Interview with Charles Tachau, October 7, 1977

Dwayne Cox:

This is an oral history interview with Reverend Charles Tachau. Today's October 7th, 1977. My name is Dwayne Cox from the University of Louisville. I've interviewed Reverend Tachau on one other occasion for a project on the black community in Louisville, and I'm back again now to interview him on another project, a topic that I guess will be broader and which he may have even more to say about than on the Black History Project, and that is a project that the University of Louisville Archives began back in December of 1976 in cooperation with the Jewish Community Federation, an oral history project on the Jewish 1:00community in Louisville.

D.C:

Reverend Tachau is related to some of the oldest Jewish families in Louisville. I always hate to say old families because all families are old, but long established, I suppose you could say, and that is the Tachau family of course and the Brandeis family and the Levys.

D.C:Dembitz. Names that in Louisville history go back at least to the 1840s. When I first got in touch with Reverend Tachau on this project, wrote him a letter, I remember he wrote back and said that he possibly had the best memory 2:00of any of his family members, and that is for details of his family history. He's loaned us a nice set of photographs of his family history, which we've microfilmed at the university.

D.C:

Without any further ado on my part, I would just as soon turn it over to Reverend Tachau and let him talk about his family history, firsthand recollections, secondhand recollections, anything that you think would pertain to the historical record.

Charles Tachau:

Okay. Of my four grandparents, three of them were born in Louisville, parents who immigrated to the United States not long before that from Central Europe. The fourth was born in St. Louis of a similar family, but I'll leave that out. Those were my two grandfathers, Alfred Brandeis and Emil Tachau and my Grandmother Tachau, who was born Lena Levy. My two grandfathers were both descended on their mother's side from a large tribe, you might almost call it, Wehle family, W-E-H-L-E, which came to America from Prague in 1848 or following 4:00the revolutions of 1848, and first settled in Madison, Indiana. But after a very few years, I think not more than four, moved to Louisville. That is the branch that I'm descended from did, and some however at that time moved to New York and are still quite a few of them there in that section.

C.T:

The two ladies who were first cousins and who were Wehles were my Great-Grandmother Tachau, whose maiden name is Fanny Wehle, and my Great-Grandmother Brandeis, whose maiden name was Fredericka Dembitz. Grandma Brandeis was the older by quite a bit, and her fiance, Adolph Brandeis, came with her or her family and they were married shortly after arriving in Madison, 5:00Indiana. Grandma Tachau was more nearly a child at that time and moved with her parents to Louisville and eventually married Grandpa Tachau, who came to America around the same time but not with the family from Denmark.

C.T:

Adolph Brandeis's brother also came to America with him. He was referred to in the family as Uncle Sammy, and I don't know what that was short for, Samuel maybe. He married another one of the Wehles and had a fairly large family that lived in Louisville. There were thus two Brandeis families that lived in Louisville. Uncle Sammy had several children, of whom I might just mention a few 6:00that were of some minor prominence in Louisville.

C.T:

Albert Brandeis was a fairly prominent attorney, a bachelor, and most prominently he was attorney for the local board of education. At the time it was reorganized, as I understand, to in effect take it out of politics, as the expression was then. Prior to that time, the schools had been run principally as little independent schools in the various wards of the city. This would've been about oh, roughly 1910 or maybe a little later that this was done. One of the elementary schools in Louisville is named for Albert Brandeis. It's just very 7:00near here on 26th Street. Also, although many people don't realize it, Brandeis Street out near the University of Louisville is named for him and not for his more famous cousin.

C.T:

There was another much younger brother in that family named Rob, or Robert I guess it was, who was the founder of Brandeis Machinery Company, which still operates in Louisville. I don't really know much about what they do. He died a long time ago a fairly young man, childless, and the business is not in the family. His widow survived for a long time. I remember her.

