bored with garrison life, left the army
in 1907.
In 1911 Dreben enlisted with the
forces of Pancho Villa, who was
aligned with Francisco Maderds
revolutionary army. In May Dreben
and his American dynamiters and
machine gunners helped the Made­ristas
capture Juarez, a victory that
contributed materially to the over­throw
of dictator Porfirio Dfaz.
From 1911 to 1916 the short,
stocky Dreben fought with about
every ,army in northern Mexico. He
followed the red-flag rebellion of
Salazar-Campa and campaigned
with the Obregon-Carranza-Villa
armies against the Huerta govern­ment.
Then he served the Mexican
Federal government as a spy against
the revolutionaries. When Villa split
from Obregon and Carranza, Dre­ben
became a gun smuggler for
Villa, but when Villa raided the
American town of Columbus, New
Mexico, in 1916, Dreben quit. Fight­ing
south of the border was one
thing; killing Americans and looting
American towns was something he
could not abide. Besides-as Dreben
himself so aptly put it-he didn't
want to do any more fighting in
Mexico, because there was no Jewish
cemetery there, and he didn't want
to start one.
Dreben rejoined the U.S. Army
in February 1918. He was assigned
to the 142nd Infantry Regiment. In
action near St. Etienne, France, the
next October, Dreben and 18 com­rades
captured a German platoon
and four machine guns that were
holding up the Allied advance. For
his heroism Dreben was awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross. The
French government gave him the
Medaille Militaire as well as the
Croix de Guerre with palms. He was
Sam Dreben (sombrero in center) with Mexican revolutionaries
. _,,....,.~!i"P ...... ~---
,
15
also decorated by the Italian and
Belgian governments.
After the war this intrepid sol­dier
of fortune settled in Los Angeles,
working as a special agent for an
insurance company. In 1925 Dreben,
survivor of a hundred battles, died
at 4 7. He collapsed in his doctor's
office from an accidental overdose of
medicine. A newspaperman who had
followed Dreben across Mexico said
of him: "Sam's two most cherished
possessions were his Jewish ancestry
and his American citizenship:'
DR. H.J. ETTLINGER
1913
Dr. Hyman]. Ettlinger's career at
The University of Texas is proof that
brains and brawn can and do mix.
During his 61 years in the Depart­ment
of Mathematics, Dr. Ettlinger
was recognized as one of the nation's
outstanding mathematicians. He was
also an extraordinary college athlete.
Ettlinger was born in St. Louis
on September 1, 1889. He received
a four-year scholarship to Washing­ton
University in St. Louis but
needed only three years to complete
his degree. In that time he acquired
a Phi Beta Kappa key; lettered in
three sports; became a member of
Sigma Xi, honorary science frater­nity;
and received All-American
honors in football. In 1920 he
received his Ph.D. in mathematics
from Harvard University.
Ettlinger arrived in Austin in
1913 to begin his teaching career. He
also coached various university teams
until1919. Between 1915 and 1950 he
refereed more than 1,500 high school
and collegiate football games. During
a brief stint as Director of Intercol­legiate
Athletics, Dr. Ettlinger
arranged the only gridiron meeting
between Harvard University and
The University of Texas. (Harvard
won 31 to 7.)
At The University of Texas Dr.
Ettlinger coauthored a revolutionary
calculus text, published articles in
numerous scholarly journals and was
16
chairman of the mathematics depart­ment
for more than 25 years. In the
1950's he formed the Grass Roots
Educational League and barn­stormed
the state, introducing more
than 40,000 students to the possibili­ties
in math and science.
Numerous groups have honored
him for his humanitarianism and
service to Judaism, among them the
National Conference of Christians
and Jews, B'nai B'rith and the Kallah
of Texas Rabbis. In 1962 Dr. Ett­linger
became semiretired. In 1969,
at age 80, he was designated pro­fessor
emeritus.
SIMON AND
TOBIAS SAKOWITZ
1915
In 1902 Simon and Tobias Sakowitz
oper{ed a small store in Galveston,
selling clothes mostly to sailors. This
.}'Vas the start of Sakowitz, Inc., today
one of America's finest specialty
.stores. Their story is in the classic
tradition of American immigrants
who, through hard work, rose to posi­tions
of success and prominence in
their community.
Simon and Tobias Sakowitz
were born in Kiev, Russia. They
were brought as children by their
parents to Texas, where their father
became a prosperous Galveston mer­chant.
In 1902 the brothers opened
a store that sold ships' supplies and
sailors' clothes. In 1910 they opened
their first branch at Houston. Follow­ing
the 1915 Galveston hurricane,
Simon and Tobias sold their island
holdings and moved the operation to
downtown Houston. By 1929 their
store was widely known and re­spected
throughout Texas. During
the 1950's and 1960's the brothers
expanded to numerous shopping
centers being built around Houston.
The Sakowitz brothers gave
unstintingly of time and energy to a
variety of civic and philanthropic
projects. Simon died in Houston in
late 1967, Tobias in 1970.
JACOBJ.TAUBENHAUS
1916
Jacob Taubenhaus, a Palestinian
immigrant, made some of the most
significant strides ever taken in the
control of plant diseases. Born at
Saffed in 1884, he attended a local
agriculture school before coming to
the United States to complete his
education. He studied at Cornell
University, acquiring undergraduate
and graduate degrees in 1908 and
1909. He received his doctorate at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1913.
Three years later Dr. Tauben­haus
became chief of the division of
plant pathology and physiology for
the Texas A&M University Agricul­tural
Experiment Station System.
Although he devoted his major atten­tion
to the study of cotton root rot,
he also did extensive research in
diseases of the sweet potato, onion,
melon and tomato plant. He was a
charter member of the American
Phytopathological Society. Dr. Tau­benhaus
was a leader in Jewish affairs
at Texas A&M University and was a
founder of the Hillel Club there. He
died at his home in College Station
in 1937.
Jacob J Taubenhaus
HAYMON KRUPP
1919
Part of the credit for the west Texas
oil bonanza belongs to Haymon
Krupp, a Russian-born Jew who had
settled in El Paso. In 1919 Krupp and
Frank Pickrell organized the Texan
Oil and Land company to finance a
wildcat well on university-owned
lands in Reagan County. Their oil
strike in 1923 brought hundreds of
millions of dollars pouring into the
permanent fund of The University
of Texas and Texas A&M University.
Shortly after World War I
Rupert Ricker had attempted to
promote the drilling of an oil well
near his Reagan County home. He
"blocked up" more than 430,000 acres
of university land in Reagan, Irion,
Upton and Crockett counties. Unfor­tunately
Ricker failed to raise the
$43,000 rental owed the state. With
only a few days' grace remaining, he
sold the fruit of his labor to Frank
Pickrell and Haymon Krupp for
$500. Pickrell and Krupp raised the
rental fee.
The two then traveled to New
York, trying to sell drilling permits,
but failed to find any buyers. To
develop their leases Pickrell and
Krupp organized the Texan Oil and
Land Company, with Krupp as pres­ident.
Texan was capitalized at
2,000,000 shares valued at $1 each.
The company executed an agreement
"Santa Rita," by Tom Lea
with New York brokers, authorizing
a geological survey and then allowing
the brokers to select 200,000 acres in
payment for the total capital stock.
Even after this financial wizardry, the
Eastern brokers found it impossible
to sell stock in a wildcat well to be
drilled by a company that had no oil
production. This minor flaw was
remedied when Krupp and Pickrell
purchased three producing wells in
Burkburnett, Texas. Texan was now
a producing company. Brokers sold
sufficient shares to finance drilling
the first new well.
Santa Rita No. 1 was started
just before midnight on the last day
of grace, January 8, 1921. The name
had been chosen in New York by
backers who were obviously skeptical
about the success of the project. A
priest had advised the investors to
invoke the aid of Santa Rita, Saint
of the Impossible. After almost two
and a half years of effort, Texan
struck oil at a depth in excess of 3,000
feet. The producing well was located
squarely in the center of a 64-square­rpile
block of leases.
Krupp and Pickrell's Santa Rita
No. 1 kicked off a boom that added
immense wealth to all of west Texas.
Haymon Krupp died in 1948.
FRED FLORENCE
1920
The life of Fred Florence was the
rags-to-riches legend come true- he
began as a janitor in a small east
Texas bank and rose to be president
of the largest financial institution of
the South. His Lithuanian Russian
parents immigrated to the United
States in the 1880's and settled in
New York, where Fred was born in
November 1891. He was three
months old when his parents moved
to Rusk in east Texas.
