The Community of True Inspiration at Eben-Ezer

By Paul Lubienecki, PhD

Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author.


The religious persecutions in Europe, particularly in the German-speaking regions during the 18th and 19th centuries, generated a mass influx of religious sects into America. Political and religious turmoil in the German territories produced a wave of immigrants seeking religious freedom, political autonomy, and abundant resources. In the early decades of the 19th century, the idea of a “New Germany” was promoted based on a mixture of paternalism and romantic adventurism. However, the urge to immigrate to the United States centered on the notions of land and liberty in contrast to the distressed conditions and state of affairs in the petty German kingdoms.[1] Religious concerns ultimately decided the issue.

A primary justification for most Germans settling in America was based on their religious convictions. In 1817, Emperor Frederick Wilhelm III sought to secure his rule through a forced merger of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches into the United Evangelical Church of Prussia. He formatted an official United Church Agenda, or liturgical order of service, which prescribed the forms and orders to be followed in all churches. Many of the pastors and churches complied.[2] However, some Lutherans refused to believe this new Church, and its doctrines compromised their religious beliefs and convictions. 


Inspirationists

Many others were already in rebellion with the Lutheran Church for its ritualistic form of worship more akin to Roman Catholicism than Protestant spirituality. A hundred years earlier, two leaders of this dissent within the Lutheran denomination were Eberhard Gruber and Johann Rock. Gruber, a Lutheran clergyman, and Rock, son of a Lutheran minister, founded what was deemed a cult known as the Community of True Inspiration (Wahre Inspirations-Gemeinden).[3]

The Inspirationists believed that God spoke directly to Christians through signs, visions, and a relationship with the believer. They also believed that select community members, or Instruments, were chosen to communicate God’s teaching to the faithful. During moments of inspiration, the Instrument conveyed the word and teachings of God to the community.[4]


The Inspirationists established faith communities throughout Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. As their adherents increased, so did persecution from the civil and religious authorities for their non-conformist ways. With the deaths of Gruber (1728) and Rock (1749), the elders governed the Inspirationists. But the vigor, spiritual enthusiasm, and numbers of the faithful waned.

In 1819, Christian Metz, a 24-year-old carpenter from Ronneburg, declared that he received the “gift of inspiration.” He was not a neophyte to the faith, as his grandfather, Jacob Metz, was already an adherent. Christian was known for his management skills, organizational talents, and fearless spiritual leadership.[5] His persona partially facilitated a revival of the sect.

The community grew with new adherents and the faithful developed a communal lifestyle, much to the consternation of local residents. However, these dissidents continued to incur the persecution of Lutheran church officials as well as the government. Refusal by Inspirationists to obligatory military service resulted in arrests, imprisonment, and even forfeiture of property. As early as the mid-1820s a “prophecy” emerged concerning immigration to the United States where they could openly exercise their beliefs.[6]

The harsh treatment that the Inspirationists endured worsened. The political unrest of the 1840s cast a shadow on this group now regarded as a dangerous minority. Many endured economic hardships, especially tradesmen and craftsmen, as local residents refused to conduct business with them. Most struggled daily just to exist. The case was similar for those who were day laborers, ordinary workmen and unskilled workers. These circumstances created the persuasive conditions for emigrating. That destination would be America. Unfortunately, in late 1840, Metz declared that the “time is not yet fulfilled.” But a continued series of crop failures and famines altered Metz’s convictions. On July 27, 1842, he declared:

“Your goal and your way shall lead towards the west to a land still open 

to you and your faith. I am with you and shall lead you over the sea.”[7]

The New World

On August 27, 1842, the faithful from all the communities gathered at Arnsburg to pray and appoint those who would find an appropriate settlement for the Inspirationists in America. Christian Metz, the 47-year-old spiritual leader of the movement, was selected. Additional members included William Noe, 38 years old, who was proficient in business affairs. Gottlieb Ackerman, 40 years old, was experienced with medical and pharmaceutical matters and George Weber, also 40, was trained as a physician. Metz later declared that a revelation from God occurred and Weber’s 11 year old son, Ferdinand, should accompany them to the New World.[8]

Metz and his group expressed feelings of dread and depression, leaving their homes to find a new one for the community. They acknowledged the burden and responsibility of this mission without certainty of success. The group left Bremerhaven on September 20, 1842, and landed in New York after a difficult thirty-seven-day voyage. During their journey, the ship’s captain, Johann Wächter, learned the purpose of their undertaking and gave them the name of a land agent, George Paulsen, in New York who had experience working with German immigrants on land purchases.[9] Metz viewed this as the work of God since they had no direction on how to proceed once they landed in the New World.

The group’s stay in New York City was brief. During his meeting with Paulsen, Metz inquired about land in Ohio but was advised that it was well settled. Wisconsin was a possibility, but Paulsen advised against it due to the many failed attempts by settlers. Paulsen did know of a large 50,000-acre tract of land in Chautauqua County, New York, and gave him a letter of introduction to Mr. Patterson of Westfield, New York, and additional letters of introduction to other land agents.

The areas of upstate and western New York were ideally suited for Metz and the community's needs. Their beliefs would be tolerated and possibly welcomed in this part of the New World. During the 1820s, western and central New York experienced a series of popular religious revivals that later earned this region the label of the “Burned Over District,” which implied the area was set ablaze with spiritual fervor.[10] During this period, various religious, non-conformist, and spiritual sects such as the Shakers, the Oneida Community, Mormons, Millerites, and others flourished here.[11]

The New World Inspirationists ventured to Albany and then proceeded by barge on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, arriving there November 12, 1842. The group lodged at the Mansion House owned by Philip Dorsheimer. This proved to be providential. While lodging at Mansion House, Metz, Weber, and an interpreter met Patterson. The land agent discussed the benefits and significance of the property in Chautauqua County. Eavesdropping on the conversation, Dorsheimer advised Metz and Weber that Patterson was overvaluing the land. He suggested they examine the Buffalo Creek Indian Reservation as it was good land soon to be opened to white settlement.[12] The location was closer to the larger Buffalo market and the Erie Canal shipping hub. Coincidentally, the other two group members were visiting local German emigres who told them of the land prospects at the Reservation. All agreed to inspect the site.

Metz, Noe, Ackerman, Weber, and Dorsheimer surveyed the area just a few miles south and east of Buffalo. Along Buffalo Creek the group encountered several sawmills and spoke with these businessmen about the industrial prospects of the site. Metz was elated at the vastness of the virgin forest and the uncultivated land.[13] The group had decided to purchase the land but agreed it was advisable to inspect the Chautauqua County tract. Metz and Noe, along with the property agent, traveled some seventy miles throughout the county, but the Inspirationists viewed the Buffalo Creek site as a more favorable where they could establish their colony.

Serious negotiations for the land purchase commenced at the end of November 1842. The initial offering was for 10,000 acres at $10.50 per acre. Delays in the purchase were inevitable, and problems with translating official documents tainted the process. Attorney Thomas Ogden of New York City was the corporate counsel for the Holland Land Company, which owned a three million-acre tract of land in western New York. 

Some of this land was purchased by Tomas and his brother David, who formed the Ogden Land Company. This firm purchased and facilitated the transfer of Native American land to white settlers. Contractual setbacks, legal limitations, and postponements frustrated Metz and his companions. After several weeks of negotiations and delays, some involving third-party advisors, the Inspirationists purchased 5000 acres at $10.00 per acre.[14] Metz concluded that reducing the acreage and lowering the price would facilitate a more straightforward transaction.

During the intervening months since their arrival in America, several other Inspirationists traveled to Buffalo. On May 1, 1843, the four New World Inspirationists left Mansion House for their new property and resided in the former home of Chief John Seneca.



The New Colony

Construction of new housing began quickly and was done by the Inspirationists and non-member contractors. This new settlement, at the present site of Gardenville, was named Eben-Ezer, meaning “stone of help” from the Book of Samuel, chapter 7, verse 12. The name was soon abbreviated to Ebenezer. This particular place was chosen due to its proximity to Buffalo Creek, which provided water power to operate several mills. As the colony rapidly grew, it became apparent that more land and individual space was needed.

Four hamlets were established within the colony to support the settlers and their industries. Middle Ebenezer occupied the area of present day Gardenville. Upper Ebenezer, present-day Blossom, was to the east; Lower Ebenezer, just north of Gardenville in present-day West Seneca and New Ebenezer, was situated between Middle Ebenezer and Upper Ebenezer on Cazenovia Creek.[15]

As more members of the sect arrived, housing construction increased. The land was cleared, timber milled, wells dug, and small farm plots started. However, the local Indian population viewed this as infringing their land rights. Many Native Americans still lived within the settlement, and arguments arose over the use of land and timber. The Germans were confused about the nature of this hostility, believing the land was theirs; however, their colony was settled on reservation land.

The local tribes wanted the Germans to leave the reservation and pay restitution for the use of the land and the lumber they took. The tribes petitioned the Federal government, and negotiations began with the local Indian Agent and the Secretary of War. Settlement negotiations were protracted and often tense, filled with misunderstandings and ignorance of the law over property rights and land use.

On August 1, 1844, the Federal government ruled in favor of the German settlers at the Ebenezer Colony, advising the Seneca Indians that they no longer retained ownership of the land and forest rights. Any intrusion by the Seneca onto the land would be deemed trespassing. Unfortunately, vandalism and destruction of the forest began, and several Senecas were arrested.

The Ebenezer community did not want any further trouble with the Senecas and were sympathetic to their plight as they, too, had been persecuted in Germany. The Seneca Nation convened a meeting with the Ebenezer group to find a joint amicable remedy. The Inspirationists believed that they had been deceived by the land agent over the purchase of the land and what was theirs. Yet, they still considered their position strong as they had legally purchased the land. With some reluctance, the Senecas reached a settlement with the Germans. The Native Americans would relocate to their nearby reservations in southwestern New York at Allegany and Cattaraugus counties. Some would receive compensation for their land claims. It was an agreement that did not please all, but it did end the conflict. By late 1846, the last of the Senecas left the Ebenezer colony and the German settlers came into full possession of the land.[16] Now, the community could prosper and grow without impediments.



The Ebenezer Community

From 1843 to 1846, over 800 Inspirationists arrived at the colony from Germany. This diverse group included young and old, wealthy and poor, skilled and unskilled workers.

The wealthier members were initially called upon to contribute funds and finance various operations. Land would be held in common for two years. This plan was based on conditions in the Old World, where wealth and property acquisition was difficult. This experiment failed at the colony. The economic conditions for attaining wealth and property were readily available in America. Demands for skilled and unskilled laborers in America meant abundant jobs, and a worker and his family fared better in the New World than in Germany.

The challenge for the Community was to maintain a cohesive group that desired to live within the confines of Ebenezer and not be swayed by the “temptations” of the New World. To achieve this, the elders, in January 1846, crafted the Constitution of the Community of True Inspiration at Ebenezer. The document identified this society as a faith based group founded on the Scriptures who “pledged to render obedience to their faith in all respects, to fight for it, to endure and suffer and struggle to preserve in it to the end of life.”[17] All deacons and elders were to live a life of grace with the spiritual and temporal welfare of the community as their primary concern. Community members were to “live likewise” and recognize the deacons and elders as their spiritual teachers and pastors. All authority, both spiritual and administrative, was vested in the elders.

The Ebenezer community exhibited the qualities of a communistic society and was the first such organized assemblage in western New York. Land, livestock, buildings, and machinery were held in common, and each member “was to bear his burden according to his ability for the common good of the community.” Under the terms of their Constitution, all received an annual fixed wage from the treasury, as established by the elders, and the guarantee of medical care, daily food, and shelter.[18] Incidentals such as tools, clothing, shoes, furniture, and bedding were to be purchased separately and considered the individual property of that member.

This lifestyle achieved positive results for the community and the majority thrived under this arrangement. Success and sacrifice, both spiritual and physical, were a shared experience. However, not all enthusiastically embraced it. Wealthier members lost control of their affluence, and poorer community members realized they could achieve a better and freer life outside the Ebenezer community. Many left but the society did not document the numbers of those who moved away.


Life in the Colony

The four residential communities of the Ebenezer colony occupied approximately 8,000 acres, and the members resided in villages instead of scattered farmhouses. This settlement arrangement was due more to the elders' supervision and control over the Inspirationists than would have been possible if they lived in scattered homesteads.[19] The appeal of American self-determination was often regarded as a tacit threat to the communal routine.

The elders assigned families to housing within the colony. There was no standardization of home designs. Some buildings were two stories, but most were one level or a story and a half, and the number of bedrooms varied. Homes were either timber frame or brick construction. The homes did not have a kitchen or dining room, as cooking and eating were communal events. Home furnishings were purchased by each family. Wood for heating the house was supplied by the community. Single men resided in a “brother's house.” This was a large home with individual apartments consisting of a bedroom and sitting room.

The location of a member’s residence was based on their employment. Farmers and agriculture workers were housed on the outskirts of the community. Cabinet makers, harness makers, butchers, craftsmen, and laborers resided adjacent to their work site. Bakers, cooks, and cleaners lived near the communal kitchens. Schoolmasters and some teachers lived above the classroom.[20]

The Inspirationists did not favor large gatherings. Consequently, shared meals were eaten at the kitchen-house. These houses were situated throughout the four communities and of an appropriate size to accommodate the moderate number who gathered for daily sustenance. While the food was simple fare, there was always an abundance. Men, women, and children sat in separate areas, and conversation at the table was discouraged. A prayer service followed each meal.

