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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.
There is, of course, a significant 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
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| Simon Rosendale courtesy of Albany Law School |
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. Mr. Cohen was not present when the case was called, and it is alleged he has left the city.”[23] A few days later, another newspaper reported “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 fraud charges and embezzlement, M. K. Cohen adopted a popular strategy: he decided to go west, abandoning his bail money and his wife and five children. By 1880, he had created a new life 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 was found to be correct upon examination of the books. 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. 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 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, "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 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. 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 actively participated 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 founding 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, talked over the Durango trip, and generally had a good time.”[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 abandoned its Dodge City home base “because Dodge City was fast going downhill.” 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 in 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 courts could not review the re-apportionment law except in cases of fraud and gross injustice. On 13 October, the court delivered its ruling, upholding the constitutionality of the apportionment law. The principal 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-handedly 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]McKane was indeed tried and convicted of violating New York’s election law the following year. 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 brought by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, and the United States Supreme Court squarely decided that the railroad must pay a tax on 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 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
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| Dodge City Cow-Boy Band |
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 to mislead the public and to endeavor to obtain the benefit of any reputation the band may have for his orchestra. 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. He manipulated the bass drum at one time, 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 aligned 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, fed, and 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
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F.M. Warburg & wife, S.W. Rosendale, Edw. Warburg |
In 1932, American voters elected 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
[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 177th 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 90th 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 4th Observance is Much Changed,” Time-Union (Albany), 30 June 1929, A-7.
[124] “Simon W. Rosendale, On 90th 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.
