The Hart/Saltiel Connection

It's amazing what you can "prove" about history when creating a family tree.  I am trying to prove that E. H. Saltiel and E. S. Hart were cousins.

We know from the bigamy case that Eleazer Hart at 20 White Lion Street was the uncle of Jane Harris Saltiel so what did I do?  I searched that address.  And from that single web search which snowballed into numerous other sites, I was able to create this family tree.

Is it accurate?  Well, here are some proofs:

1)  We know that Eleazer was Jane's uncle - that fits.

2)  If you look at the 3rd generation - those in yellow, each person across the board named their first son Judah, after their father who had passed away.  Consistent with Ashkenazi naming practices. This would be the 4th generation - they are the green boxes.

3)  In the 1871 England Census, Nathan Minden, his wife Hannah and their children, Evaline, Kate, Michael and Sarah are living in the house of Rachael A. Harris with her daughter, Jane Saltiel.  Now go down the list of Aaron's children and you will find Hannah Hart, Rachel's niece, married to Nathan Minden with those 4 children.

Remember, you can click on an image to enlarge it.

Where is E. S. Hart who was at Cotopaxi?  We know his name was Eleazer Samuel Hart and that he was born in London in 1832.  We know that Ashkenazi Jews do not name their children after living ancestors.  So he could not be the son of Eleazer Hart 1791-1857, the brother of Rachel Hart.


If you look at the children of Michael Hart, another brother of Rachel, and you go down the list, we find a Samuel Hart born in 1832.  Is this our E. S. Hart?

Let's look at the names he used:

Samuel Hart -     ship's manifest, 1854
Eleasa   Hart -    1875 New York Census
Saml. Hart    -     1880 Census
Eleazar S. Hart - 1888 Denver Directory
E. Samuel Hart - 1892 Denver Directory
Samuel Hart -     1894 Denver Directory
Samuel Hart -     1900 Census
Eleazier Hart -    1907 Cook county death index

He was 22 when he came to America.  There isn't much on him in England prior to that.  If we put him in as the son of Michael Hart, that makes him a 1st cousin to Jane Harris Saltiel and a 1st cousin once removed to E. H. Saltiel.  We used to count that as a second cousin.

I think we have a good match.  I will continue to research this aspect as I have time.

Just a couple of side notes.  When doing my research I came across a website that claimed in London in the 1850s, reform Judaism was coming into play and Jew were not necessarily sticking to their custom of never naming a child after a living relative.  In this tree, we see many children with names identical to living relatives.  We need to keep in mind that each child had a Hebrew name and it is the Hebrew name that could not be giving to a living relative - not the anglicized name.

Most of the 3rd generation (green) was born in Middlesex which includes Spitalfields, Strand, Nottingham, Whitechapel, Edmonton, Adgate and other small villages.

We have already discussed why Rachel went to Bath.  To escape the stigma of the bigamy trial. To reside in an Ashkenazi community.

From the above tree, you can see that I've found her son, Judah Lewis Harris living there as wall.  His first 6 children were born there.  But Isaac and Solomon were born in Middlesex starting in 1859 which coincides with the time Rachel, Jane and Emanuel moved back to the Middlesex area.

Emanuel Harris Saltiel was clearly named after his mother's father.  His grandmother, Rachel Hart Harris, was still living in the 1871 census.

Aaron named his daughter Rachel in  1830.

Aaron's son, Emmanuel Hart, named his daughter Rachel Hart in 1854.

Aaron's daughter, Hannah, who lived with Rachel Hart Harris, named her daughter Rachel Minden in 1855.

Did the concept of not naming after the living apply to men only?  Or did all 3 of these women have different Hebrew names?

For now, I think we have a fairly good family tree and a connection between the Harts and the Saltiels.

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The Saltiel/Hart connection - the religious family tree

Here's the Hart family tree:

The common ancestor was an "unknown" Hart.   We now know he was  an Ashkenazi Jew - a German Jew,  Judah Hart.   He had at least 6 children, Rachel, Eleazer, Michael, Aaron, Henry and Elizabeth.

Rachel had Jane, who married John Jacob (Alfred) Saltiell.  They had Emanuel Harris Saltiel.