Education was a priority for the Ebenezer community. The German states in the 19th century had a prestigious tradition of educating boys and girls and ensuring that teachers were highly qualified.[21] This practice followed the Inspirationists to the New World. Boys and girls studied together in the classroom. The school day was long, enabling the parents to work without worrying about their children at home. Classes were conducted six days a week and year-round. The only exceptions were for religious holy days and to help with the harvest.

The Ebenezer community was required to abide by the educational requirements of New York State. However, the colony, as the Incorporated Village of Ebenezer, had full control over the curriculum, allowing religious instruction. Students were taught their catechism, Bible history, and stories about the heroes of the True Inspirationists faith. Additionally, boys and girls were taught practical skills such as knitting, as many made their own socks and small articles of clothing. Older boys learned a trade and worked as apprentices at the colony’s various craft shops. Girls were taught cooking, baking, spinning, and sewing.[22] German was the main language spoken here, but business transactions with the “outside” required a command of English; subsequently, students were taught basic English.

While bachelors lived in segregated housing, single women lived with their parents until married. Marriages had to be approved by the elders. A one-year courtship was required, and then a simple ceremony was performed. Men under the age of 24 were not permitted to marry, but there was no similar prohibition on women. Divorce was not accepted, nor was a second marriage to a widow or widower.


Farming and Commerce

The Inspirationists, while grounded in their faith, were sustained by commerce and agriculture, selling produce and manufactured products to support the community financially. Each of the four Ebenezer communities had a farm division supervised by a farm manager; the colony had 2200 acres under cultivation. Various industries, craft shops, and businesses were operated by the workers. Assorted occupations of the members were listed as farmers, merchants, butchers, shoemakers, copper, millers, tanners, potters, bookbinders, carpenters, dyers, wagon makers, tailors, locksmiths, saw millers, laborers, and other livelihoods.[23]

The New Ebenezer hamlet, the smallest of the four, had no farm. However, it contained 9 houses: a small dry goods store, a carpenter shop, a barn and stable, and a dye house. Its location on Buffalo Creek was an ideal source of water power for the woolen mill. Upper Ebenezer had a church, schoolhouse, general store, meat house, and bakery. Farming was conducted here with assorted barns and stables on the land. Industries employed tinsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, cabinet makers, and shoemakers. A grist mill and saw mill utilized the power of the Buffalo Creek surrounded by lumber resources.

Middle Ebenezer was the largest of the villages within the colony. It held the largest population of the colony, with 57 houses, a church, a schoolhouse, and a general store. Multiple businesses functioned here: a sawmill and a wool mill with looms and spinning machines. Skilled and unskilled laborers worked as carpenters, locksmiths, potters, blacksmiths, bakers, wagon makers, furniture manufacturing, boot and shoemakers, a book bindery and print shop, clock and watchmakers, and candle makers. A cider mill and brewery were also located in the village. The farm division managed a large piggery, a dozen barns, stables, drying sheds, and granaries. Slaughterhouses, meat markets, and produce storage sheds were part of the agricultural division.

Lower Ebenezer was the community's spiritual center, as the largest church was located there. Like the other villages, it contained housing and craft shops for the residents. As the colony's population grew, more schools were located here.


Religion

The singular purpose of the Ebenezer community was religion. The daily activities of agriculture, work, and education provided the inhabitants with the necessary means to live apart from “the world” and concentrate on living out their religious beliefs. The community observed four core rites: baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial, officiated by an elder.

Those beliefs were focused on the Old and New Testaments and the revelations of prophecy. Following that were the 24 rules for living a Godly life.[24] Some of those precepts included obedience to God and the elders, praying, living a humble existence, hard work, and charity to all. Additionally, the community followed the “Twenty-One Rules for the Daily Examination of Our Lives.” This comprised more of a code of conduct for matters unrelated to the faith or religion.[25]

The leadership of the faithful was comprised of the prophets and elders. The prophets were regarded as the head of the church. Usually, this comprised only two to four individuals. At times, accusations were made of false prophets within the community, but there is no written record of who they were, why the allegations were made, and the results of such assertions. However, there was some indication of jealousy at the root of these claims. Next were the elders who held various occupations within the colony. They were viewed as the spiritual fathers of the communities and pastors of each individual church. They conducted religious services and officiated at the ceremonial rites.

The congregation was divided into three spiritual groups or “orders.” Membership was based on levels of piety. The “high order” was the first, then the middle group and the third was the lowest, mostly children. In this third order men and women and boys and girls were segregated. Each order held separate services simultaneously, which excluded the others. A yearly spiritual examination of the members was conducted, usually in late December. During this scrutiny all members of each order were subjected to an intensive examination to determine their spiritual condition and placement into an order. Elders examined elders, and lay members evaluated each other. However, a person could be removed from a group based on their conduct.[26]

The meetinghouse was a plain structure devoid of any signs or symbols of the Christian faith. This white-washed building contained no pulpit or stained glass windows. The interior was divided into three separate rooms for each order. Members entered in silence. The presiding elder sat at a table flanked by a row of elders facing the congregation. Men and women sat across from each other on long benches, each person carrying their Bible.

Religious services were held daily, and attendance was mandatory. Morning services were conducted on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with an afternoon service as well. Prayer services were conducted every evening, and extra services were held on special or holy days of the year. Each service began with a silent prayer followed by a hymn announced by the presiding elder. No musical instruments were to accompany the singing, and the tunes were analogous to traditional Lutheran hymns blended with Georgian chant. The melodies were described as melancholy.[27]

Following the hymn was a long prayer recited by the elders while the congregants knelt on the hardwood floors. After that a passage from the Bible was read with the men and then the women reading each verse. There was no formal sermon, but each elder provided a lesson for the congregation. The intention of the service was for each member to receive a message of inspiration from the Bible or the lessons or directly from God. A concluding prayer and hymn ended the lengthy service with the members silently leaving.


The Move

By the early 1850s external pressures and conditions began encroaching upon the colony. The city of Buffalo was expanding into their area, bringing with it worldly distractions. Newly arrived immigrants from Germany were more attracted to well-paying jobs than developing their spiritual life. These settlers enjoyed comfort, entertainment, money, and individuality rather than a communal religious lifestyle.

Tensions percolated within the Community of True Inspiration. Envy and resentment among members and elders threatened to tear at the core of their faith. Some members were expelled or left voluntarily for better opportunities. Allegations that some community members were becoming wealthy or not abiding by the rules brought charges and counter-charges, creating an unholy environment. 

Water power for the mills along Buffalo Creek and an adjoining canal diminished due to erosion. Farm production was reduced due to flooding. A railroad was proposed that, when completed, would divide Lower Ebenezer from Middle Ebenezer. The local legislative authorities viewed the Community’s property as a prime site for the expansion of industry and agriculture and desired to take more control of the area. It was apparent to the elders that survival of the community, both spiritual and material, necessitated a move.

The Community decided that a larger parcel of land was required to continue their mission. Commanded by “inspiration,” it was decided that this could be acquired somewhere in the western part of the nation. In September 1854, four members: Christian Metz, Carl Winzenried, Ferdinand Weber, son of George Weber, an original settler at Ebenezer, and Charles Mayer left western New York to find the Community’s new “promised land.” The four traveled first to Chicago, then St. Louis, and navigated the Missouri River to Parkville near Kansas City. They journeyed through the Kansas prairie in wagons and on foot with Native American guides, seeking their new home.[28] The four could not locate adequate tracts of land to suit the Community’s needs. Additionally, political tensions were raging in the territory over statehood and slavery, which disturbed the group. As a result, the men returned home.

Later that year, John Beyer and Jacob Wittmer scouted land in the newly recognized state of Iowa. They reported that a favorable site was located twenty miles west of Iowa City near a river. In May 1855, they, along with Frederick Heinemann and Carl Winzenreid, examined the flat land in Iowa and, finding it suitable to the Community’s needs, purchased the tract.

The society generally agreed to the move, but some remained in western New York. The historical record does not list names or reasons why they did not go west. In early July 1855, ten years after the colony was founded, the Community of True Inspiration started moving to their new land along the Iowa River. This new settlement was named Amana, a Biblical reference from the Song of Solomon Chapter 4, Verse 8, meaning “to remain faithful.”[29] The move, by wagon and steamboat, took almost six years to complete. These colonists took all they could, including the wares of their trades and livestock, to start their new lives. The properties were placed on the market and the eight thousand acres of Eben-Ezer eventually sold. With the start of the Civil War, the houses and lands that remained of the community were either abandoned or absorbed into the local governmental districts.

In Iowa, the Amana Society thrived and replicated much of what it started in western New York, establishing several colonies within the community and following the same pattern of life, education, commerce, and religious practice. The Amana Society flourished until the Great Depression of the 1930s. At this juncture, the “Great Change” occurred as the Society split into two distinct organizations. One of which later evolved into the manufacturer of refrigeration units: the Amana Corporation.[30]

Germans fled the Old World to the New World, seeking religious freedom and the self-determination to live as they wished. This vision was first realized in western New York but as the world encroached a move to Iowa was necessitated. The communal lifestyle of the Community of True Inspiration came at a time when the words of Karl Marx started to echo in Europe. While this Society likely would denounce Marx’s ideal of a godless shared community life, the group at Ebenezer was, in reality, one of the first communist groups in America. The difference was that the Ebenezer community’s raison d’être was to glorify God through their lives and work. This success was achieved in western New York.

About the author: Paul Lubienecki obtained his M.A. in Pastoral Ministry from Christ the King Seminary, an M.A. in History from Buffalo State College, and his Ph.D. in History from Case Western Reserve University. His research work examined how Buffalo native Msgr. John Boland established labor schools for workers to assist them in integrating the fundamentals of the social encyclicals in the workplace. Dr. Lubienecki has lectured and published multiple journal articles on Catholic labor schools. He recently published The Americanization of  Lay Catholics on Organized Labor by Mellen Press.

Dr. Lubienecki has taught courses in American history, theology, spirituality and museum studies and is a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.  He has been a Special Studies Instructor at the Chautauqua Institution and is the founding director of the Boland Center for the Study of Labor and Religion, where he teaches, publishes, and lectures on the integration of history at the intersection of religion and the labor movement. He is also engaged in union-organizing activities of service workers in the Buffalo area.

Bibliography

---

[i] Stefan von Senger in Emigration and Settlement Patters of German Communities in North America, (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1995), 148.

[ii] E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans in North America, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 132.

[iii] Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic societies of the United States, (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 25.

[iv] Thomas Streissguth, Utopian Visionaries,(Minneapolis: The Oliver Press, Inc., 1999), 67.

[v] Frank J. Lankes, The Ebenezer Society, (West Seneca: West Seneca Historical Society, 1963), 9.

[vi] Bertha Shambaugh, Amana: The Community of True Inspiration, (Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1988), 329

[vii] Ibid., 57.

[viii] Lankes, 13.

[ix]Alan DuVal. Christian Metz: German-American Religious Leader & Pioneer. Ed. Peter Hoehnle. (Iowa City: Penfield Books, 2005), 21.

[x] Streissguth, 68.

[xi] David Ellis, James Frost, Harry Carman, A History of New York State, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 307.

[xii]Frederick  Houghton,  The History of the Buffalo Creek Reservation, (Buffalo: Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society. Vol. 24. 1920), 110.

[xiii] Nordhoff, The Communistic societies of the United States, 28.

[xiv] Lankes, 24.

[xv] Lankes, 35.

[xvi] Houghton,  121.

[xvii] Constitution of the Ebenezer Community.  Elisha Blakeman recollections found in “A Brief Account of the Society of Germans Called the True Inspirationists,” (undated) Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

[xviii]Shambaugh,  Amana, The Community of True Inspiration,  45.

[xix] Lankes, 61.

[xx] Lankes, 88.

[xxi] Karl A. Schleunes, "Enlightenment, reform, reaction: the schooling revolution in Prussia." Central European History 12.4 (1979), 322.

[xxii] Lankes, 90.

[xxiii] Lankes, 96.

[xxiv] Lankes, 41.

[xxv] Shambaugh, 277.

[xxvi] Shambaugh, 313.

[xxvii] Lankes, 44.

[xxviii] Lankes, 121.

[xxix] Nordhoff, The Communistic societies of the United State, 31.

[xxx] David Hudson, Marvin  Bergman; Loren Horton, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. (Iowa City, IA: University Of Iowa Press, 2009), 169.[1] Stefan von Senger in Emigration and Settlement Patters of German Communities in North America, (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1995), 148.

New York’s World War II Monuments: A Remembrance

By Michael Mauro DeBonis 

Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author

World War II (1939-1945) was the most bloody, destructive, and costly military and political conflict in the known history of humanity. The war spanned every habitable continent (except deep-frozen Antarctica), northern and southern hemispheres, and it was brutishly fought on land, sea, and air. America’s National WW II Museum’s website says World War II cost the lives of nearly 85 million people in total, including both civilians and military personnel, from across the globe. For the United States of America, WW II began late, in early December of 1941, as opposed to Western Europe, where the man-made catastrophe had started two years earlier, in 1939.

