CHAPTER TWO

LEONARD’S STORIES

 

Leonard Dreifuss, Family Historian

 

Leonard Dreifuss was named for his paternal grandfather Leopold Dreifuss, who died before Leonard was born.  Consequently, most of what Leonard knew about his grandfather, had been explained to him by his father, Isaac Joseph Dreifuss.  From Isaac Joseph, Leonard learned that his namesake had been sent by his German family from his German home in Altdorf Baden, to travel alone to America in 1868, shortly before his eighteenth birthday.  His German family had chosen a town called Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania to become Leopold’s home in America according to the stories Isaac Joseph told Leonard.  Selinsgrove was the town to which Leopold was sent, but Leonard knew that Leopold left there after only a few years to become a butcher in Brooklyn, New York.  But Leopold’s siblings, two brothers and a sister, were later sent to Selinsgrove to live, and in was in Selinsgrove that they stayed for many years and that is where they raised their children.

 

Over the years of Leonard’s youth, Isaac Joseph shared many stories with him about Leopold’s family in Selinsgrove but Leonard never met any of his Selinsgrove relatives.

 

The Story Is Passed On

Conduits of Our Family Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo at Left:  Isaac Dreifuss (left) told his son, young Leonard about Selinsgrove

Photo at Right:  We assume the stories originated with Leopold Dreifuss (center) who told them to his son, Young Isaac (right)

 

Leonard Dreifuss was my father, and yet for most of my youth I do not recall him ever mentioning his grandfather’s Pennsylvania background or his father’s Selinsgrove stories. When my brother Pete and I were children, Leonard told us about his grandfather's 1868 immigration from Germany and that he and his father had been born in Brooklyn.  As far as we knew, Dad’s family had always lived in Brooklyn.

 

It was only after my grandfather, Isaac Joseph Dreifuss, died in 1968 that I first heard Leonard speak about the small Pennsylvania community where part of his family had once lived.  The parts of the story that Leonard did not understand had apparently begun to labor upon him and now that he knew that there would be no more stories, Leonard slowly began to share what he remembered about Selinsgrove with my brother Pete and myself.  As Leonard explained to us about our family’s life in this town called Selinsgrove, a town that Leonard had never visited, Pete and I, as young adults, began to share his curiosity about our Pennsylvania heritage.  Leonard decided that he needed to do his own research to learn about the lives of his Selinsgrove family.

 

I was in Law School in 1968 when Isaac Joseph died; Pete was in his first year of college.  When Leonard confronted us with Isaac’s stories, we asked him many questions about Leopold and Selinsgrove.  He answered as best he could, but for many of the questions his answers were little more than speculation.   In the years that followed, we spoke often with our father about Selinsgrove but had little time to help him with his research since we had both recently married and were, at that time, consumed with our fledgling careers and with our own young families.  By the early 1970s, as Dad grew closer to retirement, he began to speak of his desire to learn the full story of his Selinsgrove background.

 

Leonard did not dispute the accuracy of what his father had told him, but he understood that much of the story was missing.  The stories told to him by Isaac Joseph left him wondering about Leopold’s unknown benefactors in Selinsgrove, to whom Leonard believed he owed his American birth.  As he became more focused upon these unanswered questions, Dad began to voice the issues he had with his father’s stories.  Why had his family chosen Selinsgrove?  What family members had already established themselves in Selinsgrove prior to Leopold’s arrival, that could have provided for Leopold and his siblings when they arrived?  What had become of the rest of Leopold’s Selinsgrove community, and why had Leonard not been told about them?   He was concerned that portions of his family history might be forever lost.

 

To my brother Pete and I, what had once been Isaac Joseph’s tales of the Dreifuss sibling’s immigration and the town of Selinsgrove, were now Leonard’s stories.  We understood Dad’s frustration with the parts of the story that he believed to be lost or fuzzy, although we did not completely understand why he believed he could re-discover the history that had been lost.  It was puzzling to us that our father had chosen to keep his stories to himself for so many years and now wanted to uncover parts of his family that had been long forgotten.  We did not understand that Leonard’s newly found motivation to understand the truth behind his Selinsgrove stories was tightly wound with the story of his own childhood in Brooklyn.

 

Leonard’s Story

 

As a young man Leonard would have thought it unlikely that he would become the family historian and the compiler of his family’s history.  He was a man with many talents, but his early life had been filled with challenges that afforded him little opportunity to ponder his family’s immigration to this country, to question his father’s stories or to understand about Selinsgrove.

 

Leonard’s father and grandfather had lived their American lives in New York and many might question why he later concerned himself about the Pennsylvania history of his grandfather’s siblings.  Leonard was born in Brooklyn in 1916, seven years after the death of his immigrant grandfather.  Leopold’s children, including Isaac Joseph, were all born and raised in Brooklyn, so Leonard was a second generation, native-born American, with his roots deep in Brooklyn.  What relevance did Selinsgrove have to Leopold’s life in Brooklyn?

 

Although he remembered his father’s stories Leonard knew little about the lives of his Selinsgrove family.  From his father’s stories he understood that, in America, Leopold’s siblings had each married and raised their children in Selinsgrove.  He knew that, like Leopold, each of his sibling had begun their lives in Selinsgrove as peddlers and that Rosa, Leopold’s sister in Selinsgrove had married a Selinsgrove man named Albert Gunzberger.

 

After Leopold’s passing, Leonard’s father Isaac retained little or no contact with his father’s Pennsylvania siblings and at some point had became estranged from some of his own siblings in Brooklyn.  Young Leonard was friendly with some of his cousins whose families had retained contact with the Pennsylvania part of the family, but even they professed to have little understanding of Leopold’s immigration and the town of Selinsgrove Pennsylvania.

 

Coping with Hard Times

 

Leonard grew up in depression years.  Isaac Joseph, like his father Leopold, was a butcher, and somehow had managed to open his own butcher shop, apparently at the wrong time, early in the Depression.  The Depression was hard on new businesses and Isaac Joseph’s butcher shop had a slow start.  The slow economy had made it difficult for many of his customers to pay and perhaps Isaac was too soft hearted in allowing credit to those who would later be unable to meet their obligations.  Isaac ultimately lost his business and a back injury he had sustained, along with the chronic back pain that resulted, made it difficult for him to maintain other employment.  Consequently, at the age of 14 Leonard entered the work force in order to help support his family.

 

Leonard grew into a powerful young man.  Between school and work, whatever spare time he had, he spent at the gym, weight-training and wrestling.  I learned, through stories told by Leonard’s cousins and friends that, as a young adolescent, my father gained a reputation as a street fighter, not averse to instigating fights with opposing gang members as he and his friends ventured into other neighborhoods.

