Exploring Louisiana’s Jewish heritage

The five Blum sisters, Jewish women living in France, immigrated to south Louisiana in the 1850s and 1860s, some of them settling and raising their families in Berwick.
They were some of the 600-plus French Jewish immigrants who settled in 49 of the 64 Louisiana parishes over the course of the last two centuries. Their biographies are detailed in “Louisiana’s Jewish Immigrants from the Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France” by Carol Mills-Nichol, who describes her book as a jumping off point for anyone interested in researching whether they are of Jewish ancestry.
It is the tomb of Miriam Blum Fortin in the Berwick Cemetery that graces the cover of Mills-Nichol’s book, chosen, the author said, because of its obvious references to both Christianity and Judaism.
“I chose her tombstone for the cover because I believe it typifies the lives of so many Jewish immigrants who were transplanted into Christian, mostly Catholic, Louisiana. The guardian angel atop her imposing monument, the largest in the little cemetery, looms over her inscription which ends with the Hebrew letters which are an abbreviation of a verse from the Bible, the first book of Samuel, 25:29, ‘May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life’,” Mills-Nichol said.
Born Marie Blum on Jan. 10, 1840, in Dettwiller, Bas-Rhin, France, her parents were Marx/Marc Blum, a native of the town, and his second wife, Madeleine Weil, born in Schwenheim, Bas-Rhin.
Mills-Nichol explained that many of the Jewish immigrants she studied went by numerous names as they changed them when they immigrated or simply adopted another first or last name at some time in their lives.
According to a notation in the 1900 federal census, Miriam immigrated to the United States in 1855, the same year as her older sister, Adele Blum, one of the five Blum sisters who eventually settled in Louisiana. The other three sisters were Jeannette, Pauline and Sara Blum.
Miriam made her home with her steamboat engineer husband, Hypolite Paul Fortin/Fortune, in Berwick. Hypolite, a native of Canada, married Miriam circa 1859, probably in Louisiana, although no marriage record has been found to date. The 1900 census indicates they had been married for 41 years, according to information from Mills-Nichol’s book.
The couple’s first child, Bertha Elizabeth, was born in July 1861 in Cincinnati at the beginning of the Civil War. Capt. Fortin joined the Confederate cause in 1862, enlisting as a private in Company B, Louisiana Militia, Chalmette Infantry Regiment, where records show him working on Confederate gunboats in March of that year. The family settled in Patterson, then relocated to Berwick.
Hypolite and Miriam were the parents of seven more children, all born in Louisiana: Moïse/Morris M. (b. 1867), Henry B. (b. 1869), Rose (b. 1872), Cécile (b. 1875), Mathilda (b. 1878), Joseph A. (b. 1880; died 1898), and Edward M. (b. 1882). Both Morris and Edward followed in their father’s footsteps. Morris became a river pilot, and Edward, was chief engineer on river steamers. Miriam Blum Fortin died on Feb. 17, 1907, at Berwick and was interred there in the Hebrew Cemetery, the book narrative indicates.
Mills-Nichol of Madisonville said she found out 15 years ago that she was part Jewish, and that began her odyssey of research that eventually became the short biographies of 638 immigrants to Louisiana who left from places in the Bas-Rhin, Alsace.
Most of the Jewish families in Louisiana are related to one another, the author said. A lot of Jewish immigrants didn’t marry other Jews. Especially in the earlier years of their immigration, they had problems finding a spouse, so they married Catholics. As such, the Jewish ancestry often is buried deep in family trees, Mills-Nichol explained.
“Some unlucky souls never even completed the journey. They may have died of disease in European ports while awaiting passage, or perished at sea during the arduous voyage. Those lucky enough to arrive did not always settle in New Orleans,” Mills-Nichol said in an email.
Many journeyed still farther inland to big towns such as Lafayette, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Alexandria, Opelousas, Donaldsonville or smaller towns like Kentwood, Chackbay, Waterloo, Livonia, Mansura, Marksville, Kennerville, Hohen Solms, Bunkie, Kirksville, Berwick, Big Cane, Plaquemine, Morgan City, Houma, Bayou Goula, Franklin or Pointe-à-la-Hâche.
Still others, the author said, were employed as store keepers on plantations such as Azima, Belmont, Cinclare, Cora, Cote Blanche, Cypress Hall, Live Oak and Tezcuco.
“While many of them prospered in Louisiana, others suffered unspeakable tragedies in their adopted homeland. Some were murdered. Others ended their own lives. A frightening number of them succumbed to consumption, typhoid or yellow fever, many within a few years of their arrival,” Mills-Nichol said.
This book gives a “genealogical step-up to people” looking for ancestors but not a specific genealogy for entire families, the author said.
It does give the stories of the immigrants’ lives and their children’s birth dates.
“The person who’s reading the book can pick it up from there,” with their own research, she said.
Mills-Nichol provides a beginner’s how-to for the research as well due to the peculiarities of Jewish genealogy in which the immigrants frequently “shed their names and that makes genealogy very hard sometimes.”
Additionally, before 1808, Jews ordinarily did not have family names, instead taking the patronymic surnames indicating that they are the “son of (father’s name).”
Napoleon Bonaparte changed that so he could track them for taxing purposes and to conscript the men into the army, she said.
Mills-Nichol said her own research for the book took two years.
“Louisiana’s Jewish Immigrants from the Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and through the publisher, Janaway Publishing Inc. It is also listed at Ingram.