World War II Memorial, Battery Park, NYC. Photo
by Michael Mauro DeBonis April 2001.

World War II pitted the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy against the Allied Powers of the USA, France, the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and many others. In America, the WW II historical museums and memorials, which honor our country’s many men and women who contributed to the war effort, are nearly countless in number and exist in every U.S. state and territory. This article focuses on just two of New York State’s numerous ones.

At the southern end of Battery Park, in New York City, is the famed East Coast World War 2 Memorial. We know from nycgovparks.org that the East Coast (WW II) Memorial was designed by the architectural firm of Gehron and Seltzer in the early 1960s, commissioned by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) shortly before this time, and it was completed by the spring of 1963. NYCGOVPARKS.ORG further comments that this exquisitely built and executed WW II memorial was dedicated to American President John F. Kennedy on May 23, 1963.

The massive Battery Park World War 2 Memorial comprises eight huge, smoothed granite walls, with each wall immortalizing the inscribed names, lives, and heroic sacrifices of 4,601 American military service personnel who died fighting against German naval forces during the very deadly and costly Battle of the North Atlantic, a savage seaborne campaign, which was waged between the Allies and Fascist Germany, throughout the entirety of World War II. It was only in 1943 that the Allies, badly outmatched by the German Navy at first, could gain the upper hand over their enemy.

Wall of American Militarymen who died in WWII
Battle of the North Atlantic, WWII Memorial, Battery
Park, NYC. Photo by Michael Mauro DeBonis.

The East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight monolithic walls accurately record the service branch of each American military member who died fighting in the Battle of the North Atlantic. The names of American military members are not only those of the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps, but they also include the names of many U. S. Army, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines, who were also killed on American military supply and naval ships, heading back and forth from America’s east coast to Europe, during WW II. Many of the American ships were unfortunately torpedoed and sunk by Germany’s infamous “wolf packs,” which were the deadly and stealthy submarines of the German Navy. German naval submarines were also called U-boats for being constructed and deployed to carry out Nazi Germany’s covert and malicious underwater warfare.

Each of the eight walls of the East Coast WW II Memorial is nineteen feet tall, with four walls each being positioned at the extreme ends of both the northern and southern portions of the Memorial. The walls are situated firmly atop a well-paved plaza. At the eastern side of the Battery Park WW II Memorial, and placed securely on top of a well-cut pedestal of black polished granite, is a giant majestically sculpted bronze (American) bald eagle. The eagle is depicted in a downward swooping motion, carefully depositing an honor wreath on a rising sea wave.

The colossal bronze metallic statue of the eagle was eloquently created and shaped by noted Italian-American sculptor Albino Manca, who died in 1976 and is recorded as such on nycgovparks.org and metmuseum.org for NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Manca’s great bronze eagle sublimely and solemnly pays tribute to The Battle of North Atlantic’s American fallen. Manca’s eagle is America’s eagle, and the eagle flies directly in the middle of the center aisle, which divides the East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight historic walls.

The other WW II public monument discussed in this article is the Northport (Long Island, NY) Veterans Administration Hospital’s World War II Navy Memorial Plaque. A visual inspection of this WWII public monument (personally carried out by me in September of 2023) indicates that it was cast in bronze, although other composite metals and materials may have been used in its composition. The Northport VA Hospital’s WW II Navy Memorial Plaque is part of an internationally famous series of historical markers called Still on Patrol. The Still on Patrolmarkers are memorial plaques issued by the United States Navy, U. S. Veterans Administration Hospitals, and the U. S. Submarine Veterans of World War II to give the highest esteem and permanence to the lives of American naval officers and sailors who bravely sacrificed their lives, in both Pacific and Atlantic theaters of operation during the Second World War, to advance and preserve democracy. The War Memorial Center of Wisconsin states on its website warmemorialcenter.org that these very respected Still on Patrol historical markers were issued at least as far back as September of 1988. They are intended to enshrine in perpetual honor the lives of 3,131 U. S. Navy submarine sailors and their 374 officers, who guided them in battle against the navies of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The artfully embossed captions in bronze describing the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaques affirm these statements.

They further detail in bold capital English print all the specific names of the 52 sunken submarines of WW II’s U. S. Navy, such as the Albacore, Bonefish, Sealion, Seawolf, S-27, and S-28. At the top left and right-hand corners of the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are also elegantly embossed in bronze the official seals and symbols of the U. S. Navy’s Submarine Warfare Insignia and Insignia of the U. S. Submarine Veterans of WW II, respectively. Just above the bottom center of the Still on Patrol Plaque is another gracefully embossed and deeply delineated large image of a U. S. Navy WW II submarine, swiftly splitting ocean waves, as it cruises the open waters of the high seas, looking for America’s maritime enemies.

Directly below the raised large image of the WW II submarine on the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are embossed two separate and moving comments regarding the dead and gallant American submariners of WW II, who valiantly served on the U. S. Navy’s sunken underwater war machines, and never again returned alive home, to both family and friend. One comment is movingly proclaimed from the mouth of WW II U. S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the other stirring tribute is from WW II U. S. Navy Vice-Admiral C. A. Lockwood.



They both read as follows:

1) WE SHALL NEVER FORGET THAT IT WAS OUR SUBMARINES THAT HELD THE LINES AGAINST THE ENEMY WHILE OUR FLEETS REPLACED LOSSES AND REPAIRED WOUNDS.

FLEET ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ, UNITED STATES NAVY, 1941-1945.



2) I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THEY WENT DOWN FIGHTING AND THAT THEIR BROTHERS WHO SURVIVED THEM TOOK A GRIM TOLL ON OUR SAVAGE ENEMY TO AVENGE THEIR DEATHS.

VICE ADMIRAL C. A. LOCKWOOD, JR., COMMANDER, UNITED STATES NAVY SUBMARINE FORCE, 1943-1946.



Teresa Reid, a senior-level historian and curator for the Northport Historical Society, says that the “…Still on Patrol WW 2 Memorial Plaque at the VA Hospital at Northport, Long Island, was installed in 2013 to give the World War II U.S. Navy veterans of Nassau and Suffolk Counties the great admiration and honor due to them because of their bloody and historic sacrifices made for the American nation, at a most critical time of need.”

The Historical Marker Database (HMD. Org) lists the WW II U. S. Navy Still on Patrol Memorial Plaques as being posted at historical sites in as many as 28 different U. S. states. The submariners of World War Two who served and died on the Still on Patrol submarines are listed as “still on patrol” because they never returned home from the Second World War to their families and friends alive and (still to this day) are considered lost at sea. As members of America’s Greatest Generation, they, their lives, and their immortal tributes to defend American democracy will live on forever. 

Although the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque is not the aesthetic masterpiece, as is Manca’s superlative eagle, it was not intended to be as such. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque is a work of adequately conceived and delivered artistic craftsmanship. It is a work of solid and resilient creative competence. In being so, the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (situated in Northport, NY) effectively transmits and conveys the American cultural ideals of democracy American WW II veterans doggedly fought to preserve, as does Gehron, Seltzer and Manca’s earlier World War II East Coast Memorial, on display, in NYC. World War II's thematic and historical threads universally connect American war memorials. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (whose designer is currently unknown) should be interpreted philosophically and historically as an extension of the East Coast WW II Memorial. A viewer’s trip to personally see both is not wasted time or effort.



BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to Manhattan’s East Coast World War II Memorial at Battery Park, NYC, April 2001.

2) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to the Veterans Administration Hospital at Northport, Long Island, New York, September 19, 2023.

3) Reid, Teresa, Interview with Michael Mauro DeBonis at Northport, New York, October 3, 2023.

4) www.hmdb.org, Official Website of the Historical Marker Database.Org, situated throughout all 50 American states, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 17, 2024.

5) www.metmuseum.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 12, 2024.

6) www.nationalww2museum.org, The National World War Two Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 21, 2024.

7) www.nycgovparks.org, Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, New York City, New York, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, February 23, 2024.

8) www.warmemorialcenter.org, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 19, 2024.





About the Author: Michael Mauro DeBonis is a poet and a historian from Long Island, NY. A graduate of Suffolk County Community College (A. A. in Liberal Studies) and SUNY at Stony Brook (B. A. in English Literature), Michael’s work first appeared in The Brookhaven Times Newspapers. Michael’s latest poetry and prose may be found in The Lyric Magazine, The New York Almanack and The New York History Review. Mr. DeBonis is dedicated to studying and to learning the history of the great State of New York.

Epitaph for Sailor X

Epitaph for Sailor X

by Michael Mauro DeBonis

Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author

 

                                    “Give an old ghost

                                    what you love most

 

                                    in the form of a prayer.

 

                                    I was a sailor in the open air.

                                    I was a dream in a burning star.

 

                                    I am one without a care,

                                    sleeping with kelp and songs ajar.”

 

                                  - April 17, 2024.          

 

 

 

About the Author: Michael Mauro DeBonis is a poet and a historian from Long Island, New York.  A graduate of Suffolk County Community College (A. A. in Liberal Studies) and SUNY at Stony Brook (B. A. in English Literature), Michael's work first appeared in The Brookhaven Times Newspapers.  Michael's latest poetry and prose may be found in The Lyric Magazine, The New York Almanack, and The New York History Review.  Mr. DeBonis is dedicated to studying and learning the history of the great State of New York.

                                    

The Writer Behind the Masked Man

by Stephen G. Eoannou

Copyright ©2024. All rights reserved by the author



Ninety years have passed since the radio listeners first asked, “Who was that masked man?” As the 90th anniversary of The Lone Ranger’s radio premiere is celebrated, an even more intriguing question about one of the most iconic and enduring characters to emerge from the early days of radio lingers: who actually created him? Was it a struggling freelancer from Buffalo named Fran Striker? A wealthy Detroit radio station owner? Or did a team of writers create one of our most beloved and enduring heroes?

Part of the conflict over the Ranger’s “parentage” is attributable to his enduring popularity: radio was just the start of his nine-decade gallop through American pop culture. The "Masked Man" conquered all media: television, movies, books, and comics.

Even today, Ranger toys and giveaways remain highly collectible, and franchise reboots occur regularly. Many people were eager to claim the credit—and reap the benefits—from that long-lived success.


Consider the Freelancer

Francis Hamilton Striker, born in Buffalo, New York, on August 19, 1903, to Frank and Addie Striker, is one of the leading contenders for the title of the Ranger’s creator.

By all accounts, Striker had a happy childhood, which he shared with his younger sister, Pauline. He showed a keen interest in reading and writing from an early age. He sold his first article and short story to a Buffalo newspaper when he was only twelve.

But far from being a quiet, bookish child, Striker was gregarious and curious and created a scrapbook of membership cards from all the youth groups, church clubs, and science clubs he belonged to. At Lafayette High School, he ran track, played saxophone in the school band, and became interested in photography and science. After graduation, he attended The University of Buffalo and majored in Chemistry. In addition, he was active in theater and played the sax in various jazz bands. He also pledged multiple fraternities because, as he explained, each frat had such great guys he just couldn’t decide on one. University officials, of course, reprimanded him. 

Striker’s True Vocation 

Striker’s interest in the theater eventually surpassed his interest in Chemistry. Much to his parents’ dismay, Striker dropped out of college. He tried working at Woolworths and Pillsbury, but the theater kept calling him.

He temporarily left Buffalo for New York City and was hired by The Harry Miller Production Company, a producer of live stage shows. There, Striker learned to direct, produce, and write scripts professionally.


Back to Home Base 

Buffalo remained Striker’s true home, and he returned to The Nickel City in 1928, intending to establish himself as a producer and director in Buffalo’s growing theater circle. But Striker always had a curious mind and soon found himself attracted to the exciting new world of radio. His writing and production experience in New York provided the entrée to that world and landed him a position with local station WEBR.

The early days of broadcasting were heady and frantic with live productions, full in-studio orchestras, and station owners desperate to fill airtime. At WEBR, Striker wore many hats—director, announcer, sax player, news reporter, and, of course, scriptwriter. 

Love and Success 

Romance entered Striker’s life when he reconnected with Janet Gisel, someone he had known since childhood. As children, the two didn’t like each other very much. Things were quite different as adults. They dated and were married in April 1929.

The following year, Striker was promoted to WEBR’s Station Manager, providing him with a more sharply defined role that enabled him to focus mainly on writing and directing live radio dramas.

Striker flourished. He could write quickly and innovatively and pound away at his Remington 16 typewriter for hours.

About this time, Striker borrowed an idea from a New York City-based writer, Phillips Lord, and began offering his scripts to content-starved radio stations nationwide. This approach allowed him to sell a radio series several times in different markets. His fees ranged between two and six dollars per script, income that the newly married Striker desperately needed.

Hard Times 

The stock market crash had sent the nation reeling into a Depression that grew deeper as the months passed. In 1932, the unemployment rate in the United States was around twenty-four percent. Twelve million Americans were out of work, and over a quarter of a million families had lost their homes.

The Strikers were not immune to these economic woes. By the time FDR was elected to his first presidential term in November 1932, Striker had supported a dozen family members who had lost everything since Black Monday, in addition to Fran and Janet’s first child born that same year.

Striker was working and writing almost non-stop at WEBR and hawking his scripts across the country. He was under constant financial pressure to provide for his growing number of dependents.


