Arizona's Jewish Pioneers

In the dreary steerage compartment of a vessel bound from England for the port of New York 136 years ago, three young men talked about their future in the New World.

All three had fled Poland and the Russian military conscription that was terrorizing Jewish families. The youngest of the three had been assured that relatives would give him a job tailoring in Philadelphia, and he tried to convince the other two-who were brothers to join him. The elder brother was polite but firm; he would not go to Philadelphia but would continue on to California, where the discovery of gold promised a bright future.

None of the three men could have dreamed on that voyage across the Atlantic Ocean that they would become the foundation of two prominent pioneer families that would contribute greatly to the history and overall development of the territory and thereafter the state of Arizona.

Thirty-one-year-old Michel Goldwater and his 20-yearold brother Joseph stayed in New York only long enough to visit friends and make plans for the voyage to California. That meant taking a ship to Nicaragua, then trekking across the isthmus and embarking on a new sea voyage to San Francisco.

The Goldwaters did not prosper in California, and in 1860-eight years after the journey across the AtlanticMichel started his Arizona adventure at Gila City. The town, located on the Gila River some 20 miles up-lived gold strike, but the activity was feverish enough for Goldwater to start what would become a major merchandising venture with a wagonload of fancy wares and clothing.

A good-humored summary of the Goldwater saga in Arizona is offered by Barry M. Goldwater, a third generation family member who became a five-term United States senator and the Republican nominee for President in 1964.

"In spite of the things you may hear and read, I would contend the thing the Goldwaters have done best for the past service of both his grandfather and his Uncle Morris as mayors of Prescott. Morris was mayor for 20 years, was a territorial legislator, and served as vice president of the Arizona Constitutional Convention.

The contributions of the Goldwaters were enormous and are well told in the book The Goldwaters of Arizona, by Dean Smith, published by Northland Press and the Arizona Historical Foundation and available from Arizona Highways.

While establishing themselves in the West, Mike and Joe Goldwater kept up a casual correspondence with their Atlantic-passage shipmate, Philip Drachman. That friendship finally lured Philip to Arizona. There is some confusion as to the year he arrived in Tucson. His grandson, Roy P. Drachman, says he passed through the Old Pueblo in 1854 en route to visit a sister in San Bernardino, California. He returned to the desert a few years later, and in the first census of the new Territory of Arizona in 1864 he was listed as a 31-year-old merchant with a real and personal estate of $5,000.

Drachman went into business with another pioneer merchant, Isaac Goldberg, first in La Paz on the Colorado River and then in Tucson. He later served in the Fourth Territorial Legislature, and became a charter member of the organization known today as the Arizona Historical Society.

Philip strengthened the Drachman influence in the territory when he convinced his brother, Samuel, to come west. More than any other pioneer, Samuel strove to establish and maintain Jewish traditions in this frontier region. Although he was not ordained a rabbi, Sam Drachman would take his horse and buggy across the desert to Phoenix or even to El Paso to attend a wedding, encouraging the young couple to follow the faith of their people. Considering the hardships of such desert travel a century ago, Samuel's commitment to Judaism can hardly be overestimated.

An example of his dedication is related in a newspaper story of October 25, 1894, when Sam hitched up his horse and 100 years in Arizona is sell pants. I don't mean this in the narrow sense of the word. At different times, there have been Goldwater stores at La Paz, Ehrenberg, Prescott, Parker, Seymour, Lynx Creek, Phoenix, Bisbee, Fairbank, Contention, Tombstone, Benson, and Crittenden.

"Along with earning their living as pants salesmen, members of the family were freighters, government contractors, forwarding merchants and lost money in about half the mines of Yavapai County and all the dry oil wells drilled in Arizona before statehood."

The senator looks back with pride at the traveled to Phoenix to preside at the uniting of two young people from prominent Jewish families. That hot fall day Hugo Zeckendorf was to wed Rebecca Goldberg.