After graduating from high
school at 15, young Florence began
sweeping floors for the First National
Bank of Rusk. He was soon ap­pointed
a teller, and at age 24 he was
made president of the State Bank at
Fred Florence
Alto, a few miles south of Rusk. He
served in the Army Air Corps in
World War I, then, on his return to
civilian life, he resumed his job as
bank president. He was also elected
mayor of Alto in 1919.
In 1920 Florence went to Dallas
to become a founder of the Guaranty
Bank and Trust Company, forerun­ner
of the Republic National Bank.
He was elected president of the
Republic National in 1929, when he
was only 38. Under his leadership the
Republic National grew until it was
the largest bank in the South.
Throughout his life Florence
was active in professional and trade
associations. He participated in
numerous civic and charitable
causes, including the Community
Chest, the Jewish Federation for
Social Service and the scouting pro­gram.
In the 1930's he served as
president of the Texas Centennial
Exposition and, in 1937, was presic
dent of the Pan American Exposi­tion.
In 1959 he received the Bene­merenti
Medal from Pope John
XXIII, the highest decoration that
can be awarded a non-Catholic. Fred
Florence died on December 25, 1960,
mourned by his Jewish and non­Jewish
friends alike.
17
Officers and trustees of Hebrew Free Loan Association, 193 7-1938
HEBREW FREE LOAN
ASSOCIATION
1924
Tzedakah is a Hebrew word that is
almost untranslatable to English.
The best rendition is probably "Thou
shalt help thy neighbor as thy
brother:' The Hebrew Free Loan
Association of San Antonio was
founded in this spirit in 1924. It was
organized as a nonprofit group but
not as a charitable one. All interest­free
loans must be repaid.
Any Jewish person who is 21 or
older, and lives in Bexar County, is
eligible for a loan if he or she can
obtain four cosigners for the note.
When the association was formed the
usual amount of the loan was $5.
Today the maximum is $1,000. The
income of the association is derived
from $5 annual memberships, dona­tions,
memorial gifts, endowments
and special fund-raising events.
The Jewish tradition of self-help
extends back in time for more than
a thousand years. Wherever Jews
have settled they have formed orga­nizations
to help one another in time
of need.
CHARLES L. BRACHFIELD
1926
When Judge Charles Brachfield of
Henderson, Texas, filed as a Demo­cratic
candidate for attorney general
in 1926, he became the first Jew ever
to seek a statewide office in Texas.
18
Charles Brachfield was born at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1872. His
parents came to Texas in 1874, set­tling
in the town of Henderson. He
grew up there, then read law in
Waco. After being admitted to the
bar, he returned to his hometown to
pra€tice law. He was Rusk County
judge from 1898 to 1902, then served
a four-year term as state senator
.. beginning in 1904. In 1917 he wa~
elected judge of a five-county district
· a position he held until his unsuc~
cessful bid for attorney general.
When Judge Brachfield kicked
off his campaign, there were five men
in the race; only three had a chance
to win: Brachfield, James V. Allred
and Claude Pollard. Brachfield had
informed Pollard of his plans, telling
him that he would not run if Pollard
was going to enter. Pollard declined
but later changed his mind and filed
for the office, with the result that they
split the heavy east Texas vote. Both
men ran well in east and north Texas.
Brachfield, long known as a prohibi­tionist,
garnered almost no votes in
the heavily German and Mexican
counties of central and south Texas.
He missed the run-off by about 3,600
votes; nevertheless, in a decade domi­nated
by Klan activity, Brachfield's
showing was remarkable.
Following his defeat, Brachfield
resumed his law practice in Hender­son.
He was active in civic, charitable
and fraternal organizations. At one
time he served as Grand Master of
the Odd Fellows Lodge in Texas.
After his death in 1952 the Hender­son
chapter changed its name to the
Brachfield Lodge in his memory.
SIDNEY M. LEVYSON
1931
Sidney Levyson led the long fight to
restore leprosy victims to health and
to public acceptance. He was born
at Gonzales, Texas, in 1899 and grew
up in Boerne, where his father owned
a drugstore. Sidney graduated from
The University of Texas Pharmacy
Branch at Galveston and began
working in his father's store. In 1920
he moved to San Antonio. There he
was first diagnosed as having leprosy,
or Hansen's disease. He was com­mitted
in 1931 to the United States
Public H ealth Service Hospital at
Carville, Louisiana. In those days
patients took assumed names to
protect their families from the stigma
attached to the disease. Levyson
chose Stanley Stein as his alias.
When Levyson..Stein was com­mitted
to Carville as Case Number
746, he found himself in a semipenal
institution, shunned by society and
treated almost like a convicted felon.
Carville was five miles from the near­est
railroad station; access was by a
dirt road; and the place was sur­rounded
by a high, barbed wire
fence. There was no post office;
Sidney M . Levyson
patients were not allowed to use the
phone; marriage between patients
was prohibited; and they could not
vote in local or national elections.
Within three months after his
arrival, Stanley Stein initiated a pa­tient's
newspaper, the Sixty-Six Star.
The Star carried on a crusade to bet­ter
the lot of Hansen's disease vic­tims,
and by 1940 the paper had
gained worldwide circulation. For its
well-informed reports on matters
concerning the illness, the Star earned
the respect of the medical profession.
Stein and his successors exerted every
effort to encourage research, until
finally the sulfone treatment was
discovered. The Star then collected
funds to buy the medication for treat­ment
in places as far away as India.
Stanley Stein and the Star
brought the telephone and the post
office to Carville. Through Stein's
efforts the access road was paved, the
barbed wire removed, patients al­lowed
to marry and a new hospital
built. Stein lost his sight many years
before sulfone drugs were developed,
but he never lost his courage. His
book, No Longer Alone, tells the story
of one man's battle against supersti­tion,
prejudice and unreasoning fear.
Stein died at Carville in 1968.
ELSIE FRANKFURT
1938
In 1938 Elsie Frankfurt designed and
marketed the "windowpane" mater­nity
skirt. Her design revolutionized
the production of clothing for moth­ers-
to-be. Page Boy, Incorporated,
founded by Elsie and her two sisters,
is now a multimillion-dollar business.
Fired by the untidy appearance
of expectant mothers ("They looked
like unmade beds:'), she designed a
skirt that was more appealing and
comfortable to wear. Fresh out of
Southern Methodist University
School of Business, Elsie and her
sisters borrowed $500 and began
operations in a rented loft in Dallas.
By 1951 Page Boy, Inc. was grossing
more than $1,000,000 annually and
The founders of Page Boy, Inc.
operating a manufacturing plant in
Dallas with outlets in Texas and
California, and in Cleveland, Detroit
and Indianapolis.
'I'hat September Elsie became
the first woman member of the
Young Presidents Club, an organiza­ti~
n composed of heads of million­dollar
corporations under the age of
40. Elsie was then 33 years old.
THE HARRY HERTZBERG
CIRCUS COLLECTION
1942
The Harry Hertzberg Circus Collec­tion,
located in downtown San Anto­nio,
is the largest of its kind in the
world. Hertzberg, a prominent law­yer,
donated thousands of circus­related
items to the city at his death
in 1940. Two years later the collection
was opened to the public. Memorial­ized
in photographs and artifacts are
circus greats like P.T. Barnum, Tom
Thumb, the Flying Wallendas, Buffa­lo
Bill Cody and his Wild West Show,
and great animal trainers such as
Clyde Beatty and "Bring 'Em Back
Alive" Frank Buck. Also included are
a handbill and poster collection, a
hand-carved miniature circus and a
variety of similar artifacts from
around the world.
Hertzberg, son of Eli and Anna
Hertzberg, was born in San Antonio
in 1883. Early in life he determined
on a legal career. He became one of
the outstanding young lawyers in the
city. Active in civic affairs, he served
in the Texas Senate.
Tom Thumb's carriage from the Hertzberg Collection
19
Harris Kempner
forthcoming cotton crop. When the
crop was picked Kempner received
it at a predetermined price and sold
it overseas or to the cotton mills in
the Northeast at the prevailing
market rate.
During his career Harris Kemp­ner
was active in a variety of busi­nesses.
He was an organizer and
promoter of the Gulf, Colorado, and
Santa Fe Railroad. He served as a
director from 1877 to 1886 and was
at least partly responsible for the
line's eventual consolidation with the
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. He
was also an avid land investor. His
purchases of farmland in south Texas
provided a strong base for later
expansion. In the 1880's and early
1890's he served as director of ten
central Texas banks.
