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Goodman and Levy family papers and scrapbooks, 1850-2003

Estelle Goodman Levy was born in El Paso, Texas, where her father, Aaron, owned the Lion Grocery Company. Her grandfather, Parez Levy, was an optician in Nashville, Tennessee. She attended Science Hall in Shelbyville, Kentucky and graduated from Throop Academy in Pasadena (now the California Institute of Technology), in 1910. Estelle returned to El Paso and married Charles Levy in 1916. She was active in the political, civic, social, historical, philanthropic and Jewish life of El Paso and the Southwest, belonging to Mount Sinai Temple and many other local organizations including: the National Council of Jewish Women; the Texas State Federation of Sisterhoods; the Women’s Club of El Paso; the Red Cross; the Parent Teachers Association; and the Cloudcraft Baby Sanitarium. With Isidore Bernard and Fanny Sattinger Goodman, two of her relatives, Estelle supported the El Paso Historical Society and contributed articles to its quarterly. Estelle Levy’s daughter, Amelia Rose, moved to Oakland, California in 1966 and married Edgar Guy Lemmon, Jr. in 1967.

The collection contains the following: a few items relating the life of Parez Levy in Tennessee, including a scrapbook and a Masonic certificate; items relating to the life of Aaron Goodman in El Paso, Texas, including family scrapbooks with documents and correspondence from Aaron’s Lion Grocery Company and an 1889 legal document (in Spanish) relating to a Goodman’s interests in a mine in Juarez; the handwritten diaries of Estelle Goodman Levy (Aaron’s daughter); a wedding book and marriage certificate from the wedding of Estelle Goodman and Charles Levy; a number of scrapbooks documenting the life of Estelle Goodman Levy in El Paso; and a significant number of items relating to the life of Amelia Levy Lemmon, including 48 scrapbooks and photo albums dating from Amelia’s school years through 2003. These document Amelia’s experience at UC Berkeley and in the San Francisco Bay Area, her activities in the Sisterhood of Oakland’s Temple Sinai and in the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee, and her travels around the world. Amelia’s childhood is also documented in the Goodman family scrapbooks in the collection. The collection includes genealogical information about members of the Goodman, Levy, Frank, Lederer, Baruch, Brandt, Schenck, and Sattinger families. Also included are some historical writings, including “My Parents, Joseph Hillel Goodman and Sarah Rothschild Goodman” by Isidore B. Goodman and “In the Beginning: The Jewish Community of El Paso Texas” by Fanny Sattinger Goodman.


Author/Creator

Goodman family Levy family

Size

11 cartons and 10 oversize boxes (14.6 linear feet)

Collection #

BANC MSS 2010/736

Publication Date

October 4, 1850


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