S

See Joseph Schaffner

See Joseph Schaffner

See Joseph Schaffner

Haym Salomon, best known for his role in helping to finance the American Revolution, served as the broker to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris from 1781 to 1784. He immigrated to colonial New York in the mid-1770s. His working knowledge of many European languages enabled him to broker bills of exchange from several countries, including France and Spain. The descendants of Haym Salomon, along with members of the American Jewish community, have used his legacy as “the financier of the American Revolution” to construct an American Jewish heritage with roots in the nation’s very beginning.

See Isaac Sanger

Isaac and Lehman Sanger arrived in Texas six years after the Republic joined the Union. By the end of the nineteenth century, their firm, Sanger Bros., had become the largest department store in Texas and perhaps in the Southwest.

See Isaac Sanger

See Isaac Sanger

See Isaac Sanger

Johann Christoph Sauer was the most active publisher of German-language print in colonial America. Through his publishing work, based in Germantown, Pennsylvania, he became the mouthpiece for many German immigrants’ opinions on the political and religious controversies of the mid-eighteenth century.

The founders of the clothing firm Hart Schaffner & Marx (HSM) belonged to a small network of Jewish migrants from a few villages just outside of Worms. Soon after establishing the business in 1887, the lead partners Joseph Schaffner and Harry Hart turned HSM into a top brand for stylish, high quality men’s suits.

The life and career of Albert Scheffer, a St. Paul, Minnesota, businessman, is entwined with the financial development of the Upper American Midwest in the latter nineteenth century. He founded numerous banks and companies with great hope but eventually closed them with much sorrow. However, Scheffer was more than just a businessman. During his long career, he also became deeply involved in civic affairs in St. Paul, in local and state politics, in the fraternal affairs of Civil War veterans, and in caring for his extended family.

August Schell immigrated to the United States as a young man in the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848. After first settling in Cincinnati, Schell became one of the founding fathers of New Ulm, Minnesota, where he founded his eponymous brewery in 1860. Today, the brewery is the second-oldest family-owned brewery in the United States.

Jacob Schieffelin, the Philadelphia-born son of a German immigrant businessman, engaged in furnishing stores and provisions for the British Army in Canada, was an entrepreneur who moved vigorously into commerce and real estate speculation wherever he found himself.

A banker and philanthropist, Jacob H. Schiff secured European funding to build America’s railroads, mines, and other enterprises. He helped transform the United States into the world’s leading industrialized economy.

Nicknamed the “U.S. Candy Bar King,” Otto Y. Schnering used his personal sales skills and understanding of advertising and marketing to build the Curtiss Candy Company in Chicago and the post–World War I United States chocolate candy industry into modern, successful enterprises.

Andrew Schoch was a pioneer in the grocery trade, owning and operating one of the largest independent firms in the Midwest, with goods delivered to customers as far away as Africa and the Philippines.

Jacob Frederick Schoellkopf immigrated to the United States in 1842 and through a combination of thoughtful, strategic decision-making and a fair dose of luck, built a family empire in and around Buffalo, New York, that he passed down to his son and grandsons. Trained in Württemberg as a tanner, he took major risks in the U.S. by venturing into commercial sectors in which he had no knowledge or experience. Yet, by working closely with native-born Americans who were experts in these fields and by sending his children back to Germany for further education, he found himself on the cutting edge of a number of fields including hydroelectric power generation and aniline dye production.

In 1872, six years after emigrating from Württemberg, Albert Schoenhut began manufacturing toy pianos in a workshop in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. By the turn of the twentieth century, the A. Schoenhut Company had become one of America’s leading toy producers – and one of the few to export to Europe. Today, the toy pianos, dolls, and novelty items produced during the company’s pre-World War I heyday are prized by connoisseurs, auctioneers, and aficionados.

Among the German refugees of the 1930s there was scarcely an émigré in the USA who was a more successful businessman and brewer than Hermann Schülein. Schülein belonged to a small (and for the German-Jewish mass emigration entirely unrepresentative) group of business executives who managed to continue in their line of work in the alien circumstances of the “New World” and, remarkably, to build on the success they had known in Germany.