Enter George Trendle 

One of the radio stations that bought scripts from Striker in 1932 was Detroit’s WXYZ, owned by George W. Trendle. Trendle was born in Ohio in 1884 and graduated from law school in 1908. He was very good at both contract law and negotiation.

In addition, Trendle was an astute businessman drawn to the entertainment industry because of its potential profits. Before attending law school, he was an early investor in nickelodeons, the somewhat crude storefront theaters continuously showed short films.

Nickelodeons were the forerunner to the movie theaters and palaces that followed. They were not very reputable, sometimes considered dangerous by local authorities, and were associated with questionable characters. Physically, they were small, smokey, and furnished with uncomfortable wooden chairs.

When longer motion pictures began to be produced, Trendle could see that the nickelodeons’ days were numbered. He was convinced that moviegoers would flock to larger, more comfortable venues to watch lengthier films and would gladly pay more for the luxury.

And so, Trendle, together with a group of financial investors, built the Columbia Theater, the first large movie house in Detroit. It was an instant success.

By 1928, Trendle owned twenty movie theaters. He sold them all for cash just before the 1929 stock market collapse.


The Next Big Opp and the Last Word

Trendle saw radio as the next big opportunity in entertainment investment. He envisioned potential profits from paid advertising and sponsored programming. And so he bought Detroit radio station and Columbia Broadcasting affiliate WGHP and changed the call letters to WXYZ, “The Last Word In Radio.”

Not even Trendle could escape the Depression, however. He saw his other investments wiped out, and his net worth plummeted from three million to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

Always frugal, Trendle pinched every penny in his new radio venture and would eventually become known as “The Miser of Motown.” He kept two sets of books and used the phony one to show employees and potential hires he couldn’t afford to pay much. He often threatened to fire anyone who wouldn’t take a pay cut. Since jobs were scarce, his radio station employees had no choice but to accept lower wages.

Trendle dropped WXYZ’s affiliation with the Columbia Broadcasting System in another cost-cutting move. This meant that WXYZ could no longer access CBS’ nationally syndicated programming. Trendle wanted cheaper productions and relied on local talent and freelancers to supply content. He purchased Striker’s Warner Lester radio series and was impressed with Striker’s storytelling abilities.

By 1932, Striker was supplying Trendle with six half-hour scripts per week. In December of that year, Striker received a letter from the dramatic director of WXYZ asking if he would “… write up three or four wild west thrillers…including all the hokum of the masked rider, rustler, killer Pete, heroine on the train tracks, etc.”


A New Hero Emerges

Striker, now an expert in repurposing and reselling scripts, dug out the tenth episode of a series he wrote called Covered Wagon Days, which had aired two years earlier. He rewrote the episode and introduced a new hero: The Lone Ranger.

As instructed, Striker produced a handful of Lone Ranger scripts. Over three weeks, letters and revisions were exchanged between Striker and the WXYZ creative team regarding these first Ranger episodes. Striker would revise as he saw fit, responding to feedback as any author would.

On January 21, 1933, Striker received another letter from WXYZ, concluding, “I hope the above suggestions won’t cramp your style. I realize they have changed the character you created, but only in a minor way.” This letter, written before the first episode of The Lone Ranger aired, clearly acknowledges that Striker created The Lone Ranger.

The Lone Ranger did not premiere on WXYZ. Instead, the pilot had a special test run on WEBR in Buffalo. Local radio actor John L. Barrett was the first to star as the "Masked Man."

A few days later, The Lone Ranger debuted on WXYZ with George Stenius playing the lead role. The thirty-minute show ran on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights.

The show did well from the start. Striker polished each script, taking special care with The Lone Ranger. He was paid four dollars an episode.

Although The Lone Ranger was moved to the more coveted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night slot, it failed to attract a national sponsor. Trendle, however, sensed that The Lone Ranger was special and could become a major money-maker. He continued to pursue sponsorship aggressively and finally signed Gordon Bakery as the show’s exclusive sponsor in November 1933.

With Gordon’s backing, Trendle was able to syndicate the show. Throughout the winter, more radio stations tied into WXYZ’s broadcast. By the spring of 1934, The Lone Ranger was a national hit and on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon. 

A Double-Edged Offer 

Trendle recognized that Striker’s talent and vision for The Lone Ranger drove its success. He was also aware of Striker’s growing responsibilities and financial burden in supporting his extended family.

In May of 1934, Trendle offered Striker a full-time position writing exclusively for WXYZ for a salary representing more money than Striker had ever made. The contract also offered job security that would relieve the pressure he was under at home.

However, there was a stipulation: Striker had to sell all rights to The Lone Ranger to Trendle for ten dollars.

Striker was torn. He needed the salary and reliable income to support his wife and now two children as well as his parents, grandparents, various aunts and uncles, and in-laws who were dependent upon him. 

Striker had never signed away the rights to his work before, and the Masked Man’s potential seemed limitless. The Depression, however, was far from over. Because all the family members counted on him and the real possibility that more might soon need his help, he reluctantly signed the contract and sold the rights to Trendle.

Striker had to relocate to Detroit in 1934 as part of the agreement. The Detroit newspapers announced this in an article identifying Striker as the “…creator and author of The Lone Ranger dramas.”

A New Creed. Later, in 1934, Striker wrote “The Lone Ranger Creed,” a guide for the show’s young listeners on how to lead a virtuous life like their hero. By all accounts from family and friends, the Creed represented Striker’s own values.

One of the Creed’s tenets states, “[That] man should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.” Perhaps this is the finest explanation of why Striker sold The Lone Ranger’s rights for such a paltry sum. Yet, it must have been vexing for him to watch Trendle reap profits from all The Lone Ranger broadcasts, movies, comics, and toys.


An Enduring Relationship

If Striker was bitter, he never showed it. He continued to work for Trendle, further developing the Ranger character and creating two more classic series, The Green Hornet and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.

To Trendle’s credit, he honored their original contract and employed Striker through the Depression, ensuring the well-being of Striker’s extended family.

When the Depression ended, Striker asked Trendle for his first raise since signing their 1934 agreement. "The Miser of Motown" promptly fired him. However, the quality of all of Striker’s shows dropped so dramatically in his absence that Trendle’s sponsors forced him to rehire Striker—with a salary increase. 


New Claims of Creatorship

In the 1940s, Trendle began to allege in interviews and articles that he, not Striker, created the Lone Ranger character. A story also circulated that Striker wasn’t hired to work on the show until after the program had aired.

Trendle continued to make these claims until he died in 1972. Even Trendle’s authorized biography written by Mary E. Bickel proclaims on the front cover that Trendle was “The creator and producer of The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, Sergeant Preston of The Yukon… .”

When asked in private who created The Lone Ranger, Striker shrugged and said that people in the radio business knew the truth. When asked in public, he answered that “only God creates.”

Striker never confronted Trendle about the lie. He continued working for him until Trendle sold The Lone Ranger rights in 1954 to the Wrather Corporation for three million dollars, a record sale at the time.

Striker’s Final Years

After the sale, Striker returned to Buffalo and continued to write, focusing more on young adult action novels. He also taught creative writing classes at The University of Buffalo and the YMCA.

Sadly, Striker did not live long enough to write his memoirs and tell his side of The Lone Ranger story: he was killed in a car crash in 1962.


Credit Where It’s Due 

There’s no doubt that Trendle and the WXYZ staff contributed to The Lone Ranger’s development with their suggested revisions. Trendle certainly had the resources and business acumen to take The Ranger to a national audience and market him in an unprecedented manner.

The roots of The Lone Ranger, however, began with Striker’s Covered Wagon Days and continued throughout a career marked by his authorship of seven hundred Lone Ranger radio scripts, eighteen Ranger novels, and a dozen more young-adult books featuring the Masked Man.

While Fran Striker never received the acclaim or riches he deserved in his lifetime, he must have been confident that recognition would eventually come. After all, the Lone Ranger Creed states that “truth alone lives on forever.”

About the author: Stephen G. Eoannou is the author of the novel Yesteryear. Based on the life of Fran Striker, Yesteryear has been awarded the 2021 International Eyelands Award for Best Historical Novel, The Firebird Book Award for Biographical Fiction, Bookshelf’s ‘Must Read’ for 2023, and Shelf Unbound’s Notable Indy Books of 2023. 

A Tale of Two Albanians

By Lawrence S. Freund

copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author

 

Two men of mid-19th-century Albany, New York, had much to share: origins in the Jewish communities of what would become Germany, immigration to the United States and more particularly to the New York State capital … and, eventually, the same father-in-law. But there, they diverged in ways sometimes dramatic and always of interest for historical, legal, and personal reasons.

Many immigrants in the mid-1800s passed through the entry gates into New York City, where they stayed. However, some new arrivals saw the river emptying into the harbor as a route to another promising destination, Albany, the New York State capital that had relatively recently become the eastern portal of the engineering wonder known as the Erie Canal. Reflecting on the 19th-century immigration of Jews to the United States, scholar and author Deborah Dash Moore explains, “As central Europe transitioned from a society of estates, in which Jews served as middlemen between peasants and nobles, to an industrial society, many Jews faced dismal economic prospects. The slightly better off moved to larger cities in search of work; the poor migrated to the United States.”[1] In addition, Prof. Moore notes, the immigrants came from lands that restricted the access of Jews to “professions, trades, real estate, and even marriage.”[2] While the first Jewish arrivals in what is now Albany first set foot there in 1654,[3] as the late Rabbi Naftali J. Rubinger, a chronicler of the Albany Jewish community, suggested, “there is no doubt that any official Jewish community existed until well in the third decade of the nineteenth century.”[4] Albany by that time, added Rubinger, was “throbbing and thriving, bustling with an energetic realization of its economic potency and geographic status. Into its teeming environs, there thronged significant populations from western Europe. The primary sources of this immigration were England, Ireland, and Germany. As part of the sizeable German influx into the city of Albany, a goodly number of Bavarian Jews made up the Germanic strata of this city.”[5]

The mid-1830s is the generally accepted period for the arrival of the first significant new wave of Jewish settlers in Albany. An early source, writer Isaac Markens, listed the names of nine men who, he wrote, appeared in Albany in 1837. Two years later, according to Markens, there were 23 more arrivals, including two whose families would play a key role in the following story: Sampson Rosendale and Isaac Cohn. “In 1840,” Markens added, “the Hebrew population of Albany numbered thirty families.”[6]

There is, of course, a major omission in Markens’ chronology as there is in Rubinger’s more extensive list of these early arrivals:[7] the names of the women and children who may have accompanied these men. That there were women and children among these pioneers is evident in Rubinger’s own footnotes, attesting, for example, that Sampson Rosendale “married Fanny Sachs. He was the father of Silas, born in Saxony in 1834.”[8] Edward Bendell, another immigrant, “married Hannah Stein while yet in Bavaria,” according to another of Rubinger’s footnotes.[9]

The precise arrival date of the Rosendale family (as well as their original names) remains uncertain, although most records suggest about 1837.[10] Sampson (alternately spelled Samson) established himself in Albany as a peddler, an easily accessible profession for many of the new arrivals. Sampson and Fannie Rosendale’s first American-born child was Simon Wolfe, born 23 June 1842; he was followed by Samuel, born in 1845, and Rosanna or Rose, born in 1848.

Simon Wolfe Rosendale began his education in the public schools of Albany while at the same time, he received instruction at the synagogue school conducted by the Bohemian-born Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who had arrived in Albany in 1846 as the reform-minded spiritual leader of Congregation Beth-El. Four years later, in 1850, the latent friction between some of the synagogue’s trustees and Wise broke out into a physical confrontation, leading to an open split within the synagogue and the creation by Wise and his followers of a new synagogue, Anshe Emeth. “When the storm broke over the head of Isaac M. Wise because of his activity in the 'Reform’ movement in Albany,” recalled journalist Isidor Lewi, a close friend of Simon, “Rosendale's father (Sampson) was one of the leaders of the opposition, but he lived to see the wisdom of the Wise campaign and became his friend.”[11] Simon continued his education in Albany[12] and then began his path to the legal profession by reading law, that is, serving an apprenticeship at a leading Albany law firm. After two years of clerking, he expanded his educational horizons and enrolled in the Barre Academy, a relatively new institution (founded in 1852) in nearby Vermont focused on classical instruction. The secondary school’s object, it said, was to “maintain a healthful moral influence, and to impress upon the minds of the pupils the claims of a vital religion,” and, while controlled by the local Congregationalist community, it maintained that “no discrimination has ever been made regarding the advantages of the institution, nor is it known that any student of another denomination has complained of any interference with his religious belief.”[13] Rosendale graduated from the Barre Academy in 1861,[14] but rather than continue his academic journey to college, he returned to Albany, now joining the law office of attorney Solomon F. Higgins, after which he was admitted to the bar. Rosendale’s choice of the Higgins firm was fortuitous; Higgins was elected Albany’s district attorney on the Democratic Party ticket in November 1862 and, after taking office in 1863, appointed the newly fledged lawyer as his assistant district attorney, the first rung of what would become an ascending career in the legal profession.

