The Blumms
Simon Blum was born in Mainz, Germany, in the 1860s. He emigrated to the United States – Chicago to be specific – in the mid 1880s. He married Hanandah ("Nanda") Hofeld in the late 1880s. The Hofeld family had also emigrated from Mainz to the United States. Simon and Nanda had only one son, Stanley Walter, who was born on December 10,1888. Simon was a furrier. He died in Budapest in 1914. His grave was disinterred and his remains were taken back to the US for reburial. He was buried in a mausoleum in Rose Hill cemetery in Chicago. Apparently there is lots of room in the mausoleum for his descendants. [Stanley Blumm, Jr., has the documents on this.]
Simon had a cousin named Jerome Blum. Jerome was a student of Paul Gauguin. He and his wife Lucile Swan (they married in 1912) traveled to Tahiti to visit Gauguin. Jerome and Lucile divorced in 1924. Lucile went on to become an intimate friend of Teilhard de Chardin and one of his most ardent followers as well. Because of his profession, Jerome was considered to be a "black sheep" of the family. However, he appears to have been quite an accomplished painter and part of a large circle of famous artists including, among others, Theodore Dreiser. I have a photograph of one of Jerome’s painting called "Mangos" that was probably done in Tahiti. Stanley Jr. owns one of his paintings. My mother, Enez, has been painting a lot since she and my father retired. The style of her painting is strikingly similar to Jerome’s.
Hanandah was still quite young when Simon died. Her second husband was a rascal who married her for her money and who left her almost penniless. After the second husband left her, she lived in a hotel in New York. Stanley, Jr., helped her monetarily; he also did her taxes for her.
My mother claims that when she, her mother, and Stanley Jr. were in Paris in the 1920s they ran into Hanandah with her lover (possibly already her husband by then). It was an embarrassing moment for them.
Stanley Blum and Inez Levy were married in Vicksburg in 1914. They moved to New York in 1917. They had two children: Stanley (born on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918) and Enez (born on Bastille Day, July 14, 1921). After the separation of Stanley and Inez in 1931, Stanley changed his last name from Blum to Blumm. Stanley Jr. went to work for him briefly in 1945 in Marathon, New York, making ice skates. From 1931 to 1938, Inez, Enez, and Stanley, Jr., lived with Sallie and Alfred Levy in New York City. The divorce between Stanley, Sr., and Inez was finalized in 1936; Inez married Harry Dulfon in 1938.
Stanley Blumm Sr. remarried after the divorce. His second wife was Marjorie Hayden. They lived in Marathon, New York. They had three children: Shirley, Freddy, and Leon. Stanley Sr. died in 1962; Marge in 1978. Leon is their only surviving son. He lives in Virginia.
Stanley Jr. married Dorothy Yokel in October 1940. They had two children: Robert Paul "Buzz" (1944) and Richard Stephen "Rich" (1947). Stanley and Dorothy moved to Binghamton, New York, in 1945. Stanley tried a variety of businesses before settling on the sign business in 1961. Dorothy worked for a while as a printing broker and designer. Stanley and Dorothy were divorced in 1975. Stanley married Pauline Kennedy in 1975. Dorothy did not remarry.
Buzz went to Marietta College in Ohio and graduated in 1966. He married Diane Hagenreiter in that October 1966 (they had met at college). They had three children: Rebecca (1972), Natalie (1974), and Eliza (1976). Buzz and Diane separated in 1986 and divorced in 1992.
Becca lives in Boston where she works for Sun Microsystems. Talie lives in New York where she works for the George Soros Foundation. She married Scott Holden Smith in 1999. Liza is an undergraduate student at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
Buzz married Cecile Deffner in 1992 in San Luis Obispo, California. They moved to Eugene, Oregon, soon after. Buzz continues to work in the sign business. He is an avid mountain climber. They have two children: Andrew "Drew" (1996) and Madeline Emma "Maddie" (1998).