C.T:

Then there was a sister of that family named Florence, who was one of the first female doctors in Louisville and practiced for a long time and lived to a great 8:00age. I remember her very well. She died at about age 85 when I was about 20. There was another brother who was also a doctor and who disappeared mysteriously in New York. I have no idea when that would've been. I would think in the 1870s or 80s. He was one of the oldest members of that family. The story was that he came out of the hospital where he was working one day and got into his carriage to be driven home and was never seen again. Supposedly, it was because of this that his sister, Cousin Florence, decided to go to medical school and take, as it were, his place in the medical profession.

D.C:

This was in Louisville or New York he disappeared?

C.T:

No. That happened in New York, the way I remember hearing the story. He had a widow or wife or whatever she was who lived a long time and one son who was called Harry. They changed the spelling of their name to B-R-A-N-D-Y-C-E, which was a source of a good deal of annoyance to the rest of the family. Interestingly enough-

D.C:

Why was that?

C.T:

Oh. I suppose that was an anglicizing, perhaps to make it more pronounceable. I never heard that Harry Brandyce ever married or had any children. I don't suppose he did, and I never met him. I don't even know whether he's alive or dead, but he's my mother's generation. He's a good deal older. He probably is dead by now. But Cousin Florence, who was our main contact in my time with that 10:00branch of the family, spoke of him from time to time.

C.T:

His mother also lived a long time and interestingly enough, was a sister to my Grandmother Brandeis's sister-in-law. That was the woman who married her brother. It was a connection back into the family. Their maiden name was [Dormanser 00:10:29] I don't know that they ever had any connection with Louisville though. Then there was another brother. I don't know anything about him except that he did marry and have some sons. To my knowledge, those sons would be the only people who would have had any children that could've carried on the Brandeis name from either of those two brothers because those were the 11:00only male descendants of Uncle Sammy in that generation. My own great-grandfather had no male descendants in my parents generation.

D.C:

Excuse me. Are you saying to your knowledge, at least among the people you know, there aren't any male Brandeises?

C.T:

That's correct, except possibly descendants of Cousin Theodore. I know nothing more about him than that he did have some sons. He did not live in Louisville. There were some there, at least in my mother's generation, but now whether there were any beyond that, I don't know. Mother might know, but I don't know.

C.T:

There was another cousin, another brother in that family, whose name I think was Adolphus but was always called Cousin Dolly. He was apparently a great friend of my Grandfather Brandeis, his first cousin. Because in the pictures of my 12:00mother's family when she was young, Cousin Dolly often appears in family groups and looks a great deal like my grandfather. Hard for me to tell them apart. He was a bachelor, and as far as I know there was never any other distinguishing thing about him particularly. Must've been a delightful kind of guy because he was always out at their house.

C.T:

Then there was another old maid sister called Cousin Belle, who died about the time I was born, but there were a lot of delightful stories about her. She lived with Cousin Florence but must've been a very different personality. She was dreaded by everybody in the family because she was such a gossip and messed into everybody's affairs so much. Her reputation was if she came to your house, she always looked in your closets and checked on everything that you had and so forth. Mother would remember some of the stories about her. I don't really specifically remember any, but I remember hearing about it.

D.C:

Just for the record, can you say who your mother and father are?

C.T:

Yeah. My mother was Jean Brandeis, the daughter of Alfred and Jenny Brandeis. She was born in 1894 and is still alive. My father was Charles Tachau, the son of Emil and Lena Tachau. His dates are 1892 to 1955. So far I'm still talking about mostly my mother's family and collateral branch of it. Now, her own direct family, that is her Grandfather Brandeis, whom I already mentioned, Adolph Brandeis, married Fredericka Dembitz. Fredericka's mother was a Wehle who had died before the family immigrated to Kentucky, but her father and her brother and she came with the large tribe that her mother's family brought.