Isaac Cohn and his wife Amelia were among the early German-born Jewish arrivals in Albany. Their first child was Levi, born in Albany in 1841, followed by Caroline (known as Carrie, born in 1843), Betsy (later known as Lizzie, born in 1844) and Helen (born in 1849). By 1850, Isaac had established himself as a dry goods merchant and, in 1860, employed his son Levi as a bookkeeper. In 1864, during the Civil War, Levi, likely through his Albany Democratic Party connections, was appointed paymaster of a New York State National Guard brigade with the rank of major. The position would lead in that same year to Levi’s appointment to a three-man commission sent to Washington, D.C., by New York’s Democratic governor to oversee the voting of New York’s soldiers in that year’s presidential election as well as to attend to the troops’ pay and health. The three men were arrested on 27 October 1864, jailed, and tried on charges of election fraud by a suspicious Lincoln administration. They were found not guilty by a military tribunal, but it was not until 17 February 1865 that Levi was released from prison in Washington and could return to his home in Albany.[15] With the war's conclusion, Levi set up shop in Albany as a tobacconist. Meanwhile, in about 1864, Levi’s sister Lizzie married another arrival from Germany, Meyer Kallman Cohen, an insurance agent who preferred to be known by his initials, M. K.

In 1868, tragedy struck the Cohn family when Isaac jumped into the Hudson River and drowned. “After relieving himself of his coat and hat and writing his residence, No. 88 Madison Avenue, on a card,” one newspaper reported, “he took the fatal plunge. It is surmised that he was laboring under insanity at the time, caused by sickness, with which he has been afflicted for some months. He was respected by his acquaintances and was very well situated financially.”[16] Two years earlier, Isaac had prepared for his death by signing a will in which he divided his estate among his four children, but tellingly stated, “whereas I have heretofore advanced to my daughter Lizzie Cohn the sum of one thousand dollars. Now therefore I charge and direct that the same be deducted, out of her share above given…”[17] By 1870, Lizzie and M. K. Cohen had become the parents of three children (Frederica, Ira and Howard; two more would follow, Herbert and Amy), but while claiming a relatively high and likely unreal estate value that year of $10,000, they were also sharing living quarters with another couple: Sampson and Fannie Rosendale.[18]

The link between Albany’s Cohn and Rosendale families is clear. Three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers. Silas Rosendale, the eldest of Sampson’s children, responded by immediately enlisting as a corporal in a New York State volunteer regiment and was ultimately promoted to captain. In July 1862, Silas was wounded in the arm (“slightly,” according to one report).[19] In February 1863, after recovering at home, Silas (at the time, a first lieutenant) prepared to return to his regiment and was presented with a sword “by his Albany friends,” with speeches by, among others, his brother Simon and M. K. Cohen.[20] In 1870, a new lodge of the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith was founded in Albany. Installed as its president was Simon W. Rosendale, as its treasurer, M. K. Cohen.[21] In February of that same year, Simon W. Rosendale married Helen Cohn, the sister of M. K. Cohen’s wife, Lizzie.

The fourth and last child of M. K. and Lizzie Cohen, a daughter they named Amy, was born in 1873. In those years, M. K. continued his work in Albany as an insurance agent while, at the same time, performing as a tenor with choral groups in the city, singing, for example, “Seu Shearim” (“Open Up You Gates”) with a chorus from Albany’s Anshe Emeth synagogue at the consecration of a new synagogue in Hudson, New York.[22] In late 1874, however, M. K. Cohen’s fortunes took a decidedly bleak turn when he was charged with passing a forged check for $600. “Several persons were present to make similar complaints,” a reporter said. “After his arrest, Cohen gave bail for an examination, which was to take place this afternoon. When the case was called, Mr. Cohen was not present, and it is alleged he has left the city.”[23] A few days later, another newspaper reported there were “nearly two hundred policyholders in various life insurance companies for which Mr. Hendrick, Mr. Safford, and Mr. Rose are agents, who are bewailing the absence of M. K. Cohen. It is alleged that Cohen would go to the office of the above-named persons, procure policies on trust, take them to the persons who were insured, get the premiums on them, and put the money in his pocket.” The newspaper added pointedly that according to an 1873 law, “the embezzlement of moneys by insurance agents is made larceny.”[24] Months later, with M. K. Cohen now absent, 29-year-old Lizzie Cohen and her four children, ages eight to two, moved into the Albany household of her 34-year-old brother Levi.[25]

Simon W. Rosendale continued to serve in his appointed position as Albany’s assistant district attorney for four years, but in 1868, he decided to move into elective politics and accepted the nomination of the local Democratic Party as its candidate for recorder, a judicial position hearing criminal and civil matters along with some administrative responsibilities. Rosendale won the election with what a newspaper later described as “one of the largest majorities recorded up to that time for a Democratic candidate.”[26] Rosendale’s administration of justice drew quick praise from the Albany press, one journal rejoicing that “the spirit of lawlessness and rowdyism has received a check by the fearless manner in which Recorder Rosendale has administered justice. Acting entirely independent of all party considerations and political influences, he has meted out punishment to all offenders in a manner entitling him to the praise and respect of every law-abiding citizen.”[27]

However, four years later, in 1872, when Rosendale ran for re-election, the Albany Democrats split into two factions, and the Republican candidate in the three-man race was the winner.[28] Having moved into private practice after his electoral defeat, Rosendale nevertheless returned to government service when Albany’s mayor, Michael Nolan, a Democrat, appointed him corporation counsel, in effect, the city’s chief attorney and legal adviser. Rosendale held that position until 1882 when he resigned because of what was described as “the pressing demands of his rapidly growing law practice.”[29] Indeed, in 1878, Rosendale had joined a law firm with Albany attorney Rufus W. Peckham, who, like Rosendale, had once served as the city’s district attorney and corporation counsel.[30] In 1883, Peckham, a Democrat, was elected to the New York State Supreme Court, a trial-level tribunal. As a result, with Peckham now on the bench, the Peckham and Rosendale partnership was dissolved, and the firm became known as Rosendale and Hessberg. Albert Hessberg was a young attorney who had started his law career at the same firm and, to his advantage, was Rosendale’s nephew by marriage (Hessberg was married to Frederica Cohen, a daughter of M. K. and Lizzie Cohen, the sister of Rosendale’s wife Helen). Three years later, in 1886, Peckham continued to ascend the judicial system and was elected in a statewide vote to New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.[31] It was a career path that did not escape the notice of his former law partner.

Faced in late 1874 with charges of fraud and embezzlement, M. K. Cohen adopted a popular strategy of his time: he decided to go west, abandoning his bail money along with his wife and five children. By 1880, he had created a new life for himself in San Francisco, but he was still apparently engaged in activities recalling his recent Albany misadventures. On January 15, 1880, a Sacramento newspaper reported that the previous day, a police officer from San Francisco had arrived in town “and arrested a peddler named H. K. Cohen upon a warrant charging him with embezzlement…” The pair was scheduled to return to San Francisco the following day.[32] Later that same year, in about August, Cohen experienced another encounter with San Francisco lawmen, although, on this occasion, he was evidently blameless. Likely with a mind to the approaching November presidential election, the German-born Cohen went to the city’s registrar's office to register to vote. Claiming that he had lost his naturalization papers, he provided the place (Albany) and year (1860) he had become an American citizen. A month or so later, Cohen returned to the registrar's office and was told by an official, according to one account, “that he had written to Albany and received information that no man named Meyer K. Cohen had ever been registered in 1863. Mr. Cohen informed him that 1860 was the date given, which, upon examination of the books, was found to be correct. Deputy Holmes profusely apologized for his little mistake, and Mr. Cohen returned to his place of business with the assurance that there would be no further trouble.”[33] However, In October, according to this same account, Cohen was informed by another official that he was under arrest “for fraudulent registration and must give bonds or go to jail. He was finally released on his own recognizance after refusing to furnish bail.” The San Francisco Examiner commented editorially (although within its news article) that this was “a clear case of attempted bulldozing, and it is said that there will be a systematic attempt made by the Federal election officials to prevent naturalized citizens from voting.”[34] In the meantime, though, Cohen had successfully registered to vote on 28 September 1880 as Mayer Kallmann Cohen, a shirt manufacturer living at 331 Kearny Street in San Francisco.[35] Of interest, on 11 June 1880, in that year’s federal census, Cohen still listed himself as married, more than five years after leaving his family in Albany.[36]

M. K. Cohen appears now to have sought a radical change in his circumstances, moving from urban San Francisco to Silverton, a new rough-and-tumble mining town in the mountainous southwest corner of Colorado. First laid out in 1873, Silverton, according to one historian of the town, was described “by an eyewitness (in 1876) as ‘presenting a rather disgusting appearance,’” and consisted “of 350 people, 100 houses, two sawmills, and four stores, along with the usual complement of saloons, hotels, boarding houses, cigar and tobacco shops, and gambling halls.”[37] In August 1881, Cohen first appeared in the annals of Silverton when he purchased a saloon in the town, selling drinks at the cut-rate price of two for a quarter.[38] But his occupational leap from shirtmaker to saloon keeper was balanced by a familiar pattern of law-breaking. In March 1882, Cohen was arrested in Denver and charged with larceny in what he claimed was “merely a scheme to force money from him.”[39] An accommodating judge discharged Cohen, but the sheriff from Silverton’s San Juan County quickly arrived in Denver and re-arrested him on charges of forging a note for $460. Cohen was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to four years in the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City. A Denver newspaper observed that Cohen was “well known in Denver as connected at one time with the firm of Simpson & Co., liquor dealers.”[40]

After serving two years in the Canon City prison, Cohen saw a chance for freedom, thanks to the arguments of three attorneys before Colorado’s highest court. The court began its review of the case by recalling Cohen’s indictment, that he “did counterfeit and forge the handwriting of another, to-wit, Lawsha Brothers, to a certain promissory note of the date of January 3, 1882, for the sum of $460…”[41] Cohen’s trio of lawyers presented several challenges to Cohen’s conviction and, crucially, the Supreme Court accepted one of them: that the trial judge had neglected to instruct the jurors that to convict Cohen, they had to believe his “signing was forged or counterfeited, and with intent to damage or defraud some person.”[42] The court filed its ruling on 14 March 1884, reversing Cohen’s conviction and remanding him for a new trial. In June, a Silverton judge ordered the sheriff to retrieve Cohen from the penitentiary while the town’s citizens were already circulating a petition arguing that Cohen’s two years behind bars was sufficient for his crime and that the prosecutor should abandon any further legal action against him.[43]

In Albany in 1891, Simon W. Rosendale continued his private law practice, testifying in February before a state senate committee on behalf of Albany merchants against a bill that would have extended the existing 1886 child labor laws (largely ineffective)[44] from factories to the state’s mercantile establishments. The bill, sponsored by a senior Republican senator, was “absurd,” Rosendale argued, claiming that “Stores are in a sense educational institutions and young men working there should not be hampered by having their hours limited.” He also maintained that “It would be an infringement of the laws of personal liberty to say that women should work only so many hours a week.”[45] Even as Rosendale was defending his clients and their interests, he was also focused on a larger goal, which he achieved on 16 September 1891 when New York State’s Democrats nominated him for attorney general at their Saratoga convention. A politically connected journalist for Whitelaw Reid’s Republican New York Tribune later reported a “highly interesting movement in Democratic politics”[46] that led to Rosendale’s nomination. Back in 1886, according to the story, Rosendale was instrumental in ensuring the election victory of Rufus W. Peckham, his former law partner, to the Court of Appeals. Peckham returned the favor now in 1891 when Rosendale sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for attorney general. “It was rather indecorous for a Judge of the Court of Appeals,” the Tribune suggested, “but nevertheless Mr. Peckham descended into ‘the dirty pool of politics’ so far as to solicit” the support of the Democratic party boss Edward Murphy. That accomplished, Rosendale secured the nomination.

On 3 November 1891, the entire New York State Democratic ticket was elected, led by gubernatorial candidate Roswell P. Flower. Rosendale won by what a Democratic Party journal described as “a very flattering majority.”[47] But there was another achievement, largely unstated at the time, as one of his nephews, G. Herbert Cone,[48] would later recall: Rosendale’s election, Cone wrote, “was a great distinction then, as he was the first Jew to be elected to office in New York by a statewide vote.”[49] Cone, on close terms with his uncle in Albany, explained: “Always a devout Jew, Rosendale identified himself with practically all the movements in his active days that sought to advance Jewish interests and culture. He was President of the Court of Appeal of the B'nai B'rith, a member of the Executive Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a generous supporter of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and an intimate friend of Dr. Isaac M. Wise, its founder.”[50] All that was reflected in Rosendale’s post-election comments to the press. “If my election means anything other than partisan success,” he said, “it also emphasizes the fact that in this great Empire State, at least, no bigotry or prejudices are to operate to prevent the nomination of any person. If my election to the distinguished position of Attorney General will have a tendency toward refuting the cruel malevolent charge of the Goldwin Smiths, it will at least have accomplished some good purpose.”[51] Goldwin Smith, a 19th-century British-born academic, also active in Canada and the United States, has been described as “the most vicious anti-Semite in the English-speaking world.”[52] Goldwin’s name was a natural choice by Rosendale as a generic term for anti-Semitism.