He died in 1894 after a brief ill­ness,
but the firm of H. Kempner
remained intact. Kempner was sur­vived
by his widow, four sons and
four daughters. His eldest son, I.H.,
assumed management of the firm .
I.H. was born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1873. When his father
became ill he was called home from
law school at Washington and Lee
University. He took charge of the
firm's cotton, banking and ranching
divisions and managed them until
shortly before his death in 1967.
Soon after his return to Galves­ton
young Kempner was elected a
director of the Galveston Cotton
Exchange. He served as director,
10
president or vice president almost
continuously for nearly half a cen­tury.
In 1907 Kempner and Colonel
W.T. Eldridge bought the Cunning­ham
Sugar Refinery at Sugar Land,
Texas. The company, then in finan­cial
trouble, was reorganized and
renamed the Imperial Sugar Com­pany.
It soon became a major asset.
Throughout his life I.H. Kemp­ner
was actively involved in Galveston
public affairs. After the 1900 storm
he served on the relief committee that
buried the dead and supervised the
rehabilitation and reconstruction of
the devastated city. The commission
form of municipal government was
originated in Galveston following this
disaster. Kempner was a member of
the first commission. For a number
of years he was finance commission­er,
and in 1917 and 1918 he served as
mayor of Galveston.
I. H. Kempner
In 1950 the family established
the Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund.
Through this private foundation it
has contributed to a variety of chari­table,
educational and religious orga­nizations.
The family has established
college scholarships, donated funds
for a new rabbinage at B'nai Israel
and funded a variety of medical re­search
projects at The University of
Texas Medical School in Galveston.
When I.H. Kempner died in
1967, leadership of the Kempner
trust fell to the third generation. The
investments of the firm have re-mained
centered in banking, rail­roads,
cotton and sugar refining. In
recent years the organization has
broadened its base by investing in
rice plantations and insurance.
ERNST AND
OLGA KOHLBERG
1884
When 18-year-old Ernst Kohlberg
arrived at El Paso in 1875, the village
was known as Franklin, and Juarez
was Paso del Norte. Kohl berg had
left his home in Westphalia to avoid
the draft. Part of his passage was paid
by Solomon Schutz, an early Jewish
settler in Franklin. In return, young
Kohlberg was to work for Schutz
without salary for a time. Schutz, in
turn, would teach Ernst the mer­chandising
business. At first sight
Ernst was unimpressed with the
adobe village, calling it "nearly the
end of the world and the last crea­tion!'
But he stayed on and contri­buted
greatly to the progress of what
became El Paso.
In 1884 Ernst Kohlberg married
Olga Bernstein and brought her to
live in west Texas. The young woman
had been reared in the finest tradi­tions
of European culture and gra­cious
living. Throughout her life in
El Paso she sought to bring civilizing
institutions to the frontier commu­nity,
and to a surprising degree she
succeeded. Two years after his mar­riage
Kohlberg and his brother,
Moritz, established the International
Cigar Company, the first cigar fac ­tory
in the Southwest. The deluxe
brand was called La lnternacional.
Ernst Kohlberg was also a founder
of the El Paso Electric Railway Com­pany,
a director of the Rio Grande
Valley Bank and Trust Company, and
operator of the St. Regis Hotel,
which was the site of the 1909 meet­ing
between U.S. President Howard
Taft and President Porfirio Dfaz of
Mexico. In 1893 he was elected to the
El Paso City Council.
Meanwhile, Olga Kohlberg and
several friends began to advance the
I
Ernst Kohlberg
idea of schooling for very young
children. This "Study Circle" pur­chased
equipment and materials and
brought a teacher from St. Louis. By
1892 the group had convinced the El
Paso Board of Education to make
kindergarten part of the public school
system. As a result of Olga's labors,
El Paso became first in the state to
have free public kindergarten.
Olga was the first to see the need
for a hospital in El Paso. Stirred by
the death of a sick man left to die on
a railroad platform, she formed the
Ladies Benevolent Association,
which was responsible for the town's
first hospital in 1892. She served on
the first board of directors of the El
Paso Public Library and continued
there for 25 years. She became its
president in 1903, and it was largely
through her efforts that the library
was built into one of excellence. In
1898 the Kohlbergs helped organize
the Temple Mt. Sinai.
Ernst Kohlberg was murdered
in his office by a drunken tenant in
June of 1910.
When Olga Kohlberg died in
1935 she had left her mark on virtu­ally
every civic project in the city.
In 1952 Tom Lea used Ernst
Kohlberg as the basis for the fictional
character of Ludwig Sterner in The
Wonderful Country, thus granting the
Jewish pioneer a measure of literary
immortality that he well deserved.
LEON. LEVI
1876
Leo N. Levi was one of the first
Texas-born Jews to achieve national
recognition. His father, a native of
Alsace, was a pioneer banker and
merchant who had settled in Victoria
in 1849. Leo graduated from the
University ofVirginia and began the
practice of law in Galveston in 1876.
He became a tireless worker for civic
betterment, often acting as unofficial
lobbyist for the city's interests before
the Texas Legislature. In 1887 he was
elected president of Congregation
B'nai Israel. In this capacity he was
instrumental in bringing Rabbi
Henry Cohen to Texas.
LeoN. Levi
While in Galveston Levi joined
the Independent Order of B'nai
B'rith and became president of the
order's Southern district. In 1900, a
year after he moved from Galveston
to New York, he was elected national
president of the order. After the par­ticularly
brutal Easter massacre of
Jews at Kishinev, Russia, in 1903,
Leo Levi framed the famous Kishi­nev
Petition sent by the U.S. govern­ment
to Czar Nicholas II. The peti­tion
deplored the riots and asked that
the czar publicly oppose religious
persecutions. President Theodore
Roosevelt ordered Levi's petition and
its 13,000 signatures cabled to the
American representative in St.
Petersburg, but the czar refused to
accept it. Levi died in New York in
1904, leaving his fortune to establish
the B'nai B'rith hospital at Hot
Springs, Arkansas.
RABBI HENRY COHEN
1888
During the 62 years he served his
community and his fellow man,
Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston
achieved a national reputation for
philanthropic and humanitarian
endeavor. He served Jew, Gentile,
black and white indiscriminately.
Anyone who needed help could go to
Dr. Cohen and find aid. Born in
London, England, in 1863, he was
educated at Jews' College and was
ordained a rabbi in 1884. His first
assignment was in Kingston, J amai­ca.
Next he was sent to the Jewish
congregation in Woodville, Missis­sippi,
where he served until being
called by Congregation B'nai Israel
in Galveston in 1888.
The rabbi soon became a famil­iar
sight on city streets as he sped
along on his bicycle, coattails flapping
behind him. Each morning he would
scribble the day's appointments on
his shirt cuff. The range of his activi­ties
was immense. In Galveston he
could always find a job, a hospital
bed, a square meal or a train ticket
for anyone who needed help. After
the 1900 Galveston storm he served
on the Central Relief Committee. In
1907 Cohen became the director and
guiding force behind the Jewish
Immigrants Information Bureau,
which funneled Jewish immigrants
through Galveston to new homes in
Texas and the Midwest. In 1914, at
the request of the American secretary
of state, he directed aid to American
citizens who were victims of the
Mexican Revolution. In World War
I Henry Cohen convinced President
11
Rabbi Henry Cohen
Woodrow Wilson to appoint Jewish
chaplains in the armed forces.
Throughout his life Cohen
stood in the front ranks of those
advocating prison reform. He sought
better medical facilities , vocational
training and more humane treatment
for prisoners, including the separa­tion
of hardened criminals from first
offenders. In 1928 Governor Dan
Moody appointed him to the State
Prison Board. The rabbi served until
1930, working for his reforms, all of
which were eventually adopted.
Cohen received many offers to
serve larger, more affluent congrega­tions,
but he preferred to stay in
Texas. He was honored many times
by groups ranging from Hebrew
Union College to Texas Christian
University. On one occasion, when
he was paid tribute by his community
and his congregation, he responded
to the accolades, saying, "I found
good clay when I came to Galveston
and Texas. It is not difficult for the
sculptor when he has good material!'
But the audience knew that it takes
a great sculptor to make an enduring
contribution, no matter how good
the material might be. Cohen retired
m 1949 and died three years later,
12
..
deeply mourned by the thousands he
had served so well.
ISAAC DAHLMAN
1889
The opening in 1889 of the Dahlman
Dressed Beef Company at Fort
Worth marked the beginning of a
new era in the Texas livestock indus­try.
