Selig Gassenheimer, b. 1849, was the first child born to Samuel Gassenheimer (1802-1854) and his second wife, Pauline Schwab (1811-1894). He had three older siblings from the marriage of Samuel to his first wife, Blümchen Seckel.
Selig was born in the small village of Bibra, which had been home to Gassenheimers since the mid-1700s. In 1854, Selig’s father, Samuel, died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Bauerbach. Selig remained in Bibra with his mother Pauline, older sister Therese, b. 1844, and younger brother Simon, b. 1853. His three other siblings, Amalie, b. 1837, Gustav, b. 1839, and Joseph, b. 1842, lived elsewhere in Thuringia.
Starting in 1856, the children of Samuel Gassenheimer started to leave Germany: Gustav was the first to head to the United States. (See ‘The Family of Gustav and Minnie Gassenheimer”). Eight years later, in 1864, Selig left Bibra and Germany and headed to the United States. He was 15 years old. Selig headed to Alabama, where there was a growing community of German Jews from the Coburg area of Bavaria. His younger brother, Simon, b. 1853, joined him in 1868. On her arrival in 1871, Amelia Levor, née Gassenheimer, a widow, settled in New York with her son, Samuel. On their arrival in 1880, Joseph, his wife Fannie, and their three young children — Samuel (b. 1872), Alma (b. 1874), and Malvina (b. 1879) — also headed south.
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Not a great deal is known about Selig’s early years in Alabama; a newspaper article tells us that his brother Simon came to Alabama “as a lad to join his brother, who operated an ice house. Mr. [Simon] Gassenheimer became acquainted with physical labor by driving an ice wagon.” In November 1876, Selig married Rosa Strauss, the first of five children of Leopold (1824-1871) and Babette (née Seligmann, 1837-1905) Strauss. Leopold had come to Montgomery in 1870 from France; Babette had been born in Bavaria. Selig and Rosa started married life in Opelika with the birth of a son, Sidney, in 1877.
In 1878, Simon decided to establish himself in Montgomery, and founded the Capitol Clothing Company. Selig and Rosa remained in Opelika for another two years during which, according to the June 1880 US Federal Census, peddled junk.
But soon after the June 1880 Federal Census, Selig also moved from Opelika to Montgomery, and a small ad in the 22 September 1880 Montgomery Advertiser indicated the new business direction that he planned to take: office supplies. Whether Simon was initially involved in the venture, explaining the use of “Bros” in the company name, is not known.
A year later, Gassenheimer Bros. sold the business to A. Wolf.
In the 1883 Montgomery City Directory, he was identified as a “bookkeeper” living at 30 Commerce Street and working at 20 Adams. In the late 1880s, he started a small company, the Gassenheimer Paper Company. The entry in the 1902 City Directory listed him at
Selig’s and Rosa’s first child, Sidney was three years old. Selig and Rosa completed their family with the birth of Bernard in 1896. The 1900 US Federal Census captured the family living at 421 South Perry in Montgomery: two daughters, six sons, and a nephew living with Selig and Rosa. Twenty-four-year-old Sidney, the eldest child, was working as a book keeper in his father’s paper company, as was his thirty-year-old cousin, Samuel. Leo, age was working as a salesman for the paper company. The two eldest daughters, Florence and Alma, had completed whatever formal schooling they were to take; three of the younger children were at school, and Bernard was a child of four.
In 1903, Selig changed the company name and incorporated it as the “Mercantile Paper Co.” It was a “janitorial supply company.” Allan Gassenheimer recalled in March 1980, when the company was sold. At that time, “there was not much office equipment.” The company sold brooms, mops, and other janitorial supplies along with paper bags and a limited amount of school sup plies until the office supply industry began developing and the company shifted its emphasis into that area. Office equipment in those days was far different from today, according to Gassenheimer. “I remember when the first filing cabinet was a big wooden cabinet, and my father put it on a horse and dray and took it around and showed it to everybody,”
“United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925”, , FamilySearch(https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q24F-47KT : Sun Mar 10 12:20:39 UTC 2024), Entry for Selig Gassenheimer, 1889.
Alabama Department of Archives & History, October 1953, “Interior of the Mercantile Paper Company at 138 Commerce Street in Montgomery, Alabama, during its fiftieth anniversary celebration.
There is a record in Ancestry.com. Alabama, U.S., Marriages, Deaths, Wills, Court, and Other Records, 1784-1920 [database on-line], 2011, for the death of an “Alase” Gassenheimer, 13 July 1879 in Opelika, Alabama, and buried in the Jewish cemetery, Oakwood cemetery, Montgomery Alabama. It does not tell us who her parents were, but Selig and Rosa (née Straus) Gassenheimer were living in Ophelia at this time, so it is believed that she was their daughter.