Morris E. Meyer (1812-1886) was born in Hanover, Germany. He emigrated to the United States and settled in Charleston, South Carolina, becoming a citizen in 1844. Meyer married Sarah Gertrude Oppenheim (1825-1911), a fourth-generation member of a South Carolina Jewish-American family (see Malcolm H. Stern, First American Jewish Families, 1991, Baltimore, Maryland). About 1863 Morris and Sarah moved to Camden, South Carolina, where Morris established himself as a merchant, mainly in the cotton trade. When General Sherman's troops swept through Camden in the spring of 1865, Meyer lost his entire store of cotton as well as the family's household goods. After the war Meyer moved to New York City where he engaged in the cotton trade and other ventures. Some time after 1877, Morris and Sarah and their children, Adele and Rebecca, left the United States and took up residence in Hanover, Germany, where Morris died on October 11, 1886. Sarah died in Berlin on March 18, 1911.
The Morris E. Meyer Papers, 1842-1939, consist mainly of Morris and Sarah Meyer's business and family records and correspondence. There are also a few items from their daughter Adele and the family of her husband, Gustave Freund.
This collection is of value to researchers interested in the business history of the cotton trade, the American Civil War and its aftermath, and slavery and the slave trade; to social historians interested in nineteenth century marriage ties linking Jews in the United States and Germany; and to Jewish family historians and genealogists.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by subject in five folders and chronologically within each folder. Folder 1: Business records and correspondence, 1856-1877, includes records of cotton purchases, other transactions, and an inventory of assets circa 1871. Folder 2: Cotton claims correspondence, 1893 and 1894, contains Sarah Meyer's correspondence related to her husband's losses resulting from actions by Union troops in 1865. Folder 3: Family records and correspondence, 1842-1939, consists of miscellaneous items. The earliest, December 14, 1842, is a t'no-im, an engagement contract (in Hebrew) for Rachel Heller of Praszka, Poland, and Solomon Freund of Landsberg, Upper Siliesia, Germany [presumably Gustave's parents]. Additionally, there are letters (in German) to Morris and Sarah following the birth of a daughter in 1857, a letter from Levy I. Moses (Sarah's uncle) describing financial losses and sentiments about the failed succession; and a family genealogy drafted on the verso of a September 30, 1938, letter to Adele Freund. Folder 4: Official documents, 1863-1871, including a Presidential Pardon for Morris Meyer, September 29, 1865, and a United States passport issued to Morris Meyer, wife and two children, June 28, 1871. Folder 5: Slave transactions, 1850-1865, including bills of sale and mortgage bonds related to slave transactions by Morris Meyer between 1850-1861, and a list of Meyer's household slaves in 1865.
Processed by Louis Rosenblum in 1995
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 4728 Morris E. Meyer Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
provenance unrecorded
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.