 

According to one cousin, among Leonard’s friends, he earned the nickname of  “Lefty Lenny” due to his skill in using his fists.  But the Leonard I remember was not proud of this period of his life and, although he never denied or apologized for it, neither did he choose to discuss it with his sons. Fortunately, it appears that this phase of his life was a short one.  His struggle to support his parents while attempting to complete his education left him little time for street life.

 

Leonard at about age 14

 

 At only slightly more than five feet, ten inches, Leonard would later be deemed too short to become a New York City policeman, but as a young man he was in great demand for jobs that required his notable physical strength.  As a high school student he was able to demand top pay for loading and unloading trucks, but Leonard came to hate such jobs preferring sales positions.  He would later lecture to his children about the importance of education, which he believed had ultimately enabled him to earn his living based upon his brain and not his back.

And Leonard was proud of his sales skills.  Years later, Leonard would relay to his children his experiences as an unauthorized ice cream salesman on the beach in Coney Island.  The police would attempt to inspect the credentials of boardwalk and beach vendors.  Leonard had no credentials, so in order to avoid arrest, he frequently had to run from police, thrusting his box of merchandise into the hands of friendly sunbathers who would hide the ice cream under their blankets until the police was out of sight, while Leonard ran into the surf.

 

Notwithstanding her son’s busy work schedule, Leonard’s mother would not allow him to quit school and somehow he was still able to compete academically.  Leonard had always excelled in math and science, and when he reached high school age he was recommended for admission to Brooklyn Technical High School, a school that admitted only students with talents in math and science.

 

My grandmother would not allow this opportunity to pass although admission to Brooklyn Tech was an honor that Leonard had not chosen.  His new school required a longer commute and isolated Leonard from most of his friends who now attended more conveniently located Erasmus High School.  In his later years Leonard frequently expressed his regret at not having received a more balanced liberal arts education.  Only technical courses were offered at Brooklyn Tech at that time.

 

Leonard was not close to his father growing up.  Although he loved his father, Leonard understood that Isaac Joseph’s difficulties with staying employed had changed his life and deprived him of his childhood.  The resentment never left him.  In the final years of his life, Leonard bitterly expressed his frustration at having lost a portion of his youth in order to support his family.

 

But as a young adult, Dad never allowed this frustration to poison his relationship with his father.  When Leonard moved to Washington D.C. he found his father a job as a butcher there.  Isaac Joseph took the job and for a period of time lived with our family in Southeast Washington.  But Isaac Joseph’s residence in Washington was only for a short time.  He soon began to miss my grandmother and his Brooklyn life and moved back to Brooklyn.  After my grandmother died Leonard stayed in close contact with his father, and, of course, continued to contribute to his support.  The relationship may not have been a warm one, but, as far as I could tell, Leonard always treated his father with respect.

 

Leonard’s complex relationship with his father during his youth is reflected in his short-lived attempt to keep a diary as a young teen.  Dad recorded one entry in the back of a Geography book in 1932 when he was sixteen, and, at least temporarily, had become unemployed.  A portion of that diary entry is quoted below, along with grammatical inaccuracies and attitude.  The statement reflects Leonard’s growing resentment toward his father as well as his admiration for his mother.

 

“ I guess moms down by the Good Humor feller now trying to get me a job (did I say trying?)  The day before yesterday I had 3 jobs today I have none.  (Oh yes it can be done) say why don’t mom get pop a job (oh oh gone too far) (smack)!!  That’s alright, pops alright he’s trying to do his best in these hard times (what the hell I can’t even get a job.)”

 

There is little doubt in my mind that Leonard’s difficult childhood relationship with his father was, at least in part, responsible for his inability to ask the questions about his Selinsgrove family that would later haunt him.

 

Lessons of the Holocaust

 

As a young adult, Leonard watched as newspapers became consumed with reports of the Nazi treatment of Jews who still remained in Germany.  Leonard’s mother, Karolina Hess Dreifuss left Germany in 1906, to free herself from the domination she felt from her male oriented, and controlling military family, but now she worried about her siblings, many of whom now realized that they must leave Germany but needed Karolina’s help.

 

There was a window of time during the 1930s when Germany was willing to allow its Jews to immigrate to countries who would accept them.  Few countries stepped forward to accept these Jews.  The United States conditioned acceptance of these threatened German Jews upon the written assurance by credit worthy American citizens that German-Jewish immigrants would not become dependent upon the government for support.  An affidavit of support was required before Karolina’s siblings and their families could immigrate.  Karolina went, door to door, soliciting successful Jewish business people to sign such affidavits

 

According to Leonard, many of the Jewish business people Karolina approached were reluctant to provide the guarantees required by the Government.  Although she was successful in rescuing some family members, many who were unwilling or unable to leave perished.  Leonard witnessed his mother’s frantic efforts on behalf of her family, and no doubt began to appreciate Leopold’s flight to this country seventy years earlier.

 

After high school Dad was given the opportunity to further his technical education at Cooper Union College which did not require tuition from technically qualified students.  Leonard worked during the day and went to school in the evening, attempting to earn an Engineering degree.   He continued to support his family during this period as he took a series of jobs through the “Works Progress Administration,” a New Deal program designed to help put the Country’s struggling economy back to work.  But Leonard felt that his dependence upon such work was demeaning and failed to produce sufficient income to provide for his independence from his parents while he continued to provide for their support.

 

In the early 1940s Leonard met my mother, but work opportunities were still difficult to come by in New York during this period prior to World War II, and thoughts of marriage had to be postponed until he could find a source of income that would enable him to begin his own household.  At the time, work for the Federal Government employment was highly sought after because it was considered to be secure.  Leonard’s responsibilities to his family weighed upon him as he took the standardized Government exam and subsequently qualified for a job in Washington D.C. as a draftsman.

 

He and my mother married in October of 1941 and relocated to Washington.  Leonard was forced to leave Cooper Union without a degree after attending part time for four years at night.  According to his Army enlistment records, his four years of night school at Cooper Union was only the equivalent of three years of college.  But Leonard never had time to go back to finish his degree.  He became a cartographer (mapmaker) and spent the balance of his career making aeronautical charts for the Federal Government, used for airplane navigation.  When the United States entered World War II, Leonard was drafted into a division that made aeronautical charts for American bombers overseas.

 

There was no time to entertain his interest in the story of Selinsgrove  and his family there as he now had to devote all of his time and efforts on his new career and growing family.  He allowed his father’s stories of Selinsgrove to remain dormant until the time of Isaac Joseph’s death in 1982.