Before local refrigerator plants
were established, cattlemen drove
their herds to railroad sidings, loaded
them in cars and shipped them to
packing plants in St. Louis, Omaha
and Chicago. They were at the mercy
of buyers, forced to take whatever
prices they were offered. With refrig­eration
plants near the sources of
supply, cattle could be shipped short
distances to the plant, slaughtered,
and the meat shipped in refrigerated
railroad cars directly to Eastern and
Northern markets.
Two Fort Worth refrigeration
plants had failed in the 1880's. In
1885 one of them was sold to Chicago
creditors, who intended to dismantle
and remove it from Texas. Isaac
Dahlman scraped together the money
to buy out the creditors. From the
beginning he was beset with over-whelming
problems. No one in Texas
would make up the additional capital
necessary to make the venture suc­cessful.
His supply ofbeefwas erratic.
And when he finally had cattle on
hand and a plant ready to operate,
he could not obtain refrigerated box­cars
from the railroad.
Finally, in 1889 the Dahlman
company contracted with an English
syndicate to ship refrigerated beef
through Galveston and New Orleans
to Liverpool, England. Unfortunate­ly,
some of the earlier shipments were
too long in transit. Large amounts
of the meat spoiled, and Dahlman's
undercapitalized company went
bankrupt. Nevertheless, he had
shown that his idea was basically
sound. His example persuaded other
men to solve the problems, and by
1916 Fort Worth was ranked as the
fifth largest cattle market in the
United States.
ANNA HERTZBERG
1901
During more than 50 years in San
Antonio, Anna Hertzberg earned
distinction as a patron of fine music,
a social leader and a philanthropist.
Born in New York, Mrs. Hertzberg
came to San Antonio in 1882 as the
young wife of jeweler Eli Hertzberg.
As a talented pianist and graduate of
Anna Hertzberg
the New York Conservatory of
Music, she soon became interested
in the musical life of the Alamo City.
In 1901 she organized the Tues­day
Musical Club with seven charter
members. The club sponsored per­formances
by nationally known art­ists
and spread an appreciation of
fine music throughout the San
Antonio area. Under her direction
the Tuesday Musical Club estab­lished
a scholarship fund to aid tal­ented
students in their studies at the
New York Conservatory of Music.
Before World War I Anna Hertzberg
also founded and served as president
of the original San Antonio Sym­phony
Orchestra.
From 1911 to 1913 she was presi­dent
of the Texas Federation of
Women's Clubs. During her tenure
she worked for laws to better protect
married women's property rights. In
1915 she was the first woman elected
to the San Antonio School Board.
While she was president of the San
Antonio Council of Jewish Women,
she organized the first night school
in the city; it was eventually absorbed
by the city system. At the time of her
death in 193 7, Anna Hertzberg had
materially improved both the cultural
and educational qualities of her
adopted city.
JOSEPH H. GOODMAN
1902
Many of the Jews who came to Texas
brought members of the family at a
later date. None, however, tackled the
problem with Joseph Goodman's
zeal. For years after he moved to El
Paso, he operated the equivalent of
a one-man immigration service.
Born Joseph Hillel Guttman in
a Lithuanian village, he served in the
Russian army of Czar Alexander III.
At the end offour years' duty, Joseph
immigrated to the United States. He
anglicized his name to Goodman and
began working in a New York City
sweatshop. About 1893 he became a
peddler. Carrying a 160-pound pack
on his back, he sold goods on the
joseph H. Goodman
Onondaga Indian reservation and
among the scattered farmhouses of
Upper New York State. After saving
enough money for a grubstake, he
journeyed to Vado in New Mexico
Territory. There he opened a general
store, worked hard and made money.
In 1902 he relocated in El Paso,
then. a town of 15,000, where he
started a fuel and grain business, He
warited to give his young son a prop­er
education and religious instruction
in the family's traditional Jewish
faith. After getting established Good­man
brought his five brothers to
America. Then he and his brothers
brought their sister and her husband
to Texas. They realized that other
family members in Lithuania faced
increasing religious and economic
persecution. Eventually 47 Good­mans
came to the El Paso area.
The project snowballed. Nieces,
nephews and friends in turn helped
others to make the voyage. As a result
of the Goodman immigration proj­ect,
there were very few of the early
arrivals whose children and grand­children
are not related into the third
and fourth generations. The man
who started it all, Joseph Goodman,
was active in Jewish community
affairs until shortly before his death
in 1958 at age 90.
JEWISH IMMIGRANTS
INFORMATION BUREAU
1907
Between 1907 and 1914 some 10,000
Jews entered the port of Galveston
en route to new homes in Texas, the
Southwest and the Midwest. Their
sponsor was the Jewish Immigrants
Information Bureau, popularly
known as the Galveston Movement.
The bureau was financed by a
$500,000 gift from New York philan­thropist
Jacob Schiff, and directed
locally by Rabbi Henry Cohen.
By 1905 there were almost a
million Jews in New York alone.
Arrival of first immigrants sponsored by the J.I.I.B.
1.3
Many lived in dirty, squalid tene­ments
not much better than the
ghettoes they had left in Poland,
Rumania and Russia. The ] ewish
Immigrants Information Bureau was
founded in an effort to relieve these
conditions. Mr. Schiff was convinced
that newly arrivedJews from South­ern
and Eastern Europe would have
better opportunities if they could be
induced to settle in the American
South, West and Midwest.
The operation resembled a trav­elers'
aid society. Immigrants were
met at the pier by Dr. Cohen or a
representative of the bureau. After a
short welcoming speech in Yiddish,
they cleared customs and were taken
to the bureau's office. There they
were fed, given a chance to bathe and
write letters home, and provided with
current reading materials. As soon
as possible all were sent to their new
homes. The bureau maintained a
network of committees in cities and
towns of the South and Midwest.
Immigrants' skills were matched with
available job openings, and the com­mittees
assisted the new arrivals in
finding housing and by teaching
them English. The flow of immi­grants
was halted by the outbreak of
war in 1914. Following the armistice,
America imposed strict immigration
quotas, whereupon the Galveston
Movement died.
NEIMAN-MARCUS
Stanley Marcus has a well-deserved
reputation as a merchandising ge­nius.
His natural showmanship and
almost infallible public relations
judgment, coupled with a desire to
run the world's finest department
store, have made Neiman-Marcus of
Dallas world-famous.
The enterprise was founded in
1907 by Herbert Marcus Sr., his
sister Carrie and her husband, A.L.
Neiman. Their ad in the Dallas Morn­ing
News on September 8 proclaimed
the opening of a store that would
carry exclusive lines of ladies' gar­ments,
most never before offered in
14
Carrie Marcus Neiman c. 1903
the"Southwest. The store prospered,
and in 1928 Herbert Marcus bought
ouf the Neiman interests and beCa.me
the majority stockholder. In time, his
four sons, Stanley, Herbert Jr.,
Original Neiman-Marcus store
Edward and Lawrence, entered the
business. To Stanley must go much
of the credit for the firm's extraordi­nary
merchandising success and
worldwide reputation.
Born in 1905, he entered the
firm fresh out of Harvard Business
School in 1926. During his early
months with the store, he developed
the first regularly scheduled weekly
fashion shows ever held by an Amer­ican
department store. These were
quickly followed by Neiman-Marcus
Fashion Expositions and Neiman­Marcus
fashion originals. By the
later 1930's Neiman-Marcus was a
national leader in women's fashions.
Neiman-Marcus special occa­sion
catalogs, such as its Christmas
annual, are always eagerly received.
In past years the catalog has offered
for sale such items as a team of
camels ("his" and "hers"), twin air­planes,
mink-covered pocket flasks,
Chinese fishing junks, emerald­studded
ladies' pipes, Mandarin silk
robes and a variety of name designer
fashion creations.
Stanley Marcus became presi­dent
of the firm in 1950, upon the
death of his father. Over the years he
Stanley Marcus
has been an active and outspoken
participant in a wide variety of cul­tural,
civic and social causes. He is
a collector of fine art and rare books,
and a noted gourmet. A number of
foreign governments and scores of
American organizations have hon­ored
him for his outstanding civic
and business contributions.
Stanley Marcus served as presi­dent
of the firm until December
1972. He then was elected chairman
of the board, and his son, Richard,
became president. Stanley Marcus
summed up the reasons for Neiman­Marcus's
success. In 1969 he said:
"I've been interested in many things
in my life, but actually there is noth­ing
better than a customer buying
something from you, taking it home
and liking it!'
