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When surnames were chosen in the city of Wehrda, Hesse-Cassel, there were three men who chose the name WERTHEIM. A Wehrda register from 1809 shows that their former names were; Baruch Salomon, Hirsch Salomon and Moses Salomon. In Jewish naming tradition, the second name is the name of the father, we can infer from their names that these three were all son of Salomon, and brothers. It is likely that at some point, their ancestors lived in Wertheim, Germany. In the days when Jews only used given names, ancestral towns of origin were often used to help identify individuals. Many of the Jews of Cassel were engaged in trade cattle trade.
I have not had success in uploading my family tree to this site, so my tree appears as a 25 page graphic in the picture section below. It includes both pictures and biographical information for the descendants of Baruch Wertheim b. 1765 Wehrda, Hirsch Wertheim b. 1771 Wehrda, and Moses Wertheim b. 1778 Wehrda.
It is fairly certain that Baruch's son Solomon immigrated to Cleveland, OH in 1848. Moses' son Baruch immigrated to New York City around the same time. Hirsch had a daughter Beile who married Moses Billstein and immigrated to Cleveland in 1856 after the death of her husband to join most of her children. Interestingly, many of these immigrant families started in the cigar trade.
I have also located other offspring of both Hirsch and Moses who remained in Germany. Of these, I am discovering relatives who perished in the holocaust and others who were able to emigrate in the late 1930's.
Main surnames that appear in the early generations of this family tree include:
BILLSTEIN, BIRKENRUTH, BUXBAUM, BYCK, FERNBERGER, FRANK, GOLDSTONE, GRIEF, HEXTER, HILLER, JACOB, JOSEPH, KAHN, KAMM, KAPPENBERG, LEVI, PLAUT, ROSENBLATT, SCHEUER, SCHLOSS, SIMON, SIMSON, STERN, STRAUSS, WEIS, WERTHEIM
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