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Jews in Antebellum South?? Yes, Indeed! by Anne Butler
In 1820 there were just a couple
of thousand Jews in the United States, but anti-Semitism in
Central Europe combined with cheaper transatlantic ship passage
to swell the population through the mid-1800's, with many of the
immigrants landing in Louisiana just as the cotton empire moved
westward toward the fertile lands bordering the Mississippi
River. Their experiences have often been overlooked in southern
history, but a new exhibit in the West Feliciana Historical
Society museum in St. Francisville attempts to rectify that
omission.
The religious persecution of
the Old World ironically prepared America's early Jewish
immigrants for success in the New. Forbidden to own land or even
work or marry as they wished, many of the more adventurous and
ambitious of the Jews from Bavaria and the German states along
the Rhine found their skills as merchants and traders would
prove vital to the South's agrarian economy in the heady reign
of King Cotton.
Former Jewish Synagogues ~ Historic
District
Often arriving penniless, these Jewish immigrants
began as peddlers, taking much-needed merchandise into the countryside
in horse-drawn carts or heavy packs on their back. In the days before
rural mail delivery, itinerant peddlers were the only means for isolated
farm families to purchase necessities, and so the peddlers prospered.
As they did, they moved up to clerk in stores owned by
other Jews, then opened stores of their own in the small towns serving
as commercial centers for the surrounding plantation country. Other
Jewish immigrants became wholesalers, importing and supplying the stock
for the small stores, and still others moved north to act as buyers and
sellers for family firms in the South. Close family, marital and
business ties linked all these immigrants together.
The rural merchants' sales and terms of payment
depended upon the prevailing agricultural economy. Consequently, many of
the small-town storekeepers of necessity became traders in the big cash
crops of cotton and sugar cane when crop liens were used as security by
planters needing advances for planting, harvesting and shipping crops.
The whole southern economy in the Cotton Kingdom was balanced
precariously on credit extensions at every level, from the planter
through the supplier through the crop broker through the banker and
purchaser.
The country storekeeper was an important player in
this agrarian economy, particularly as the country deteriorated into
divisive civil war and its even more devastating aftermath. Many of the
Jewish immigrants served with their neighbors in the Confederacy, and
afterward they were able to extend life-saving credit to suffering
post-war planters, farmers and sharecroppers. At a time when cash was in
short supply and banks unreliable, their stores had far-reaching credit
arrangements and became conduits for funneling some much-needed cash
into the rural areas.
Julius Freyhan High School
As these hard-working immigrants prospered, the South
became the center of Jewish population in the country, offering
religious and political freedom as well as the possibility of great
financial success. Synagogues and temples were built, cemeteries
established and charitable organizations formed as the Jews shared their
prosperity in great and far-reaching philanthropies, funding museums and
zoological parks, civic improvements and levees, hospitals and public
schools for both black and white students. When the boll weevil and
other factors proved the ruination of the cotton economy by the early
1900's, many Jewish families moved from the country to the city and from
mercantile to professional status in mainstream American society.
But before the Civil War, as the aristocratic planters
lived lush and lavish lifestyles, what they lacked was mercantile
experience. They planted, they socialized, they philosophized, they
beautified their surroundings, but they needed somebody else to provide
the practicalities, the dry goods and the equipment and underpinnings of
the cotton culture, somebody with enough shrewd business sense to
survive the ebb and flow of a fluctuating economy based on chancy crops
and credit. Into this gap stepped the Jewish immigrants, many from
mercantile or trade backgrounds in the European villages they had left
behind, and they filled the need admirably.
Hebrew Rest Cemetery
Scholar Louis Schmier said, "Jews became a part of
southern society, made their presence felt, and wove their contributions
through the southern fabric. Jews took hold of life in the South and
found it good and rewarding, and the Jewish presence has been good and
rewarding for the South." What was true of the South was true of
St. Francisville, and the museum exhibit pays tribute to the
far-reaching contributions of its Jewish population, which swelled to
nearly a hundred families by the end of the 19th century and then
dwindled to one lone elderly soul, solitary keeper of the immaculate
oak-shaded Jewish cemetery.