SAM DREBEN
1911
Sam Dreben once was described by
an American general as the most
fearsome Jewish fighting man since
Joshua. Dreben was born in Poltroe,
Russia, in 1878. He came to America
as a young man and joined the
United States Army in 1899. He
served with American forces in the
Filipino Insurrection and partici­pated
in the international force that
relieved the beleaguered Westerners
holding Peking during the Boxer
Rebellion. But the United States ran
out of wars to fight, and Dreben,
bored with garrison life, left the army
in 1907.
In 1911 Dreben enlisted with the
forces of Pancho Villa, who was
aligned with Francisco Maderds
revolutionary army. In May Dreben
and his American dynamiters and
machine gunners helped the Made­ristas
capture Juarez, a victory that
contributed materially to the over­throw
of dictator Porfirio Dfaz.
From 1911 to 1916 the short,
stocky Dreben fought with about
every ,army in northern Mexico. He
followed the red-flag rebellion of
Salazar-Campa and campaigned
with the Obregon-Carranza-Villa
armies against the Huerta govern­ment.
Then he served the Mexican
Federal government as a spy against
the revolutionaries. When Villa split
from Obregon and Carranza, Dre­ben
became a gun smuggler for
Villa, but when Villa raided the
American town of Columbus, New
Mexico, in 1916, Dreben quit. Fight­ing
south of the border was one
thing; killing Americans and looting
American towns was something he
could not abide. Besides-as Dreben
himself so aptly put it-he didn't
want to do any more fighting in
Mexico, because there was no Jewish
cemetery there, and he didn't want
to start one.
Dreben rejoined the U.S. Army
in February 1918. He was assigned
to the 142nd Infantry Regiment. In
action near St. Etienne, France, the
next October, Dreben and 18 com­rades
captured a German platoon
and four machine guns that were
holding up the Allied advance. For
his heroism Dreben was awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross. The
French government gave him the
Medaille Militaire as well as the
Croix de Guerre with palms. He was
Sam Dreben (sombrero in center) with Mexican revolutionaries
. _,,....,.~!i"P ...... ~---
,
15
also decorated by the Italian and
Belgian governments.
After the war this intrepid sol­dier
of fortune settled in Los Angeles,
working as a special agent for an
insurance company. In 1925 Dreben,
survivor of a hundred battles, died
at 4 7. He collapsed in his doctor's
office from an accidental overdose of
medicine. A newspaperman who had
followed Dreben across Mexico said
of him: "Sam's two most cherished
possessions were his Jewish ancestry
and his American citizenship:'
DR. H.J. ETTLINGER
1913
Dr. Hyman]. Ettlinger's career at
The University of Texas is proof that
brains and brawn can and do mix.
During his 61 years in the Depart­ment
of Mathematics, Dr. Ettlinger
was recognized as one of the nation's
outstanding mathematicians. He was
also an extraordinary college athlete.
Ettlinger was born in St. Louis
on September 1, 1889. He received
a four-year scholarship to Washing­ton
University in St. Louis but
needed only three years to complete
his degree. In that time he acquired
a Phi Beta Kappa key; lettered in
three sports; became a member of
Sigma Xi, honorary science frater­nity;
and received All-American
honors in football. In 1920 he
received his Ph.D. in mathematics
from Harvard University.
Ettlinger arrived in Austin in
1913 to begin his teaching career. He
also coached various university teams
until1919. Between 1915 and 1950 he
refereed more than 1,500 high school
and collegiate football games. During
a brief stint as Director of Intercol­legiate
Athletics, Dr. Ettlinger
arranged the only gridiron meeting
between Harvard University and
The University of Texas. (Harvard
won 31 to 7.)
At The University of Texas Dr.
Ettlinger coauthored a revolutionary
calculus text, published articles in
numerous scholarly journals and was
16
chairman of the mathematics depart­ment
for more than 25 years. In the
1950's he formed the Grass Roots
Educational League and barn­stormed
the state, introducing more
than 40,000 students to the possibili­ties
in math and science.
Numerous groups have honored
him for his humanitarianism and
service to Judaism, among them the
National Conference of Christians
and Jews, B'nai B'rith and the Kallah
of Texas Rabbis. In 1962 Dr. Ett­linger
became semiretired. In 1969,
at age 80, he was designated pro­fessor
emeritus.
SIMON AND
TOBIAS SAKOWITZ
1915
In 1902 Simon and Tobias Sakowitz
oper{ed a small store in Galveston,
selling clothes mostly to sailors. This
.}'Vas the start of Sakowitz, Inc., today
one of America's finest specialty
.stores. Their story is in the classic
tradition of American immigrants
who, through hard work, rose to posi­tions
of success and prominence in
their community.
Simon and Tobias Sakowitz
were born in Kiev, Russia. They
were brought as children by their
parents to Texas, where their father
became a prosperous Galveston mer­chant.
In 1902 the brothers opened
a store that sold ships' supplies and
sailors' clothes. In 1910 they opened
their first branch at Houston. Follow­ing
the 1915 Galveston hurricane,
Simon and Tobias sold their island
holdings and moved the operation to
downtown Houston. By 1929 their
store was widely known and re­spected
throughout Texas. During
the 1950's and 1960's the brothers
expanded to numerous shopping
centers being built around Houston.
The Sakowitz brothers gave
unstintingly of time and energy to a
variety of civic and philanthropic
projects. Simon died in Houston in
late 1967, Tobias in 1970.
JACOBJ.TAUBENHAUS
1916
Jacob Taubenhaus, a Palestinian
immigrant, made some of the most
significant strides ever taken in the
control of plant diseases. Born at
Saffed in 1884, he attended a local
agriculture school before coming to
the United States to complete his
education. He studied at Cornell
University, acquiring undergraduate
and graduate degrees in 1908 and
1909. He received his doctorate at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1913.
Three years later Dr. Tauben­haus
became chief of the division of
plant pathology and physiology for
the Texas A&M University Agricul­tural
Experiment Station System.
Although he devoted his major atten­tion
to the study of cotton root rot,
he also did extensive research in
diseases of the sweet potato, onion,
melon and tomato plant. He was a
charter member of the American
Phytopathological Society. Dr. Tau­benhaus
was a leader in Jewish affairs
at Texas A&M University and was a
founder of the Hillel Club there. He
died at his home in College Station
in 1937.
Jacob J Taubenhaus
HAYMON KRUPP
1919
Part of the credit for the west Texas
oil bonanza belongs to Haymon
Krupp, a Russian-born Jew who had
settled in El Paso. In 1919 Krupp and
Frank Pickrell organized the Texan
Oil and Land company to finance a
wildcat well on university-owned
lands in Reagan County. Their oil
strike in 1923 brought hundreds of
millions of dollars pouring into the
permanent fund of The University
of Texas and Texas A&M University.
Shortly after World War I
Rupert Ricker had attempted to
promote the drilling of an oil well
near his Reagan County home. He
"blocked up" more than 430,000 acres
of university land in Reagan, Irion,
Upton and Crockett counties. Unfor­tunately
Ricker failed to raise the
$43,000 rental owed the state. With
only a few days' grace remaining, he
sold the fruit of his labor to Frank
Pickrell and Haymon Krupp for
$500. Pickrell and Krupp raised the
rental fee.
The two then traveled to New
York, trying to sell drilling permits,
but failed to find any buyers. To
develop their leases Pickrell and
Krupp organized the Texan Oil and
Land Company, with Krupp as pres­ident.
Texan was capitalized at
2,000,000 shares valued at $1 each.
The company executed an agreement
"Santa Rita," by Tom Lea
with New York brokers, authorizing
a geological survey and then allowing
the brokers to select 200,000 acres in
payment for the total capital stock.
Even after this financial wizardry, the
Eastern brokers found it impossible
to sell stock in a wildcat well to be
drilled by a company that had no oil
production. This minor flaw was
remedied when Krupp and Pickrell
purchased three producing wells in
Burkburnett, Texas. Texan was now
a producing company. Brokers sold
sufficient shares to finance drilling
the first new well.
Santa Rita No. 1 was started
just before midnight on the last day
of grace, January 8, 1921. The name
had been chosen in New York by
backers who were obviously skeptical
about the success of the project. A
priest had advised the investors to
invoke the aid of Santa Rita, Saint
of the Impossible. After almost two
and a half years of effort, Texan
struck oil at a depth in excess of 3,000
feet. The producing well was located
squarely in the center of a 64-square­rpile
block of leases.
Krupp and Pickrell's Santa Rita
No. 1 kicked off a boom that added
immense wealth to all of west Texas.
Haymon Krupp died in 1948.
