/. 'I A
THE TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS
THE
JEWISH
TEXANS
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
AT SAN ANTONIO
INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
THE TEXIANS AND TEXANS
A pamphlet series dealing with the many kinds of people who
have contributed to the history and heritage of Texas. Now in
print: The Indian Texans, The German Texans, The Norwegian
Texans, The Mexican Texans (in English), Los Mexicano Texa­nos
(in Spanish) , The Spanish Texans, The Polish Texans, The
Czech Texans, The French Texans, The Italian Texans, The Greek
Texans, and The Jewish Texans.
© 1974: The Institute of Texan Cultures
Cover illustrations: Mayer Halff, Courtesy of Alex Half£. 'J if - g' 7 {:'
The Alterman-Salkind Sanctuary of Congregation
Agudas Achim, San Antonio. :f t · - ' -
Jewish W edding in Fort Worth, Courtesy :::; ·
of RRbbi Isadax e G fti ge]c 7 4 _ <9 '() )
INTRODUCTION
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 18.67, 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 from France. The second wave of
immigration, beginning about 1885 and
ending with the outbreak of World
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. 0. Dyer, one Jao de la Porta-a Portu­gese
Marano Jew-was with Jean Laffite
at Galveston Island about 1816. Samuel
Isaaks- whose 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 set-
IMMIGRANTS EMBARKING FROM HAMBURG FOR NEW YORK ·7 3 -
tied in Nacogdoches for a bout 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
T exas in constantly increasing numbers.
Some settled in the commercial centers of
Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio;
others in the small towns and at the cross-roads
of rural Texas. As their strength
increased, they began organizing the tra­ditional
institutions of Jewish life: benev­olent
societies, cemetery associations, syn­agogues,
and community centers. Many
of these early immigrants brought with
them little more than the clothes on their
backs and a desire to make the most of
whatever opportunities befell them. Vir­tually
all became useful, productive, and
responsible citizens of their adopted
homeland.
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ADOLPHUS STERNE
Hoya Library and Museum, Nacogdoches
1826
ADOLPHUS STERNE
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 Cologne, Germany in
1801, son of a Jewish father and Lutheran
mother. 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. Sig­nificantly,
he joined the Masonic order
during this interval. 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. He smuggled 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
and for Texas, the internationally power­ful
Masonic order interceded in his be­half
and he was parol~d.
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 at Nacogdoches. It was in Sterne's
home that Sam Houston was baptised a
Catholic, naming Mrs. Sterne as his god­mother.
During the revolution, he served as a
Texan agent in · New Orleans. While
there, he raised and equipped a company
of the New Orleans Greys. During the
years of the Texas Republic, Sterne be­came
postmaster at Nacogdoches. He also
led a company in the Cherokee war and
fought in the battle of the Neches. He
served in both houses of the state legisla­ture.
He 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,
which was first published in the 1920's.
This diary affords an unexcelled view of
early Texas society.
1835
DR. ALBERT M. LEVY
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 young 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 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 the Independence early in
1837. The Independence was captured by
two Mexican men-of-war and the crew
were thrown into a Mexican prison. Ac­cording
to 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 of Texas'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.
1836
EDWARD I. JOHNSON
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 adventure, joined
a volunteer company going there.
"ALBERT M. LEVY AT THE SIEGE OF BEXAR," BY BRUCE MARSHALL :pl-'0 lTC Collection
He landed at Matagorda in November
with Captain Thomas K. Pearson's outfit.
Pearson's men hauled a cannon-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 perished
with most of the command on Palm Sun­day,
1836.
1837
JACOB DE CORDOVA
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 Spanish town, Jamaica
in 1808. He migrated to the United States
about 1830, settling in Philadelphia.
There, he learned the printing trade. In
1833, he returned to Kingston, Jamaica
where he established a newspaper, The
Gleaner, which is still published by the
de Cordova family. He operated an im­port-
export business in New Orleans in
1835, and in 1837, settled permanently in
Texas, first at Galveston, and later at
Houston. Here, he opened a real estate
business. In 1838, he secured the first
Texas charter for the International Order
of Odd Fellows. De Cordova was appoint­ed
First Deputy Grand Master.