Through bills of lading and invoices, receipts for
cotton and gossip-column snippets, the exhibit draws upon old records in
the St. Francisville True Democrat newspaper, legal and court records,
and the voluminous files of vintage photographs in possession of the
local historical society to mount a quietly simple exhibit which speaks
volumes. An intriguing cross-country connection fostered the interest in
researching and collecting which resulted in this exhibit.
Receipt on Cotton
Several panels of the exhibit focus on Julius Freyhan,
who arrived in Louisiana in 1851 as a penniless German Jewish immigrant
and died one of the richest men in the South. His extensive business
interests included dry goods stores, cotton gins, saloons and opera
houses, cotton mills and real estate, first in the St.
Francisville-Bayou Sara area and later in New Orleans. After the Civil
War, his shrewd fiscal policies saved many a struggling planter, and
when he died in 1904, the obituary that ran in the New Orleans paper
said, "Through his energy and business acumen, he was able to build up
one of the largest supply houses in the states, and during the hard
times which swept over the country at various periods, he was able to
keep the farmers on their feet until the price of their crops rose."
Upon his death, Julius Freyhan left funding to build the first public
school in St. Francisville, a large brick structure overlooking the
Mississippi River, most recently unoccupied and falling into disrepair.
Now his granddaughter, who has just died at age 94 in
California, has left in her own will the funding to restore the Freyhan
School building as a community facility and venue for exhibits
explaining early Jewish contributions. As the restoration of the
facility will take some time, the beginnings of the exhibits have now
been hung in the West Feliciana Historical Society museum, including a
number of historic photographs left to the society by Freyhan's
granddaughter, and the museum has for sale the commissioned memoirs of
the Julius Freyhan family's generous generations.
Exhibit at West Feliciana
Historical Society Museum
And so the museum has a fascinating display
of old crockery whiskey jugs ("J. Freyhan & Co. Handmade
Sour-Mash Bourbon"), some still sporting corncob stoppers, as
well as an original wooden banister and small well-worn school
desk from the old Freyhan School, the marble cornerstone from
the Temple Sinai, vintage books, engraved baby silver, a large
silver tankard, and all the lively little vignettes bespeaking a
thriving presence in 19th-century St. Francisville, echoing
similar societies all over the South.
The successful businesses owned by Jewish immigrant
families ran the gamut from Moritz Rosenthal the shoemaker to Max
Dampf's general merchandise store selling "dry goods, clothes, shoes,
staple and fancy groceries," from Abe Stern's livery stable selling
horses and mules to the fancy Meyer Hotel, from Morris Burgas whose dry
goods store offered the highest prices for cotton and moss, to Freyhan &
Co. which became the principal source of supply for dozens of Louisiana
parishes and Mississippi counties, in a single year selling upwards of a
million dollars worth of goods and handling some 14,000 bales of cotton.
In typical fashion, when Julius Freyhan expanded he took his two
brothers-in-law as partners, his firm becoming M&E Wolf only after his
death, and brought over an Oxford-educated nephew from Berlin to keep
the books and buy cotton.
But these Jewish tradesmen and merchants did not
isolate themselves, instead becoming vital and valued members of their
communities. They may have been born in the Black Forest, but once here
the immigrants became public-spirited members of police juries and bank
boards. While they belonged to the Jewish philanthropic society B'nai
B'rith and contributed to Jewish causes worldwide, they also freely gave
to civic and public improvement projects, roads, levees and other local
needs.
The West Feliciana Historical Society museum and
tourist information center is located at the heart of St. Francisville
on Ferdinand St. and is open daily, free of charge; for information,
call 225-635-6330.
Located on US Highway 61 on the Mississippi River
between Baton Rouge, LA, and Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is
especially enjoyable in the winter when all of the antebellum gardens
are filled with colorful blossoming camellias, but it is actually a
year-round tourist destination, with six historic plantations-Rosedown
and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, the Myrtles, the
Cottage and Greenwood--open for daily tours, Catalpa Plantation open by
reservation and Afton Villa Gardens open seasonally. Reasonably priced
meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville.
Eclectic shops fill restored 19th-century structures throughout the
historic downtown area. Some of the state's best Bed and Breakfasts
offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside
resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; a modern motel
has facilities to accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica
Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking,
hiking, fishing, birding, horseback riding and other recreational
activities.
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information about accommodations, recreation, dining and much
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