 

When Leonard retired from Government in 1973 it was his intention to spend his later years in real estate sales.  Dad found that his sales skills had not dissipated and he had several successful years.  During this time, he read several books on genealogy and began to put into writing the information on the family members he knew of in his and my mother’s family.

 

Leonard spent many hours documenting the names and other information that his parent’s could recall of their German families and about both sides of my mother’s Polish family.  It was at this time that he attempted to visit Selinsgrove for the first time, but he found little there.  Other than the Dreifuss and Gunzberger names, he was uncertain what he was looking for, and these names did not appear in available records.

 

Leonard’s “Roots”

 

But my father’s quest to find his Pennsylvania family had to wait until he finished his government career and his obligation to support and educate his children.  It was in 1977 that the television series “Roots,” aired.  This dramatization of author Alex Haley’s book by the same title, portrayed the lives of Haley’s African-American ancestors during the period of slavery in the U.S., and was based upon Haley’s own genealogical family research.

 

I remember watching some of these shows with Leonard and saw that he was clearly moved by these presentations.  Leonard had already begun his family search at the time but I believe that it was this television show that convinced him that, like Alex Haley, he would be able to research his way back through his grandfather’s history and perhaps fill in some of the gaps of his family’s missing history.

 

It wasn’t just the Selinsgrove stories that Leonard wanted to understand.  Leonard’s mother had immigrated from Germany in the early 1900s and much of the family she left behind had perished in the Holocaust.  Leonard sought to understand about this part of his family also and about the Polish parents of my mother who also left a portion of their families behind, to an uncertain fate.  Leonard hoped to preserve the stories of these forgotten ancestors for his children, and for the grandchildren he anticipated.  But clearly, it was the missing part of the Selinsgrove story that continued to capture Leonard’s imagination.

 

After Isaac Joseph’s death in 1982, Dad must have realized that without his father’s help re-discovering his family’s Selinsgrove experience would not be an easy task.  He still had a few living cousins that had also grown up in Brooklyn who knew parts of the Selinsgrove story from their mothers, who were Leopold’s daughters (Isaac’s sisters).  Leonard contacted these cousins to determine whether their recollections could add anything to the stories he remembered, passed on to him by his father.  Leonard became convinced that his cousins had little to add to what he already knew, but he carefully wrote down their recollections and was grateful to receive photographs of Grandfather Leopold and Grandmother Eugenie from one, as well as a photograph of an older man that his cousin, Lester Stone identified as Leopold’s father, “Isaak” Dreifuss.

 

Finding Leopold’s Caretaker in Selinsgrove?

 

Leonard strongly believed that his grandfather Leopold and siblings had been sent by their German family to Selinsgrove in the care of some other relative who had come to live in Pennsylvania earlier; even before Leopold’s immigration in 1868.  He realized that these family members might have been from his grandmother, Rosina’s side of his German family,(Leopold’s mother) and yet he did not yet even know Rosina’s maiden name.  Without this information finding a family link in Pennsylvania might not be possible.

 

The stories told to Leonard by his father seemed to center mostly around the Dreifuss name. Dad recalled his father’s insistence that his Dreifuss family had been somehow related to Alfred Dreyfus, the French military officer who, at the end of the nineteenth century was persecuted in France because of his family’s Jewish faith and was unjustly accused of treason.  Isaac Joseph had also claimed our family was related to a man named “Barney Dreifuss, another German-Jewish immigrant who was an early owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.  A book I received for my Bar Mitzvah about Jews in Sport taught me that Barney Dreifuss, a member of baseball’s “Hall of Fame,” was credited with having organized the first baseball “world series.”  Leonard attempted to substantiate these claims, but without success.

 Leonard remembered being told that Leopold’s two younger brothers, Aaron and Henry had been in business together for a period in Selinsgrove and that their sister, Rosa had married a man there named Abraham or Albert “Gunzberger.”  The Gunzberger name was an unusual one that should have stood out in available records, but without knowing its exact spelling, finding a reference to the name would be difficult.

 

Leonard began teaching himself about Jewish Genealogy in the late 1960s or early 1970s, well before he chose to share his Selinsgrove stories with his family.  Even before his retirement, Leonard realized that before he could uncover additional information about his family, he needed to know where to look.  He read every book he could find on genealogy, specifically about Jewish and German genealogy, and he subscribed to various periodic journals, most notably “Toledot, The Journal of Jewish Genealogy.”

 

Even though Leonard’s background in genealogy was limited, compared to other researchers he knew he had become somewhat of an authority on the subject to many with no experience at all.  In the late 1960s he was asked to teach a course on the subject at the Hillel House at the University of Maryland in College Park while I was still a student there.  (Unfortunately, Pete and I didn’t take his course.)

At some point Leonard began the tedious process of recording, name by name, the members of his parent’s families and of the families of my mother’s parent’s.   With each entry, Leonard attempted to include whatever information he had relevant to each relative listed.  This turned out to be a much more time consuming procedure than Leonard had anticipated, but it was fortunate that he took this project upon himself when he did, or the lives of many of these family members would have been lost.

 

He carefully recorded the names of each family member on special genealogical data sheets, which had been designed for that purpose.  Each sheet provided space to record birth, death and marriage dates and the location of each event for each family member and spouse, as well as the data for each child of that marriage.  Although the data sheets had room to record the sources of this information, Leonard was not always disciplined in filling in that information and many of his sources have been lost to us.  Each child Leonard listed would then receive his or her own data sheet, recording their marriages and the names of their children.

 

If there had been more than one marriage for any individual, an additional data sheet would be necessary since additional marriages meant additional children.  The data forms had no place to list siblings, so he tried to keep the sheets in proper order, family by family so that in order to locate siblings you would go back to the page of the parents, which listed the children of the marriage.  It was a dreary, tiresome process and it took many hours of Leonard’s time.

 

Notwithstanding the many books on Jewish genealogy that Leonard studied at the time, he was not yet prepared for the task of actually researching public records in a small Pennsylvania municipality, and when he made his only visit to Selinsgrove he attempted to do it during a single daytrip.

 

I don’t think my father visited either the Snyder or Montour County Courthouses at all.  He explained that his reluctance to spend time researching in the various Pennsylvania courthouses was based upon his belief that his Selinsgrove family had lived very simply in Pennsylvania and had acquired few possessions that would show up in public records.  Perhaps this was just an excuse, but Leonard truly believed that little would be found in the public records to document his family’s lives in Pennsylvania.  In truth, I believe that at this point in his research Leonard still wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for and his declining health must have made travel difficult for him.  Had he lived longer, perhaps he would have returned to Pennsylvania to complete his research.