After spending two years in the confines of the Colorado penitentiary, M. K. Cohen arrived back in Silverton on 10 June 1884, and the prosecuting attorney immediately asked the local court to drop his retrial “in obedience to a request of a petition signed by citizens that two years in the penitentiary had satisfied justice in his case.”[53] Days later, Cohen, now at liberty, announced that he would be opening a saloon on Greene Street in Silverton,[54] and indeed, the new drinking establishment received its first customers on 1 August.[55] Cohen, an enthusiastic singer, aptly named the saloon the Arion after a mythological Greek singer/poet. Cohen, during his Albany days, had brought his tenor voice to concert halls and houses of worship. Now, in Silverton, he performed opera,[56] high mass at the Silverton Catholic church[57], and blackface minstrelsy.[58] However, while successful in the concert hall, Cohen could not sustain his saloon and ran out of money. As 1884 ended, he lost the Arion.[59] The following year, Cohen, in partnership, purchased another saloon, this one in the basement of Silverton’s Grand Hotel, but once more, the scheme ended in failure for Cohen, and after just two months, his partner took over the business.[60]

Realizing his lack of success in Silverton’s competitive saloon industry, Cohen moved on to other enterprises in the mining town. In 1886, he was actively engaged in sign painting and decorating, winning praise for a drop curtain he created at the Fashion Saloon as “the finest piece of artistic lettering done in Silverton.”[61]Sometime later, he received plaudits from one of the town’s newspapers after completing “some fine lettering for the Crystal Palace Billiard Hall of Anderson & Anderson. Mr. Cohen,” proclaimed the journal, “is a first-class sign-writer, not only in this country but any other. His fine ornamental sign work should adorn every business house in the city.”[62] Cohen also delved into the raffle business, offering Silverton’s residents 300 chances at a dollar each, with five prizes, including what was described as a diamond ring and a gold watch.[63] He offered a German-language class, announcing, “Those desiring to acquire a thorough knowledge of that language will address M. K. Cohen, P.O. Box 191.”[64]

In 1889, a new chapter opened in Cohen’s life with the founding of an amateur band in Silverton, the "Rainbow Cornet Band," commonly known as the "Rainbows." The amateur musical group played locally on various occasions and traveled for a concert in nearby Durango, Colorado. In March 1890, the ensemble, dressed in their newly arrived uniforms, gathered at Silverton’s Grand Hotel to honor their president, M. K. Cohen, on what was described as his 51st birthday. “Mr. Cohen thanked the boys in a few well-chosen words,” according to a Silverton newspaper, “complimented the boys on their natty appearance and invited them upstairs where a very nice supper had been spread. Jack Sinclair proposed Cohen’s health, and the boys drank one another’s health and talked over the Durango trip and had a good time generally.”[65]

Inspired by the success of its Rainbows, Silverton soon engaged with a musical group of considerably greater fame and accomplishment. It was called the "Dodge City Cow Boy Band," founded in about 1880 and taking its name from its original base in the booming Kansas cattle town. The musicians performed in cowboy attire and were led by Jack Sinclair, who substituted a revolver for the usual baton. On 12 September 1890, articles of incorporation for the band in its new home in Silverton were filed in Denver by several men, including M. K. Cohen and Jack Sinclair.[66] A few months later, the band paraded in Denver at the inauguration of Governor John L. Routt. “Clad in striking costume and with a banner surmounted by the largest pair of steer’s horns to be found in the world, (the band) proved the most striking feature of the parade,” enthused a reporter.[67] According to one Colorado-based report, the band had chosen to abandon its Dodge City home base “owing to the fact that Dodge City was fast going down hill.” Meanwhile, the report continued, its leader, Jack Sinclair, had been called to Silverton to instruct the newly formed Rainbows, and “Upon finding good musical talent in that locality and receiving encouragement from the citizens, he procured most of the best players from Dodge City, who found ready employment in the thriving metropolis of the San Juan.”[68] At about the same time that Cohen was instrumental in bringing the band to Silverton, he also became an agent in Silverton for the St. Paul German Accident Insurance Co., advertising that he was “prepared to insure anyone and everyone against accidents. The company is first class is every respect and is doing a large business throughout the west and north-west. It does not cost much to insure, and having an income when you meet with an accident is very handy.”[69] Although Cohen had now resumed the insurance sales work he began in Albany two decades earlier, his primary focus at this time was the new band in town, and he became its secretary and bass drum player.[70] However, his engagement with the band in Silverton would come to bear elements of his problematic conduct in Albany.

In a summary of his first year as New York State’s attorney general, 1892, Simon W. Rosendale wrote, “Probably the most important public questions were involved in what is known as the ‘apportionment cases.’”[71] The three cases argued on the same day, 4 October 1892, before the Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, all focused on the same claim: the state legislature’s apportionment law enacted earlier that year was unconstitutional. The Democratic-controlled legislature had re-apportioned the state’s senate districts while it reduced the number of assembly seats in some counties and increased them in others. In general, Republicans called foul. Lawyers arguing before the court nominally represented public officials, but, in the public view, it was a contest between Republicans and Democrats, with Attorney General Rosendale representing the Democrats and William A. Sutherland arguing for the Republicans (indeed, it was a re-match between the two attorneys: Rosendale had defeated Sutherland in the 1891 race for attorney general). Sutherland contended that Monroe County had been defrauded by the legislature’s act, which, he said, was unconstitutional. Rosendale countered that “absolute equality is impossible and that mathematical precision is not required by the Constitution.”[72] He also contended that the re-apportionment law could not be reviewed by the courts except in cases of fraud and gross injustice. On 13 October, the court delivered its ruling, upholding the constitutionality of the apportionment law. The main opinion was delivered by Judge Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner and a major sponsor of Rosendale’s candidacy for attorney general on the Democratic ticket. Peckham declared, “the courts have no power … to review the exercise of a discretion intrusted (sic) to the Legislature by the Constitution unless it is plainly and grossly abused,” and concluded, “We are compelled to the conclusion that this act of 1892 successfully withstood all assaults upon it, and is a valid and effective law.”[73] Response to the high court’s ruling was not surprisingly divided. One Democratic-leaning newspaper commented, “The charge that the decision is warped by partisan bias is simply the ill-tempered ravings of the defeated litigants”[74] while, in contrast, a Republican-leaning journal observed that the Democratic members of the Court of Appeals voted “to maintain the interests of the Democratic party and to affirm a law the inequality and unfairness of which they placidly concede.”[75]

In October 1893, New York State’s Democrats gathered in Saratoga to nominate their candidates for the fall election. Simon W. Rosendale, his two-year term as attorney general nearing completion, handily won re-nomination, as Albany lawyer and politician Louis W. Pratt proclaimed that the party’s best political achievement during the past two years was the reapportionment of the senate and the assembly. Pratt went on, “The man upon whom Democratic success depended and who single handed met the enemy in legal conflict, who defended the constitution and the law against every attack of our enemies and who won a glorious victory at every point – that man was the attorney-general of New York – Simon W. Rosendale of Albany.”[76] Democrats confidently considered Rosendale’s re-election a “foregone conclusion”[77] while Republicans charged that Rosendale had “shown the proper degree of subserviency to the Democratic machine, and whose connection with bank wreckers and the like does not entitle him to the confidence of the people.”[78] On election day, the entire Democratic ticket, including Rosendale, was defeated. However, Rosendale, still as attorney general until the end of the year, faced one last election issue, a flagrant challenge to the rules, although the rule breaker was a fellow Democrat. John Y. McKane, the Democratic boss in the Gravesend area of what is now Brooklyn, had turned back a delegation of Republicans who had a court-granted injunction to inspect the ballot registration lists and observe the local voting. McKane, crowing, “Injunctions don’t go here,” set his police on the Republicans and arrested them.[79] Asked by a reporter for his reaction to the incident, Rosendale explained that, as attorney general, he had no standing to take the case to court, but he went on to say, “"I never read of a grosser, more abominable election outrage than that which McKane is represented as having perpetrated.” Not mincing words, he added, ““McKane should be pursued by all the resources of the courts, for he has apparently defied and disobeyed the election laws of the State and brutally assaulted citizens who were endeavoring to have those laws respected.”[80]The following year, McKane was indeed tried and convicted of violating New York’s election law. He was sentenced to six years at Sing Sing prison but was released after serving just over four years.[81]

Rosendale’s career as an elected official was now at an end, but before leaving office in December, he was able to notch his last victory in his legal belt. Two years earlier, in 1891, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a split decision, had reversed its previous rulings on the taxation of railroads’ interstate commerce, allowing the State of Maine to impose an excise tax on a railroad company.[82] “Early in my term of office as Attorney-General in 1892,” Rosendale would recall, “I came across a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which convinced me that the State had the right to tax that portion of the interstate business of the railroads which is done within this State. It was a test case that had been brought by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, and the United States Supreme Court squarely decided that the railroad must pay a tax upon the amount of interstate business it should do within the State of Maine. I at once called Controller Campbell’s attention to this decision, deeming it my duty to do so, although I had my doubts as to the wisdom of the State of New York taxing its railroads upon their interstate business and thus putting them at a disadvantage with other great railways of other States in competing for this business.”[83] Rosendale argued the case against a railroad’s lawyer before a three-judge state panel, which ruled in Rosendale’s favor.[84] A friendly Albany newspaper commented, “The ability of Attorney-General Rosendale and his grasp of the important problems of litigation which have come before him is shown again by the unanimous decision of the General Term, sustaining his opinion in the matter of imposing a tax on foreign corporations.” The newspaper added, “It will be a great loss to the people of the State when Mr. Rosendale's term expires. He has performed his duties faithfully and well. A lawyer of the highest standing, a scholar and linguist of exceptional attainments, and a citizen universally respected, he will return to private practice with the record of an honorable and successful official career.”[85]

Reflecting on his lifelong friendship with Simon W. Rosendale, Albany-born journalist Isidor Lewi would write, “Simon Rosendale was above all a Jew. If the chronicle of his earthly journey were to be preserved, it would have been his wish – those he knew him best think – that his name be counted among those who, by precept and example, added lustre to American Judaism. The American Jewish Historical Society was one of his great loves. He served as one of its vice-presidents from the first organization meeting in 1892 to his last day; he contributed learned papers on colonial New York in the early volumes and rarely missed an annual meeting.”[86] In an unsigned letter intended for publication in 1918, Rosendale wrote, “A long lineage of Jewish ancestry precedes my advent into the world. I have never felt the opprobrious epithets that are so frequently used in derision for being a Jew. I attribute my position which has always been free from prejudice and slur because of my faith solely to the fact that I am an American.”[87]Yet, prejudice was clearly evident during that period, notably in a character in Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, House of Mirth, and its leading character with a name not so coincidentally very similar to Rosendale’s, “Simon Rosedale.” Rosedale is not a literal figuration of Rosendale; Wharton introduces her Rosedale character as “a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type”[88] and, later, “the same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social board a dozen times…”[89] Rosedale’s “existence in the novel,” writes author Elizabeth Pantirer, “embodies fears of Americans during the turn of the century who viewed Jews as a genuine threat to their identity and prosperity.[90]

Simon W. Rosendale never regarded his Jewish identity as an issue. What became an issue for him was the evolution of the perception of the Jewish identity in the early years of the new century. In 1896, the Hungarian-born journalist Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet urging the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and followed that the next year by convening the First Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland. That led eventually, in 1917, to Britain’s Balfour Declaration calling for a "national home for the Jewish people." In 1918, Rosendale published his response to Zionism, declaring, “We are Jews by religion only. Religious faiths, beliefs, and affiliations are and should be kept separate and apart from nationalism. Palestinian nationalism is not a dogma or doctrine of the Jewish religion.” Rosendale continued, “We are American citizens of the Jewish faith and as such cannot but oppose any movement for the creation of a state predicated on religious belief or affiliations.”[91] But a few months later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in a letter to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a prominent American Zionist, expressed satisfaction “in the progress of the Zionist movement in the

The United States.”[92] Rosendale, unhappy with Wilson’s policy declaration, immediately picked up his pen and wrote to his congressman about what he called “a pretentious Jewish movement known as Zionism.” Speaking on behalf of the Reform movement of Judaism, among which Rosendale counted himself, he wrote that they “maintain that they are Jews by religion only and Americans by nationality.” Rosendale added, “they neither participate in nor approve of the effort to establish a Jewish Palestinian State.”[93]Rosendale followed that letter by joining 30 other “prominent men” in a petition sent to Wilson for consideration by the Paris Peace Conference deliberating the terms of the peace after World War One. “(W)e raise our voices,” they declared, “in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed.”[94] Years later, while marking his 90th birthday in 1932, Rosendale showed no sign of abandoning the lessons he learned in Albany many decades earlier from Rabbi Isaac M. Wise and held then by Reform Judaism: “(W)e are Jews by religion only; declare against all claims to Jewish political nationalism; abandon many of the outworn, inappropriate customs and ceremonies as well as ritualistic formulas and practices.”[95]

M. K. Cohen continued his association with the world of music, entertaining with his own tenor voice in the Silverton, Colorado, area, acting as secretary of the Cow Boy Band, and involving himself with a touring classical music group headed by the Spanish pianist Carlos Sobrino and cellist Richard F. Schubert. On 15 August 1891, a Colorado newspaper promoted a concert that week by the Sobrino-Schubert Concert Combination “under the management of M. K. Cohen.”[96] At the same time, alarm bells went off in Silverton, where a local newspaper informed its readers: “M. K. Cohen, a former resident of this town, is posing in Denver as manager of the Dodge City Cow Boy Band. This is a copy of his card:

M. K. Cohen
Manager of the Dodge City Cowboy Band and the Sobrino Schubert Concert Combination
2647 Curtis St. Denver, Colo.

