A Classification of American Wealth
History and genealogy of the wealthy families of America - Sponsors

Julius Rosenwald entered Sears, Roebuck & Company in 1895 acquiring a partnership together with his brother-in-law Aaron Nusbaum. He quickly rose to be the organizational head of the firm and extended his control over the company after Richard Warren Sears retired in 1908 and sold out in 1913. By the 1920’s the Rosenwald family firmly controlled Sears, Roebuck & Company and ranked among the richest in the USA.

Numerous other Jewish merchants, usually working in family partnerships, established department stores in many other places throughout America, often acquiring a local reputation far greater than their also considerable wealth. The Gimbels thus established a department store in Milwaukee in 1887, another one in Philadelphia in 1894 and one in New York City in 1910. During the 20th century, Gimbel Brothers grew into a chain, with stores in many large US cities. The Kaufmann brothers established themselves in Pittsburgh and built that city’s main store, before branching out to smaller cities in the area. Many others could be named, including the Riches of Atlanta, the Goldsmiths of Memphis and the Magnins of San Francisco. 

They were all outdone by the Lazarus (or Lazari) who started in Columbus in the mid-nineteenth century and who produced the one great entrepreneurial genius, Fred Lazarus jr, who combined many of the oldest and most renowned American stores in his Federated Department Stores corporation in 1929. That chain would grow through more acquisitions throughout the Twentieth Century before staging a mega-merger with May Department Stores in 2005.
 

NEW  Retailers and Merchant Princes  NEW  - Index Rise of the department store moguls             Alexander Turney Stewart and the first large store in New York City             The Wanamakers - from Philadelphia to New York             Marshall Field & Company in Chicago             Rowland Hussey Macy - genesis of a department store             Sequence at Macy's in New York - the Straus Family (coming soon)             Jewish merchant princes in America (coming soon) The chain store tycoons (coming later)             George Huntington Hartford's Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P)             F.W. Woolworth & Company - 5 and 10 cents story The story of mail order merchandising (coming later)             Montgomery Ward - the pioneer             Richard Warren Sears - mail order tycoon             Succession at Sears Roebuck - the Rosenwalds From the Encyclopedia of American Wealth             Thematic list : Retailers - Merchant Princes (1910) UPDATED

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