 

 Preliminary Research

 

Dad’s research of the “Dreifuss” family name had given him some understanding of the name’s derivation.  The name, he learned, was most prominent in the areas of Alsace and Lorraine in France and immediately across the Rhine River in the towns of Baden Germany, which included Leopold’s ancestral home of Altdorf.  The name “Dreifuss,” in German, means “three feet” and certain three-footed stoves are still referred to by that name.  Leonard learned of some theories as to why this name might have been used by his German family.

 

According to some sources the Dreifuss name designated Jewish families expelled from the Town of Treves and were allowed to become residents of France by Napoleon on condition that they adopt the name “Treves,” a name that somehow ultimately evolved into Dreifuss, Dryfus, Dreyfus and other spellings.

Another theory revolved around the insecurity held by the French and the Germans governments concerning the loyalty of their Jewish citizens.  These two nations had been at war with one another for hundreds of years, and both suspected that the Jews living within their borders identified with their Jewish brethren more than with the country in which they resided and might not support their country in the event of war.  Jews were frequently accused of disloyalty by both countries.

 

Alfred Dreyfus, for example, who Isaac believed was somehow related to our family, had been a loyal French military officer, who was accursed of treason by his own government and sent to Devils Island because of false accusations of treasonous acts, fueled by underlying French Anti-Semitism.  The “three feet” translation of the “Dreifuss,” name, according to this theory, reflected fears by France that Jews symbolically had three feet, two of which they suspected were in Germany, a country they believed was plotting their destruction.  Ironically Germany had the same concern about its own Jews and underlying anti-Semitism in both countries would ultimately make Jewish existence in those countries increasingly difficult.

 

Pete recently discovered a third theory.  Jews in the nineteenth century, according to this theory, had frequently earned their livings as peddlers and the third foot referred to the staff sometimes carried by peddlers.  Whatever the true derivation of the Dreifuss name, families by that name were common in the Baden area of Germany and across the Rhine River in the areas of Alsace and Lorraine, France.

 

 

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington

 

In 1980 Leonard became a founding member of The Jewish Genealogical Association of Greater Washington.  Given his take-charge personality he would soon be an officer and a leader for the young organization.  There he sought the knowledge and methods of more experienced researchers.  The Internet and the many databases currently available to genealogists did not exist in an accessible form at that time so the procedures Leonard had to follow were much slower and more tedious than the procedures a researcher would follow today.  Leonard taught himself what offices he needed to write to and where he needed to visit in order to obtain the information he sought.    I found among Leonard’s files an early leaflet published by the JGSGW stating the history of that organization and soliciting membership by those interested in Jewish Genealogy.  On the reverse of this brochure was an informational explanation: “HOW TO START TRACING YOUR JEWISH ROOTS by Leonard Dreifuss and other JGS members”  There were no web related search engines such as “JewishGen” or “Ancestry.com” available at that time Leonard authored this pamphlet so his recommendations to new researchers included a collection of leading books available at that time for Jewish genealogists: a subscription to “Toledot,” materials available in the Family Library of The Church of Latter Day Saints, the National Archives and the Library of Congress as well as steamship records and membership in the JGSGW.

Dad’s deteriorating health ended his real estate career several years after his retirement but cancer surgery only managed to temporarily interrupt his family search.  However, after his second operation in 1986 he rarely traveled far from home.

 

Other Genealogists Descended From Leonard’s Family

 

In the course of Leonard’s research, he discovered books by authors who also had ancestors from Aldorf Germany and who shared his ancestry.  Alice Dreifuss Goldstein was a Research Associate at Brown University whose writings about her demographic studies have been extensively published.  Leonard found Alice’s PhD thesis in the Library of Congress; “A study of Jewish Demographics in the town of Altdorf, Baden, Germany.“

 

At the beginning of Alice’s thesis Leonard found a dedication to her ancestor “Abraham Dreifuss” of “Altdorf” who Leonard had discovered from his research had been his own paternal grandfather.  After being contacted by Pete, Alice brought much of her family to visit Leonard, Pete and I and our families at Pete’s house several years prior to Leonard’s death.  Alice and her family have been very helpful to our research and have remained close friends.    Alice is actually descended from Isaak Dreifuss, Leopold’s father, but through a different wife.  Alice’s family is descended from Isaac and his first wife Sarah Schweizer.  It was after Sarah’s death in 1847 that Isaak married Leopold’s mother, Rosina Bernheim(er) in 1848.  Alice was born in Baden Germany, in Kenzingen, a town not far from Altdorf.  Alice and her immediate family escaped Nazi anti-semitism and immigrated to the U.S. although much of her extended family was lost.

 Leonard somehow found another book, with the title “Schicksal und Geschichte der judischen Gemeinden” (Fate and History of the Jewish Communities), although it was written entirely in German and published in Germany in 1988.  One section of this book dealt with the town of Altdorf, and was co-authored by a woman named “Hanna Meyer-Moses.”  It is not clear how Leonard discovered this book or when he first made contact with Hanna Meyer-Moses, but when she visited the Washington, D.C. area to donate her book to the newly opened Holocaust Museum, she visited Leonard at his home and gave him a copy of the book.  In later years Hanna and her husband Werner joined Pete and I in a trip back to Altdorf and Schmieheim.

 Hannah and the families of her ancestors had been residents of Altdorf long prior to the onset of the second World War.  When Nazi’s invaded Altdorf, she and a sister escaped to Switzerland while her parents were sent to concentration camps and ultimately perished.  Hannah has been very outspoken on the treatment by the Nazis of Jews in general and of her family in particular.  In August of 1982 Hanna refused a German attempt to honor her work with the statement that she could not, “on a mountain of bones and ash standing, answer a German medal.”  Hannah Meyer Moses is related to Pete and I through Abraham Dreifuss, Leopold’s paternal grandfather (Leonard’s great-great grandfather).  She is descended from our ancestor Abraham Dreifuss’s through Abraham’s first marriage to Marianne  Gundelfinger, while our family derived  through Abraham’s second wife, Duset Weil.

 

Leonard’s “Bernheim” Ancestors

An Important Discovery

 

Leonard’s genealogical search for his grandfather, Leopold and the Selinsgrove connection was in full force by the time he retired from his Government job in 1973. By researching census records, and birth/death records of family members he was slowly learning about his family.

 

Some of the discoveries he made were important and kept him motivated.  It was during this period that Dad located the New York City death certificate of his immigrant grandfather, Leopold Dreifuss that identified Leopold’s German parents to be “Isaac Dreifuss” and “Rosa Bernheim.”