FRED FLORENCE
1920
The life of Fred Florence was the
rags-to-riches legend come true- he
began as a janitor in a small east
Texas bank and rose to be president
of the largest financial institution of
the South. His Lithuanian Russian
parents immigrated to the United
States in the 1880's and settled in
New York, where Fred was born in
November 1891. He was three
months old when his parents moved
to Rusk in east Texas.
After graduating from high
school at 15, young Florence began
sweeping floors for the First National
Bank of Rusk. He was soon ap­pointed
a teller, and at age 24 he was
made president of the State Bank at
Fred Florence
Alto, a few miles south of Rusk. He
served in the Army Air Corps in
World War I, then, on his return to
civilian life, he resumed his job as
bank president. He was also elected
mayor of Alto in 1919.
In 1920 Florence went to Dallas
to become a founder of the Guaranty
Bank and Trust Company, forerun­ner
of the Republic National Bank.
He was elected president of the
Republic National in 1929, when he
was only 38. Under his leadership the
Republic National grew until it was
the largest bank in the South.
Throughout his life Florence
was active in professional and trade
associations. He participated in
numerous civic and charitable
causes, including the Community
Chest, the Jewish Federation for
Social Service and the scouting pro­gram.
In the 1930's he served as
president of the Texas Centennial
Exposition and, in 1937, was presic
dent of the Pan American Exposi­tion.
In 1959 he received the Bene­merenti
Medal from Pope John
XXIII, the highest decoration that
can be awarded a non-Catholic. Fred
Florence died on December 25, 1960,
mourned by his Jewish and non­Jewish
friends alike.
17
Officers and trustees of Hebrew Free Loan Association, 193 7-1938
HEBREW FREE LOAN
ASSOCIATION
1924
Tzedakah is a Hebrew word that is
almost untranslatable to English.
The best rendition is probably "Thou
shalt help thy neighbor as thy
brother:' The Hebrew Free Loan
Association of San Antonio was
founded in this spirit in 1924. It was
organized as a nonprofit group but
not as a charitable one. All interest­free
loans must be repaid.
Any Jewish person who is 21 or
older, and lives in Bexar County, is
eligible for a loan if he or she can
obtain four cosigners for the note.
When the association was formed the
usual amount of the loan was $5.
Today the maximum is $1,000. The
income of the association is derived
from $5 annual memberships, dona­tions,
memorial gifts, endowments
and special fund-raising events.
The Jewish tradition of self-help
extends back in time for more than
a thousand years. Wherever Jews
have settled they have formed orga­nizations
to help one another in time
of need.
CHARLES L. BRACHFIELD
1926
When Judge Charles Brachfield of
Henderson, Texas, filed as a Demo­cratic
candidate for attorney general
in 1926, he became the first Jew ever
to seek a statewide office in Texas.
18
Charles Brachfield was born at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1872. His
parents came to Texas in 1874, set­tling
in the town of Henderson. He
grew up there, then read law in
Waco. After being admitted to the
bar, he returned to his hometown to
pra€tice law. He was Rusk County
judge from 1898 to 1902, then served
a four-year term as state senator
.. beginning in 1904. In 1917 he wa~
elected judge of a five-county district
· a position he held until his unsuc~
cessful bid for attorney general.
When Judge Brachfield kicked
off his campaign, there were five men
in the race; only three had a chance
to win: Brachfield, James V. Allred
and Claude Pollard. Brachfield had
informed Pollard of his plans, telling
him that he would not run if Pollard
was going to enter. Pollard declined
but later changed his mind and filed
for the office, with the result that they
split the heavy east Texas vote. Both
men ran well in east and north Texas.
Brachfield, long known as a prohibi­tionist,
garnered almost no votes in
the heavily German and Mexican
counties of central and south Texas.
He missed the run-off by about 3,600
votes; nevertheless, in a decade domi­nated
by Klan activity, Brachfield's
showing was remarkable.
Following his defeat, Brachfield
resumed his law practice in Hender­son.
He was active in civic, charitable
and fraternal organizations. At one
time he served as Grand Master of
the Odd Fellows Lodge in Texas.
After his death in 1952 the Hender­son
chapter changed its name to the
Brachfield Lodge in his memory.
SIDNEY M. LEVYSON
1931
Sidney Levyson led the long fight to
restore leprosy victims to health and
to public acceptance. He was born
at Gonzales, Texas, in 1899 and grew
up in Boerne, where his father owned
a drugstore. Sidney graduated from
The University of Texas Pharmacy
Branch at Galveston and began
working in his father's store. In 1920
he moved to San Antonio. There he
was first diagnosed as having leprosy,
or Hansen's disease. He was com­mitted
in 1931 to the United States
Public H ealth Service Hospital at
Carville, Louisiana. In those days
patients took assumed names to
protect their families from the stigma
attached to the disease. Levyson
chose Stanley Stein as his alias.
When Levyson..Stein was com­mitted
to Carville as Case Number
746, he found himself in a semipenal
institution, shunned by society and
treated almost like a convicted felon.
Carville was five miles from the near­est
railroad station; access was by a
dirt road; and the place was sur­rounded
by a high, barbed wire
fence. There was no post office;
Sidney M . Levyson
patients were not allowed to use the
phone; marriage between patients
was prohibited; and they could not
vote in local or national elections.
Within three months after his
arrival, Stanley Stein initiated a pa­tient's
newspaper, the Sixty-Six Star.
The Star carried on a crusade to bet­ter
the lot of Hansen's disease vic­tims,
and by 1940 the paper had
gained worldwide circulation. For its
well-informed reports on matters
concerning the illness, the Star earned
the respect of the medical profession.
Stein and his successors exerted every
effort to encourage research, until
finally the sulfone treatment was
discovered. The Star then collected
funds to buy the medication for treat­ment
in places as far away as India.
Stanley Stein and the Star
brought the telephone and the post
office to Carville. Through Stein's
efforts the access road was paved, the
barbed wire removed, patients al­lowed
to marry and a new hospital
built. Stein lost his sight many years
before sulfone drugs were developed,
but he never lost his courage. His
book, No Longer Alone, tells the story
of one man's battle against supersti­tion,
prejudice and unreasoning fear.
Stein died at Carville in 1968.
ELSIE FRANKFURT
1938
In 1938 Elsie Frankfurt designed and
marketed the "windowpane" mater­nity
skirt. Her design revolutionized
the production of clothing for moth­ers-
to-be. Page Boy, Incorporated,
founded by Elsie and her two sisters,
is now a multimillion-dollar business.
Fired by the untidy appearance
of expectant mothers ("They looked
like unmade beds:'), she designed a
skirt that was more appealing and
comfortable to wear. Fresh out of
Southern Methodist University
School of Business, Elsie and her
sisters borrowed $500 and began
operations in a rented loft in Dallas.
By 1951 Page Boy, Inc. was grossing
more than $1,000,000 annually and
The founders of Page Boy, Inc.
operating a manufacturing plant in
Dallas with outlets in Texas and
California, and in Cleveland, Detroit
and Indianapolis.
'I'hat September Elsie became
the first woman member of the
Young Presidents Club, an organiza­ti~
n composed of heads of million­dollar
corporations under the age of
40. Elsie was then 33 years old.
THE HARRY HERTZBERG
CIRCUS COLLECTION
1942
The Harry Hertzberg Circus Collec­tion,
located in downtown San Anto­nio,
is the largest of its kind in the
world. Hertzberg, a prominent law­yer,
donated thousands of circus­related
items to the city at his death
in 1940. Two years later the collection
was opened to the public. Memorial­ized
in photographs and artifacts are
circus greats like P.T. Barnum, Tom
Thumb, the Flying Wallendas, Buffa­lo
Bill Cody and his Wild West Show,
and great animal trainers such as
Clyde Beatty and "Bring 'Em Back
Alive" Frank Buck. Also included are
a handbill and poster collection, a
hand-carved miniature circus and a
variety of similar artifacts from
around the world.
Hertzberg, son of Eli and Anna
Hertzberg, was born in San Antonio
in 1883. Early in life he determined
on a legal career. He became one of
the outstanding young lawyers in the
city. Active in civic affairs, he served
in the Texas Senate.
Tom Thumb's carriage from the Hertzberg Collection
19
But there was another side to
Harry Hertzberg. As a child he fell
in love with the sights, sounds and
smells of the Big Top. Since he could
not follow the circus train as it left
the depot, he began collecting things
related to it. He acquired books on
the history of the circus and became
friends with many great performers
of his day, from whom he received
numerous unique and historic gifts.
Today his extensive collection helps
to preserve knowledge about a fasci­nating
part of our heritage that other­wise
might have been lost.
