Pioneer Jewish Texans

9. The Great Merchants: Some Called Them Princes

C h a p t e r n i n e t h e G r e at m e r C h a n t s Some Called Them Princes They may have lived as conquistadors, buccaneers, ranchers, seamen, or oil men—but they were all merchants. They traded with the indians on the frontier. They sold them booty from the spanish Main. They brought cargo from Charleston and returned with Texas cotton. They bartered calico, cattle, and oil-field pipe. Merchandising often served as a springboard for other careers. Jewish colonizers like De Cordova had general stores before they began selling real estate. Financier Morris Lasker peddled wares through the Georgia countryside before he came to Texas. From Jewish carpenters for Cortés to Jewish Texans who left to pan for gold in California, as postmasters and alcaldes, with few exceptions, they were all merchants. Jewish merchants chronicled as great merchant families impacted the merchandising business as never before or since in Texas. Their businesses mostly dealt with merchandise of the general-store type, usually the dry goods company—and in their growing success many became household names, so that today, in Texas, to say “Jewish merchant” brings visions of high fashion, costly, dazzling apparel, and glamorous careers. it is astonishing that it took just fifty years for Texas to progress from samuel isaacks and his ox wagon to neiman-Marcus. elijah and samuel isaaCKs elijah isaacks, born in north Carolina in 1775, went to Texas and arrived there on January 10, 1820, nearly two years before stephen F. austin and his first colonists arrived in December 1821. he and his wife settled in east Texas near the neches river, and at age fiftyseven he was elected a delegate from that area to the historic convention of 1832, presided over by austin, in which the colonists asked Mexico for government reforms. he died in Jasper County in 1859. Their son samuel isaacks, born in Tennessee in 1804, went to Texas with a friend around 1819, preceding his parents. one of ten children, he was age fifteen when he arrived. he joined austin’s first Colony of Three hundred. as a colonist, in 1824 he received a spanish grant of one league and one labor of land (4,605 acres) in a bend of the Brazos river near the present site of rosenberg. Two bounty warrants were issued to him for military service from June 9, 1836, to January 1, 1837. after living in angelina County, where his children were born, in 1855 isaacks moved to harris County and built wharves. he freighted supplies from Galveston by ox wagon, opening a road north to Coldspring. he later lived on Taylor’s Bayou near seabrook, where he died in 1878. his grandson, Judge s. J. isaacks, who was reared Methodist, served as the first mayor of Midland.1 samuel maas samuel Maas was not the typical Jewish immigrant who came to america to escape the czar on a fifteen-dollar steerage voyage across the atlantic. Maas sailed the atlantic many times, always in a luxury cabin. he spoke english perfectly even before he emigrated from Germany . he corresponded with Texas luminaries such as henri Castro, French colonizer of the frontier, and occasionally gave Castro unasked-for advice. when Maas went back to europe to carry on trade for Texas, he took 134 the great merchants with him a letter of recommendation from no less a person than sam houston. when he went looking for a wife, he made another trip to europe to win the hand of the daughter of a rabbi. she was isabella offenbach, an opera singer and sister of Jacques offenbach, a composer whose light operas inspired the French cancan, at the time considered a very scandalous dance. sam houston wrote to ashbel smith on behalf of samuel Maas on July 21, 1843, when Dr. smith was chargé d’affaires to england and France:2 Dear sir: Captain sam’l Maas, a citizen of houston, intends to visit europe, and will be pleased to present himself to you. i think you have known him at Galveston. For several years i have known him favorably. he has sustained an irreproachable character. . . . he is a gentleman of business habits, close attention, sober, and in short, he is one of the few gentlemen in Texas against whom i have never heard an imputation of any kind. if you can with propriety advance the views and interests of Captain Maas, i...