 

Now that Leonard knew Leopold’s mother’s maiden name he could now attempt to locate Bernheim family members who had lived in Selinsgrove before Leopold arrived there.  This turned out to be the clue that opened the door to some of Leonard’s most important findings, and those that would be later sought by his sons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leopold's Death Certificate: Leonrd knew that Leopold's German family surnames had been "Bernheimer" and "Dreifuss"

 

The Writings of Isaac W. Bernheim

 

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After Leonard discovered the maiden name of his great grandmother, he began to research the names “Bernheim,” or Bernheimer, as it had been used in Germany, searching for his great-grandmother’s family in this country; perhaps one or more Bernheimer relatives who may have come over before Leopold and could have provided support for Leopold and his siblings.  One of his contacts referred him to the autobiographical works of Isaac Wolf Bernheim who Leonard would soon refer to as “I.W. Bernheim” or just “IWB.”  IWB came to America from Germany only one year before Leonard’s grandfather, Leopold.  He achieved enough wealth to ultimately retire and write his memoirs.   These memoirs provided us with some understanding of his Bernheim family in Schmieheim and later Frankfurt, Germany.  In his later years IWB wrote and published his Bernheim family history which Leonard came to believe was the history of his own German family.

 

IWB spent his early years in this country as a peddler in Pennsylvania, but ultimately moved to Kentucky where much of his family, who were also German immigrants, already resided.  It was in Kentucky that he and his brother Bernhard would make their fortune, selling whiskey through the company that they called “Bernheim Brothers.”

 

Bernheim Brothers became “Bernheim Distillery” as the brothers began to distill their own brands, including “I.W. Harper,” the Bernheim brand, which is still manufactured and is distributed today in Europe by another distillery.  The Bernheim brothers became very wealthy and in his later years, after the sale of his business’, I. W. Bernheim became a much-respected philanthropist, and a spokesman for Reformed Judaism, who published several autobiographical books focusing upon his German family, including “The Story of the Bernheim Family.”

 

In “The Story of the Bernheim Family” IWB told the story of his own life, which he began by describing his family in Schmieheim, Baden, Germany.  Leonard, knew that Schmieheim was a town that neighbored his grandfather’s town of Altdorf and he suspected a relationship.  He hoped to find something, somewhere in this book, to tie his great grandmother’s Bernheim family to that of Isaac W. Bernheim.  He did not have to look too hard.

 

IWB and The Selinsgrove Connection

 

The more he read in this book, and about the Bernheim family that it described, the more Leonard became convinced that he had found the other half of his German family.  Not only did IWB carry the family name of “Bernheim” (or Bernheimer as the family was referred to in Germany) but Leonard discovered through IWB’s writings that IWB’s mother’s maiden name was “Dreyfuss.  Most importantly, Leonard learned from his book that a “Henry Bernheim,” who was the brother of IWB’s father, had immigrated to the United States in 1851 and died…

                                                      “about 1878 “in Selins Grove, Penna.”

 

There it was…the Selinsgrove Connection.  After this revelation Leonard knew that IWB’s family had been somehow linked to his own.  Indeed, Leonard found an 1870 U. S. census record of a Henry Bernheim living in Selinsgrove with his wife Richa, his daughter Ellen and mother-in-law, Mary Ellenbogen.  Although he realized that nothing in IWB’s family history constituted proof of the relationship, Leonard strongly suspected that Rosina Bernheim Dreifuss had been somehow related to IWB.

 

Leonard paid careful attention to I. W. Bernheim’s description of Bernheim’s family in Schmieheim Germany as described it in his book.  IWBs grandfather, the book states, was “Salomon Bernheimer”, who lived and died in Schmieheim, and that Salomon and his wife Ella:

 

“raised a family of seven children, consisting of five daughters and two sons, of which the older, Leon Solomon Bernheim was my sainted father.”

 

Although the book did not name the daughters of Salomon Bernheimer, Leonard suspected that one of them was Leopold’s mother, “Rosa Bernheim.”  If this was true, it would mean that Salomon Bernheimer was Leonard’s great-great grandfather and that IWB was Leopold’s first cousin.  Leonard’s passion was thereafter directed towards somehow establishing that the family described in IWB’s book was Leopold’s family…and Leonard’s.

 

Nothing found so far constituted proof of a relationship between Leopold Dreifuss and IWB’s family, but Leonard’s belief that he had discovered an important part of the Selinsgrove connection was now justified.  Since we knew that the Henry Bernheim that resided in Selinsgrove in 1870 was the grandson of Salomon Bernheimer of Schmieheim, if we could establish that Leopold’s mother Rosina was a daughter of this same Salomon Bernheimer then it might be reasonable to conclude that this Henry Bernheim might have been motivated to take responsibility for his late sister’s children.  Of course there was much we had to learn before we could make that assumption, and at that point neither Pete nor I completely understood the gravity of what Leonard had found.

 

Unfortunately, neither Pete or I read IWB’s book in detail until after Leonard’s death and were probably less excited about Leonard’s discovery than he expected us to be.  When I first read the book, I was struck by a statement the writer made in the early pages explaining that his motivation for writing about his German family had been influenced a belief that Jewish family histories had been repressed in Germany and he felt compelled to pass the story of his Bernheim family to the “Bernheims of Tomorrow.”

 

“The Jew was so long on the defensive that no opportunity was given him for preparation of those family records which reveal so intensely the character of any people.  Realizing the lack of such literature, I have ventured to write this modest volume in the hope that the Bernheims of tomorrow may find something to profit in the chronicle of their kinsman of to-day.”

                                                                                                         Isaac W. Bernheim

 

Given his strong belief that Leopold’s mother fit somewhere within this Bernheim family, Leonard may have felt that this paragraph was speaking directly to him.  He was hopeful that evidence of the relationship would someday surface.  Although Pete and I paid careful attention to Leonard’s new discovery we probably failed to show him the excitement he believed it deserved.

 

Rosanne Leeson

 

It was in late December, 1977 that Leonard discovered the work of fellow family researcher Rosanne Leeson.  Actually, it was Daniel Leeson, Rosanne’s husband, who wrote the article that Leonard discovered in the journal “Toledot” in which Leeson made reference to “the Dreyfuss family of Altdorf, Baden and Peducah, Kentucky.”   The town of Altdorf, Baden, that Daniel Leeson wrote of, Leonard knew, had been Leopold Dreifuss’ German home, and Leonard knew from IWB’s autobiographical book that the town of Peducah Kentucky was the town to which much of the extended family of IWB’s mother, Friederike or Fanny Dreyfuss had immigrated, a decade or more earlier.  IWB spoke of Friederike’s immigration and of her “Dreyfuss” family in Pedukah.

