Samuel Ullman

Samuel Ullman (born April 13, 1840 in Hechingen, Germany - died March 21, 1924 in Birmingham) was a long-time member of the Birmingham Board of Education, a lay-leader at Temple Emanu-El, and a writer whose poem, "Youth" is celebrated worldwide.

Ullman was born to Jacob and Lena Goldsmith Ullman, Jews living under the repression of the German Confederation in Hechingen. They named their first son Samuel after his grandfather, the Ribbi Samuel ben Isaac Ullman and moved, before he was a year old, to the Alsace region of France where they could raise him under greater freedom.

In 1850, the family, now numbering six, sailed for America, anxious about the rise of Emperor Louis-Napoleon. On January 17, 1851, after a 56-day voyage, the family arrived in the port of New Orleans where they bought passage on a riverboat to Port Gibson, Mississippi where Jacob's brother Isaac had already settled and opened a butcher's shop.

When Isaac and his wife, Agatha, succumbed to yellow fever in 1853, Jacob and Lena adopted their two children. In the same year, Samuel began to assist his father in the butcher shop making deliveries before school. Later he took charge of buying cattle for the shop.

In 1856, Jacob sent Samuel to Louisville, Kentucky to attend a Jewish school there run by Rabbi Bernard Gotthelf. While there, Samuel boarded with a grocer who shared his name and who was one of the founders of the Adas Israel Congregation that founded the school. In all he spent 18 months at the school before returning to his father's business as "first assistant."

On May 31, 1861 Ullman enlisted in Captain John Taylor Moore's Mississippi militia which became attached to the 16th Mississippi Regiment under the command of Captain Carnot Posey and ventured to Virginia that July. Ullman was listed in the roster as a musician in the regimental band. The following May, the 16th Mississippi fell under the command of General Stonewall Jackson for the duration of the Valley Campaign which ultimately drove the Union Army from the vicinity of Richmond. Ullman was wounded lightly at Cross Keys just before the final Seven Day's Battle.

That August, Ullman's regiment accompanied Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Second Bull Run and up into Maryland where they faced off against George McClellan's Army of the Potomac at Antietam. An exploding shell caused Ullman permanent hearing damage. He won his discharge after providing a substitute on November 7, 1862, and returned to Port Gibson.

In 1865 Ullman moved to Natchez, which, surrendering early, had largely been spared from battle and looting. Ullman joined an Orthodox Jewish group called Hebra Kadusha. He was a member of a progressive group that split from that congregation in the Winter of 1865 to establish a reformed congregation called B'nai Israel. Ullman became a lay leader and organized the group's religious school, which held classes on Sundays like their Christian neighbors. He solicited the help of Emma Mayer, and the couple quickly fell in love and were married on May 24, 1867 at her parents' home in Natchez.

Meanwhile, Ullman and his cousin David Laub had opened the Ullman and Laub Mercantile business which steadily grew into an established company. Ullman's family also grew, with the first of eight children born in 1869. By then, Ullman had been elected president of B'nai Israel Congregation and guided the group in the building of a temple, funded in large part by money raised by a Hebrew Ladies' Aid Society which was led by Emma. The new temple was dedicated on March 8, 1872. Ullman served twice as interim lay rabbi and was also active in the Ezra Lodge No. 134 of B'nai B'rith, which he had helped found in 1870. In 1878 Ullman was elected president of the District Grand Lodge No. 7 which represented most of the Southern United States.

Ullman also participated in local politics, running unsuccessfully for Alderman in 1873, and then winning the office in 1876. He served three one-year terms on that Board and also served the Natchez Board of Health during a Yellow Fever outbreak that threatened the populace in 1878. He was not re-elected in 1879.