Happy birthday, Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald was born on August 12, 1862 in Springfield, Illinois. He was the second of six children of Augusta and Samuel Rosenwald, immigrants from Bunde in Hanover, Germany. Sadly, there are no photos of him as a little boy but I imagine he was a lively lad, playing with his sisters and brothers, speaking a bit of German with his parents but English when he was out and about, going to school, learning to read and, eventually, starting to work helping out in his father’s clothing store on Capitol Square.

The first story we have about Julius’s childhood is from 1874 when Springfield dedicated a memorial to the memory of Abraham Lincoln, the man who had gone from being a local lawyer (and having lived in a house across the street from where Julius was growing up) to being president of the United States during the four ghastly years of Civil War. After his assassination in April, 1865 his body had returned home to Springfield for burial. Now, a stone obelisk was being erected in his memory.

Twelve year old Julius answered an ad in the Springfield newspaper inviting “live, active, energetic boys” to apply for a job selling brochures describing the memorial. As I wrote in You Need a Schoolhouse: The celebrations brought to town military bands; divisions of Civil War veterans; members of the Lincoln family; General William Tecumseh Sherman; and his friend, the general who had won the war and who was then president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. In the enormous crowd that gathered for the ceremonies, Julius made $2,50 selling the brochure, “peddling” as he called it. He later recalled observing Grant sitting in his carriage. “He was the first man I had ever seen with kid gloves on his hands,” Julius told an interviewer many years later. “They were yellow in color and I looked so long that I have never forgotten them.” The merchant’s son was picking up the eye of a clothier and the ways of the salesman.

Here is Julius Rosenwald in about 1927 with his wife, Gussie, and eight of their grand children. Perhaps little boy Julius looked like one of them. The one on the right is Richard, son of Julius’s daughter Adele. He was my late and much loved father in law.

Happy birthday, Julius Rosenwald!