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JACOB DE CORDOVA l.O.O.F. Museum, San Antonio
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In 1847, 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 1849, 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, T exas: Her Resources and Her
Public Men. He compiled a veritable en­cyclopedia
on land laws, data on the eli-mate,
biographies of prominent men, ar­ticles
on railroads, cotton growing, and
sheep raising. He journeyed to Philadel­phia,
New York, and to 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,
only slightly ahead of his time.
1839 . I
ROSANNA OSTERMAN
Rosanna Osterman W(lS the guiding force
'f..! ' . J'
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in the Galveston Jewish community in
the days when their numbers were few.
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
"ROSANNA OSTERMAN TENDING THE WOUNDED." BY BRUCE MARSHALL ITC Collection
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 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. This information 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-three thousand
dollars each to the Jewish hospitals in
New York, New Orleans, and Cincinnati;
five thousand dollars to build a synagogue
in Galveston; and twenty-five hundred
dollars 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 Osterman provided the impetus
for the organization of Jewish community
life in Galveston.
1857
THE SANGER BROTHERS
Early in 1857, young Isaac Sanger came
to Texas to make his fortune. By Novem­ber,
he was operating a general store at
McKinney. From this small store grew a
mercantile empire with outlets in about 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, then 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, ar-rived
to help Isaac look after the growing
business. By 1860, Sanger Brothers owned
stores in Decatur, Weatherford, and Mc­Kinney.
Expansion was halted by the Civil
War, while 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.
Sanger Brothers were leaders in inno-
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vative merchandising. In 1880, they es­tablished
a mail order department. In
1884, the firm issued its first catalog, and
by the mid- nineties, Sanger Brothers
were doing a million-dollar 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 at Dallas in 1925. Today,
none of the smaller stores are in existence,
but the Sanger-Harris stores in Dallas
stand as a memorial to the mercantile em­pire
founded by five immigrant brothers.
1859
CONGREGATION
BETH ISRAEL
The first Jewish congregation in 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
CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL rt-13(p
the ritual. From the beginning, Congre­gation
Beth Israel ·was groping its way
from the Traditional ritual to the Reform.
Before 18 70, 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 A venue. 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. The founders of Congrega­tion
Adath Y eshurun were mostly recent­ly
immigrated Russian and Polish Jews
fTC Collection
who disagreed with the Reform move­ment.
In 1908, Congregation Beth Israel
moved south to Crawford Street, follow­ing
the general pattern of residential
change in the Jewish neighborhoods. 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 congregation
grew so rapidly that, in 1967, it made an­other
move to 5600 North Braeswood,
where the temple is situated today.
1863
CAPTAIN LEVI HARBY
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
the Harriet Lane. The Lane was
captured, throwing the Union forces into
confusion and winning the battle for the
Confederates. Harby was made a commo­dore
in the southern navy and given com­mand
of a fleet of gunboats on the Sabine
River.
He died at Galveston in 1870. On his
tombstone is the following inscription:
"And with my last breath on the thresh­old
of death, I proclaim my faith in Is­rael's
God."
1864
THE HALFF FAMILY
At one time Mayer and Solomon Half£
controlled more than six million acres of
ranchland. Their lives spanned the rise
and fall of the great range cattle industry.
Mayer Half£ 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 at
Liberty. In 1857, his brother Solomon
joined him, and the 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. Half£ and Brother.
Their business eventually became one of
the largest of its type in the Southwest.
Mayer was more interested inzcattle than
in bolts of cloth; he managed the ranches
while Solomon tended the store. '
In the 1870's, the brothers acquired the
fifty-thousand-acre Circle Dot ranch in
Brewster County. At that time, cattle
were worth about four dollars apiece in
Texas, but forty to fifty dollars 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 Half£
succeeded admirably, becoming one of
the largest stock-raisers in the state. Even­tually,
Half£ 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 two-hundred-thousand-acre Quien
Sabe Ranch near Midland held the larg­est
number of Herefords in the Southwest.
Mayer Half£ was a founder of the City
National Bank in San Antonio, and both
brothers participated in founding the Al-amo
National Bank. In 1902, Solomon re­tired
from M. Half£ and Brother to devote
his time to duties as vice-president of the
Alamo National Bank. Solomon Half£
died in May, 1905; Mayer followed him
in December.
1865
MORRIS LASKER
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 small East Prussian
village of Lask, he received a good educa­tion
in Greek and Latin, while preparing
himself 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, then wan­dered
restlessly over north central Texas
until joining a band of Indian fighters.