At the evening ceremony in the Gold-berg home on East Adams Street, Samuel delivered these words: "My beloved children, the ceremony of marriage...has been performed, and you now stand before God and the world as man and wife. You have freely and voluntarily appeared before this hymeneal altar to form a perpetual union, and to enter into a solemn, sacred, and civil contract which is universally recognized, honored, and sanctioned by our Supreme Ruler of the universe, agreeable with the Mosaic dispensation; and in conformity with the rules, customs, and laws of our country, you have agreed with each other to form a conjugal bond in form and in deed.

"The eyes of the world are now upon you, that you may live and act as becomes a son and daughter in Israel." The reporter called the wedding "one of the most bril-liant social events that Phoe-nix journalists have had the pleasure of recording...."

Samuel H. Drachman, like his brother, served in the Territorial Legislature, and he also was instrumental in developing Tucson's public school system. As a businessman he was not without a sense of humor. In his tobacco store he posted his own version of the Ten Commandments, starting off as follows: In 1910 Samuel Drachman helped to found the first synagogue in Arizona, Temple Emanu-El in Tucson.

When the Drachman brothers died-Philip in 1889 and Samuel in 1911-they were buried with honors and widely mourned. Both had contributed in important ways to their community, and both

Had aided in establishing early-day Jewish organizations.

Who was the first Jewish pioneer to come to Arizona? Certainly one of the earliest was Nathan B. Appel. By his own account, he traveled to Tucson in 1856 with a wagonload of merchandise. He recalled the difficult trip from south-eastern New Mexico, a trip made potentially deadly when Apache Indians refused to let him obtain water near Stein's Pass.

An Indian agent was stationed nearby with a contingent of soldiers. Appel recorded that the agent would neither assist him nor order the soldiers to help.

"He said I must take my chances," Appel wrote later. "This I forthwith proceeded to do. I made my teamsters and the herder take their guns and go to the [springs] where they stood guard. Then I took my mules one by one to the water and let them slake their thirst. The Apaches looked on savagely but made no further demonstrations."

Appel settled in Tubac and served in the First Territorial Legislature when it convened in Prescott in 1864.

Another storied Jewish pioneer was Solomon Barth, who joined the Goldwaters in business at La Paz in 1862. Barth was a born entrepreneur. When business started booming along the Colorado, he operated a mercantile store; then he saw an opportunity to set up an ore-hauling business at Weaver-ville, in the foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains. His ox wagons hauled freight all the way to Fort Dodge, Kansas. It was on one of those trips that he discovered an excellent stopover point on the Little Colorado River, a spot with abundant wild grain and plenty of water. Barth negotiated with Mexican settlers for land and water rights, later selling to Mormons. The community became the present St. Johns.

Barth also operated horse-back mail routes in Arizona and New Mexico. A political power, he served twice in the Territorial Legislature. When he died in 1928, the State Senate honored him with a special resolution, stating that as an Indian trader Barth "was so loved and respected by the Indians of northern Arizona that through tribal rights and treaties he was granted a portion of northern Arizona equal in size to any one of many of the eastern states and including a major portion of what is now Apache County and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado."

In an interview some years later, Solomon Barth's son Jacob emphasized that the story of his father's being given such rights by the Indians was just that-a story.

The founding of the University of Arizona in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature is directly traceable to the initiative and intervention of threeJewish pioneers. Their names: Jacob S. Mansfeld, Selim Franklin, and Charles M. Strauss.

Arizona's Jewish Pioneers

Mansfeld came to Tucson in 1870, bringing culture with him; he opened what is believed to have been the first bookstore in the territory. It was in the rear of his Pioneer News Stand that a meeting was held to draft a plan to establish an institution of higher learning in Arizona.

The plan was not popular in the community. For economic reasons, many Tucsonans would have preferred that their city become the site of some other territorial institution, perhaps the new insane asylum. But by the time Tucson's legislators reached Prescott, the territorial capital, arriving late because of a storm, the options were eliminated. Even the proposal for a university seemed unlikely to gain support.

Representative Franklin, a lawyer and perhaps an amateur psychologist, went to work on the Legislature, known widely throughout the territory as the "Thieving Thirteenth" for its unabashed corruption. He told his colleagues bluntly that they were the "most energetic, most contentious, and most corrupt" legislators in the territory's young history.

