CHAPTER XX

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THE JEWS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF TEXAS. THE MEXICAN WAR.

The first settler in 1821――Adolphus Sterne, who fought against Mexico and later served in the Texan Congress――David S. Kaufman――Surgeon-General Levy in the army of Sam Houston――A Jew as the first meat “packer” in America――Major Leon Dyer and his brother Isadore――Mayor Seeligsohn of Galveston (1853)――One Jew laid out Waco; Castro County is named after another――Belated communal and religious activities――The War with Mexico, in which only a small number of Jews served――David Camden de Leon and his brother Edwin, U. S. Consul-General in Egypt.

The history of the Jews of Texas begins at the time when the largest state of the American Union was still a part of Mexico. The first Jewish settler of whom any record is preserved was Samuel Isaacs, who came there from the United States in 1821 with Austin’s first colony of three hundred. He received a Spanish grant of land as a colonist, and is later mentioned once more as the recipient of a bounty warrant for 320 acres of land, located in Polk county, for services in the army of Texas in 1836–37. When Abraham Cohen Labatt (b. in Charleston, S. C., in 1802; d. in Texas after 1894), who has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, visited Velasco, Texas, in 1831, he found there two Jews――Jacob Henry from England and Jacob Lyons from Charleston――who had been there for some years engaged in business. When the former of the two died without issue he left his fortune for the building of a hospital at that seaport.

Adolphus Sterne (b. in Cologne, Germany, 1801; d. in New Orleans, 1852) was one of the first settlers in Nacogdoches, in the eastern portion of Texas, where he came from New Orleans in 1824. He knew several European languages and soon mastered various Indian dialects, which made him very useful to the insurgents against Mexican rule, whose cause he espoused. He was sentenced to death for his share in the Fredonian war against Mexico. He was saved by a general amnesty which had been declared by that time, and took an oath of allegiance to the Mexican government, which he kept faithfully until Texas became an independent republic in 1836. After having been Alcalde and official interpreter under the old order, he served in both the upper and the lower houses of the Texas Congress. Dr. Joseph Hertz came with his brother Hyman to Nacogdoches about 1832; Simon Schloss (b. in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1812) came there in 1836. David S. Kaufman (b. in Cumberland County, Pa., in 1813; d. in Washington, D. C., 1851), a graduate of Princeton College, came there from Louisiana in 1837. In 1838 he was elected a Representative in the Texas Congress; was twice re-elected and was twice chosen Speaker of the House. In 1843 was elected to the Senate, where, in 1844, as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he presented a report in favor of annexation to the United States. When this plan was carried out he was elected one of the first members of the House of Representatives from Texas, serving from 1846 until his death five years afterwards. Albert Emanuel (b. 1808) came there from Germany in 1834, and was one of the first volunteers in the Texas army, serving in the battle of San Jacinto. He later settled in New Orleans, where he died in 1851. Samuel Mass (who married a sister of Offenbach, the composer) and Simon Weiss were two other natives of Germany who settled in Nacogdoches about that time. Four Jews are known to have fought at Goliad under Fannin (March 26, 1836), one of whom, Edward J. Johnson (b. in Cincinnati, O., 1816) was slain, together with his chief, after the surrender to the Mexicans.

Moses Albert Levy served as surgeon-general in Sam Houston’s army throughout the Texas-Mexican war. Dr. Isaac Lyons, of Charleston, served as surgeon-general under General Tom Green in the war of 1836. Among other Jews who rendered notable service to the Republic of Texas were the brothers Leon and Isadore Dyer, natives of Germany, who, at an early age, came with their parents to Baltimore, where the older Dyer founded a meat-packing establishment, which is said to have been the first in America. Leon Dyer (b. 1807; d. in Louisville, Ky., 1883), who settled in New Orleans, was quartermaster-general of the state militia of Louisiana in 1836, when Texas called for aid in her struggle for independence. With several hundred other citizens of New Orleans, he responded, and, coming to Galveston, he received a commission as major in the Texas forces, signed by the first President, Burnett. The Louisiana contingent was assigned to the force of General Green, and saw much active service. Major Dyer also served on the guard which took General Santa Anna, the captive President of Mexico, from Galveston to Washington in the following year. His brother, Isadore Dyer (b. 1813; d. in Waukesha, Wis., 1888), settled in Galveston as a merchant in 1840, and was one of its public spirited citizens. He was one of the earliest grand masters of the Order of Odd Fellows in Texas. The first Jewish religious services in Galveston were held at his house in 1856.