Lasker quietly voted against secession,
then prudently joined the Confederate
Army. He served in the second 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 utter
astonishment, he made fifteen hundred
dollars 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
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1893, largely because most of his capital
was tied up in real estate. He rebounded,
however, and in 1895, was elected to the
Twenty-fourth Texas Legislature, 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.
1866
HEBREW BENEVOLENT
SOCIETY OF GALVESTON
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
at 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 Rosanna's legacy and all other money
"MORRIS LASKER MAKING A SALE," BY BRUCE MARSHALL 6 lTC Collection
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 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 simply-D. & 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 r e­maining
in America.
Daniel and Anton Oppenheimer were
born in Bergkundstadt, Bavaria, where
their father, Jesse, was a baker and con­fectioner.
In 1854, seventeen-year-old
Daniel migrated to America, landing first
in New York, then continuing by ship to
Galveston. From Galveston he made his
way to Palestine, where an uncle operated
a general store. In 1858, Daniel sent for
his brother Anton. The two moved to
Rusk, a small town about thirty miles
east of Palestine, where they established
their own store.
The brothers entered the Confederate
THE OPPENHEIMER BANK ABOUT 1900
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 Nine­teenth
Century, there were few national-
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Courtesy of Dan Oppenheimer
ly chartered banks in Texas, primarily
because fifty thousand dollars capital was
required for a charter. The Texas Consti­tution
of 1876 prohibited state chartered
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 partner.
When Daniel died in 1915, his son Jesse
became the senior partner, a position
which 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 tumed
down a would-be borrower. The man
begged him to take up the matter with
the loan committee the next day. Jesse
Oppenheimer rose from behind his roll­top
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 tum 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.
1870
HARRIS AND
I. H. KEMPNER
In 1870, Harris Kempner, from Russian
Poland, established at 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 1837. To avoid serving in the Russian
army, he immigrated to the United States
at seventeen. 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
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the end of the war he retumed 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 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 18 77 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 farm land in South Texas provided a
strong base for later expansion. In the
HARRIS KEMPNER Courtesy of H. Kempner
1880's and early 1890's, he served as di­rector
in no less than ten Central Texas
banks.
He died in 1894, after a brief illness.
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, the son
was called home from the 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, president, or vice­president
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 andre­construction
of the devastated city. The
commission form of municipal govern­ment
was originated in Galveston follow­ing
this disaster. Kempner was a member
of the first city commission. For a number
of years, he was finance commissioner; in
1917 and 1918, he served as mayor.
I. H. KEMPNER Courtesy of 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 remained centered in bank­ing,
railroads, cotton, and sugar refining.
In recent years it has broadened its base
by investing in rice plantations and insur­ance.
ERNST KOHLBERG El Paso Public Librarr
1884
ERNST AND
OLGA KOHLBERG
When eighteen-year-old Ernst Kohlberg
· arrived at El Paso in 1875, the village was
known as Franklin, and Juarez was Paso
del Norte. Kohlberg 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 a frontier com­munity,
and to a surprising degree she
succeeded. Two years after this marriage,
Kohlberg and his brother, Moritz, estab­lished
the International Cigar Company,
the first cigar factory in the Southwest.
Their deluxe brand was called La Inter­nacional.
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, site of the 1909 meeting
between President Taft and President
Diaz of Mexico. In 1893, he was elected
to the El Paso City Council.
II
12
Meanwhile, Mrs. Olga Kohlberg and
several friends began to advance the 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 Kohl­berg's
labors, El Paso became the first city
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. Mrs.
Kohlberg served on the first board of di­rectors
of the El Paso Public Library, and
continued there for twenty-five years.
She became its president in 1903. Largely
through her efforts the library was built
into one of excellence. In 1898, the Kohl-bergs
helped organize the Temple Mt.
Sinai.
Kohlberg was murdered in his office by
a drunken tenant in June, 1910. In 1952,
Tom Lea used Kohlberg as the basis for
the fictional character of Ludwig Stemer
in The Wonderful Country, thus grant­ing
the Jewish pioneer a measure of liter­ary
immortality that he well deserved.
When Olga Kohlberg died in 1935, she
had left her mark on virtually every civic
project in the city.
