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A PIOUS MERCHANT
Gerson Levi
born Nov 9, 1808 Buttenhausen, Germany
died May 27, 1869 Hagerstown, Md.
(continued)
Gerson Levi arrived in the port of New
York on September 1,
1834. He had been travelling together with his newly-wed wife, his
brother-in-law Philip Arnold, and other relatives from his home village
Jebenhausen in Germany. Together they settled in Chambersburg, but in
1839 the Levi family moved on to Hagerstown. In both towns their
arrival marked the
beginning of a Jewish presence.
By 1850 the Jewish population of
Hagerstown was the largest in the area - a mere handful of families
who did not form an organized congregation but were closely bound
together by kinship. For three decades the Levi family was the nucleus
of this local family network, and until his death Gerson Levi was the
backbone of Jewish religious life in the area. Although never ordained
as a rabbi, the son of the rabbi of Jebenhausen led Jewish services in
Hagerstown and Chambersburg and performed Jewish marriages in the area.
When the Benevolent Society was founded in 1840, he presented it with a
minutes book, and in all likelihood he was the one who drew up its
elaborate bylaws.
Gerson Levi's dry goods store was a successful business in mid-19th
century Hagerstown. The end came with the tribulations of the Civil
War. In December 1861 Levi's nephew, 16-year-old Morris Levi, was shot
and wounded by a Union soldier in his father's dry goods store in Clear
Spring, Md. In 1864 Hagerstown's merchants were hit hard by the
Confederate occupation, and Jewish storekeepers seem to have suffered
more than others. In the course of that year Gerson Levi and his
relatives
and competitors in town, his brother Abraham Levi, his brother-in-law
Nathan Kahn, Seligman Dettelbach and Raphael Drifuse all declared they
were about
to
close their businesses.
When Gerson Levi died in 1869, he was interred next to his wife, who
had died seven years earlier. Five children, three brothers-in-law, one
sister-in-law, three nieces and seven nephews of Gerson Levi are also
buried in the Jewish cemetery of Chambersburg.
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