Julia Robinson, author of Early Jewish Merchants of Silver City, will lead her Lunch and Learn audience to learn how many features of our modern town came directly from the leadership of early Jewish merchants.
Noon, Wednesday, November 19, in room ABC in the Resource Center on the WNMU campus at the corner of 12th and Kentucky Streets, Robinson's presentation will offer photographs from her most recent book.
Asked how she became interested in the Jewish pioneers, Robinson says, "I first wondered why I had heard of all the other 'outstanding' early Silver City residents, including Billy the Kid, the madams, and Rebecca Brewer, even the Chinese and Buffalo Soldiers who had stayed in the area, but had never heard of any early Jewish settlers.
"Once I realized how lacking the resources were on these early settlers, I asked prominent local historians to write a book to fill in this historical gap. No one was willing to take on the task, so I decided to do it myself."
Thus, if anyone wishes to spend months at the Silver Public Library delving into microfilms of 19th century newspapers, risking their eyesight to assemble hundreds of brief sentences about this or that pioneer, that person may join Robinson, whose masterful account tells much more than just routine details of business.
The deaths of children, from infancy to adolescence, were a burden that afflicted every part of early Silver City. Even the most well-to-do of Silver City were not spared grief arising from unchallenged death.
"I was drawn to the incredible hardships the girls and women endured," recalls Robinson. "I was amazed that some wives traveled back to the east coast to give birth. I was saddened to learn that none of the male descendants of David Abraham, who were named David, made it to adulthood."
Abraham will be one of the major figures whom Robinson will trace in her Lunch and Learn presentation. He will be joined by his talented sons, by Isaac Cohen, the Rosenbergs, Max Schutz, Sam Schiff and by their family members. Abraham was born in Poland but moved to England where he married and then immigrated to San Francisco. Cohen was born in Jerusalem, Syria, and served in the Union Army, for which most soldiers were born abroad. Schutz had come from Germany.
Abraham brought the first ice plant to Silver City, on the east side of South Bullard. Ice wagons delivered blocks of ice to households for their boxes. In a recent meeting of residents interested in the Brewer Hill or Perros Bravos neighborhood, a talented story teller described swimming in the pond created by the runoff from the ice plant which was a successor of Abraham's original facility.
Robinson will remind her audience of how the buildings of the pioneers remain as testaments. Max Schutz, for a number of years the richest person in Silver City, lived in the largest Victorian mansion on Broadway, a couple of blocks from the Palace Hotel that he created and not far from his men's haberdashery on Bullard
Isaac Cohen's Italianate house still dominates North Bullard, and his store/restaurant building on the northeast corner of North Bullard and Broadway continues to speak of quality, despite the repeated, early threats from fires and Cohen's struggle to equip a city fire department.
If his ice plant persisted, Abraham's street trees along Bullard did not endure. In a sense, lack of permanence was the same with the civic work of Abe Abraham, the oldest surviving son. He starred in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance and was a mover and shaker in the Silver City music and theater scenes.
Schutz's son Salo who owned the Princess, an early movie palace on Bullard, hit a different note of modernity. He was attacked in the town council for showing movies on Sunday.
"It was interesting to read about Max Schutz defending the religious choices of his children," says Robinson. "At the same time, he defended his own position as a Jew who believed the Sabbath was on Saturday."
Robinson admits her surprise in the book's prologue, "I was surprised to learn that the [Silco] theater, and in fact all early theaters in town had been owned and operated by Jews."
Adolph Schutz was a partner in the company that opened the Silco in 1923.
Perhaps the name most associated with the Silco was Eddie Ward, son-in-law to Sam Schiff. Schiff and Max Schutz had designed the town's first sewer system. Hence, another characteristic of this pioneer population that Robinson will describe: versatility. There were no specialists. All were generalists unafraid to act.
Cohen, a businessman who had invested in the mines, a seller of clothes and supplies, was a central figure in bringing the Santa Fe Railroad to Silver City. Cohen was alone in the Jewish community to have kept many religious traditions. He was a man on the move who moved his family to New York City so that his sons could have a Bar Mitzvah but not before his wife's brothers were comfortably established in business.
Sometimes innovative things didn't work out as planned. Schutz installed acetylene lighting in his store, even though next to the store on Bullard, the town had placed its first electric streetlamp. The acetylene fizzled. The electrified streetlamps, however, multiplied.
Robinson has facilitated WILL classes in memoir writing. She has published two memoirs, relating stories of an Indiana farm family and of her own adventures. She worked as a school librarian. For her presentation, she will be joined by her editor, Tom Hester, who had served mainly to spot comma splices and indefinite references.