1876
LEON. LEVI
Leo N. Levi was one of the first Texas­born
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 of Virginia and be­gan
the practice of law at 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.
While in Galveston, Levi joined the In­dependent
Order of B'nai B'rith and be­came
president of the order's southem dis­trict.
In 1900, a year after he had moved
from Galveston to New York, he was
elected national president of the order.
After the particularly brutal Easter mas­sacre
of Jews at Kischineff, Russia, in
1903, it was LeoN. Levi who framed the
famous Kischineff 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 thirteen
thousand 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.
1888
RABBI HENRY COHEN
During the sixty-two years he served his
community and his fellow man, Rabbi
Henry Cohen of Galveston achieved ana­tional
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,
Jamaica. Next he was sent to the
Jewish congregation in Woodville, Mis­sissippi,
where he served until being
called by Congregation B'nai Israel at
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
RABBI HENRY COHEN
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
Courtesy of Rosella W erlin
and the Mid-west. 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, it was Henry Cohen who
convinced President Woodrow Wilson to
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14
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. Cohen retired
in 1949, and died three years later,
mourned by the thousands he had served
so well.
1889
ISAAC DAHLMAN
The opening of the Dahlman Dressed
Beef Company at Fort Worth in 1889
marked the beginning of a new era in the
Texas livestock industry. Before local re­frigerator
plants were established, cattle-men
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
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 ~craped together
the money to buy out the creditors. From
the beginning, he was beset wl.th over­whelming
problems. No one in Texas
would put up the additional capital nec­essary
to make the venture successful. His
supply of beef was 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. But he had shown that his idea
was basically sound. His example per­suaded
other men to try, and those who
followed Dahlman succeeded. By 1916,
Fort Worth was ranked as the fifth largest
cattle market in the United States.
1901
ANNA HERTZBERG
During more than fifty 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 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 also founded and served as presi­dent
of the original San Antonio Sym­phony
Orchestra.
From 1911 to 1913, Mrs. Hertzberg
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 president of
the San Antonio Council of Jewish W om­en,
she organized the first night school in
the city; it was eventually absorbed by
the city system. At the time of her death
in 1937, Anna Hertzberg had materially
improved both the cultural and educa­tional
qualities of her adopted city.
1902
JOSEPH H. GOODMAN
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
of four 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 one hundred
sixty pound pack on his back, he sold
goods on the Onondagan 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 fifteen thousand, where he start­ed
a fuel and grain business. He wanted
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 and friends in Lithuania
faced increased religious and economic
persecution. Eventually, forty-seven of
the Goodmans came to the El Paso area.
15
16
JOSEPH H. GOODMAN
Courtesy of I. B. Goodman
· The project snowballed. Nieces, neph­.
ews, and friends in turn hel.J?eQ ,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
ninety.
1907
JEWISH IMMIGRANTS
INFORMATION BUREAU
Between 1907 and 1914 some ten thou­sand
Jews entered the port of Galveston
enroute to new homes in Texas, the
Southwest, and the Midwest. Their spon-sor
was the Jewish Immigrants Infor­mation
Bureau, popularly known as the
Galveston Movement. The bureau was fi­nanced
by a half million dollar 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. Many lived in
dirty, squalid tenements not much better
than the ghettoes they had left in Poland,
Roumania, and Russia. The Jewish Immi­grants
Information Bureau was founded
in an effort to relieve these conditions.
Mr. Schiff was convinced that newly ar­rived
Jews from southen; 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 quotas, and the Galves-ton
Movement died. ·.
. ARRIVAL OF ~IRST IMMiGRANTS SPONSORED BY THE J .I.I.B. 7.1 ~·? /f.OCongregation B'11ai israel Archives
~!
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 the
Southwest. The store prospered, and, in
1928, Herbert Marcus bought out the
Neiman interests and became the majori­ty
stockholder. In time, .his four sons,
Stanley, Herbert, Jr., Edward, and Law­rence,
entered the business. To Stanley
must go much of the credit for the firm's
merchandising success and world-wide
reputation.
Born in 1905, he entered the firm fresh
out of Harvard Business School in 1926.
During his first year 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 Neiman-Marcus
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 STANLEY MARCUS
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Neiman-Marcus, Inc.