Once he had their attention, Franklin held out an offer of absolution: "But, gentlemen," he said, "here is an opportunity to wash away our sins. Let us establish an institution of learning; let us pass this bill creating a university where for all time to come the youth of this land may have the opportunities of education; where they may learn to be better citizens than we are; and all our shortcomings will be forgotten in a misty past, and we will be remembered only for this one great achievement.

"For your own salvation, you must vote for the bill."

There was an awkward silence; but then the delegate from Pima County was cheered, and the bill establishing the University of Arizona was passed with an appropriation of $25,000.

The campaign to create a university at Tucson was not over. A donor of land had to be found to complete the arrangement. One story is that Mansfeld, who was to be a member of the first Arizona Board of Regents, walked into the desert and identified the necessary land, which was owned by operators of a popular saloon, and convinced them to donate the 40 acres. Franklin told the final chapter a different way. He said that Strauss, a former mayor of Tucson and superintendent of public instruction for the territory, was the one who approached the saloon owners. Looking back, there is enough credit for all three pioneers.

In eastern Arizona, Anna and Isadore Elkan Solomon formed a base for what became an important pioneer clan. Both were from Posen, Prussia. Anna was a daughter of the Freudenthals, who had settled in southern New Mexico. The Freudenthals helped the Solomons in their move to Arizona, where they established the town of Solomon, ran a hotel, and after many difficulties-developed a banking enterprise.

Marriages linked the Solomons with the Lantins, merchants in Globe; the Wetzlers, a prominent cattle ranching family in northern Arizona; the Ferrins of Tucson; and the Goldbergs of Phoenix. One Solomon daughter, Blanche, married Jacob Weinberger, a young lawyer in Globe. Weinberger later played a major role in the Arizona Constitutional Convention. Hattie Ferrin Solomon was one of four University of Arizona graduates in the Class of 1898.

Also in eastern Arizona, Charles and Henry Lesinsky helped develop the copper industry in the 1870s. Later they would build the territory's first railroad to bring down ore from the mountains north of Safford. To smelt the ore, the Lesinskys needed a slowburning, high temperature fire. Isadore Solomon solved the problem using mesquite charcoal.

The remarkable story of the Solomon family tree is narrated in Elizabeth Ramenofsky's From Charcoal to Banking.

Pioneer Jews contributed to the development of Arizona in many areas, thoroughly dispelling the myth that they they were were only only the peddlers of the frontier. They founded communities (Nogales, for example, was born as Isaacson); they served in the Territorial Legislature; they were mayors of Tucson, Phoenix, Prescott, Bisbee, Yuma-and rough-tough Tombstone. They were bankers, saloonkeepers, merchants, mining entrepreneurs, cattlemen, and lawmen. And the first brewery in the territory was established by Alex Levin and Joseph Goldtree. They advertised, "Lager Beer, Ale, and Porter constantly on hand."

In addition to the pioneers already discussed, numerous other Jewish names became prominent in Arizona history, including Wormser, Mannasse, Goldman, Korrick, Melczer, Rosenzweig, Heyman, Steinfeld, Jacobs, Frank, and Capin.

Although the Jewish pioneers never represented more than a minute percentage of the territorial population, and a significant number intermarried with Protestants and Catholics, the Jewish faith was not forgotten in this new environment. Old newspapers tell of services in private homes, in stores, in hotel rooms. As early as the 1880s, there were Jewish fraternal and burial organizations as well as ladies' charitable groups. On October 3, 1910, a large gathering of Jews and non-Jews attended the dedication of Temple EmanuEl in Tucson. In that same year, Congre gation Emanuel was formed in Phoenix. Frank Brophy, a prominent Catholic layman, businessman, and Arizona historian, wrote in his The Arizona Sketch Book: "...the pioneer Jews of Arizona lived in harmony, peace, and honor among their fellowmen. They made notable contributions to the civilizing process then beginning in a savage land. They were among the leaders in the building of a strong and permanent society...."