Belle Straus Weil - April 3, 1964 This text document should be copied and pasted into MS Word or another word processing program for easier reading. It is available in a fully formatted version on request. =========== This is the transcript of a recording of Belle Straus Weil discussing her family history. Belle was born in Lonoke, Arkansas, Dec. 22, 1886, and died in New York, July 7, 1971. She was interviewed April 3, 1964, by her grandson, John Paul Lowens with whom she had already had extensive discussions on family history which were not tape-recorded. At the time of this conversation, Belle Weil was 77. See Appendix for additional details. =========== My father, Gustav Carl Straus was born in Kaiserslautern, Rheinpfalz, Bavaria, Germany, the only son of Michael and Rosa Goetz Straus. Michael Straus, my grandfather, was as I remember, as I've been told the youngest of ten brothers all in the neighborhood of the Rheinpfalz. My grandfather's business was what was the common, the most common business of Jewish people of that generation in that part of Germany. He was in the horse business, a horse trader. My father grew up in this quite large comparatively large city near the border of Strasbourg in Bavaria. [Sic-Kaiserslautern is in the Rhein-pfalz (Eng. trans.: Palatinate) just east of the Saarland. Strasbourg is 75 miles south on the West bank of the Rhein in what is now France. The entire area was once been part of the Kingdom of Bavaria.] My father was the second oldest of this family having six sisters and being the only son. His older sister was Bertha. Then came my father (Gustav C. Straus), then came Sophie, Elise, Yetchen, translated Henrietta, Bienchen translated Phillipine, and Lena, the youngest. The oldest sister (Bertha) became Mrs. Leo Loewenthal whose husband was a Scotch Jew from Glasgow, Scotland whom she married in either Kimberly or Johannesburg, South Africa. All of my father's sisters except one emigrated to South Africa because the third sister, Elise, met and married a Holland Dutchman, Harry Hartog in Mainz, Germany and went with him to Kimberly, South Africa where the diamond boom was on. There were many young ambitious Jewish boys of German, Dutch, Belgian extraction who had emigrated to South Africa because of the Lure of the diamonds. When my father's sister Elise arrived in South Africa, she realized that there were a great many eligible young men, bachelors, and very few white educated German young ladies so she sent for her next sister, Bertha who subsequently married Leo Loewenthal. [Alt.Sp.Lowenthal- From L”wenthal. Each sister as they married and made homes for themselves in this new and wildly speculative country brought the next sister. Then came Yetchen who married Adam -- correction -- Rufus Davis. After Yetchen came Bienchen, translated Phillapine [Sabine], who married Adam Sedgwick Woolley -- a mining engineer of a very well known British family. Woolley is a very well known name in England -- W-o-o-l-l-e-y -- and at present there is an armory -- a barracks -- called the Woolledge -- which is named after the Woolley family. Bienchen had no children but she brought -- they brought then the sister Lena who met and married a young German boy from Friedberg, [spelling??] Germany, Bernhard Oppenheimer, who was -- who had come from England -- from London, where he had worked for his uncle, Hirschorn from London and had gone into the diamond business in Africa. My father's one sister [Sophie] followed him to America. At the age of seventeen, [in 1869] my father left Kaiserslautern and came to America to find his fortune. There were several cousins and relatives in America and it was the custom at that time for young men to come to a wealthier established cousin and work his way up in a sort of apprenticeship and then find his own way in this new country. My father emigrated to Arkansas having first gone to Corinth, Mississippi where he was employed by cousins by the name of Rubel. [The RUBEL family originated in Hochspeyer, Rheinpfalz and has been extensively documented]. From Corinth he gradually made his way to Lonoke, Arkansas. My father's original job with the Rubels -- R-u-b-e-l -- I know very little about because he was only 17. But he soon found his way to his [Arkansas] cousins where he was very much welcomed - very much closely associated with - a very well estab-lished cousin at that time considered very well off in the way of land. My father arrived there in 1869, the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan and the "carpetbaggers" the aftermath of the Civil War in Arkansas. Arkansas was a far cry from New York and other well-established Eastern cities. My father worked for his cousin, Ferdinand Gates, changed from G-o-e-t-z. Ferdinand Gates was a niece -- nephew of my father's mother, Rosa Goetz Straus. He had preceded him to America before the Civil War and was well established when my father arrived in 1869 - 70 - 71. My father saved his money, he had grown up in the vicinity of animal life and a country existence and he found himself very happy in Arkansas. He gradually assembled land, worked his way up until he established a store in Lonoke, Arkansas, a store in De Vals Bluff, AK, a store in Newport, AK and several others whose names escape me for the moment. My father brought over his sister Sophie, who married a Holland Dutchman [Adolph Hamburg, a cousin of Harry Hartog] also in the cotton industry in Arkansas because that was the industry of the Southwest in those days. It was the tenant farmer idea-- land was worked by negro farmers who although it was not slavery, -- it was barter rather than money. The end of the year my father in --- in exchange for all the necessities of life which these