17
18
ORIGINAL NEIMAN-MARCUS STORE
items as a team of camels ("his" and
"hers"), twin airplanes, mink -covered
pocket flasks, Chinese fishing junks, emer­ald-
studded ladies' pipes, Mandarin silk
robes, and a variety of name designer
creations.
Stanley Marcus became president of
the firm in 1950, upon the death of his
father. Over the years he has been an
active and out-spoken participant in a
wide variety of cultural, civic, and social
causes. He is a collector of fine art, rare
books, and a noted gourmet. Numerous
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Neiman-Marcus, Inc.
foreign governments and scores of Amer­ican
organizations have honored him for
his 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
Neiman-Marcus'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."
1911
SAM DREBEN
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 18 78.
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 Madero's 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 Diaz.
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-Carranza­Villa
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.
Sam Dreben joined the United States
Army for the third time in February,
1918. He was assigned to the 142nd In­fantry
Regiment. In action near St. Eti­enne,
France the following October, Dre­ben
and eighteen comrades captured a
German platoon and four machine guns
that were holding up the advance. For his
heroism, Dreben was awarded the Distin­guished
Service Cross. The French gov-ernment
gave him the Medaille Militaire
and the Croix de Guerre with palms. Dre­ben
was 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, Sam Dreben, survivor of a hun­dred
battles, died at 47. 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."
I
SAM DREBEN (SOMBRERO IN CENTER) WITH MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARIES El Paso Public Library
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1913
DR. H. J. ETTLINGER
Dr. Hyman J. Ettlinger's career at The
University of Texas is proof that brains
and brawn can and do mix. Now retired
from the Department of Mathematics
after sixty-one years, Dr. Ettlinger had
been 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 PhD in mathe­matics
from Harvard University.
Ettlinger arrived in Austin in 1913 to
begin his teaching career. He also coached
various university teams until 1919. Be­tween
1915 and 1950 he refereed over fif­teen
hundred 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 thirty-one to seven.
At The University of Texas, Dr. Ett­linger
co-authored a revolutionary calcu­lus
text, published articles in numerous
scholarly journals, and was chairman of
the mathematics department for over
twenty-five years. In the 1950's he formed
the Grass Roots Educational League and
19
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20
barnstormed the state, introducing more
than forty thousand students to the possi­bilities
of careers 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 organization of Texas rab­bis.
In 1962, Dr. Ettlinger became semi­r
etired. In 1969, at age eighty, he was
designated professor emeritus.
1915
SIMON AND
TOBIAS SAKOWITZ
In 1902, Simon and Tobias Sakowitz
opened a small store in Galveston, selling
clothes, mostly to sailors. This was 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. While still children, they
were brought by their parents to Texas,
where their father became a prosperous
Galveston merchant. In 1902, the broth- .
ers 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
that were sprouting around Houston.
Simon and Tobias Sakowitz gave un­stintingly
of time and energy to a variety
of civic and philanthropic projects. Simon
died in Houston in late 1967; his brother,
Tobias, followed in 1970.
1916
JACOB J. TAUBENHAUS
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 Un~ted 9tates 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
JACOB J . TAUBENHAUS Texas A&M University
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.
1919
HAYMON KRUPP
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 forty-three thousand dollars 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 five hundred dollars. Pickrell
and Krupp raised the rental fee.
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"sANTA RITA," BY TOM LEA Schwettmann, Santa Rita
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
Texon Oil and Land Company, with
Krupp as president. Texon was capital­ized
at two million shares valued at one
dollar each. The company executed an
agreement with New York brokers, au­thorizing
a geological survey and then
allowing the brokers to select two hun­dred
thousand 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. Texon 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, J anu­ary
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, Texon struck oil at a depth
in excess of three thousand feet. The pro­ducing
well was located squarely in the
center of a sixty-four square mile 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.
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FRED FLORENCE
Republic National Bank of Dallas
1920
FRED FLORENCE
Fred Florence, son of Lithuanian Russian
parents, rose from janitor in a small east
Texas bank to president of the largest fi­nancial
institution of the South. His life
reads like the mythical rags to riches sto­ry
come true. Florence's 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
fifteen, young Florence began sweeping
floors for the First National Bank of Rusk.