Eleazar had Eleazer Samuel Hart.  He would be a 1st cousin to Rachel and a 1st cousin once removed to Emanuel.  But an Ashkenazi wouldn't name a child after a living parent.  Rachel's brother Michael, had Samuel, born 1832, who is a match to Eleazer Samuel Hart who was at Cotopaxi.  Again, a 1st cousin, once removed to E. H. Saltiel.

I need help from my Jewish pals!  When I reread the bigamy case....it clearly states that John Jacob was brought up in the Sephardic school.  Jane is a German Jew and therefore I would presume she is Ashkenazi.  She descends from Rachel Hart Harris above.  Jane was an Ashkenazi Jew and  she married a Sephardic Jew and thus E. H. Saltiel was Sephardic?  But by his DNA he was both Sephardic and Ashkenazi?  

Because the  Harts were Ashkenazi, this would then explain their kindness to the Colonists.  And it might explain some of the animosities between Saltiel and Hart - which I will show in future posts.  

(Both Saltiel and the Harts were British, never spoke Yiddish, and thus the problems communicating with the Russian Jews who immigrated to Cotopaxi.)

Emanuel and Eleazer's children who were at Cotopaxi would have been second cousins.

Emanuel was 38 years old when the Colonists arrived in Cotopaxi.  E. S. Hart was 50.  While I'm happy to have finally connected the family tree of the Harts and Saltiels, I'm now curious about the religious aspects of this tree.

Mom once took our family tree and entered into it all of the medical conditions for each person living, and each deceased person as far back as she could.  Wouldn't it be interesting to create a family tree that showed the religions for each branch?  And the sect or variance within each religion? 

Please note that this post was updated from it's original content/questions based on a later post where I made the Hart/Saltiel connection.

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Emmanuel Saltiel - a Jew from Portugal? And his cousins, the Harts:

I love how oral histories turn into something they are not.  I have read so many places where the author will state that E. H. Saltiel came to America from Portugal.

I think not!

It does state that he was a "Portuguese Jew" -  and I'm sure that's where others come up with the notion that he was from Portugal.   However...the term is slang meaning that he was a Sephardic Jew.  And that would separate him from the Ashkenazi Jews who were the colonists.

What is the difference?  Check here - not much!

I have done the family tree for Emanuel, I have collected the census records....he was born in Bath England.  He immigrated to this country at a very young age about 1862 and he immediately entered the military in the Civil War.  His father, grandfather, gr grandfather and gr gr grandfather were all born in England.  His 3rd gr grandfather was born in Greece.  The next one born in Italy and the next one in Crete.

Saltiel was not Portuguese, nor did he come from Portugal!  But he was a Sephardic Jew - and he probably practiced it some of the time.  He married Elizabeth M. Wolfe in 1870 in New York City.   In a 1871 newspaper article, he state that she was Episcopalian.  But further research shows she was born a Jew.  He was buried as a non-catholic in a catholic cemetery at Rawlins WY in 1900.

What's interesting is that he was a Sephardic Jew who arranged to have a group of Ashkenazi Jews brought to Cotopaxi in 1882.  Fascinating chapter of the Jewish migration to the Western United States.

Along with Saltiel was his cousin, Eleazer Samuel Hart, better known as E. S. Hart.  He had a store and a hotel in Cotopaxi.  Hart was raised as an Ashkenazi Jew (see that story here).   Hart's daughter was married in a synagogue in Chicago.  After Cotopaxi, this family migrated Denver, then  to Chicago IL where we find them in the census records.

His son, Myer Hart, had a son Robert M. Hart, who at some point moved from Chicago to Boulder CO.  Robert married Miriam Rothberger.  They were united by a Rabbi in Colorado.

they were living in Chicago in the 1940 census:

Robert and Miriam Hart were living in Boulder where she died in 1986.  He died there in 1995.

The Miriam R. Hart Regional Radiation Center in Boulder was built in her honor.  An amazing contribution to Colorado from the descendant of someone who was part of the Cotopaxi Colony.  So while most of the story of the Cotopaxi Colony has been one of the ashkenazi jews who were escaping persecution in Russia, I think we cannot forget the sephardic Jews who were there at the same time.

Wonder what I can find on other descendants!

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