C.T:

Those great-grandparents had four children. The two older were girls who, at least the oldest and perhaps the second, may have been born in Madison. The two younger were boys who were born in Louisville, I know, and they were my Grandfather Alfred, the older son, and his brother Louis, who was famous for being justice of the Supreme Court. My grandfather's dates are 1854 to 1928, and Uncle Louis' dates are 1856 to '41, I believe, or something like that. My grandfather had four daughters, and Uncle Louis had two daughters. That's why there were no male descendants in the male line on that side.

C.T:

The two daughters I might refer to briefly. The eldest was Aunt Fanny, who was named for her Grandmother Dembitz, who was a Wehle. She married Mr. Charles 15:00Nagel, N-A-G-E-L, who was an attorney in St. Louis. Around about 1876 or so, somewhere in there, she had a son named Alfred for her brother, my grandfather, who died as a child. But there's some cute stories about him.

C.T:

Then not long after that she had a daughter, Hildegard, who is still living and one of my few first cousins of my mother that is still living. She's quite a little older than mother. I don't know exactly how old. I should think Cousin Hil would be 90 or so or a little older maybe. They never lived in Louisville. Her mother died very shortly after her birth, and her father married again. There were several more children. However, she always remained very close to the 16:00Brandeis family and is still a delightful person.

C.T:

She's a student of Jung, and she had a long personal relationship with him. Translated quite a few of his writings and writings about him from German into English. She's really a charming person. She never married. Her father must've been quite a prominent attorney and was in fact secretary of commerce, I believe it was, under President Taft's administration. They were always the St. Louis family, although she as long as I've known her lived in New York and Connecticut. I don't know, I guess a long time.

C.T:

The second sister, whose name was Amy, married her mother's first cousin, Otto Wehle. They always lived in Louisville. Uncle Otto was an attorney here. They 17:00had four children, a daughter Fanny, who married a man in Holland and lived in Rotterdam until after World War II when she died. She was the oldest grandchild in that whole family. Then there were three brothers, Cousin Louis, Cousin Harry and Cousin Fred. Cousin Louis was an attorney, practiced for a while with his father in Louisville but moved to New York and was a fairly prominent attorney in New York. He was a contemporary of Franklin Roosevelt and a friend of his. I don't know that he was a very close friend, but he was to some extent. He died a few years ago, perhaps 10 years ago.

C.T:

Cousin Fred always lived in Louisville. Died not very long ago, three or four years. His widow still lives here and one daughter. Two sons live away. Cousin Harry was an interesting person too. He was for many years curator of paintings 18:00at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and died several years ago, not too long ago. He had never had any children. There wasn't much Louisville connection with any of them. They were born and raised in Louisville, but except for Cousin Fred, they didn't stay here. Cousin Fred was just in business in Louisville. I don't know of anything very significant that he did. He was a Presbyterian. He would not have been active in the Jewish community in any case.

C.T:

Then my mother's own sisters were Adele and Fanny, who never married, who died within the past five or six years. And Amy, who married a Mr. McCreary, who was a teacher at Louisville Male High School. Aunt Madie and Aunt Fanny, Madie is a 19:00nickname for Aunt Adele, they were quite active in a lot of civic affairs in Louisville. Aunt Fanny was very much involved in music, and she was into all kinds of cultural things as well as serving on various United Way, it was Community Chest then, boards and things of that kind. Also, she was the main correspondent between her uncle, the justice, and the University of Louisville.

C.T:

Aunt Madie, who was the older of the two, was also involved in United Way affairs and art affairs, painting particularly. She was not too bad a painter herself, and she was involved in the local arts center and things of this kind. She was also a trustee for a good many years at University of Louisville during the latter part of her life and also worked for the Courier Journal and was a 20:00member of the editorial staff, though she did not write much. She did the research for them, occasionally wrote something. My mother has been a very prominent person in Louisville and state affairs in a number of ways during her life. I would hesitate really to give the whole list, but it's pretty well known.