negroes needed for their families he received in return the results of their husbandry, that is, cotton bales brought in to be shipped to Loui --- New --- New Orleans, Louisiana to be shipped to all parts of the United States where cotton goods was the big item, to Eur--Europe, to England and France. Cotton dresses in summer were the favorite way. Everything was cotton in those days. Draperies, clothes, bedclothes, nylon and these -- and the synthetic fibers were not known. From 1871 or 1872 when my father arrived in Arkansas, until 1881, he worked hard and became a successful businessman in the Southwest. He was a very fine looking man, a good horseman, very well-liked in the community and finally in 1881, he made his first trip back to Kaiserslautern to see his mother whom he hadn't seen since 1869 when he left her as a boy at the railroad station in Kaiserslautern. After four months in Europe, where he visited Paris and London as a successful young bachelor, he returned to New York where he fell in love with a very personable young New York debutante, Clementine Kupfer. Clementine [called "Clemmie"] was not altogether a stranger; her mother was my father's first cousin. She had been born Binchen Straus of Udenheim near Mainz, Germany. She [Binchen] had married Simon Kupfer and they were successful, broadcloth importers in New York City. Simon Kupfer was from Altenkunstadt in - I think it is Baden, Germany. [sic-it was Bergkunstadt]. My mother, then a girl of nineteen became engaged to my father. They were married in New York City and headed south. [KUPFER: Apdx. B] They were married on March 25, 1883 at Terrace Garden in New York City. They made their home in Lonoke where my father built a home for her, a New York style home such as we saw in the old - in the eighties & 90's in N.Y., the Vic -- the post Victorian age of three-story houses in New York, not what you would usually see in Arkansas. This home in Lonoke, a town of fifteen hundred- 900 blacks and six hundred whites, was quite an experience for a young twenty-year-old society girl of N. Y. City. Antibiotics were unknown, sewage was unknown, and though all the luxuries of the successful businessman were lavished on my mother as a young bride, her life there was a most strange and unhappy one for a New York girl. There was very little to do, Little Rock, the center of Arkansas was quite a ways away. Prairies looked out on all sides of the house and the farm and the garden. Sewage such as was known in New York bathrooms and modern conveniences of that day were unknown in Arkansas. It was outhouses, no ice, no gas, oil lamps, no street lamps, no side- walks, a tiny town far from the cities with one train a day from Little Rock [22 miles west]. As a little girl of three going back there with my mother, I remember we walked along the street next to the station, (the only street in the town) with a lantern swinging in our hands and all of a sudden a black huge thing loomed up and my mother said "Shoo" and the cow lazily got up and moved away. My father owned a great deal of land in Arkansas as a cotton plantation must have and as he drove out with my mother to visit his various tenant farmers as a recreation to her, he used to say to her: "As far as you look on all sides of you, all this land is yours." And she would laughingly turn around and with tears in her eyes, would say "I would change it all for just one beautiful silk dress from B. Altmans' (department store) in New York." My [older] brother (Albert Straus) and I, my brother born in the New York (2/16/1884) where my mother had come home for on a visit, I born in Lonoke, Arkansas (12/22/1886). My next sister, who lived only four months, Rosa Straus, born in Lonoke, Arkansas. After five years, I think it was a - no, four years -- the house burned to the ground and all my mother's valued treasures from New York were lost. My father was not lost because he had his land and his stores throughout Arkansas. But feeling that he wanted to make my mother more contented, he moved, we moved to the great city at that time of Little Rock, Arkansas where again, my grandmother (Binchen Straus Kupfer) who had become a widow moved down from New York to be with my mother and we -- my parents bought a very beautiful home on one of the principal streets, Scott Street in that day of Little Rock. In the meantime, my father's sister Sophie (Straus Hamburg) had died. But our friendship with my father's brother-in-law, Adolf Hamburg remained throughout the years. My brother Sylvan [Milton Straus] was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1889 just six years after my mother was married, and in those six years, there had been four living children and two stillborn. I began my life, school life, in kindergarten, Scott Street School, Little Rock, Arkansas. Many [people with] celebrated names were familiar names [guests] around our household table. Great statesmen were -- in the last two years [my father was acquainted with several men who, in the last few years (1950-1964)] have become well known names in the Congress and the Senate of the United States. All were our neighbors and very good friends in Arkansas. Among them was the name of Trimbel [sp?], the honorable Judge Trimbel of Lonoke whose son became a Congressman from Arkansas, later a Supreme Court Judge of Arkansas. Joseph T. Robinson, the leader of the majority of the Senate of Little Rock, Arkansas, [correction] of Washington D.C. Also the name of McClellan [sp ?], the man who has conducted many of the inquiries in Washington was a neighbor of ours in Lonoke and a well -- his father and my father were young men together in the pioneer days after the Civil War. In Little Rock, my father, as a supplement