Henry Seeligsohn (b. in Philadelphia, 1828; d. 1886) came to Texas in 1839, and was elected first lieutenant of the Galveston Cadets, an organization composed of young boys, which rendered efficient service. His father was Michael Seeligsohn (d. 1868), who was elected Mayor of Galveston in 1853. Levi Myers (sometimes also called Levi Charles or Charles Levi) Harby (b. in Georgetown, S. C., 1793; d. in Galveston, 1870), who was a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1812 and was taken prisoner by the British, also participated in the Texan war of independence. A. Wolf was killed in the battle of Alamo in 1836, and his name is inscribed on the Alamo monument at Austin. Jacob de Cordova (b. in Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1808; d. in Texas, 1868) removed to Galveston from New Orleans in 1837 and was the founder of several newspapers, represented Harris county in the Texas Legislature in 1847, and laid out the city of Waco in 1849. Henry Castro (b. in France, 1786; d. in Monterey, Mexico, 1861), a descendant of a wealthy Marrano family, entered, in 1842, into a contract with President Sam Houston of Texas to settle a colony west of the Medina. Houston also appointed him consul-general in France for the Republic of Texas. Between 1843 and 1846 Castro sent to Texas about 5,000 emigrants from the Rhenish provinces, who settled in the towns of Castroville, Quihi, Vandenburgh and O’Harris. Castro county, in northwest Texas, was named in honor of this early promoter of immigration to Texas, who sank large sums in the venture.

There was little communal and religious activity in the stirring times of the early development of Texas, and the first communal organizations appeared a considerable time after Jews settled in some localities. The first Jewish cemetery in Texas was established in Houston in 1844, where the first synagogue in the state was built exactly ten years later. The Jews of Galveston acquired their first burial ground in 1852: religious services were held since Yom Kippur 1856, but no congregation was organized until twelve years later. In San Antonio almost twenty years passed between the acquisition of a cemetery (1854) and the organization of the first congregation. All the other Jewish communities in the rapidly growing state date their foundation from a later period.[31]

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The war with Mexico, which began in 1846, was the least popular of all the wars in which the United States has engaged, and this probably accounts for the small number of Jews who volunteered to participate in what was practically an attack on a weak neighbor. The number of Jews in the country was now more than ten times as large as in the time of the wars with England; but there are only about a dozen more names in the list of the Jewish soldiers of the Mexican war (in the above-mentioned work of Mr. Simon Wolf) than in the list of the year 1812. New York now had the largest Jewish community, and was represented by no less than fifteen in that small band of less than sixty, in which there was only one from Pennsylvania (Gabriel Dropsie, Co. E, 1st Regiment), one from New Jersey (Sergeant Alexander B. Weinberg) and five from Maryland. The others were mostly from the South, a large proportion of them having participated in the earlier struggle between Texas and Mexico.

The most prominent Jewish soldier of the Mexican war was David Camden de Leon (b. in South Carolina, 1813; d. in Santa Fé, N. M., 1872). He graduated as a physician from the University of Pennsylvania in 1836 and two years later entered the United States army as an assistant surgeon. He served with distinction in the Seminole war of 1835–42, which was the most bloody and stubborn of all wars against Indian tribes. For several years afterwards he was stationed on the Western frontier. He served throughout the Mexican war and was present at most of the battles. At Chapultepec he earned the sobriquet of “the Fighting Doctor,” and on two occasions led a charge of cavalry after the commanding officer had been killed or wounded. He twice received the thanks of Congress for his distinguished services and for his gallantry in action. He was afterwards again assigned to frontier duty, and in 1856 became surgeon, with the rank of major. Like most Southern officers in the regular army, de Leon resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Civil war and joined the Confederacy, for whose government he organized the medical department, becoming its first surgeon-general. Edwin de Leon (b. in Columbus, S. C., 1818; d. 1891), the journalist and author, who was appointed by President Pierce consul-general to Egypt, and was later a confidential agent of the Confederate States in Europe, was a brother of David C. de Leon.

Leon Dyer and Henry Seeligsohn, whose participation in the struggles of Texas was described at the beginning of this chapter, also served as officers in the war with Mexico. The names of Captain Michael Styfft, who served on the staff of General Zachary Taylor, and of Lieutenant-Colonel Israel Moses, who was promoted from the rank of assistant-surgeon, have also been preserved. Among those who were killed in action was Sergeant Abraham Adler of the New York Volunteers.

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