C.T:

Now to switch over to my father's side of the family. His mother, as I mentioned, was Fanny Wehle, a first cousin of Fredericka Dembitz. She was a little younger when they came to America. She married Charles G. Tachau, who came here from Denmark. They had nine children. They married in about 1865, I think, of whom my Grandfather Emil was the oldest of two sons, and there was 21:00only one daughter older than he.

C.T:

Their father, my impression is, struggled to make a living during all of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and was in various types of businesses. Judging from stories my grandfather used to tell about his boyhood, they lived sort of on the edge of poverty. I don't think he ever went any further than the eighth grade in school, for instance. However, some of the daughters must have because some of his sisters were teachers in the public schools here in the 80s and 90s. At least one was to my knowledge and I think there were a couple others who were.

C.T:

His father was quite a little older than his mother, and he died in 1891 at about age 60 or so. Previous to that, the two oldest daughters, one of whom was 22:00the oldest in the family and the other was immediately younger than my grandfather, had married two brothers by the name of Naumberg, N-A-U-M-B-E-R-G, I think it was. They lived in Philadelphia at that time. My great-grandmother picked up all of her younger children, which would've been six, some of them quite young, and moved up to live with these two daughters.

C.T:

My grandfather was the only one who stayed here, and he had just married himself. He purchased from his mother for probably a rather small amount his father's business, which his father had recently founded or started, a small insurance agency. My grandfather basically made his living out of that for the rest of his life, and the whole family really except myself have always been in 23:00the insurance business since then.

C.T:

My grandfather had two sons, my father Charles and a younger son, Louis. After World War I, they went in business with their father under the name of E.S. Tachau and Sons Insurance Agency. I don't know that it would be too interesting to detail all the facts of that business. That business still exists in that name but was sold about 20 years ago to a rather remote cousin of the Tachaus and some associates of his. My brother is the only one still in the insurance business in the family now, and he operates under a different name.

C.T:

My Grandfather Tachau was a very interesting person to me. He was born in 1866 24:00and died in 1961. I don't know how to describe him really. He was an extremely responsible kind of a person in terms of family, in terms of civic activities also. When I was a child, he was a relatively young and vigorous man for a grandfather. I can remember him when he was 60. None of us I think really cared for him. I guess we were scared of him. He was very strict and did not tolerate 25:00any nonsense from his grandchildren. He had a sharp tongue too. He'd embarrass you very easily.

C.T:

As he got older and older and particularly after my father died and my uncle was incapacitated and he was semi-retired, I formed quite a relationship with him. Either he had mellowed a good deal or else he treated adults differently than he did children. But anyway, I became very attached to him for the last, oh, I should think, 10 years of his life. Now bear in mind, I was 30 years old. I was almost 40 when he died. He had a very remarkable really career of involvement in local affairs aside from making a living, and he never made a very big living.

C.T:

He was heavily involved in Jewish affairs during the earlier part of his life, adult life. Then for some reason that I don't know that I ever heard, he almost totally dropped out of that. Most of his interests the last years of his life were in wider community affairs. For example, he was one of the founders of the Jewish, what did they call it, Welfare Agency or Social Service Agency maybe, something of that sort. Perhaps you know the answer to that.

D.C:

Well, today it's the Jewish Social Services Agency.

C.T:

But originally... Am I cut off?

D.C:

No, no. I was just checking it.

C.T:

Originally, it had a different name, but the Social Services Agency is the successor.

D.C:

Jewish Welfare Board, was that it?

C.T:

Yeah. Something like that. The only thing I really know about that, and I showed you that, is that I have a list of all the members of all the boards or subcommittees of that that it seems to me was dated 1915. He's on about seven of them. I've also heard him say on a number of occasions that he was part of the committee or whatever they called it of Temple Adath Israel that called Dr. Ralph to be the rabbi there. My impression is that was around 1915 or so. Of course, that was well before I was born.