The newspaper went on, “His card is simply for the purpose of misleading the public and to endeavor to obtain for his orchestra the benefit of any reputation the band may have. Mr. Cohen acted as secretary for the band at one time and agitated the bass drum, but after his removal from the band, his connection with the band ceased.”[97] Later that month, the president of the Cow Boy Band, Horace Greeley Prosser – owner of a Silverton furniture store/undertaking establishment and a long-time singing partner with Cohen – advised Denver’s leading newspaper that the Cow Boy Band “is in no way connected with the Sobrino Concert company and that Mr. M. K. Cohen is not and never was manager of said band.”[98]

Cohen was now gone from Silverton and Colorado and made his way east, arriving in Chicago in September. In November, he was in Milwaukee, staying at the city’s Grand Central Hotel. On 1 December 1891, he ended his life. At his death, local journalists added a description to their reports of Cohen’s suicide that he might have enjoyed: “Suicide of M. K. Cohen of the Dodge City Cow Boy Band,” read the headline of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel,[99] while Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, in a story sent from Milwaukee, began its account, “M. K. Cohen, business manager and part owner of the Dodge City Cow Boy Band...”[100]

According to newspaper reports, Cohen was found in his hotel room bed on the morning of 1 December. Near him were several letters and a business card listing him as business manager of the Dodge City Cow Boy Band – the same card his former band associate, Prosser, found so objectionable – along with his Denver address. There was also a letter to his long-ignored wife in Albany, Lizzie Cohen, from which a reporter deduced that “it appears that he had been separated from his family and that he felt desperate because his wife was seeking a divorce.”[101] Another letter indicated he had contemplated suicide while living in Chicago in September; other papers showed evidence that he had been a heavy user of morphine for the past year and that he had been a Colorado correspondent for several prominent papers.[102] Also, according to one newspaper, “There were about a dozen letters addressed to persons who owed Cohen money. Cohen told each one that if the account had been settled a life would have been saved.”[103]Cohen, in his last request, asked members of Milwaukee’s Jewish community to arrange for his burial. Grasped in his lifeless hand, recalled one reporter, was “a prayer written in Hebrew,”[104] likely his final thought.

Shortly after Cohen’s death, a Milwaukee newspaper reported that the city’s Jewish community would attend to his burial and that “A telegram was received yesterday from the wife of the deceased, who said that he had not been at home since 1874, and had not supported her, and that consequently, she did not feel under any obligations to bury the remains.”[105] According to Milwaukee’s official record, Cohen, age 53, was buried at the city’s Greenwood Cemetery, a Jewish burial ground that opened in 1872.[106] As a final coda to Cohen’s last days, a Silverton, Colorado, newspaper commented just days after his death, “M. K. Cohen was evidently insane at the time he killed himself as at no time in his life was he either manager or part proprietor of the Cow-Boy Band. At one time, he manipulated the bass drum, but that was all.”[107]

In the years after Cohen’s death, his wife, Lizzie, lived in Albany with their son Herbert, an attorney associated with the Court of Appeals.[108] A brief notice appeared in Albany newspapers that she died on 4 March 1903 at her residence (the home of her daughter Amy) and that there would be a private funeral service.[109] She is buried beside her father, Isaac Cohn, in Albany’s Beth Emeth Cemetery.

Simon W. Rosendale, interviewed for his 80th birthday in 1922, said he had always been a Democrat and named three men who “best embody his political ideals” – Thomas Jefferson; Samuel Tilden, a one-time governor of New York and the Democrats’ losing presidential candidate in 1876; and Grover Cleveland, another former New York governor and the Democrats’ successful presidential candidate in 1884 and 1892. Cleveland, according to the birthday profile, was, in fact, “his close personal friend.”[110] According to journalist Isidor Lewi, Rosendale “was high in Cleveland's social inner circle, and the intimacy between them continued long after the Governor became President in 1893.”[111] The former attorney general was also on close terms with New York’s legal community, and In early 1898, he was elected president of the New York State Bar Association, which led the Albany Law Journal to characterize him as “one of the ablest lawyers at the bar of the Empire State, (and) is also possessed of that rare combination of qualities so seldom found united in one individual – legal and literary ability of the highest order, tireless energy, executive ability and urbanity.”[112] Speaking to the bar association’s annual meeting the next year, Rosendale urged judges not only to be free from political influence but also to be seen as unaffected by political considerations in their decision. “It may well be asserted as axiomatic that a judge should not engage in active partisan politics,” he declared. “To the extent to which he permits himself to be ranked as an active partisan, to that extent, he impairs his usefulness.”[113] During that same period (1898-1905), Rosendale was also a special lecturer at Albany Law School, teaching civil law and “Law from a Humanitarian Standpoint.”[114] He advised the aspiring attorneys to pursue their studies in the city where they hoped to eventually practice. “Everyone knows,” he said, “that a young lawyer must make a large number of friends, and if he can do this while he is still in school, he is ahead of the man who studies in another city and who returns at the end of his course to find himself almost a stranger in his home city.”[115]

On 8 March 1899, New York’s Republican Governor Theodore Roosevelt turned to Democrat Simon W. Rosendale to represent the state’s third judicial district (the Albany area) on the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities, a position he would hold for the next 18 years after reappointments to the post by succeeding governors. New York had established the organization in 1867, “an unpaid board of commissioners consisting of men of high character imbued with the spirit of public service,” as one history of the board put it.[116] They were charged with inspecting “Orphan Asylums, Hospitals, Homes for the Friendless, and other charitable institutions.”[117] Rosendale’s acceptance of the job was in line with the philosophy he once outlined in a conversation with a reporter. “I have always felt that when men are financially independent and equipped in any way to be of service to their community reach the point where they might feel able to retire,” he said, “they should turn their endeavors in the direction of public works. There are always plenty of things that such men can do. And it is good for them.”[118] As a commissioner, in 1910, Rosendale objected to an economist’s comment that “with occasional exceptions, the almshouse system with its recurrent scandals and its often commonplace and unprogressive management, remains the black sheep in the philanthropic flock.”[119] Rosendale, concerned about lapsing “into too great a condition of pessimism,” asserted, “Great improvement is noticeable in the almshouses, a decided and gratifying improvement. In the country, almshouses… the inmates… are better housed and better fed and better clothed than quite a percentage of the taxpayers themselves.”[120] However, in 1913, in an address to a charity conference, he seemed more open to reform, declaring, “The adequate relief of the poor in their homes is a subject which seems to require greater attention than it has hitherto received. There is a growing feeling that more should be done for the relief of the poor in their homes so that suitable family homes be kept together and the children saved from the necessity of being committed to institutions which, no matter how good they may be, can never be made to take the place of a proper family home.”[121]Rosendale resigned from the commission (as its vice president) in 1917, explaining that he had “accepted the position from a sense of civic obligation, and after eighteen years of service feel that I have earned retirement with conscious satisfaction of duty reasonably performed, and time and effort gratuitously, if thanklessly, rendered.” At Rosendale’s retirement in 1917, the Board of Charities adopted a resolution describing him as “A man of much ability, conservative by nature …”[122]

In his later years, Rosendale remained engaged with his voluntary associations – religious, civic, educational – and was amenable to requests for reminiscence and commentary. Asked in 1929 about an apparent decline of the communal spirit in Albany’s Fourth of July celebrations, Rosendale blamed it on “the automobile and other means of modern travel,” but he tempered his observation with the comment, “I try not to become narrow and sit in judgment upon the younger generation for, after all, we must remember that each generation has its own way of doing things; and while things were much simpler in my youth, we all think our own way of doing things best.”[123] In 1932, in response to a 90th birthday message from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the congregational arm of Reform Judaism, Rosendale wrote, “My early school days were passed under the sainted Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, to whose teachings and influence I am glad to attribute my interest in our religious affairs, and am glad to think that in mature years I was able to be at his side, among the protagonists of his far-seeing endeavors,” and he concluded, “My attachment to the cause grows no less because of advancing years. While not so active in many matters, I remain interested in realizing that ‘as the evening twilight fades away, stars in the heavens appear invisible by day.’”[124]

In 1932, American voters elected yet another New York governor to the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt. On taking office, he launched a program of political and economic reform along with steps to relieve the nation from the tight grip of the Depression. Much of that program was blocked by the Supreme Court and its conservative majority, leading Roosevelt in 1937 to propose an ultimately unsuccessful plan to add new justices to the nine-member court. “In politics (Simon W. Rosendale) was a Democrat,” wrote his nephew, Herbert Cone, at the time, but added “I betray no confidence when I say that he looked askance at the present tendencies of the party under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He especially deplored the pending proposal to make radical changes in the Federal Supreme Court.”[125] Asked during this same period about the rise of Nazi Germany, Rosendale replied, “That brutal, shameful and regrettable situation seems to me to be somewhat typical of the inherent unrestrained North German temperament – to be aggressively and assertively dominant. The South German temperament is more even and peaceful. I was in Berlin on the day war was declared. The militaristic spirit ran wild everywhere, and the same spirit seems to be pervading Germany today. Hitler, who is not a German and who is supposed to be a civilian, invariably wears a military uniform. Even the small children are organized in a military fashion. Some people think the Allies were too easy on Germany at the war's end, and that may be true. When German troops returned to their homes, they were greeted almost as conquerors. The military spirit did not appear to have been crushed.”[126]

Simon W. Rosendale died at his Albany home on 22 April 1937. “He was in his ninety-fourth year when he entered into sleep eternal,” wrote his lifelong friend, journalist Isidor Lewi, “but he was never an old man. Erect in carriage, scrupulously exact in his attire, keen and alert in conversation, with memory ever at command to recall incidents – personal, political, or historical – and a sense of humor by which he was prone to give a touch of merriment even to somber situations.”[127] The funeral was held at Congregation Beth Emeth in Albany with a eulogy by Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson, formerly a rabbi at Beth Emeth and now the senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. “The life of Simon W. Rosendale,” he proclaimed, “was distinguished not only by great length of days but by his use of the days.”[128]

Rosendale was buried at Albany’s Beth Emeth Cemetery with his wife Helen, who had died in 1922. They share a common gravestone with an epitaph from the Hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs: Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee Away.



About the author: Lawrence S. Freund is a former overseas news correspondent and news editor based in New York. A graduate of Queens College (City University of New York) and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he has contributed articles on various aspects of the American Civil War and regional history.






Bibiography

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[1] Deborah Dash Moore, Jewish New York (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 123.

[2] Ibid., 126.

[3] https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/tag/asser-levy/, retrieved 8 January 2024.

[4] Naftali J. Rubinger, “Albany Jewry of the Nineteenth Century,” doctoral dissertation, Yeshiva University, 1971, 5-6.

[5] Ibid, 44.

[6] Isaac Markens, The Hebrews in America (New York, 1888), 116.

[7] Rubinger, 45-47

[8] Rubinger, 46.

[9] Ibid.

[10] The sailing ship Hortense arrived in New York City from Hamburg on 10 September 1840 with a Samson Rosenthal (38 years and six months), Seligman Rosenthal (three years and nine months) and Fannie Simon (36 years and 0 months) aboard. The names and ages correspond closely with the names and ages of the German-born Rosendale family of Albany, although the match-up has yet to be proven. (Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.)

[11] Isidor Lewi, “Simon W. Rosendale,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 35 (1939), 320.

[12] Many published sources indicate that Simon W. Rosendale attended The Albany Academy, a private secondary school, before reading law (for example, The American Israelite, in a profile of Rosendale, reported “After attending the public schools of this city [Albany] he entered the Albany Academy, meeting there Charles Emory Smith (now Minister to Russia) and others who have all distinguished themselves in the various walks of life selected by them. On graduating from the academy (which he did in the honor list) in 1857, he commenced to read law…” (“III.—Our Distinguished Men,” The American Israelite, 21 August 1890, 5). However, The Albany Academies, while locating enrollment records for Simon’s brothers Silas and Samuel, was unable to find an enrollment record for Simon (John McClintock, archivist emeritus, email to the author, 20 January 2024).

[13] Catalogue of the Officers, Instructors and Students of Barre Academy, Barre, Vermont, 1872-73 (Montpelier: Poland’s Steam Printing Establishment, 1873), 14. (https://archive.org/details/annualcatalogueo00barr/page/14/mode/2up, accessed 9 January 2024).

[14] Ibid, 18.

[15] Lawrence S. Freund, “Abraham Lincoln and Levi Cohn: Jewish Attitudes in the North During the Civil War,” The American Jewish Archives Journal (Vol. LXXI, No. 2, 2019), 50-59.

[16] “Suicide By Drowning,” The Daily Whig (Troy, N.Y.), 12 May 1868, Page 4.

[17] Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.Original data: New York County, District and Probate Courts, retrieved 10 January 2024.

[18] Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch, retrieved 10 January 2024. The census taker misspelled Sampson Rosendale’s given name, writing “Simon,” the name of Sampson’s son.