Diane married George Sievers and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Rich went to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He joined the Peace Corps after graduating in 1971. He spent two and a half years in Micronesia, mostly on the islands of Ponape and Yap, making various side trips to other Asian and Polynesian lands. After the Peace Corps, Rich moved to Kobe, Japan, where he started work as a TV announcer for an English language station. He learned to read, write, and speak fluent Japanese and later became a TV personality in the Kansai region and the English-language spokesperson for large Japanese companies like Matsushita. He also published three guidebooks about Western Japan. Rich was in Kobe during the major earthquake of 1995. He moved to Portland, Maine, in 1998, where he continues to work for Japanese companies and U.S. companies doing business in Japan and travels regularly to Asia for work and in search of art.
The Levys
Mike Levy (born in Vicksburg in 1850) got into the department store business with a partner named Henry "Dutch" Baer. Their store was called Baer and Brothers and it was probably located on Washington Street in Vicksburg (to be confirmed). Their main competitor was The Valley Dry Goods owned by the Switzer family. Simon Switzer was the patriarch of the Switzer clan. The Levy’s and the Switzer’s were friends even though they were competitors. Minette Scharf, one of Inez Levy's best friends, was a Switzer, as was Barbara Switzer Loeb.
Sallie Brown's family came from Alsace. It was probably spelled Braun in France. It is likely that the Levy's came from the town of Obernai. Apparently Jews were not allowed to live in Strasbourg at the time. Like many other female Alsatian Jews, Sallie's mother came to Mississippi to find a Jewish merchant to marry. Sallie was born on July 4, 1865, in Vicksburg. Sallie had several brothers and sisters including Abe. He was born around 1868. Abe owned a shoe store in Vicksburg.
Mike Levy and Sallie Brown were married in the early 1880s. They lived on Cherry Street in Vicksburg. They had three children: Ruth (1885), Samuel Alfred (1889), and Inez (1893).
Ruth married Oscar Fox of Nashville, Tennessee, around 1910. They had two daughters: Ruth Louise (1910) and Georgette (1913). Ruth Fox was called "Gaggi" by the Fox grandchildren. Stanley Blumm Jr. remembers having a number of run-ins with Gaggi while he was a boy staying in her home. [To be fair to Ruth, however, Stanley was a pretty mischievous boy.] Sallie Rose remembers visiting her grandmother and never being allowed to touch anything. Ruth Louise went to live with Inez Levy for six months in New York after a fight with her mother.
Ruth Louise married Edgar D. Meyer in 1929. Edgar was a fashion designer. They lived in Cincinnati. They had two daughters: Sally (1933) and Margo (1942). Ruth Louise and Eddie visited us in New Kensington once. They brought a miniature poodle with them. We took them to a restaurant at the top of Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh.
Sally married Marvin Rose whose family owned a building demolition company. They had two children: Eugene (1959) and Lisa Rose (1962). The Roses divorced. Sally did not remarry.
Margo married Jerry Itkoff in the mid 1960s. The story of the marriage is interesting. Margo had just transferred to Chatham College in Pittsburgh when Jerry came to see her during orientation. He convinced her to come back to Cincinnati to marry him, even though her parents were going to lose the tuition money for the year. Apparently he was very convincing. Margo and Jerry have a daughter named Kimberly (1974). Kim married Chris DeSalvo in April 2000. Kim is currently working for Nextel Corporation in Atlanta.
Alfred Levy served as 1st Lieutenant in the US Army in France, 1917-1918. After the war, he worked as a coffee broker and importer for Jake Aaron, who had a coffee business in New Orleans. Later he went into business for himself in New York. He had a seat on the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange. My mother said that Alfred had a small roaster that he used for samples. The family got all its coffee from Alfred’s little roaster.
Alfred married his good friend Cremieux Israel’s nurse three years before he died in 1962. Before that he used his mother as an excuse not to marry. Alfred liked dogs. He had a Scottish terrier. When Sallie Levy died in April 1947, it was reputed that a woman that the family had never met gave Alfred an ultimatum, but Alfred refused to marry her, citing the dog as an excuse.