Soon, he was appointed a teller, and at
twenty-four, he was made president of the
State Bank at Alto, a few miles south of
Rusk. He served in the Army Air Corps in
World War I, and on his return, resumed
his job as bank president. His fellow citi­zens
also elected him mayor.
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 thirty-eight. Under his
the Jewish Federation for Social Service,
and the scouting program, to name a few.
In the 1930's, he served as president of
the Texas Centennial Exposition, and in
1937, was president 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, respected and
mourned by his Jewish and non-Jewish
friends alike.
leadership, the Republic National grew 1924
until it was the largest bank in the South. H E B R E W F R E E L 0 A N
Throughout his life Florence was ac- A S S 0 C I A T I 0 N
tive in professional and trade associations. Tzedakah is a Hebrew word that is almost
He participated in numerous civic and untranslatable to English. The best rendi-charitab~
e-ca:u~~s, -the Community Chest, tion is probably "Thou shalt help thy
OFFICERS AND TRUSTEES OF HEBREW FREE LOAN ASSOCIATION, 1937-38
neighbor as thy brother." The Hebrew
Free Loan Association of San Antonio
was founded in this spirit in 1924. It was
organized as a non-profit group, but not
as a charitable one. All interest-free loans
must be repaid.
Any Jewish person who is twenty-one
or older, and lives in Bexar County, is eli­gible
for a loan, if he or she can obtain
four co-signers for the note. When the as­sociation
was formed, the usual amount
of the loari was five dollars. Today, the
maximum is one thousand dollars. The
income of the association is derived from
five dollar 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.
1926
CHARLES L. BRACHFIELD
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.
Charles Brachfield was born at Vicks­burg,
Mississippi in 1872. His parents
came to Texas in 1874, settling in the
town of Henderson. The youngster grew
up there, then read law in Waco. After
being admitted to the bar, he returned to
his hometown to practice law. Brachfield
was Rusk County judge from 1898 to
1902, then served a four-year term as
state senator, beginning in 1904. In 1917
he was elected judge of a five-county dis­trict,
a position which he held until his
unsuccessful 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 countfes 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 i~ 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 honor of his
memory.
1931
SIDNEY M. LEVYSON
Sidney Levyson led the long fight to re­store
leprosy victims to health and public
acceptance. He was born at Gonzales,
Texas in 1899, and grew up in Boerne,
where his father owned a drug store. 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. It was
there that his affliction was first diagnosed
as leprosy, or Hansen's disease. He was
committed, in 1931 , to the United States
Public Health 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 Sidney was committed to Car­ville
as case number 746, he found him­self
in a semi-penal 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, 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 started 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 world-wide 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
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SIDNEY M. LEVYSON
24
Courtesy of Florence Griffith
treatment in places as far away as India.
Stanley Stein and the Star brought the
telephone and the post office to Carville.
Through their 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.
1938
ELSIE FRANKFURT
In 1938, Elsie Frankfurt designed and
then 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 multi-mil­lion-
dollar business.
Fired by the untidy appearance of ex­pectant
mothers ("They looked like un­made
beds") she designed a skirt that was
more appealing and more comfortable to
wear. Fresh out of Southern Methodist
University School of Business, Elsie and
her sisters borrowed five hundred dollars
and began operations in a rented loft in
Dallas. By 1951 , Page Boy, Inc. was gross­ing
over one million dollars annually.
The corporation was operating a manu­facturing
plant in Dallas and outlets in
Texas and California, and in Cleveland,
Detroit, and Indianapolis.
Tha~ September, Elsie became the first
woman member of the Young Presidents
Club, an organization composed of heads
of million-dollar corporations under the
age of forty. Elsie was then thirty-three.
Today, two sisters remain active in the
business. Elsie Frankfurt Pollock, now
living in Los Angeles, is president; Mrs.
Edna Ravkin of Dallas is vice-president.
1942
THE HARRY HERTZBERG
CIRCUS COLLECTION
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 circus-related 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. 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
25
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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 many
unique and historic gifts. Today, his col­lection
helps to preserve knowledge about
a part of our heritage that otherwise
might have been lost.
1945
IMMIGRATION SINCE
WORLD WAR II
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
TOM THUMB'S CARRIAGE FROM THE HERTZBERG COLLECTION fTC Collection r }.--1 1
26 /\ '\~ t ) ~_) \
Displaced Persons Act in 1948. Until
about 1960, most Jewish immigrants to
Texas came from Europe. The largest
number were from Germany, Poland,
and other countries in central and eastem
Europe. Most were unskilled workers,
tradesmen, or shopkeepers.
