DAVID GOLDSMITH AND HENRIETTA HENLINE AND THEIR CHILDREN David and Henrietta Goldsmith were my great great grandparents, the parents of my great grandfather, Oscar Goldsmith and the grandparents of my grandfather, Lawrence B. Goldsmith. David was born in Klein Heubach, Germany in 1804 and his wife, Henrietta Henline was born in Albersweiller, Germany in 1822. They married in New York City after immigrating to America during the late 1830’s. Both died in Huntsville, Alabama, Henrietta in 1890 and David in 1898. This information was provided by my grandfather, Lawrence B. Goldsmith. The approximate date of their immigration is based on the fact that they married in New York and their first son Henry was born in 1840 in New York. The Goldsmiths had six children; Henry, Mayer, Levi, Mo, Oscar and a daughter who married a man by the name of Samuel Strauss. Henry Marks, a local historian who researched the early Jews of Alabama provided information in the folders on Oscar, Meyer, Levi and Henry Goldsmith who settled in the south. Henry Goldsmith (1840-1917) is buried in Maple Hill in the front portion of the Goldsmith plot. According to Henry Mark’s research notes, Henry Goldsmith worked from 1916 – 1917 in Huntsville at the Goldsmith-Grosser Co. operated by Oscar Goldsmith and Edward Grosser, Oscar’s son in law. David’s wife Henrietta, my great great grandmother, born in 1822, would have been eighteen at the time of Henry’s birth. I remember my father, who was born in 1909, saying that he remembered Uncle Henry visiting his grandparents, Oscar and Betty Goldsmith. Henry died in Huntsville at age 77. Levi Goldsmith married Caroline Henderson in 1860. The couple had three daughters. Levi enlisted in the confederate Army in 1861 and joined Captain David Huston’s Company of Limestone Grays. He was captured in 1864 and was a prisoner of war until Amnesty. At one time he was noted to have been in business with his brother Henry. During his later years he had a tobacco and cigar shop and lived at the Oglethorpe hotel in Brunswick GA. It was not uncommon for individuals to live at a hotel if alone as hotels in the past often served both residents and travelers. I remember as a child during the 1940’s and 1950’s that the Russel Erskine Hotel (where my father and I lived with my grandparents until 1952) had several resident guests. Levi who was called “PAP” by family and friends died at age 76 in Brunswick GA. His obituary notes that “AN OLD CITIZEN PASSES TO REST”. Levi died after a lengthy illness at the home of a friend where he was renting rooms. Rabbi Solomon of Savanna provided his funeral service. Levi is buried in the historic Oak Grove Cemetery in Brunswick. Meyer was born in 1845 and married Ophelia Jackson in 1867. Mayer seems to have disappeared or was lost at sea according to his daughter Mamie. Meyer and Ophelia had two daughters, Mamie and Ida. Ophelia died quite young and Mamie and Ida were raised by their grandparents, Ophelia’s parents. I remember my cousin Mamie who lived to be over one hundred and visited us every Christmas. Mamie married Fletcher Thaxton who died many years before Mamie. The couple had no children. Mamie had limited means and my grandfather, Lawrence B. Goldsmith took care of her and after his death my parents saw to her care in a nursing home in Nashville TN, Mamie’s home town. I remember asking my grandfather why he felt responsible for taking care of Mamie since she was a distant cousin and not a sibling or parent. His response was, “Goldsmiths take care of their own.” I am including his comment as I think it is an important reflection as to my grandfather’s character. My grandfather often spoke of his Uncle Mo Goldsmith, one of his father’s brothers, who lived in New York and had done quite well in business. My grandfather also told me, “Mo spent all his money during his lifetime.” Mo and his wife had a summer home in upstate New York on a lake where Mo kept a steamboat with a crew. Mo and his wife had four children; Myra, Hilda, Sam and Nat. I also remember my grandfather saying that Mo’s wife had a breakdown when their youngest son, Nat died as a child. The family had what my grandfather called a “trained nurse” with her after the tragedy. The Mo Goldsmith family’s summer home was called Myhisana, a combination of the first two initials of the four children. My grandfather spent summers at Myhisana and after he and my grandmother Annie Schiffman married, the two of them spent summer vacations at Myhisana with my grandfather’s favorite cousins, Sam Goldsmith and his wife Margaret. During those vacations, my father Lawrence, Jr. would stay with his grandmother, Betty Schiffman in New York City. After her husband Isaac died, Betty Herstein Schiffman moved to New York to live with her daughter Irma who had moved there after her divorce. In the “Bernstein, Herstein, Schiffman and Goldsmith Collection” of family artifacts that I donated to the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) in 2011 there is a scrapbook that my grandfather kept with a number of pictures taken during his summer vacations at Myhisana, but none of Mo and his wife. The scrapbook pictures of my grandparents, Sam and Margaret and their friends provide an insight as to what life was like at Myhisana. My grandfather also mentioned that Mo bought his son Sam a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He added that Sam never made much money. Sam’s wife Margaret worked at Sacks Fifth Avenue, I assume out of necessity. I remember Sam and Margaret as they visited my grandparents in Huntsville when I was a young girl. They had one child, a daughter named Peggy. In the “Bernstein, Herstein, Schiffman and Goldsmith Collection,” there are large portrait photographs of David and Henrietta Goldsmith and their daughter and son in law Samuel Strauss. I had asked my father who they were, since there was no identification written on the back of any of the four photographs. My father identified the photographs as being of his great grandparents, David and Henrietta Goldsmith and their daughter and son in law whose last name was Strauss. In the Henrietta and David Goldsmith NMAJH inventory, there are also two walking sticks with tags that my grandfather attached, identifying the owner as David Goldsmith. One of the walking sticks has a gold head engraved “To David Goldsmith from Samuel Strauss.” I don’t know what my great great grandfather David Goldsmith did for a living. I never checked the New York census records which would provide more information on the Goldsmith family. I do know that David and Henrietta moved to Huntsville to live with their son and daughter in law Oscar Goldsmith and Betty Bernstein Goldsmith during their latter years. Their move would have been prior to 1890, the year that Henrietta Goldsmith died. David died in 1898, eight years after his wife passed away. Both are buried on the Goldsmith plot in Maple Hill Cemetery. My grandfather said that after his grandparents, the David Goldsmiths moved to Huntsville that thei r bedroom was the front room at the head of the stairs on the second floor of the Goldsmith home at 204 Gates. The house was built for Betty and Oscar by Betty’s parents, Morris and Henrietta Bernstein. My grandfather, born in 1883, would have been living at home along with his sister Theresa when his grandparents from New York moved to Huntsville. Shortly before David Goldsmith’s death he contacted his nephew Abraham Goldsmith, an attorney in New York about his estate. There is a letter in one of the folders from Abraham who addresses David as “Uncle.” I assume from this letter that David Goldsmith had a sibling who also immigrated to New York and would have been the father of Abraham Goldsmith. In writing about the Goldsmith family I am reminded that there was no Social Security or Medicare during the early twentieth century. People worked all their lives until they could no longer work and then hopefully had friends or family with whom they could spend their last years.