As they did, they moved up to clerk in stores owned by other Jews, then opened stores of their own in the small towns serving as commercial centers for the surrounding plantation country. Other Jewish immigrants became wholesalers, importing and supplying the stock for the small stores, and still others moved north to act as buyers and sellers for family firms in the South. Close family, marital and business ties linked all these immigrants together.

The rural merchants' sales and terms of payment depended upon the prevailing agricultural economy. Consequently, many of the small-town storekeepers of necessity became traders in the big cash crops of cotton and sugar cane when crop liens were used as security by planters needing advances for planting, harvesting and shipping crops. The whole southern economy in the Cotton Kingdom was balanced precariously on credit extensions at every level, from the planter through the supplier through the crop broker through the banker and purchaser.

The country storekeeper was an important player in this agrarian economy, particularly as the country deteriorated into divisive civil war and its even more devastating aftermath. Many of the Jewish immigrants served with their neighbors in the Confederacy, and afterward they were able to extend life-saving credit to suffering post-war planters, farmers and sharecroppers. At a time when cash was in short supply and banks unreliable, their stores had far-reaching credit arrangements and became conduits for funneling some much-needed cash into the rural areas.

Julius Freyhan High School

As these hard-working immigrants prospered, the South became the center of Jewish population in the country, offering religious and political freedom as well as the possibility of great financial success. Synagogues and temples were built, cemeteries established and charitable organizations formed as the Jews shared their prosperity in great and far-reaching philanthropies, funding museums and zoological parks, civic improvements and levees, hospitals and public schools for both black and white students. When the boll weevil and other factors proved the ruination of the cotton economy by the early 1900's, many Jewish families moved from the country to the city and from mercantile to professional status in mainstream American society.

But before the Civil War, as the aristocratic planters lived lush and lavish lifestyles, what they lacked was mercantile experience. They planted, they socialized, they philosophized, they beautified their surroundings, but they needed somebody else to provide the practicalities, the dry goods and the equipment and underpinnings of the cotton culture, somebody with enough shrewd business sense to survive the ebb and flow of a fluctuating economy based on chancy crops and credit. Into this gap stepped the Jewish immigrants, many from mercantile or trade backgrounds in the European villages they had left behind, and they filled the need admirably.

Hebrew Rest Cemetery

Scholar Louis Schmier said, "Jews became a part of southern society, made their presence felt, and wove their contributions through the southern fabric. Jews took hold of life in the South and found it good and rewarding, and the Jewish presence has been good and rewarding for the South."  What was true of the South was true of St. Francisville, and the museum exhibit pays tribute to the far-reaching contributions of its Jewish population, which swelled to nearly a hundred families by the end of the 19th century and then dwindled to one lone elderly soul, solitary keeper of the immaculate oak-shaded Jewish cemetery.

Through bills of lading and invoices, receipts for cotton and gossip-column snippets, the exhibit draws upon old records in the St. Francisville True Democrat newspaper, legal and court records, and the voluminous files of vintage photographs in possession of the local historical society to mount a quietly simple exhibit which speaks volumes. An intriguing cross-country connection fostered the interest in researching and collecting which resulted in this exhibit.  

Receipt on Cotton

Several panels of the exhibit focus on Julius Freyhan, who arrived in Louisiana in 1851 as a penniless German Jewish immigrant and died one of the richest men in the South. His extensive business interests included dry goods stores, cotton gins, saloons and opera houses, cotton mills and real estate, first in the St. Francisville-Bayou Sara area and later in New Orleans. After the Civil War, his shrewd fiscal policies saved many a struggling planter, and when he died in 1904, the obituary that ran in the New Orleans paper said, "Through his energy and business acumen, he was able to build up one of the largest supply houses in the states, and during the hard times which swept over the country at various periods, he was able to keep the farmers on their feet until the price of their crops rose." Upon his death, Julius Freyhan left funding to build the first public school in St. Francisville, a large brick structure overlooking the Mississippi River, most recently unoccupied and falling into disrepair.

Now his granddaughter, who has just died at age 94 in California, has left in her own will the funding to restore the Freyhan School building as a community facility and venue for exhibits explaining early Jewish contributions. As the restoration of the facility will take some time, the beginnings of the exhibits have now been hung in the West Feliciana Historical Society museum, including a number of historic photographs left to the society by Freyhan's granddaughter, and the museum has for sale the commissioned memoirs of the Julius Freyhan family's generous generations.

The successful businesses owned by Jewish immigrant families ran the gamut from Moritz Rosenthal the shoemaker to Max Dampf's general merchandise store selling "dry goods, clothes, shoes, staple and fancy groceries," from Abe Stern's livery stable selling horses and mules to the fancy Meyer Hotel, from Morris Burgas whose dry goods store offered the highest prices for cotton and moss, to Freyhan & Co. which became the principal source of supply for dozens of Louisiana parishes and Mississippi counties, in a single year selling upwards of a million dollars worth of goods and handling some 14,000 bales of cotton. In typical fashion, when Julius Freyhan expanded he took his two brothers-in-law as partners, his firm becoming M&E Wolf only after his death, and brought over an Oxford-educated nephew from Berlin to keep the books and buy cotton.

But these Jewish tradesmen and merchants did not isolate themselves, instead becoming vital and valued members of their communities. They may have been born in the Black Forest, but once here the immigrants became public-spirited members of police juries and bank boards. While they belonged to the Jewish philanthropic society B'nai B'rith and contributed to Jewish causes worldwide, they also freely gave to civic and public improvement projects, roads, levees and other local needs.

The West Feliciana Historical Society museum and tourist information center is located at the heart of St. Francisville on Ferdinand St. and is open daily, free of charge; for information, call 225-635-6330.

Located on US Highway 61 on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge, LA, and Natchez, MS, the St. Francisville area is especially enjoyable in the winter when all of the antebellum gardens are filled with colorful blossoming camellias, but it is actually a year-round tourist destination, with six historic plantations-Rosedown and Audubon State Historic Sites, Butler Greenwood, the Myrtles, the Cottage and Greenwood--open for daily tours, Catalpa Plantation open by reservation and Afton Villa Gardens open seasonally. Reasonably priced meals are available in a nice array of restaurants in St. Francisville. Eclectic shops fill restored 19th-century structures throughout the historic downtown area. Some of the state's best Bed and Breakfasts offer overnight accommodations ranging from golf clubs and lakeside resorts to historic townhouses and country plantations; a modern motel has facilities to accommodate busloads. The scenic unspoiled Tunica Hills region surrounding St. Francisville offers excellent biking, hiking, fishing, birding, horseback riding and other recreational activities.

For online coverage of tourist facilities, attractions and events in the St. Francisville area, see www.stfrancisville.net, www.stfrancisville.us or www.stfrancisvilleovernight.com, or telephone (225) 635-6330 or 635-3873

Information and photos submitted by:

Main Street St. Francisville
PO Box 400, St.
Francisville, Louisiana  70775
225-635-3873 | Website | Email

 

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