Leopold Family Part Two (Updated)

A previous post began exploring what happened to the Leopold family, an early and influential Rensselaer family. According to his obituary, Abraham arrived in Rensselaer when it had about 500 residents and he watched it grow to about 3000 at the time of his death. This post continues by looking at his six sons.

(Sources include obituaries found on microfilm in the library and posted to findagrave memorials, information that can be gleaned from genealogical sites such as familysearch.org and ancestry.com, and the Hoosier State Chronicles. It is very hard to trace people on genealogical sites after about 1950. The last census to be made public was the 1940 census and other more recent records often are not yet available.)

1) Milton Leopold (1865–1870) died when he was only four years old. He is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Attica. (The Jewish Cemetery has about 100 burials and adjoins the larger Riverside Cemetery.)

2) Simon Leopold (1869–1934) died in Colorado and is buried there. He declared bankruptcy in 1899 and later in the 1910s managed the Model Clothing Store in Rensselaer, which sold mens clothing.

The newspaper reports of his death said that he moved to Colorado for health reasons. After moving to Colorado, he divorced his first wife in 1922 and remarried in 1923. (His second wife was the aunt by marriage of Lefty Clark, former editor of the Rensselaer Republican.) The newspaper reports of his death make no mention of the first wife. The will of his father singles him out with the mention that he owed his father money and he is not listed as one of the children among whom the estate will be divided.  His only child, daughter Selma (1894-1952), was one of the people who escape from the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903.  She graduated from Rensselaer High School and taught English there in 1916. Selma never married and had no children. The picture below is from the 1916 Chaos yearbook,

3) Bernhart (1870–1948) worked for his father and then had grocery stores in Wolcott and Remington. Following his marriage, he moved to Brook, where he ran a store until 1923. While in Brook, he and his sons established what became the Home Finance Company, which he relocated to Rensselaer in 1925. In 1935 he left Rensselaer and moved to California, where he lived with his daughter, Pauline Leopold Abrams. Son Simon (1892–1960) moved to Hammond and died in Munster.  Grandson James served in the military during WWII and is buried in Will County, Illinois. I could not find his children.

Bernhart's son Glenn Leopold (1893–1969) stayed in Rensselaer and managed the Home Finance Company, which was still going strong when he died. He and his wife Pauline (1902-1973) are buried in Memory Gardens Cemetery, as is his son William (1928–2012), the last of the Leopolds to be buried locally. William began his career working with his father at the Home Finance Company and later went to Washington where he worked for the Small Business Administration. He retired to California, where he died. The guestbook of his memorial at the California funeral home contains this interesting note:

I just found out about Bill's passing. He was a Cousin of my Father Curt Baker(Eltzbacher). Bill's family were responsible for bringing my Father, Uncle, and paternal Grandmother to the United States the night before the Nazi's overtook their little hometown in Germany in 1938. Bill had visited my Wife and I when we lived in Stockton, California. Bill was a very interesting man and possibly the last of that generation of Eltzbachers and Leopolds. Rest in Peace, Bill.

Bernhart's daughter Pauline Leopold Abrams (1912–1993) graduated from Rensselaer High School in 1930. Her picture below is from the 1930 yearbook. She lived her adult life in California and I could find almost nothing about her.

4) Isaac Leopold (1872-1940), the fourth son of Abraham and Emilie, started his business life with his younger brother Louis in a mens-clothing store in Remington, which they moved to Wolcott. It was while he was in Wolcott that his 16-year-old son Milton (1900-1916) died of typhoid fever. Milton is buried in Weston Cemetery. A year after his son's death the family moved to Rensselaer where Isaac engaged in selling real estate and finance. He was a director of Farmers and Merchants National Bank. His second child, Robert (1906-1963), graduated from Rensselaer High School in 1924. Robert moved to Louisville, Kentucky where he managed a millinery shop, then to Iowa where he was a buyer in millinery goods. He is buried in Denver, Colorado. He had at least one daughter.

5) Louis Leopold (1874-1928) tried merchandizing in Remington and Wolcott before moving to Chicago and working for a store in that city. His health began failing more than a decade before he died. He had one daughter, Esther Leopold Beck (1903–1968).

6) The youngest son, Moses (1876–1972), did not follow in the family tradition of retail commerce but became a lawyer and eventually a circuit court judge, serving Jasper County from 1932 until 1969. He married late to a woman much younger than himself and had no children. Milton was the last descendent of Abraham and Emilie to live in Rensselaer and his wife, Maurine Tuteur Leopold (1894–1989), was the last Leopold to live in Rensselaer.

Abraham and Emilie had eleven children, two of whom died before reaching adulthood. They also had eleven grandchildren, two of whom died before reaching adulthood. I could find eight great grandchildren, but I am certain I missed some.

Addendum: Melissa Smith from the Rensselaer Library sent me a column from the February 15, 1877 issue of the Rensselaer Union newspaper that profiled a few of the leading citizens of Rensselaer. Here is what it had about Abraham Leopold.