Inez Levy married Harry Dulfon in 1937. Harry Dulfon was President and CEO of Robert A. Keasbey Company from 1923 until 1957 when he retired. He retired just in time, because a few years later a series of very expensive legal claims were made against Keasbey and other asbestos producers by victims of asbestos poisoning. The Dulfons had a beautiful apartment in New York at 151 Central Park West. They spent the summers at a house they owned on Long Lake near Harrison, Maine. They spent the winters in Hollywood, Florida. I remember going on long walks with Harry Dulfon to town in Maine when I visited them. Inez was a stickler for good manners, but she was a very kind lady in general. All of the grandchildren loved her. She taught us how to fish and she handled the motorboat on the lake on her own. They lived next door to Lou and Sadie Fink. Lou Fink was always playing his violin (he was pretty good). Inez died on November 11, 1966. Harry died in August 1968.
The Harts
Meyer Hart was born in the Ukraine around 1890, somewhere near St. Petersburg. His father was a forester or in the forestry business. Meyer came to the United States by boat, disembarking from St. Petersburg and booking passage to the United States from some other Baltic port.
When Meyer Hart first came to the US he worked at Barry Neiman's Clothing Store in Pittsburgh where he met Ida Marcus. They moved to New Kensington after their marriage in 1910. They had two children: Edythe (1914) and Edwin "Bud" (1920). They lived in a big house on Freeport Road in New Kensington. Ida’s single brothers, Milton and Herman, lived with them.
Meyer had a sister who lived near Canada in Ransomville, New York, and a brother who lived in Pittsburgh. He never saw his brother. He was bitter about the fact that his brother did not help him when he first arrived in the United States.
Edythe married Maurice Janowitz (shortened to "Jay"). They lived in Tucson, Arizona, where they owned a liquor store called Speedway Liquors, on Speedway Avenue. Their house was at 10 Indian House Road. It was surrounded by desert – with saguaro cacti and quail and other desert wildlife. They used to feed the birds with massive bags of bird feed. Van Cliburn lived on their street (although he was almost never there); and the infamous Joe Bonanno lived nearby. Edythe died in 1986. Jay went to live in Palm Springs, Calif. Jay died in 1998.
Bud married Enez Blumm in 1941. They met at Syracuse University where Enez was doing her undergraduate studies. Bud was in the U.S. Army Air Corps (later called the U.S. Air Force) and was called for duty as an air corps communications officer in France. He arrived in France just as the war was winding down. When he returned to the United States, he and Enez settled in New Kensington, PA. Bud took over some of the managerial responsibilities for Hart’s Department Store. They had two children: Thomas (1945) and Jeffrey (1947).
Tom Hart received his BA degree from Oberlin College in 1967. He attended NYU Law School but had to drop out because of illness. He finished his legal studies at George Washington University while serving as a legislative assistant for Congressman William Dent (D-PA). Tom helped to draft the legislation for ERISA. Tom married Donna Layton on June 9, 1970. They had two children: Joshua (1979) and Julia (1985). Joshua Hart is attending Oberlin College; Julia is in the ninth grade.
Jeffrey Hart graduated from Swarthmore College in 1969. He married Joan Goldhammer on June 9, 1968. They had one child: Zachary (1986). Jeffrey and Joan went to the University of California for graduate studies. Jeff obtained his Ph.D. in political science; Joan in art history. Jeffrey taught at Princeton University from 1973 to 1980. Then he went to Indiana University, where he is now Professor in the Department of Political Science. Joan is currently an elected member of the board of supervisors of the Monroe County Community School Corporation. Zach is in the ninth grade at Bloomington High School South.
The Marcuses
Abraham Isaac and Rebecca Marcus emigrated from Serijai, a small town in Lithuania in the early 1900s. Serijai was a pleasant town with a small but relatively prosperous Jewish community. All of Serijai’s remaining Jewish inhabitants were killed during the Holocaust. Abraham and his brother Samuel were tailors like their father. Their sister Libby married a tailor, Samuel Silverstein. Rebecca ran a grocery store in Pittsburgh. They lived near the story on Bedford Avenue in Squirrel Hill. They had five children: Sarah (1887), Ida (born in 1892), Lou (1895), Herman (1900), and Milton (1906).
