Jacob SILVERSTONE & Hannah HARRIS

Hannah Harris (c1810-1849) & Jacob Silverstone (1790-1878) by Gerry Newham (May 2012)

[My 2x great-grandmother, ] Hannah Harris, was born about 1810. She married Jacob Silverstone (born Warsaw, Poland in 1790), probably in London, some time before 1833 when she gave birth to the first of three girls: Frances, to be followed in 1835 (app) by Ellen and in 1837 by Rosa.

In 1840 Hannah and the three girls, accompanied by Abraham Harris (probably her brother), emigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio. The long sea voyage by boat from Liverpool to New Orleans was followed by a trip up the Mississippi to connect with the boat along the Ohio River to Cincinnati. Presumably Jacob had travelled ahead of them but I have so far not found any record of him in the passenger lists.

Jacob and the three girls appear in the 1850 US Census but Hannah had died the previous year in a cholera outbreak. She is recorded in the Mortality Schedules prepared at the same time as the 1850 Census. Early in 1850 the now widowed Jacob married Bertha Schwab (born in Berkach, Saxe-Meiningen, Germany in 1801) and they had a son, Ezekiel, born at the end of that year.

Jacob is mentioned several times in connection wit the K K Bene Yeshurun Temple in Cincinnati. In 1841 he was a Trustee and in 1865, now aged 75, he took part in the procession for the laying of the foundation stone of the new Temple.

Some time between 1865 and 1870 Jacob and Bertha, together with Ezekiel and Bertha’s sister, Miriam, moved to Mobile, Alabama. Ezekiel died there in 1872 and his parents, Jacob and Bertha, both died in 1878. Miriam died in 1881 in Forest, Mississippi but all four are buried close together in the Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama.

The three daughters of Jacob and Hannah all married in the USA: Frances to Edward Gault about 1850; Ellen to Henry Jacobs about 1853 and Rosa to Henry Meyers in 1858. Very little is known about the subsequent lives of Frances and Rosa and whether they lived out their years in the USA or moved on is not yet known. However, Henry and Ellen returned to England about 1857 or 1858, after the birth of their second child. They settled in Brighton, where for a number of years Henry ran a glass warehouse. However this venture ended when Henry became bankrupt and the family moved back to London.