[19] “List of Casualties,” The New York Times, 8 July, 1862, 1. Samuel Rosendale, a brother of Silas, joined the 177^th Infantry Regiment in November 1862 and mustered out the following September. Simon W. Rosendale did not volunteer.

[20] “Presentation,” Albany Journal, 20 February 1863.

[21] “Benai Berith,” Albany Morning Express, 30 March 1870, 1.

[22] “Hudson,” The Albany Daily Evening Times, 12 September 1872.

[23] “M. K. Cohen Charged with Forgery,” The Albany Daily Evening Times, 23 December 1874.

[24] Albany Morning Express, 29 December 1874, 1.

[25] Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State Census, 1875 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013, retrieved 13 January 2024.

[26] “The Next Attorney-General,” The Argus (Albany), 3 November 1893, 2.

[27] “Assaulting and Murdering Policemen,” Albany Express, 30 July, 1868, 2.

[28] “Simon W. Rosendale, Lawyer in Albany,” New York Times, 23 April 1937, 21.  A Republican-leaning Albany newspaper commented before the 1872 election: “We have nothing to say against Mr. Rosendale. Upon personal grounds he is entirely unobjectionable. But he trains in a bad crowd, politically speaking, and the people can afford to permit him to retire, after having held the office for a full term.” (“The Recordership,” Albany Morning Express, 8 April 1872, 2.)

[29] “Simon W. Rosendale,” The Albany Law Journal, Vol. 57, No 1, 1 January, 1898, 58. Rosendale was again appointed corporation counsel by Albany Mayor Anthony Bleecker Banks, also a Democrat (Ibid).

[30] The New International Encyclopedia, Vol. XVII, (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1917), 242.

[31] “The State Vote,” New York Times, 5 November 1886, 5.

[32] “Embezzlement,” Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 15 January 1880, 3.

[33] “An Outrageous Arrest,” The San Francisco Examiner, 20 October 1880, 3.

[34] Ibid. “Bulldozing,” in this case, signifies “intimidation.” Meyer K. Cohen was naturalized in Albany on 6 July 1860, having renounced his allegiance to the King of Hanover (Meyer K. Cohen Petition, Albany Hall of Records, Albany, N.Y.).

[35] California, U.S., Voter Registers, 1866-1898, California State Library, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Voter Registers, 1866-1898 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011 (accessed 24 January 2024).

[36] California Census, 1880. “United States Census, 1880,” FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6P4-ZSD : Thu Oct 05 03:48:06 UTC 2023), Entry for Meyer K. Cohen and August Newbauer, 1880 (accessed 24 January 2024). 

[37] Allan G. Byrd, Silverton Then and Now (Allan G. Byrd Publishing Co., Lakewood, Colorado, 1999), 6.

[38] Ibid, 21.

[39] “Cohen Discharged,” The Denver Republican, 31 March 1882, 5.

[40] “Four Years in the Pen,” The Denver Republican, 30 June 1882, 3.

[41] “Cohen v. People,” The Pacific Reporter, Vol. 3 (Saint Paul, West Publishing Company, 1884), 386.

[42] Ibid, 387.

[43] “District Court at Silverton,” The Rocky Mountain News, 6 June 1884, 4.

[44] Richard B. Bernstein and others, From Forge to Fast Food: A History of Child Labor in New York State, Vol. II (Council for Citizenship Education, Troy, NY, 1995), 17.

[45] “The Child-Labor Bill,” Troy Daily Times, 19 February 1891, 2. New York State’s merchants successfully resisted the extension of the child labor laws to their stores until 1896. (Fred Rogers Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York,” Publications of the American Economic Association [November 1905], 64.) 

[46] “Flower or Peckham?,” New York Tribune, 4 June 1894.

[47] “Hon. Simon W. Rosendale,” The Tammany Times, 4 September 1893, 3. Rosendale received 580,185 votes, his Republican opponent (William A. Sutherland) received 535,205. (Will L. Lloyd, The Red Book [Albany, James B. Lyon, 1892], 483).

[48] A son of M. K. Cohen, Cone’s surname was originally Cohen.

[49] G. Herbert Cone, “Simon Wolfe Rosendale, A Biographical Sketch,” The American Jewish Year Book 39 (1937), 25.

[50] Ibid, 26.

[51] “Mr. Rosendale’s Views, Bigotry and Prejudice at a Discount in the Empire State,” New York Times, 5 November 1891, 5.

[52] Alan Mendelson, Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite (R. Brass Studio, Montreal, 2008), 16.

[53] “On Trial for Murder,” The Rocky Mountain News, 11 June 1884, 1. Coincidentally, two days later, Cohen’s brother-in-law, Levi Cohn – who had housed and maintained Cohen’s wife and minor children during Cohen’s extended absence from Albany – died in Utica, New York, at a mental institution. (Freund, 64.)

[54] “Sensational Court Cases,” The Rocky Mountain News, 14 June 1884, 1.

[55] Byrd, 68.

[56] “San Juan Events,” The Rocky Mountain News, 24 February 1886, 1.

[57] “Easter Sunday at High Mass,” La Plata Miner, 24 April 1886, 3.

[58] “The Silverton Snows,” The Silverton Democrat, 12 March 1887, 3.

[59] Byrd, 68.

[60] Ibid, 69.

[61] Ibid, 71.

[62] The Silverton Democrat, 25 June 1887, 3.

[63] Byrd, 73.

[64] “Business Notice,” The Silverton Democrat, 4 September 1886, 3.

[65] Silverton Standard, 22 March 1890, 3. Sinclair was the band’s musical director.

[66] “New Companies,” The Rocky Mountain News, 13 September 1890, 8.

[67] “Routt is In,” The Rocky Mountain News, 14 January 1891, 1.

[68] “Cowboy Band Here,” The Rocky Mountain News, 13 January 1891, 7. Silverton is the county seat of San Juan County.

[69] Silverton Standard, 23 August 1890, 3.

[70] Byrd, 82.

[71]Simon W. Rosendale, Report of the Attorney-General of the State of New York (James B. Lyon, State Printer, Albany, 1893), ix.

[72] “The State Apportionment,” The Evening Post (New York), 4 October 1892, 1.

[73] “Apportionment to Stand,” New York Times, 14 October 1892, 2.

[74] “Judge Peckham’s Decision,” The Utica Daily Observer, 14 October 1892, 4.

[75] “The Court in Politics,” New York Tribune, 14 October 1892, 6.

[76] “Harmony,” The Argus (Albany), 7 October 1893, 2.

[77] “Hon. Simon W. Rosendale,” The Tammany Times, 24 September 1893, 3.

[78] New York Tribune, 30 October 1893, 6.

[79] “Coney Island History: The Rise and Fall of John ‘Boss’ McKane (1868-1894),” https://www.heartofconeyisland.com/john-mckane-coney-island-history.html (accessed 8 February 2024).

[80] “Deserves Severe Punishment,” New York Times, 11 November 1893, 5.

[81] “McKane’s Career at Coney Island,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 30 April 1898, 5.

[82] Maine v. Grand Trunk Ry.

[83] “Rebates to Railroads,” New York Tribune, 26 March 1894, 1.

[84] W. H. Silvernail, ed., The New York State Reporter, Vol. LVI, The People ex rel. Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburgh Railroad Co., Relator, App’lt, v. Frank Campbell, Comptroller, etc., Resp’t. (W.C. Little & Co., Law Publishers, Albany, 1894), 358.

[85] “An Able Official,” The Argus (Albany), 11 December 1893, 4.

[86] Isidor Lewi, “Simon W. Rosendale,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 35 (1939), 321.

[87] Simon W. Rosedale, Letter sent to New York Times, Box 34, Folder 18, New York Times Company records, Adolph S. Ochs papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library. On 12 September 1918, the Times published an article citing the support for Zionism of the Jewish banker and philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff. (“Sees Refuge for Jews,” New York Times, 12, September 1918, 8.) Rosendale wrote a letter to the Times taking exception to Schiff, but it seems to have been pre-empted by a Times article on 13 September liberally quoting anti-Zionist Rabbi David Philipson in opposition to Schiff. (“Sees Danger in Zionism,” New York Times, 13 September 1918, 7).

[88] Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1905), 21.

[89] Ibid, 25.

[90] Elizabeth Pantirer, “Anti-Semitism in American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton Sim Rosedale – A Thorn in American Identity,” (2020). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/479/ (accessed 2/10/24), 34. Ms. Pantirer adds in her master’s thesis, “Unfortunately, the racial ideologies exemplified in Wharton’s novel still resonate. Just as the novel acts as a product of its culture, it continues to resonate with growing anti-Semitism today.” 

 

[91] “Judge Rosendale on Zionism,” The American Israelite, 16 May 1918, 4.

[92] “Wilson Praises Weizmann Board, New York Times, 5 September 1918, 10.

[93] Simon W. Rosendale, Congressional Record, Vol. LVII, Part 5, “Americanism v. Zionism [A letter to Congressman Rollin B. Sanford, twenty-eighth district, New York, by Simon W. Rosendale, former attorney general of the state of New York] (Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1919), 78.

[94] “Protest to Wilson Against Zionist State,” New York Times, 5 March 1919, 7. The petition was given prominent space in The New York Times, whose publisher, Adolph S. Ochs, was among the signers.

[95] “Simon W. Rosendale, On 90^th Birthday, Pays Tribute To Teachings And Influence of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise,” The American Israelite, 7 July 1932, 5. American Reform rabbis, meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in 1937 reversed the movement’s longstanding opposition to Zionism, stating, “We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in (Palestine’s) upbuilding as a Jewish homeland.” (“The Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism, ‘The Columbus Platform – 1937,’” Central Conference of Reform Judaism, https://www.ccarnet.org/rabbinic-voice/platforms/article-guiding-principles-reform-judaism/ (accessed 12 February 2024).

[96] “Grand Concert,” Grand Junction News, 15 August 1891, 8.

[97] Silverton Standard, 15 August 1891, 2.

[98] “Not the Same,” The Rocky Mountain News, 25 August 1891, 5.

[99] “He Took Strychnine,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 2 December 1891, 3.

[100] “M. K. Cohen’s Rash Act,” The Rocky Mountain News, 2 December 1891, 1.

[101] “A Suicide By Morphine,” Milwaukee Journal, 1 December 1891,3.

[102] Ibid, “He Took Strychnine.” There is no evidence that Cohen was a correspondent for these newspapers.

[103] “He Took Strychnine.”

[104] Ibid.

[105] “Strangers Will Bury Him,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 3 December 1891, 3.

[106] Registration of Deaths, 2 January 1891, Ancestry.com. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Deaths, 1854-1911 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018 (accessed 13 February 2024. However, cemetery staff have not been able to locate Cohen’s burial record or gravesite.

[107] Silverton Standard, 5 December 1891, 3.

[108] The Albany City Directory for the Year 1896 (Sampson, Murdock & Co. Albany, 1896), 137.

[109] “The Tomb,” The Times-Union (Albany), 5 March 1903, 2.

[110] “After Eighty Goods Years, New York Times, 25 June 1922, 5.

[111] Isidor Lewi, “An Oversight,” New York Times, 17 August 1935, 12.

[112] “Current Topics,” The Albany Law Journal, 22 January 1899, 49.

[113] “Members of the Bar,” The Argus (Albany), 18 January 1899, 2. Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner who became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, seeds to have violated Rosendale’s precept when he promoted Rosendale’s candidacy for attorney general in 1891.

[114] Rosendale’s lecture notes are missing from the law school’s archives.

[115] “S. W. Rosendale Dies at Home; Noted Lawyer,” The Knickerbocker Press (Albany), 23 April 1937, 14.

[116] David M. Schneider and Albert Deutsch, “The Public Charities of New York: The Rise of State Supervision After the Civil War, The Social Service Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March 1941), 3.

[117] Ibid.

[118] “After Eighty Good Years.” One monthly journal saw fit to note in its announcement of Rosendale’s appointment that he was “the first Hebrew to be appointed to membership on the board,” adding that he brought “to its service not only his valuable legal attainments, but also an experience derived from long service in philanthropic work in the city of Albany.” (“State Boards and Commissions,” The Charities Review, Vol. IX, No. 1 (Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, New York, March 1899), 57.

[119] Frank A. Fetter, “The Place of the Almshouse in Our System of Charities,” Eleventh New York State Conference of Charities and Correction – Proceedings (J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, Albany, 1911), 27.

[120] Simon W. Rosendale, “The Almshouse,” Eleventh New York State Conference of Charities and Correction – Proceedings (J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, Albany, 1911), 42.

[121] Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1913, Vol 1 (J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, 1914), 560.

[122] Fifty-First Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1917, (J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, Albany, 1918), 4.

[123] “Albany’s 4^th Observance is Much Changed,” Time-Union (Albany), 30 June 1929, A-7.

[124] “Simon W. Rosendale, On 90^th Birthday…”

[125] Cone, 27. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority at the time is generally credited with following the precedent of the court’s 1905 ruling in a case known as Lochner v. New York, which struck down state legislation limiting the hours that bakers could work because, among other things, it infringed on private contract rights. The author of the majority decision in the Lochner case was Rufus W. Peckham, Rosendale’s former law partner.

[126] “S. W. Rosendale Dies at Home; Noted Lawyer.”

[127] Lewi, 322.

[128] “Notables Attend Rosendale Rites, New York Times, 26 April 1937, 19.