C.T:

So he must have been quite prominent in the congregation's affairs at that time to have been in involved in that, but I think it was not long after that that he 28:00dropped out of that. One is tempted to think maybe he had a falling out with Dr. Ralph for something, but I don't know think so. They were always on very good terms, to my knowledge at least, but he never darkened the doors of the temple, you might say, during my memory. What that was all about I'd have no idea, or maybe he just drifted away from it for no particular reason. I never heard anybody say.

C.T:

His mother-in-law, my Great-Grandmother Levy, was very much of a temple goer according to family reputation. Most of her family and her husband's family were and still remain, to my knowledge, fairly active in Adath Israel. I particularly remember my mother talking about the lengthy funeral that they had for my 29:00great-grandmother. My mother had just married into the family at the time. Well, a little more than that. She was about seven or eight months along carrying my brother, and she had to go to this, what she always described as, three-day funeral that nearly brought on not a miscarriage; I don't guess you'd have that late, but...

C.T:

That's really my clearest memory about that. It may be somewhat exaggerated how pious Grandma Levy was because of mother's feelings about that funeral. Anyway, it would've been a more or less Orthodox type of ceremony, I would assume, to have gone on for three days, if mother's not exaggerating. I don't think it went on 24 hours a day for three days, but they probably had a couple of hours every day for three days.

C.T:

My grandfather was probably rather harassed by the fact that his mother-in-law 30:00lived with them most of her widowhood, maybe all of it, which would've been about 20 years. She died in 1924. She was not very popular with my father and uncle and probably not with my grandfather, though I don't remember hearing him say that. It just could be that that had something to do with his dropping out, but I have no idea what it was. According to my father, Grandma Levy doted on her only surviving son, who was Colonel Fred Levy, and was never very nice to my grandmother, her only daughter, but she lived with my grandma. I don't know how much my father may have exaggerated that, but there was a lot of feeling about that. I suspect my grandfather shared it, though I don't remember his saying.

C.T:

He stayed with that board, if I'm not mistaken, from 1905 until he retired from that board in 1951 or '2, very nearly 50 years. They did help with, I think, maybe they called it the Settlement House and at that time it was located on First Street between Walnut and Liberty. It had moved but they had 15, 18 years, I believe, from there to down in the Portland area where they are now. Yeah, very heavily involved in that group. At that time, they served a large number of 32:00people that lived in that area. It was rather a depressed area of Louisville. I think a great many of the people that they served were part of Louisville's original immigrant Syrian and Lebanese community who lived very much in that neighborhood, not immediate neighborhood but generally there, east of there.

C.T:

I don't doubt there were a great many poor Jews that lived in that neighborhood too at that time on Martin Street and, I believe, the synagogue is just what's now Liberty and Preston, was then Pearl Street and Preston and so forth. What is her type connection or interest that it was, I don't know, but it was a very long-term one. Had a long social relationship too with the executive director of 33:00that. The last one that I remember was [Harold Riggins 00:33:06], whose wife still lives there. But there were people before that. Well, there was a Miss Ingram who directed that long after. They were always in an out of my grandparents' house. I don't mean to imply they were imposing, but I mean they were good friends.

C.T:

Then another longtime involvement of his was with the predecessor of what's now Family and Children's Agency, but that was before they merged with the children's group. I think it was called the Family Service Organization. There may have been a predecessor of that with an earlier name, but he was on that board for a long time and chairman of it but not the whole time. He also was one of the founders of what ultimately became the Community Chest, now United Way, in 1918 or '19 or thereabout. That was originally called the Federation of 34:00something or other, philanthropy or something of that sort. Presumably, I don't really know this, but I guess he was sort of a representative of the community on there perhaps.

C.T:

The others, at least that I can think of off the top of my head at least, were primarily people associated with Belknap Hardware Company, which is primarily the Allen family and the Belknap family, although I'm sure there were some others. Not too many others though, and my grandfather was one of the founders of that and one of the first presidents of it, though not the first. I think one of the Allens was the first, but he may have been second or third. He was active in it for a long time on the board, I guess.