 

Leonard and Sons

 

So Rosanne had a “Dreyfuss” on one side of her German ancestry and a “Bernheimer” or “Bernheim” on the other.

 

 I located a first draft of Leonard’s letter to Daniel Leeson which I assume is similar to the one he actually sent.  In it, Leonard tells Daniel Leeson of his then recent discovery that his great grandmother’s maiden name was “Rosa Bernheim,” and that he was familiar with IWB’s autobiographical books.  Leonard then presented to Leeson his theory that this same Rosa Bernheim was one of the daughters of Salomon Bernheimer, who was IWB’s grandfather.

 

In the draft letter, Leonard implies that Leopold might have gone to Selinsgrove to live with his uncle Henry Bernheim and that, given the geographical location of Altdorf and Schmieheim and the common surnames, Leopold might have been related to Rosanne’s family on both the Dreifuss/Dreyfuss and the Bernheim side of his family.

 

“It probably is a long shot..”, Leonard wrote of his theory in the draft, “…but until now I have not been able to substantiate my theory…” (his theory that Leopold’s mother was a sister to IWB’s father and a daughter of Salomon Bernheimer).

 

 Leonard’s response came directly from Daniel Leeson’s wife, Rosanne.  She wrote:

 

“It was a delightful surprise to receive your letter this morning.  And, I do think that I may be able to clarify a few things for you…I must start by saying that I believe that your relationship is to the Bernheim family, and not my Dreyfuss/ Dryfuss clan”

 

Rosanne explained that the name “Dreyfuss,”…”in one spelling or another” is as common in Baden Germany as “Smith.”  Consequently, Rosanne argued, this common surname was not evidence of a family relationship.

 

Rosanne professed to know little about her Bernheim roots.  Although she concurred that the relationship Leonard theorized might exist, she saw her genealogical focus to be upon the Dreyfuss family, from which she was descended.  Her relationship to the Bernheim family, she argued, was only that Leon Solomon Bernheimer, IWB’s father, had married Fanny (Friederike) Dreyfuss, Rosanne’s grandfather’s half sister.  Not a close relationship to Rosanne.  Consequently, Rosanne explained, she had not researched the Bernheim family.

 

A Common Quest

 

But, although Rosanne had no information to share with Leonard about the Bernheim family of Schmieheim, apparently Leonard’s search for his Bernheim family was not unrelated to her own research. Even if Rosanne and Leonard were not related, there was reason to believe that the research of both were now be focused upon the same geographical area and upon the same or similar surnames.  Rosanne’s own “Dreyfuss” family had lived in Altdorf, where Leonard’s grandfather Leopold Dreifuss had grown up, and there was little doubt that Isaac W. Bernheim had descended from the family of the same Salomon Bernheim of Schmieheim that Leonard believed might be his great-great grandfather.

 

Rosanne and Leonard began sharing notes of their respective research to date and it appears that each soon developed a mutual respect for the work of the other.  In the months and years that followed, their communications continued as they began to mentor each other on future research.  Ultimately, Rosanne became an important influence upon the direction of Leonard’s research.  Rosanne gave Leonard the names of several Bernheim relatives that she felt might be able to help determine whether Rosa Bernheim was one of the five daughters of Salomon and Ella Bernheim.  Leonard did follow through and contacted at least some of these sources, but they were unable to help him.

 

Leonard instructed Rosanne as to how he had been able to retrieve family information directly from several municipalities in Baden.  He described his attempts to obtain Baden information from a local Family History Library (through the Church of Latter Day Saints), that had turned out to be unproductive.  Rosanne attempted to explore the Mormon sources on her own but ultimately she also determined this approach to be unproductive.  Then, following Leonard’s advice, Rosanne wrote directly to German municipalities, which apparently paid off for her in Karlsruhe and Freiburg.

 

The 1809 Lists

 

Perhaps motivated by recommendations found in Rosanne’s letters, Leonard wrote to The Leo Baeck Institute in New York asking if they had information concerning the Dreifuss and Bernheim families of Altdorf and Schmieheim, Baden, Germany.  He received a prompt reply, which included a list of all Jews living in these towns as of June 9, 1809.  This list was taken from a report written by Baden officials, apparently to comply with a command of Napoleon that Jews living in these communities begin to adopt surnames, whether or not they had used them in the past .

 

There were three families named “Bernheimer” and two named “Dreifuss” living in Schmieheim in 1809, at the time of the compilation of the list while two families named “Dreyfus” and one named “Bernheimer” were then living in Altdorf.  Leonard believed that the list had identified his own ancestors living in both towns.

 

The Schmieheim list included I.W. Bernheim’s grandfather, Salomon Bernheimer, then a 31 year-old “nothandler” (petty trader), his young wife, 24 year-old ” Ela” and their two children, “Low”, (Probably Leopold or Leib, IWB’s father) who was six months-old and 4 ½ year-old “Kola” (possibly Karoline).  Leonard believed that Salomon and Ela were the grandparents that IWB had described in his book.  If Leopold’s mother was, in fact, another of their daughters, she had probably not been born at the time of the 1809 list.

 

In nearby Altdorf, at the time of the list lived a 62-year-old “Viehmakler” (cattle broker) named Abraham “Dreyfus” with his wife, 36 year-old Duset and eleven children.  The youngest of these children was ½ year-old (six months) Isaak, who, notwithstanding the “Dreyfus” spelling, Leonard believed to be Leopold’s father.

 

It proved interesting to both Leonard and Rosanne that at the time of this naming mandate, what now clearly appeared to be Leonard’s family, spelled their name with a “y” rather than an “ei.”  This demonstrated to both Leonard and Rosanne, the relative lack of importance of name spellings in tracing families during this period, and eventually Rosanne reconsidered the possibility of a relationship between Leonard’s “Dreifuss” ancestors and her own Dreyfuss family.

 

The Research of David Blum

 

In a November 8, 1979 letter Rosanne recommended that Leonard seek out “David Blum”, a researcher in New York.  She told him that Blum had been helpful to her in finding information about her family in southwest Baden and Alsace.  According to Rosanne;

 

“He is from Breisach, and apparently has researched and accumulated records from that area for many, many years.  He has records for Altdorf and lines of correspondence to seekers there.  If you are willing to pay his fee I am sure that he has much of the data you seek on Isaac Dreifuss and Rosa Bernheim…Maybe we’ll find out if we really are related!”

