Abraham Tandler

From “The Forging of an American Jew: The Life and Times of Judge Julian W. Mack.”

"Abraham Tandler was still in his teens when he came over from the village of Ichenhausen, Bavaria, about 1831. His ship docked at Philadelphia and there he started his life in America. Among other Bavarian Jews in Philadelphia, he found Fanny Schwabacher, who had over with her family from Feldheim, Bavaria. Before long Abe and Fanny were married. "To make a living, Tandler began as a peddler of notions, operating mainly in the countryside, with farmers as his main customers. That was the way much merchandise was being sold at the time, Non-Jewish New England itinerant merchants having blazed that commercial trail long before. Some of these peddlers Yankees as well as Jews, would in time become store owners, bankers, and manufacturers. "Tandler’s peddling took him as far west as Louisville, Kentucky, which struck him as an especially favorable location because it was not so well settled as Philadelphia. In 1837 he opened a carpet and rug business there, and it was in Louisville that three daughters were born to Abe and Fanny Tandler. One of them, Rebecca, was to be the mother of Julian Mack. "There were then few other Jews in Louisville. Gradually, however, enough of them settled there to form a congregation; that is, a “minyan” of ten men. Founded in 1845, this congregation -- its members all in modest circumstances -- held services above Tandler’s store. Tandler became its first president...To Julian Mack all this would have been strange. Yet he himself stemmed from an Orthodox Jewish family. Later, there was to be a switch to Reform in Louisville, as elsewhere in America. It came to Congregation Adath Israel in the 1850’s. But by then the Tandlers were pioneers once more -- in California. "Julian’s maternal grandfather had caught the California Gold Rush fever i 1851 -- against the wishes of his wife. He had been doing quite well with his carpet store in Louisville. At least Fanny Tandler thought so. She saw no reason for her husband to become a prospector for gold with the risk of being killed in some mountain canyon, as she had heard had been the fate of many such prospectors. Abe, however, had no intention of braving such perils. His idea was to sell merchandise to the miners. Almost any kind of merchandise was bringing unheard-of prices in San Francisco; a dozen eggs brought three dollars; flour, twenty dollars a bottle -- all very profitable. "But Fanny Tandler could not forget San Francisco’s reputation. Men in San Francisco outnumbered women fifty to one. “There are some honest women in San Francisco, but not very many,” a French writer reported that year. Was this, Fanny Tandler wondered, a place in which to bring up three Jewish daughters? Still, while on a buying visit to Philadelphia in the spring of 1851, Abe felt the excitement over boats that landed daily, loaded with passengers and good destined for the new American “Promised Land.” Many Philadelphians had the California fever, including Abe Tandler’s brother-in-law, Jacob Lang, husband of his sister, Julia, and Lang’s brother-in-law, Jacob Sellers. When Lang and Sellers decided to go west, Tandler made up his mind to become their partner and go to California with them. He wrote to Fanny that she should carry on in Louisville “until further notice.” That meant taking care of the three girls as well as the carpet store, while Abe and his partners opened one general store in San Francisco, then another in Sacramento... "All seemed to go well for Tandler in California. Then, in the first of a series of fires that struck the city, the San Francisco store was burned out. There was no insurance. But if Fanny had expected this disaster to cool Abe’s ardor for California, she was mistaken. "He returned to Louisville in July 1852, in advance of a telegram to Fanny that stated he was safely back “in the States” -- that is, in New York. The telegram had been delayed by a congestion in communications caused by the death of Henry Clay. "Abe Tandler, however, was not chastened. He had returned not to stay but only to buy more merchandise and to take Fanny and the girls to California -- by boat from Philadelphia to Panama, on horseback across the Isthmus, and then by boat again on the Pacific north to San Francisco. "At one o’clock in the morning of March 6, 1853, after a 14 day voyage from Panama, the Babcock Line steamer Cortes docked at San Francisco. As noted in the next day’s Daily Alta California, its passengers included “Mr. Tandler, wife, and children.” The “children” were Emma, Julia, and Rebecca, who was then nine. "William Jacob Mack, who was to marry Rebecca, was then still in Bavaria. He did not get to California until 1859."