IMMIGRATION SINCE
WORLD WAR II
1945
Since the end of World War II, sev­eral
thousand Jewish refugees have
immigrated to Texas from Europe,
Cuba and most recently from South
America. The flow began almost as
soon as the fighting ended and accel­erated
with passage of the Displaced
Persons Act in 1948. Until about
1960 most J ewish immigrants to
Texas came from Europe. The largest
number were from Germany, Poland
and other countries in Central and
Eastern Europe. Most were unskilled
workers, tradesmen or shopkeepers.
jewish immigrants arriving in US.
20
Witliam Zale with schoolchildren
Beginning in 1960, the state of
.. Israel began absorbing virtually all
Jewish refugees. Jewish immigration
to America became a me~e trickle.
Of those still coming, most were pro­fessionals-
doctors, lawyers, school­teachers
and musicians. The Castro
revolution in Cuba and the more
recent social and political dislocations
in Peru, Argentina and Chile stimu­lated
a small Jewish exodus. Many
went to Israel, but others settled in
Florida and Texas.
Often these people have been
assisted by the United Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society. The society
has American headquarters in New
York City and works through local
Jewish organizations. Such factors as
occupation, climate and the proxim­ity
of relatives are considered in
placing families. Local groups
arrange for housing, furniture,
employment and, when necessary,
language lessons. Non:] ewish facili­ties,
such as health and dental clinics,
are also utilized. The majority of the
new Jewish Texans are aggressive,
hardworking and quickly assimilated
into the community.
THE ZALE FOUNDATION
1951
The Zale Foundation of Dallas was
created because two Jewish immi­grant
youths from Russia never for­got
the feeling of being poor and
discriminated against. Two brothers,
Morris B. and William Zale, founded
the Zale Corporation in Wichita Falls
in 1924. By the 1970's Zale's was the
world's largest retail jewelry enter­prise,
and the foundation they had
established in 1951 had assets of
about $12,000,000. The money has
been spent where it was most
needed- helping the disadvantaged.
The Zale family has given little
to established programs; instead, they
have provided seed money for the
development and testing of innova­tive
new ideas. According to the
Zales, "the place of a private founda­tion
is to point the way." Over the
years the foundation's board has
focused attention on education. In
the early 1960's it provided funds for
a concentrated remedial studies pro­gram
and a library building at
Bishop College in Dallas. It also
I
established the Dallas Area Scholar­ship
Fund for talented Negro men
and women to complete premedical
and medical school.
The Zale organization created
the Greater Dallas Communications
Committee in 1969; money was pro­vided
to seek peaceable solutions to
conflicts between various community
elements. In 1970 the foundation
made a grant to the Diocese of
Brooklyn for an Experimental Inner
City High School. The funds were
used to train faculty and staff for a
community-oriented school made up
of different ethnic groups and social
classes. The foundation also granted
the Pine Ridge Indian Agency
resources for development of a com­munity
college on their South Dakota
reservation. A program in El Paso
was given aid to train community
residents in the Mexican-American
district as health workers.
Beginning in 1973, the $25,000
Zale Award was presented annually
to an American who made a signifi­cant
contribution to the betterment
of mankind in his chosen field of
endeavor. The first award was made
in the field of civil rights to Roy
Wilkins, longtime executive director
of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
Morris B. and William Zale
achieved success beyond their wildest
dreams. But their most lasting contri­bution
to Texas and to America may
well be the seed money they have
planted in the inner cities of New
York and Dallas, in the Mexican­American
neighborhoods of El Paso,
on the Indian reservations of South
Dakota and New Mexico, and in
many other places where hope has
needed encouragement.
JULIUS SCHEPPS
195.3
"The irreplaceable citizen" was how
one Dallas newspaper described
Julius Schepps. For more than five
decades the tall, craggy-faced
Schepps gave both money and moral
support to a score of established
charities, while initiating and drum­ming
up support for many new ones.
Schepps's parents immigrated to the
United States from Russia in 1890.
They lived briefly in St. Louis, where
Julius was born in 1895, then moved
in 1901 to Dallas, where Joe Schepps
opened a bakery. As a youth Julius
worked in the family business,
hawked newspapers and hung
around fire stations when he should
have been in school.
In 1921 Julius took over the
bakery and ran it until it was sold in
1928. He entered a variety of busi­nesses
and made money in all of
them: insurance, wholesale liquor
distribution and banking, to name a
few. His heart was always open to
charitable works and civic projects.
Schepps served the Community
Chest and later the United Fund. In
Worlc!, War II he contributed
$120,000 for the relief of European
Jews and later was instrumental in
bwilding the Dallas Home for the
Jewish Aged. He worked for the Sal­vation
Army, the Southwest Medical
Foundation, the Caruth Rehabilita-tion
Center and headed Dallas's first
biracial commission. Although he
had attended Texas A&M University
for only a few weeks in 1914, he
retained a lifelong affection for the
school. He served as president of the
ex-students' association and was a
founder of the Hillel Foundation at
the university.
In 1953 he received the Linz
Award for outstanding civic work in
Dallas. The next year he was named
Dallas's most outstanding citizen
and, in 1956, was honored by the
Texas Social Welfare Association. In
1962 the Dallas Jewish community
honored Schepps by naming the new
Jewish community center in his
honor. In 1965 he received the B'nai
B'rith Humanitarianism Award. At
his death in 1971 Julius Schepps was
mourned by rich and poor, Jew and
Gentile alike.
FRANCES SANGER
MOSSIKER
1961
Frances Sanger Mossiker has an
international reputation as an
Julius Schepps at community center dedication
21
Frances S. Mossiker
author. Her popular nonfiction books
have been praised for their literary
quality and historical scholarship.
They have appeared in at least five
foreign languages; several have been
published in paperback.
Frances, daughter of Elihu
Sanger, was born in Dallas. She
attended Hockaday School and
majored in Romance Languages at
Smith and Barnard colleges. She has
been writing for most of her life;
beginning with book reviews, she
graduated to magazine pieces and
radio scripts. About 1957 she began
researching her first serious history,
designed for a broad audience. The
Queen's Necklace, the story of Marie
Antoinette's famous disappearing
jewels, won for Mrs. Mossiker the
Carr P. Collins award for the best
nonfiction book written by a Texan
in 1961.
All of her books are based on
extensive research in original manu­scripts,
diaries, letters and official
documents. She has used such dry­as-
dust papers to weave taut, excit­ing
stories that make one forget he
or she is reading history.
Her second book, Napoleon and
Josephine: The Biography of a Marriage,
was published in 1964. It too received
the Collins award. In 1969 her third
major work, The Affairs of the Poisons,
appeared. In 1971 More Than a Queen:
22
The Story of Josephine Bonaparte was
published for a juvenile audience.
Mrs. Mossiker has also written a
biography of Pocahontas and a major
history of the French Bourbon kings.
BEN TAUB
1964
For years, as board chairman of the
Harris County charity hospital, Ben
Taub made a great success of an
impossible job. Ben Taub Hospital,
which opened in 1964, is a memorial
to a Hungarian Jew's philanthropic
and humanitarian ideals, and to his
political effectiveness with the Hous­ton
City Council and the Harris
County Commissioner's Court.
Taub's father, Jacob Nathan
Taub, came to Texas shortly after the
Civil War. The almost penniless
Hungarian immigrant sold newspa­pel'S
and notions to eke out a living.
Finally he opened a downtown cigar
store and eventually became a tobac-
.. co wholesaler. By the time his fourth
son, Ben, arrived in 1893, the Taubs
were affluent.
Ben grew up in Houston and,
after returning from World War I,
joined the family enterprise. He
quickly became known as an astute
businessman and one of the city's
largest real estate developers. At one
time or another he served on the
boards of directors of 24 corpora­tions,
including four universities, two
banks, an insurance company and an
investment firm. Ben Taub also
acquired a reputation for charitable
endeavors. When the University of
Houston was being organized in
1936, Taub donated land for the
campus. Through a family founda­tion
he gave away millions for medi­cal
research, scholarships and hospi­tals.
His greatest contribution was
the Ben Taub Hospital.
For almost three decades he
fought for the right of indigents to
have quality medical care. He ca­joled,
pleaded and sometimes threat­ened
the city and county fathers to
provide money and staff for a pro-posed
new charity hospital. When
the hospital was almost completed,
he suggested that it be named for the
late Jesse H . Jones. The hospital
board overruled him and named it
for the man who made it possible­Ben
Taub.
JUDGE IRVING L.