 

 Rosanne had touched upon a sensitive topic for Leonard: paying for research.  It was not just that Leonard was tight with a buck (which he was), but the search process itself had become important to him.  Dad had enjoyed some early successes in obtaining information by writing to various offices in Germany and the United States for information about his ancestors, and he was reluctant to have someone else do his research for him.

 

But Leonard had reached a point of some frustration in attempting to learn how his part of the Bernheim family fit within the family described by IWB, and it appears that Rosanne’s recommendation carried some weight.  So a still skeptical Leonard wrote to Blum asking what information he had to offer.  Blum promptly replied:   “…

 

I discovered the origin of your grandfather Leopold and can supply you with all the names, data and towns of your great grandfather Isaac Dreifuss (Leopold’s father) his wives, in-laws and his 14 children with marriage partners etc…His (Isaac Dreifuss’s) father-your great great-great grandfather-was also married twice.”  “…Isaac’s wife, Rosina nee’ Bernheim(er) was a distant relation to Mrs Leeson.  I am able to give you the details of Rosina and her parents and where they came from.”

 

 Blum’s response was encouraging enough to induce Leonard to part with what turned out to be a very modest fee.  Blum’s letter had inferred that he would be able to confirm, one way or the other, whether Leopold’s mother Rosa, or Rosina Bernheimer Dreifuss was, in fact, the daughter of Salomon Bernheimer and the sister of Isaac W. Bernheim’s father, Lob (or Leopold) Bernheimer.

 

The information that Blum subsequently sent to Leonard did confirm what my father had long believed; that the parents of Leopold’s mother, Rosina (Rosa) were Salomon and Ella Bernheimer, who were also the grandparents of I.W. Bernheim.  Further, Blum identified Leopold’s father to have been Isaak Dreifuss, the son of Abraham Dreyfuss of Altdorf, Baden Germany.  Apparently the spelling of the surname had changed sometime between the two generations.

 

Blum reiterated that both Abraham Dreyfuss and his son Isaac Dreifuss had been married twice and that Leopold and his siblings had been descended from the second marriages of both.  Abraham Dreyfuss’ first marriage had been to a Marianne Gundelfinger, who died in 1794.  Abraham then remarried to Duset Weil in approximately 1796. There were eleven children born of this union, according to Blum, including Isaak, Leopold’s father.

 

Blum told Leonard that his great-great grandfather, Isaac/Isaak Dreifuss had married a Sara Schweizer in 1838 but that Sara had died in 1847 after giving Isaac five children.  Isaak then married Rosina Bernheimer in 1848 and together they parented nine children, including a “Leopold.”  At the time of Rosina’s death in 1864, only five of those children had survived; Leopold, Simon, Henry, Aaron, Rosa, and Emma.  The youngest son, Simon who was barely nine years-old when his mother Rosina died, was himself dead only three months later.

 

 According to Blum, his information “is basically taken from the registers of Altdorf and Schmieheim in conjunction with the list of 1809 which Stephen Lowenstein (from the Leo Baeck Institute) sent you plus a few other documentations which I researched in the past.”  Apparently Leonard had sent Blum his lists from Leo Baeck Institute and Blum had included this information in preparing his analysis.

 

Even today, with all of the additional research Pete and I have done in Altdorf and Schmieheim records, it remains unclear to us what Blum was referring to as “the registers of Altdorf and Schmieheim” and Pete and I remained skeptical of the validity of Blum’s information.  Fortunately, Leonard disregarded our skepticism and was now firmly convinced of the validity of his theory that Leopold’s mother was a daughter of Salomon Bernheimer of Schmieheim.

 

 What Happened to Isaak?

 

Dad’s follow up letter to Blum focused upon what Blum had not included in his report.  Blum had reported the death of Rosina, Leopold’s mother one day after childbirth in 1864, but Leonard sought a date of death for Leopold’s father, Isaak, which Blum was unable to supply.  Although he is not buried in Schmieheim cemetery, based upon family naming practices and names given to the children of Leopold and his siblings, we suspect that Isaak died shortly after Rosina.  However, to this day, we have found nothing in German or American records to confirm or refute this theory.   There was, we felt, the possibility that Isaak had also immigrated to America, but immigration index searches revealed nothing.

 

Ortssippenbuch Records

 

Notwithstanding our unanswered questions about the “registers of Altdorf and Schmieheim, the reservations Pete and I held concerning the Blum information turned out to be without merit.  Blum’s analysis was clearly substantiated years later when we discovered the “Ortssippenbuch” (German Genealogical records), for the towns of Schmieheim and Altdorf.  These Ortssippenbuch records were apparently a compilation of genealogical information gathered by German researchers in the 1930s, taken from church (and apparently Synagogue), cemetery and other available records.

 

Ortssippenbuch records are not available for all German towns and communities, and we we quite lucky that they were available for Altdorf and Schmieheim, the ancestral towns of both of Leopold’s parents.  These records confirmed the information Dad had received from Blum, and provided additional verification of Leonard’s belief that Leopold’s mother was the sister of I.W. Bernheim’s father.

 

Blum’s information, according to the Altdorf Ortssippenbuch (OSB), had correctly instructed Leonard that Leopold’s father, Isaak Dreifuss, was born and raised in Atldorf and married Schmieheim-born Rosina Bernheimer in 1848, one year after the death of Isaak’s first wife Sarah Schweitzer.   Rosina was 28 years old at the time of her marriage to Leopold’s father, while Isaak was 40 and had five children by his first wife.  Rosina was only 43 years old on the day she died.

 

And yet the Altorf OSB could not have been the source that Blum used for the information he sent Leonard.  The Altdorf OSB lists Leonard’s great-great grandfather Abraham Dreyfuss’ (born in 1747) and his first marriage to his first wife, Marianna Gundelfinger, but show only one child resulting from this union.  Blum described five children born to Abraham and Marianna, which agrees with information we received many years later from our German researcher who obtained the information directly from German records.  So the “Registers of Altdorf and Schmieheim” must have been information that Blum obtained from resources other than the Altdorf OSB.

 

When Pete and I were at the Jewish cemetery in Schmieheim we were able to identify the gravesites of all four of Leopold’s grandparents and that of his mother, Rosina Bernheimer Dreifuss .  Isaak’s grave was not found, but the burial sites we did find confirmed the names that had been provided by Blum and the Ortssippenbuchen of both Altdorf and Schmieheim.

 

Leonard found ship records from Germany establishing that Leopold had immigrated on September 28 1868, only four years after the death of his mother.  Brothers Aaron and Henry followed in 1874 and 1875 respectively and it appears that their sister Rosa, the last of the siblings to come to America (and ultimately to Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania), probably came between 1882 and 1884.