C.T:

Another prominent activity that he had was there was governor elected of 35:00Kentucky by the name of Ed Morrow in I think 1919 or thereabouts. He established or at least the legislature established something called a State Board of Charity, which was organized to be an umbrella organization for all the various institutions the state operated at that time and included all the prisons and correctional institutions and all the mental institutions and possibly some others. I don't know.

C.T:

It was run by a board of citizens, and my grandfather was appointed to this by Governor Morrow and was chairman of it during all of Morrows administration. This made him really responsible for all of these state institutions, and he 36:00spent a great deal of time of effort on that. There was a Mr. Byers, I remember, who was a friend of the family later in my memory who had been director of what's Central State Hospital. Other people he named now were the director of his prison in Frankfort and various other prisons who became friends with the senator. My grandpa always had a way of making personal friends out of these employees that the agencies had.

C.T:

Four years later, a governor of the opposite political persuasion was elected, and in some manner or other he fired my grandfather from the State Board of 37:00Charity. There exist in my archives of things that my grandfather kept various letters and telegrams he received from other members of the board expressing their great regret and an editorial in the local paper, I've forgotten which one, deploring that this had happened. I expect, though I don't really know this, that that governor not long afterward abolished that particular method of running state institutions. But certainly, it was eventually abolished.

C.T:

My grandfather made lifelong friends from that association. There was a [Mr. Saul Temple 00:37:53] at Louisville who was a member of that board, and he and my grandfather were lifelong friends at that time with all that, and there were 38:00other people. There was a very prominent citizen and judge who was Judge Alex Humphrey who was on that board who was the father of Herschel Humphrey, who was a judge here and grandfather of Allen Humphrey, who is a judge now. That was a common thing.

C.T:

Then I remember specifically a Ms. Lucy Sim from somewhere in the Lexington area that adored him who was also on that board, and she was a great admirer of my grandfather and he of her. They had long correspondence long after that. That must have been very rewarding for him, although he was kind of a fighter. I can imagine that he, knowing him myself and how he went about things, I imagine it 39:00wasn't hard for him to rub the governor the wrong way, a lot of people in fact.

C.T:

He also, in spite of his very, what I earlier described as responsible for his life and people, he had an interesting business career in a way in that he was in business with his two sons. Well, I do know something about it before that too, and my father and his brother were strongly contrasted in their attitude toward life in general and business in particular. My father was a plunger and speculator basically. My uncle was super conservative, and my grandfather, by mainly frankly awkwardness, kept them together for 30-odd years, and what was 40:00funny to me is force. It was interesting to me. I think he really liked my uncle better. He was nicer to him. They were closer personally, but in terms of his inclinations, he was really more on my father's side. He was more of a plunger himself.

C.T:

My father inveigled him into a couple of incidents during the Depression that I'm sure my uncle would never have gone along with, and they all turned out badly. Eventually, after World War II, the business went broke. By that time my uncle had had a stroke. My grandfather was in his late 80s, and my father died very soon afterwards. I don't mean to blame that whole thing on my father. There 41:00were a lot of wheels and heels on that. My brother particularly, he was involved in it, would be very resentful if he knew I suggested that. Basically, if it had been left up to my uncle alone, they never would've gotten into the situations they did.

C.T:

But earlier before the boys were even grown, long before I was born before World War I, my grandfather had gone into a brick making business. I remember my father telling about it. Somebody had patented a system for making bricks. My grandfather put some money into that and more or less quit the insurance business and actually went off to live in New York for a year to run that. For some reason or another, it went broke. It might've been the time of 1907 or whenever it was. I don't know much about that, but it always kind of intrigued me because it showed that it wasn't entirely my father that would always drag him into a trade.