Beginning in 1960, the state of Israel
began absorbing virtually all Jewish ref­ugees.
Jewish immigration to America
became a mere 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. Non­Jewish
facilities, such as health and den­tal
clinics, are also utilized. The over­whelming
majority of the new Jewish
Texans are aggressive, hardworking, and
quickly assimilated into the community.
1951
THE ZALE FOUNDATION
The Zale Foundation of Dallas was creat­ed
because two Jewish immigrant youths
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JEWISH IMMIGRANTS ARRIVING IN U .S.
..' ·..
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Courtesy of United HIAS
from Russia never forgot the feeling of
being poor and discriminated against.
Two brothers, Morris B. and William
Zale, founded the Zale Corporation at
Wichita Falls in 1924. Today, that corpo­ration
is the world's largest retail jewelry
enterprise. The foundation they estab­lished
in 1951 has current assets of about
twelve million dollars. The money is
spent where it is most needed-helping
the disadvantaged.
The Zale family gives little to estab­lished
programs; instead, they provide
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
established the Dallas Area Scholarship
Fund for talented Negro men and women
to complete pre-medical 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
27
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28
WILLIAM ZALE WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN
of a community college of their South
Dakota reservation. A program in El Paso
was given aid to train community resi­dents
in the Mexican-American district
as health workers.
Since 1973, the twenty-five thousand
. dollar Zale Award has been presented an­nually
to an American who has 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
Mexican-American neighborhoods of El
Zale Foundation
Paso, on the Indian reservations of South
Dakota and New Mexico, and in many
other places where hope has needed en­couragement.
1953
JULIUS SCHEPPS
"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 World War II
he contributed one hundred twenty thou­sand
dollars for the relief of European
Jews, and later was instrumental in build­ing
the Dallas home for the Jewish aged.
He worked for the Salvation Army, the
Southwest Medical Foundation, the Ca­ruth
Rehabilitation Center, and headed ~~
Dallas's first bi-racial commission. Al- ~
though he had attended Texas A&M
University for only a few weeks in 1914,
he retained a life-long affection for the
school. He served as president of the ex­students
association and was a founder of
the Hillel Foundation there.
In 1953, he received the Linz Award
for outstanding civic work in Dallas. The JULIUS SCHEPPS AT COMMUNITY CENTER DEDICATION Schepps Community Center
29
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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. He
had repaid a hundredfold the opportuni­ties
his community provided.
1961
FRANCES SANGER
MOSSIKER
Frances Sanger Mossiker is one of few
living Texans with an international liter­ary
reputation. Her popular non-fiction
books have been praised for their literary
quality and historical scholarship. They
have appeared in five foreign languages;
three 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
non-fiction 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 uses
such dry-as-dust papers to weave a taut,
exciting story that makes one forget he is
reading history. When a manuscript is in
progress, Mrs. Mossiker works for six or
eight hours a day, seated in a tiny, clut­tered
alcove, where she composes directly
from her notes to the typewriter.
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:
The Story of Josephine Bonaparte, was
published for the juvenile audience. Mrs.
Mossiker is currently writing a biogra­phy
of Pocahontas and a major history of
the French Bourbon kings.
1964
BEN TAUB
For years, as board chairman of the Har­ris
County charity hospital, Ben Taub
made a 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 newspapers and notions to eke
out a living. Finally, he opened a down­town
cigar store and eventually became a
tobacco 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
board of directors of twenty-three 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 dorfated land
for the campus. Through a family fol.ln­dation,
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 proposed 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 possible-Ben Taub.
1966
JUDGE IRVING L.
GOLDBERG
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 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 practice before
the Fifth Court can expect close question­ing
from Judge Goldberg. At times his
queries seem designed to rip apart the
plaintiff's case. Then the defendant's
argument receives the same treatment.
Through questions and comments, the
judge probes for weaknesses and incon­sistencies,
and cuts 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 re-
31
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32
JUDGE IRVING GOLDBERG Courtesy of Judge Irving Goldberg
solve 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.
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"74·-431
One of a series
prepared by the staff of
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
AT SAN ANTONIO
INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
1974
)