 

In the light of Blum’s information, Leonard’s conviction that the children of Isaac and Rosina had been sent to Selinsgove in the care of Henry Bernheim remained a viable theory, but this theory remained unproven.

 

OSB records for the town of Schmieheim confirmed that Rosina had a brother in Germany named Heinrich Bernheimer, and we could establish that a “Henry Bernheim” was, in fact, living in Selinsgrove at the time of the 1870 U.S. Census, who may have been Rosa’s brother.  But there was nothing to prove that Henry had been the support system for the Dreifuss siblings while they lived in Pennsylvania.  There were many reasons to question such a conclusion.   Although Leonard and Rosanne apparently never met, they corresponded from 1977 until shortly before Leonard’s death in 1997.

 

    Karen Dreifuss Burk

 

During the years of Dad’s research, he suffered through two major operations for colon cancer and ultimately endured a series of radiation treatments for prostate cancer that caused him to become anemic and weak.  The compilation of records of family members that Leonard had created on his data sheets had become voluminous and difficult to keep track of, and he wanted to leave his family a clean presentation of the family history he had compiled.

 

During his activities at The Jewish Genealogical Association of Greater Washington Leonard observed other family researchers that were using early computer technology to keep track of their family records, but he was insecure about his ability to create such a database himself.  Consequently, he called upon Pete who was a scientist and had some experience with early database programs.  Pete found several early programs to organize Dad’s information, which he kept current throughout Leonard’s final years.

 

When Leonard died on April 3, 1997, Pete developed a family website into which he built Leonard’s family database which he now compiled upon a newly developed program, discoverable by other family researchers.  My brother and I had both been bitten by whatever it was that kept Leonard focused upon his forgotten ancestors as we began our partnership to complete Dad’s work.  Pete continued to maintain the website he had built containing Dad’s database.  Although Pete alone had developed and maintained this website, online it became The Leonard Dreifuss Website under the names of both Peter and Jeffrey Dreifuss.

 

 The Genealogy of Karen Burk

 

During those early years of the Internet, more and more people were beginning to surf the web.  Many, especially those with interests in their own genealogy, would attempt to locate family members by “Googling” their own family names.  Some found our website in this manner, which directed them to our e-mail addresses.  On November 20, 1997 Pete received the following e-mail:

 

“Let me know if you get this message.  My name is Karen Burk.  My Grandfather settled in Selinsgrove, Pa. from Altdorf Germany.  Henry Dreifuss’s father was Isaac and his father’s name was Abraham.  Henry had a brother named Leopold.  Are we related?”

 

Karen was indeed related.  Her great-grandfather,  Henry Dreifuss was one of the brothers of Leopold Dreifuss who had immigrated to the Selinsgrove area just a few years after his older brothers, Leopold and Aaron.  According to Karen, Henry and his family lived in Danville, a Pennsylvania town located just a stone’s throw from Selinsgrove, where he had his business and raised his family. Henry moved his family to Detroit sometime after the turn of the century Karen told us and she still lived within walking distance of the home that her grandfather built there.

 

So in the end, Leonard’s efforts to find his lost Selinsgrove family had been, at least partially, rewarded.  It is unfortunate that he did not live long enough to have met Karen and her family.  Karen was able to fill in important parts of the Selinsgrove story but her story added a troublesome contradiction to some of what Leonard understood.

 

A Different Town?

 

Henry Dreifuss, Karen’s great-grandfather had been Leopold’s brother, but his immigration story was slightly different than the story that had been passed down to Leonard.  The story of Henry Dreifuss’ immigration, as it had been passed down to Karen, was centered, not in Selinsgrove, but in a nearby town called Danville, Pennsylvania.   Morris (Maurice) Dreifuss, Karen’s grandfather was Henry’s son, who lived with his parents in Danville for most of his youth before relocating to Detroit.  Morris passed down the story of his father’s immigration as he understood it, along with his own memories of growing up in Danville to his son, Karen’s father, Richard Dreifuss.  Karen’s grandfather Morris died in 1947 when she was three but most of his stories were passed on to her by her father.

 

Morris became a successful attorney in Michigan and had changed his name to Maurice.  According to Karen’s father, it had been Danville and not Selinsgrove to which Henry had been sent by his German family.   Henry’s brother, Aaron and a sister Rosa also lived in Danville according to the story, as Karen understood it.  Henry and Aaron were in business together in Danville during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Danville was not part of the story as told by Leonard and we assumed (incorrectly) that our father had not been aware of this town.  But perhaps, we thought, Leonard’s failure to find information on his family in Selinsgrove was because he was looking in the wrong town.  On the other hand, Karen’s grandfather died long before her birth, and she never had the opportunity to speak directly to him.  We theorized that Henry may have lived in Selinsgrove before coming to Danville.

 

Coincidentally, (or perhaps there is a genealogy gene) Karen and her husband Frank were also amateur genealogists.  It was Karen’s interest in her genealogy that lead her to find Pete’s website.  Prior to contacting us, Karen had located 1880 census records which showed Henry and Aaron Dreifuss living close to one another, not in Selinsgrove or Danville, but in nearby Mifflenburg, Pennsylvania with wives Hanna and Fanny, that she knew to be sisters.

 

Karen and Frank had visited the area and found in the Danville library an advertisement for a “Dreifuss Bros” clothing Store” from November, 1889.  Karen told us that Danville had one of the earliest Reform Jewish Synagogues in the United States and that there was still a Jewish Cemetery there.    The information provided by our newly discovered cousin fit loosely with Leonard’s information, but we now knew of two other towns, Danville and Mifflenburg that also appeared to be a part of our story.  The existence of a Synagogue and Jewish cemetery in Danville would suggest a Jewish community there.  Perhaps it was this Jewish community that attracted Leopold’s benefactors to the area.

 

In any event, Karen’s ancestral family was clearly a part of the Pennsylvania family that Leonard never knew.  Whether they lived in Danville, Selinsgrove, Mifflinburg or somewhere else, something or someone in the area had brought Leopold, Henry, Aaron and Rosa to this part of Pennsylvania.  We were optimistic that we would learn more when we did our Pennsylvania research.

 

 Although Leonard was gone and was unable to meet his Detroit family, we understood that it was only through his research and determination that we had been able to reunite with Karen Dreifuss Burk and her family.  Karen and Frank Burk would prove to be valuable allies in our research, and continue to remain our very special friends and cousins.

 

Web Editor's Notes: Current version uploaded 8/11/16. Photos extracted from document and may need improvement.