Sarah Marcus married Harry Sobol. They lived in Pittsburgh, later moving to Johnstown. They had one daughter: Elaine. Elaine married Harold Bortz. They currently live in Englewood, New Jersey. They had three children: Edward (1952), Sally (1954), and Gary (1956).
Edward Bortz is an attorney. He and his wife Janet live in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. They have two sons: Jason (1983) and Mark (1986). Gary Bortz lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a dealer in antiques and Oriental carpets. He has two children: Zoe (1993) and Theo (1999). Sally lives in Boston. She had twins: Zachary and Melanie (1986).
Ida Marcus married Meyer Hart in 1910. They moved to New Kensington, Pa. Together they built Hart’s Department Store. Ida and Meyer had two children: Edythe (1914) and Edwin "Bud" (1920).
Lou Marcus married Minnie Mervis. Minnie’s family lived in Cleveland; according to Estelle Strauss, they were well off. I remember going to visit them in Squirrel Hill when I was a boy. Lou and Minnie had two children: Allen and Eleanor. Eleanor Marcus married Burton Quint. Burt had a BS from Carnegie Mellon and worked as a salesman for Sperry Rand. They had one daughter: Robin. When Joan and I were at Swarthmore College, Eleanor and Burt lived in Philadelphia. They had us over a number of times during that period. Bert and Eleanor currently live in Laguna Beach, California. Robin married Barry Iverson. They live in Arizona. They have three children. Allen Marcus and his wife B.J. had two children: Karen and Craig. Allen was in the steel business. Karen is a journalist and writer. Craig is a furniture maker. They all currently live in Pittsburgh.
Herman Marcus remained single. He lived with his sister Ida and her husband until he died.
Milton remained single. He was the youngest of the Marcus children. He was in charge of the part of the first floor of Hart's Department Store that Meyer did not control. Milton fought in World War II in the Rainbow Brigade. He was inducted into the army a short time before his 35th birthday, after which he would have been ineligible for the draft. He saw combat in the South Pacific and was part of the island-hopping campaigns to defeat the Japanese. He did not talk about this experience with the family, but he did get together with other veterans from his platoon on a regular basis. Uncle Milton liked to go to baseball games, horse races, and dog races, with his buddies. He spent a lot of his time after retirement picking stocks to buy on the stock market. He continued to meet with former employees of Hart's Department Store also.
Bibliography
American Immigrant Wall of Honor, accessed at http://www.wallofhonor.com.
Evans, Eli N., The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South (New York: Free Press, 1997). This is a revised edition of a book originally published in 1973. It has some very interesting background information on Jews in the South.
Harris, Leon, Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Build Great Department Stores (New York: Kodansha International, 1994). This is a very good book about the Jewish families who founded stores like Kaufmans, Neiman-Marcus, Sears Roebuck, Meyer & Frank, etc.
Hyman, Paul E., The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) – lots of background information on the history of Jews in France with some detailed material on Alsatian Jews and the Dreyfus incident
Lucile Swan Papers, Georgetown University Library, Special Collections.
Philippsborn, Gertrude, History of the Jews of Vicksburg (From 1820 to 1968), unpublished mimeograph, Vicksburg, Mississippi, January 1969. Mrs. Philippsborn was the wife of Rabbi Adolf Philippsborn, who was rabbi of the Vicksburg Jewish congregation, Anshe Chesed, from 1956 until his death in 1967.
Turitz, Leo E. and Evelyn Turitz, Jews in Early Mississippi, 2nd edition (Jackson, Ms.: University Press of Mississipi, 1995). This book has a picture of Inez Levy’s 1907 confirmation class on p. 48.
Weisbach, Lee Shai, "East European Immigrants and the Image of Jews in the Small Town South," American Jewish History, v. 85, No. 3 (1997), pp. 231-262. Accessed at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_jewish_history.
Updated on April 14, 2021. Send comments or questions to hartj@indiana.edu.