Free The Jews in America Trilogy by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

pregnant, bore him a daughter, wept that it wasn’t the son he’d hoped for, and longed to be pregnant again. By the spring of 1848 Babette was pregnant, and Rosalie’s world had become a rosy blur of cooking, house cleaning, medicines, motherhood, and obstetrics. She began to worry about her brothers’ unmarried state—particularly Joseph, who was approaching thirty. Joseph, meanwhile, was busilymaking plans for his first trip back to Germany to buy more goods for his stores.
    Rosalie began a secret correspondence with a Baiersdorf girl named Babet Steinhardt, who, Rosalie had decided, would be the perfect mate for Joseph. Babet was a first cousin—she was Fanny Seligman’s brother’s child—which made it seem all the cozier, and a match Fanny would certainly have approved. Rosalie filled her letters to Cousin Babet with rapturous details of Joseph’s good looks, gentle nature, and money. And to Joseph Rosalie began dropping references to Babet’s beauty, modesty, and housekeeping skills. She suggested that he combine his business trip to Germany with a Brautschau (bride search), and hinted that, in view of his rapidly expanding operations, a time would come when he could no longer count on brothers and brothers-in-law to help him out; he would need sons. Joseph got the point. But he was annoyed at Rosalie for hammering Babet’s virtues so tirelessly, and accused her of wanting to collect a marriage broker’s commission.
    When he got to Germany, however, he made a trip to Baiersdorf. Word of his affluence had spread, and there was a sizable welcoming committee on hand to meet him. He sought out all his father’s creditors, paid them, and insisted on adding accumulated interest. He visited his mother’s grave. And he met Babet Steinhardt. She was just twenty, and, to his surprise, Joseph found her quite as advertised. He married her in a gemütlich village ceremony and in November, 1848, started home with her—the first Seligman to travel to America in other than steerage class.
    * For many years the Seligmans, and families like them, would show a preference for renting their places of business and their homes rather than buying them. This was not a reluctance to settle down. They remembered too well the futile attempts of Jews in Germany to buy land and the many instances where Jews had been summarily expelled from land they had thought they owned. The Seligmans would display this same reticence toward parcels of real estate when, not many years later, for an astonishingly low price that they could easily have afforded, they had a chance to buy one-sixth of Manhattan Island.
    * On this corner, later renumbered One William Street, would eventually rise the ornate eleven-story headquarters of J. & W. Seligman & Company. This wedge-shaped building, topped by a Romanesque tower, is now a landmark of the financial district as—through the many ironies of financial fortune—the present home of Lehman Brothers.
    â€  Where was Leopold, two years older than Abraham? Leopold was a slow-starting Seligman, and would prove to be something of a trial to Joseph as the years went by. Babette used to argue that Leopold was “artistic.”

7
    MATTERS OF STATUS
    It would become a question of some importance, later on in New York when the German Jewish crowd had crystallized around such families as the Seligmans, Lehmans, Guggenheims, Goldmans, Sachses, and Loebs, whether one’s immigrant ancestor had “started with a wagon” or started on foot. It was nearly, though not quite, as important as how far back one could trace one’s family history in Germany.
    Which means of “starting” transportation was actually “better” would become a debatable point. On the one hand, starting on foot showed a certain physical stamina. Starting with a wagon, on the other hand, might indicate superior business acumen. Most Lehmans feel strongly