The Isenberg and Silverstein century old story
In the early 1980s, Sarah Ann Silverstein Hoffman wrote a century old family story of her ancestors, the Isenbergs and the Silversteins. It was for the first edition published in 1982 of “The History of Grimes County, Texas.” It was also a century old story of a couple’s three buildings in Navasota.
Sarah Ann begins her story, “In 1898 my grandparents, Ben and Sophie Isenberg, owned an Inn for travelers in a village near Kiev, Russia. My grandfather was forced to serve as a horseman in the Russian Army. My grandmother was a direct descendant of the great Bal Shem Tov, founder of the 18th century Hasidic movement. He resuscitated a despairing, downtrodden Jewry throughout Eastern Europe.”
Sarah Ann’s grandparents had five children including her mother, Fannie, who was born in Kiev, Nov. 5, 1900. During the Bolshevick Revolution when Czar Nicholas II was torturing Russian Jews, her grandparents hired a guide to help them escape to the nearest seaport. They landed on New York’s Ellis Island March 5, 1906.
At Mexia, Texas, Sarah Ann’s mother’s family, the Isenbergs, joined relatives and started selling produce. They later settled in Houston where her grandfather sold produce from a horse drawn wagon.
Sarah Ann’s father, Ben Silverstein, was born in Warsaw, Poland, April 15, 1893. Within a year, Ben’s father died and his mother, with a newborn son, moved to Tiberias, Israel in 1894.
Young Ben was a direct descendent from the regal house of King David and King Solomon. He graduated from an Israel high school reading and writing seven languages.
At the age of 16, his brother Joe sent funds for Ben’s passage to Houston. In Bremen, Germany Ben was robbed but saved by a cotton warehouse owner who employed him to earn enough for passage to Galveston’s Immigration Island. Ben worked with the Jamail brothers on produce row in Houston. He delivered milk to the Isenberg household and met Fannie. They married at the Beth Jacob Synagogue in Houston Nov 29, 1914.
Before his marriage, Ben had come to Navasota in 1912 to establish a produce business in an “old laundry building on 10th Street that had also been the Navasota Opera House in the years past.”
Before his marriage, Ben had come to Navasota in 1912 to establish a produce business in an “old laundry building on 10th Street that had also been the Navasota Opera House in the years past.”
Sarah Ann tells that Ben became the religious leader of Navasota’s said 65 Jewish families, immigrants and business and professional people. Religious services were first held in the Odd Fellows Hall on Washington Avenue. Over time, as the Jewish families diminished, services were held in family homes.
In 1916, Ben and Fannie formed a partnership with Fannie’s parents, the Isenbergs. They operated in what was known as the old Spadachene Building on West Washington Avenue, across from where they later purchased the old Rhodes Building.
By 1936, Ben and Fannie bought out Isenberg and Silverstein Produce to change the name to Silverstein’s Produce and Grocery Store. A brass bell would be rung to tell the public fresh produce was arriving. Both families lived on the second floor of the store.
Sarah Ann’s Isenberg grandmother died in 1926, followed by her Isenberg grandfather in 1936, with both buried in the Navasota Jewish Cemetery that had been establish in Oakland Cemetery. Her parents, Ben and Fannie Silverstein, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Nov. 29, 1964, with both dying within a few months and buried in Houston’s Adath Emeth Cemetery in Houston.
Sarah Ann married Morris Hoffman June 29, 1947, at the Crystal Ballroom at Houston’s Rice Hotel. They were in business with the Silverstein’s when they bought out the Silverstein’s in 1962. They built a new store next to the old one at 217 West Washington and named it Silverstein’s Lucky Seven Food Store.
The Navasota Emporium is now located at this site.
(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org. for more info and membership).