GOLDBERG
1966
In 1966 Irving Goldberg, son of a
Lithuanian immigrant, became the
first jew appointed to a federal judge­ship
in the South. He was named to
the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by
his longtime friend, President Lyn­don
Johnson. Goldberg, son of
Abraham and Elsa Goldberg, was
born at Port Arthur, Texas, in 1906.
His father operated a dry goods store
and was a Jewish community leader
in the coastal town. Goldberg gradu­ated
from The University of Texas
in 1926 and received a Harvard law
degree in 1929. He served in the
United States Navy during World
War II and practiced law in Dallas
from 1950 to 1966, when he received
the federal appointment. He had also
been active in the Jewish Welfare
Federation, was president of the
Judge Irving L. Goldberg
I
1
T
I
!
Dallas Home and Hospital for the
Jewish Aged and was a board mem­ber
of the National Conference of
Christians and Jews.
When Irving Goldberg took his
oath of office in September 1966, he
vowed to protect "those constitutional
rights my parents sought" when they
immigrated to the United States to
escape Russian oppression. Attorneys
who practiced before the Fifth Court
could expect close questioning from
Judge Goldberg. At times his queries
seemed designed to rip apart the
plaintiff's case. Then the defendant's
argument received the same treat­ment.
Through his discerning ques­tions
and comments the judge
probed for weaknesses and inconsis­tencies
and cut through the legal ver­biage
to the heart of the discussion.
In a speech to the Dallas Bar
Association in 1970, Judge Goldberg
gave an insight into his judicial style.
He said: "Dissent has been the source
of the growth and development of the
law. Let us resolve to encourage
debate, disagreement and protest,
firm in the knowledge that there shall
arise from the commotion of disa­greement
more judicious decisions,
more resilient institutions and, in the
long run, a more viable society!'
CONCLUSION
Today's Jewish Texans are found in
all areas of the state, although an
overwhelming majority live in the
larger cities. Descendants of frontier
peddlers, clerks and grocers can be
found in all the professions and in all
social and economic classes. Jewish
community life is thriving as never
before. The synagogue remains at
the center, but over the years its func­tions
have altered. There was a time,
for example, when disputes between
members of the Jewish community
were submitted to the synagogue's
elders for mediation; this is no longer
true. In addition, many of the social
and charitable functions of the syna­gogue
have been assumed by private,
state and federal agencies.
As a people and as individuals,
Jews have contributed their talents,
energy and money to a wide variety
of civic and charitable projects. They
have stood in the front ranks of those
fighting for social justice. In times of
disaster Jewish organizations and
individuals have been among the first
to respond to pleas for aid. Jewish
Texans have retained many of their
social and religious institutions; at
the same time, they are actively
involved in the social, economic and
political changes that have affected
their communities and their state.
The Alterman-Sa/kind Sanctuary of Congregation Agudas Achim, San Antonio
23
l
I
1/
Italic numerals identify illustrations.
Brachfield, Charles L. 18
Civil War 6, 7, 8, 9
Cohen, Rabbi Henry 11-12, I2, 13, 14
Congregation Agudas Achim,
San Antonio 23
Congregation Beth Israel,
Houston 7, 7
Congregation B'nai Israel,
Galveston 10, 11
Dahlman, Isaac 12
De Cordova, Jacob 5, 5
De Ia Porta, Jao 3
Dreben, Sam 15-16, I5
Dyer, Isidore 5-6
Dyer, Rosanna
see Osterman, Rosanna Dyer
Ettlinger, Dr. Hyman J. 16
Florence, Fred 17, I7
Frankfurt, Elsie 19, I9
Goldberg, Abraham 22
Goldberg, Elsa 22
Goldberg, Irving L. 22-23, 22
Goodman, Joseph Hillel 13, I3
Guttman, Joseph Hillel
see Goodman, Joseph Hillel
Halff, Mayer 7-8
Halff, Solomon 7-8
Harby, Capt. Levi 7
Hebrew Benevolent Society
of Galveston 8-9
Hebrew Free Loan Association 18, I8
Henry, Maurice 3
Hertz, Hyman 3
Hertz, Dr. Joseph 3
Hertzberg, Anna 12-13, I2
INDEX
H ertzberg Circus Collection 19-20, I9
Hertzberg, Eli 12
Hertzberg, Harry 19-20
Houston, Sam 4
Immigration 3, 3, 11, 13-14, I3, 20, 20
lsaaks, Samuel 3
J ewish Immigrants Information Bureau
11, 13-14
Johnson, Edward Isaac 5
Kempner, H arris 9-10, IO
Kempner, I.H. 10, IO
Kohlberg, Ernst 10-11, IO
Kohlberg, Moritz 10
Kohlberg, Olga Bernstein 10-11
Krupp, Haymon 17
Lasker, Morris 8, 8
Levi, Leo N. 11, II
Levy, Dr. Albert Moses 4-5, 4
Levyson, Sidney M. 18-19, I8
Marcus, Carrie
see Neiman, Carrie Marcus
Marcus, Edward 14
Marcus, Herbert, Jr. 14
Marcus, Herbert, Sr. 14
Marcus, Lawrence 14
Marcus, Richard 15
Mi!rcus, Stanley 14-15, 14
Mossiker, Frances Sanger 21-22, 22
Nathan, Rabbi M.N. 5
.. Neiman, A.L. 14
Neiman, Carrie Marcus 14, I4
Neiman-Marcus Department Store
14-15, 14
Odd Fellows Lodge 5, 18
Oppenheimer, Anton 9
PHOTO CREDITS
Oppenheimer Bank, San Antonio 9
Oppenheimer, Dan 9
Oppenheimer, Daniel 9
Oppenheimer, Jesse 9
Osterman, Joseph 5
Osterman, Rosanna Dyer 5-6, 6, 8
Sakowitz, Simon 16
Sakowitz, Tobias 16
Sanger, Alex 6-7
Sanger Brothers Department Store 6
Sanger, Elihu 22
Sanger, Frances
see Mossiker, Frances Sanger
Sanger, Isaac 6-7
Sanger, Lehman 6-7
Sanger, Philip 6-7
Sanger, Sam 6-7
Schepps, Joe 21, 2I
Schepps, Julius 21
Schutz, Solomon 10
Stein, Stanley
see Levyson, Sidney M.
Sterne, Adolphus 3, 4, 4
Synagogues 6, 7, 11, 23
Taub, Ben 22
Taub, Jacob Nathan 22
Taubenhaus, Jacob J. 16, I6
Texas Revolution 3, 4-5, 7
United H ebrew Immigrant Aid
Society 20
World War I 11, 15
World War II 17
Zale Foundation 20-21
Zale, Morris B. 20-21
Zale, William 20-21, 20
All photos are from the collection of The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio, courtesy of the following lenders. C redits
from left to right are separated by semicolons and from top to bottom by dashes.
COVER Alexander Halff, San Antonio. Page 14 Public Relations Department, Neiman-Marcus,
Dallas- Public Relations Department, Neiman­Marcus,
Dallas
Page 3 Harper's H&ekfy, November 7, 1894, pp. 916-17.
Page 4 Hoya Memorial Library and Museum,
Nacogdoches; The Institute of Texan Cultures
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
24
Collection.
Odd Fellows Museum, San Antonio
The Institute of Texan Cultures Collection­Texas
Collection, Baylor University, Waco.
The Institute of Texan Cultures Collection.
The Institute of Texan Cultures Collection.
Dan Oppenheimer, San Antonio.
Samuel Chester Griffin, History of Galveston,
Texas (A.H. Cawston, Galveston, 1931), p.
318- Harris Kempner, Galveston.
El Paso Public Library, El Paso-Archives of
Temple B'nai Israel, Galveston.
Rosella H. Werlin, Houston-Judge Walter
Loughridge, San Antonio.
Mr. and Mrs. I.B. Goodman, El Paso­Archives
of Temple B'nai Israel, Galveston.
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Public Relations Department, Neiman-Marcus,
Dallas- El Paso Public Library, El Paso.
Texas A&M University, College Station.
Tom Lea, El Paso; Republic National Bank,
Dallas.
Hebrew Free Loan Association, San Antonio­Florence
Griffith.
Dallas Public Library, Dallas-The Institute of
Texan Cultures Collection.
United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, New
York, N.Y.; Zale Foundation, Dallas.
Dallas Jewish Archives Committee of the Julius
Schepps Community Center, Dallas.
Frances S. Mossiker, Dallas-Judge Irving L.
Goldberg, Dallas.
Page 23 Agudas Achim Congregation, San Antonio.
Back Cover Mr. and Mrs. L.H. Golden, Corsicana.
One of a series
prepared by the staff of
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
AT SAN ANTDNIO