of his knowledge of horses, became a partner in the --the society stables of Little Rock. It sounds queer to hear that today in the day of automobiles but in that day, all wealthy people had to have a place for their victorias, surries with the fringe on the top, buggies, sulkies and so forth. And their pedigree horses had to be well taken care of and my father's stables were well known in Little Rock. [Fein Carriage Co.] One of my early experiences as a little girl was visiting my father in the stables because it was a great day in Little Rock. The Barnum & Bailey circus, P.T. Barnum's, clowns, horses, animals were visiting the towns of the west. Tents, not Madison Gardens, tents were -- used as display for these circuses. The day that I arrived was a great day in my father's stable because William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill and his circus animals were housed there. And one of my earliest recollections was being hoisted into the air in the arms of William F.Cody, a handsome dignified man of the West. He had his dwarves with him, -- the famous Tom Thumb, his wife, his son, and the little midget carriage with little tiny horses were part of the -- the satin plum colored satin lining to the victoria. --- and I was allowed to climb in although I was much too big for that -- that tiny wagon. These are just recollections of my life until I was six and a half years old in Little Rock, Arkansas. =========== The second part of this interview is a question and answer session. Belle records a verbal tree and history of her ancestral families and those of her husband. This part of the interview is availaable on request to JPLowens@gmail.com =========== -------------------- APPENDIX - BELLE SOPHIE STRAUS WEIL Biography------------------------- Belle Sophie Straus was born in Lonoke, 20 miles east of Little Rock Arkansas, in December, 1886. Her family moved to Little Rock shortly after her birth, and to New York City in November, 1893 when Belle was almost 7. The Lonoke home and its contents were destroyed in a fire as were most of the civic records of Lonoke city and county. The family home in Little Rock at 1312 Scott Street (in the present-day Quawpaw Quarter Historic District) was sold to Governor (Later U.S. Senator) ?? Clark when the family moved to New York. It became known as the Clark House. In New York, Gustav and Clemmie Straus and their children divided their time between New York City and the resort town of Sacandaga Park in the Adarondacks near Gloversville, NY where Gus founded the Gloversville Welt Company. Belle attended New York City Public Schools and earned bachelor and masters degrees in Music (voice) and education at Hunter College, NYC. Her maternal grandmother, Binchen Straus Kupfer, lived with her family in both Arkansas and New York from the time she was widowed in 1887 until her death in 1906. It is from Binchen that Belle learned most about her family's history. Debutante Belle made two trips to pre-war Europe. She visited her aunt, Lena Straus Oppenheimer, and other Straus relatives in England and toured extensively on the Continent, visiting Kaiserslautern, Nuremberg and other ancestral towns and meeting a number of cousins who still lived there. While in college, Belle had met and became engaged to her first cousin, Victor Hartog, a student of Mining Engineering at Columbia University. Poor Victor was not her only fiance. Belle was an attractive, talented and lively young woman with a great deal of self esteem. She came from a well-to-do family and was courted by a number of other interesting young men. All of them were forgotten, however, when she met Berthold Weil at Sacandaga. It's said she agreed to marry Bert the day after they met. The wedding took place a few years later (1917) at Temple Zichron Ephraim (now a landmark building called Park East Synagogue) which had been founded by her husband's uncle, Jonas Weil. Bert Weil's extended family included many New Yorkers of German Jewish ancestry who had made fortunes in Manhattan real estate. (Mayer, Buttenwieser, Klingenstein, Gruenstein et al, mostly from Southwestern Baden near the French & Swiss borders). Bert inherited a modest fortune but he was not a successful businessman. His own fortune and a few others which he obtained from relatives and other imprudent investors were lost in a succession of deals gone bad. Following the last of these riches-to-rags transitions Belle became a public school teacher at the West 93rd Street Elementary School which she herself had attended. She taught in New York for almost 40 years. Belle's two daughters were born early in the 1920's. They grew up with their cousin, Virginia Straus Thorkelson, the only child of Belle's older brother, Albert Straus, who lived nearby. Albert was a traveling salesman and his wife, Catherine McGuire Straus, was for some time ill with TB leaving Virginia to live with her cousins, Madeleine and Jean. Gus Straus died in 1924. His younger son, Sylvan carried on his business and supported Clemmie. In 1940 at 51, Sylvan died of a sudden heart attack. Clemmie died in 1946. She lived very modestly during her last years. When their children left home, Belle and her husband moved to a two-room apartment where there was little storage space. For this reason there are very few papers to document Belle's memories of her life and family history. She did keep the many letters received from her cousin, Victor Hartog, during their engagement (circa 1907-12) and also many photos of the Hartog and related families in South Africa. Other surviving photographs (ca. 1864) show Belle's grandparents, Michael and Rosa Goetz Straus, Gus Straus and a sister, and the Straus home and cemetery in Germany ca. 1911. ,.