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Possibly the First Czech in New Orleans |
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The Kohns. Thanks to the personal memoir of the British Jewish historian Lucien Wolf,29 we have a charming account of the circumstances that led one Samuel Kohn to leave his native Bohemia at the beginning of the nineteenth century to emigrate to America. As Wolf put it: |
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Samuel Kohn was known all over the countryside as a good-hearted, hare-brained ne'er-do-well, fond of the tavern and the lassies; and fonder still of a game of cards....One day the news ran through Hareth [Horany, Bohemia] that Samuel Kohn had disappeared. He had last been seen drinking and gambling with strangers in the Gast-haus. and, after some high words, had tramped off in the direction of Saaz, a picture of abject misery . . . It seems that Samuel Kohn, on the day on which be disappeared from Hareth, had been cheated of everything he had in the world by a gang of card-sharpers. When he left the tavern with empty pockets, he felt he could not again go home to the poverty-stricken cottage in the wood and confess his follies to his long-suffering mother. So he turned his steps in the direction of the country town and thence tramped northward all the way to Hamburg. He worked his way on a sailing vessel to New Orleans. |
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1806 - The Inn on Bayou St. John |
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Although the exact time of Samuel Kohn's arrival in the United States is not known, we surmise that it was sometime prior to 1806, since in July of that year the New Orleans paper carried an advertisement announcing the opening of an inn at Bayou St. John, owned by one Samuel Kohn in partnership with H. Labruere.30 Kohn subsequently became a banker, moneylender, investor, and a real estate promoter. Through wit, grit and acuity, he rose from a penniless immigrant to become one of the wealthiest financiers in New Orleans. He also built dwellings and commercial buildings throughout the city and was one of the major promoters of suburban construction. |
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1820 -- 1850 -- Good Business Years |
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Samuel Kohn had several brothers, including Simon and Joachim. In 1819 or 1820, when Joachim32 reached his nineteenth or twentieth year, Samuel brought him to New Orleans and set him up in the commission brokerage line with several partners. They owned ships and handled cargoes on the Mississippi River, in the Caribbean, on the Atlantic seaboard and in Europe. After Samuel Kohn moved to Paris in 1832, Joachim acted as his agent in America.
Joachim was successful in his own right as well. He was a member of more corporation boards than any other Jew in his time. He was a director of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Co., the Carrollton Bank, the Louisiana State Marine Fire Insurance Co., and the Mechanics' and Traders' Bank, etc. In 1834 Joachim married Marie Thalie Martin, the daughter of a fashionable French physician. They had three children, of whom a daughter, Amelie, married Armand Heine, a cousin of the poet Heinrich Heine. Armand came to New Orleans in 1842 to open a concession and banking business. |
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A Trip Home |
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When Samuel Kohn visited his homeland in the 1830's, according to a peasant's account, as related by Lucien Wolf,31 "the whole of Hareth was thrown into a paroxysm of the most intense excitement." Wolf narrated how "there suddenly drove up to the door of the widow Kohn's cottage a capacious travailing carriage drawn by six horses and attended by four black servants in gorgeous liveries. A gentleman of noble presence had alighted and entered the cottage, and the black servants had followed with the baggage, which included a mysterious hogshead. The yokel had afterwards peered through the window and had seen?so he averred?the hogshead opened in the presence of the widow and - he swore it by all the saints - it was full to the brim with newly-coined gold." |
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All in the Family |
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A third member of the Kohn family, Samuel's nephew Carl Kohn,33 was brought to New Orleans by Samuel in 1830 or 1831. He achieved a level of success and prominence equal to that of his uncles. Like them he became engaged in merchant banking, commission brokerage and various other business enterprises, culminating in his election to the presidency of the Union National Bank. He, too, married into one of the first families of New Orleans, his bride being Clara White, a daughter of Maunsel White and Heloise de Ia Ronde. |
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Source and Credit |
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The information presented here is from M. Rechcigal's webpage, through the SVU, which further credits: |
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-Information of Kohn's stay in New Orleans is based on the extensive research of Bertram Wallace Korn, published in his The Early Jews of New Orleans (Waltham, MA.: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), pp. 119-27. |
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More information Sought |
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I would like to know more about the Kohn's impact on New Orleans.
There are several companies and people mentioned, as well as properties. If you have any further information about these please let me know:
Jim Hlavac -- Louisiana Czech |
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