C.T:

My grandfather loved hunting and fishing, particularly hunting. I don't know how far back the hunting trips go, but certainly as far back as I can remember. He and my father and uncle went on hunting trips. They had hunting dogs that they took up into the country with them near Cincinnati. My grandfather was the host at a big gun shoot on the opening day of the duck season. That lasted up literally until he died. 30 or 40 people were invited to that. They would go and spend two days hunting and overnight, sometimes even two nights. When I was a child, they used to go up towards Lancaster. More recently during my memory and 43:00when I would go, they went down to Columbia to shoot ducks. My brother and my cousin's husband who were involved in that still carry that on, but I don't go with them anymore.

C.T:

My grandma always thought the worst was going to happen in any situation, and she was perfectly convinced my grandfather or my father or my uncle were going to be killed out hunting. She never drew an easy breath, particularly on those overnight duck shoots they went on. My grandfather would never pay attention to that. This is just sort of personal reminiscing, but I don't know if it's really what you want to hear.

D.C:

A question that sort of came into my mind while you've been describing all this is of course historians go and find, like anyone else, with their interests. 44:00Right now, you have a great interest in family. The Moynihan pieces, the Black family, that's been refuted. You get into that. It sounds like to me that this family you're describing was a close-knit family, a family that is seen here. They stuck together and may seem of interest in your cousins and all your uncles and grandparents, which is not always the case today. Can you talk about that at all, or does that pretty much sum it up?

C.T:

Yeah, it does really. I have always associated that with Jewishness, but I don't really know how accurate that is, just sort of opinion, I guess, that I have. 45:00But it's characteristic of Jewish families that they've maintained family ties. I think, as a matter of fact though, it was also something that's characteristic of that period, late Victorian and probably early Victorian too, and particularly in America where people came as sort of a tribe and that was their identity. But certainly it lasted up into my childhood and later beyond.

C.T:

At the time when I was a child and an adolescent, there were still a great many cousins and aunts and so forth of my grandparents' generation, elderly people that we knew and were expected to know and to show respect to and to see occasionally, not necessarily on our own initiative, but it would be people who were fairly distant relatives of ours. It seems to me that in a way this was 46:00truer on my father's side of the family than it was on my mother's, but I don't know that that really is true. There were fewer relatives on my mother's father's side, and my mother's mother's side were all in St. Louis.

C.T:

Now, mother's family did keep very close ties with them during mother's youth, but that had died out by the time I was grown. Not that I never knew any of them. I did, but we didn't see very much of them. As a matter of fact, they're very confused in my mind who they all were. Well, then of course a lot of my mother's father's people were also relatives of my father's father. Since my mother's father died when I was quite small, my recollection is of my Grandfather Tachau taking responsibility for these old cousins, some of whom were really more closely related to mother than they were to dad. I've already 47:00mentioned people like Cousin Florence.

C.T:

Now another family which I didn't mention were the Dembitz. They were an interesting group. My Great-Grandmother Brandeis was a Dembitz, and her mother was a Wehle. She had only one brother somewhat younger than herself. His name was Louis. Ludwig, he was called at the time. That seemed to mark off two with that family, and he was probably an adolescent before I went to [inaudible 00:47:38]. Grandmother was a little older. Anyway, he became an attorney. Was quite a prominent attorney in Louisville. He was much more religiously Jewish than anyone else I know of in that branch of the family. In fact, in a sense he was sort of a throwback. He practiced Judaism quite strictly. He married a first 48:00cousin, another Wehle. She was the sister of Ethel Wehle.

C.T:

He was active in Republican politics here, starting with the fact that , according to my father, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1860 to nominate Lincoln. He must've been a very young man. He was an abolitionist of considerable fervor. I never heard of anything much about politics thereafter. He was considered to have been a brilliant lawyer, much consulted by other lawyers, kind of a lawyer's lawyer, and a rather impractical man. Financially, he never managed to keep his head above water, according to family traditionally. The family, one way or another, was often responsible for 49:00pulling him out of hot water financially. He had six children, three sons and three daughters. His sons were named Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and Arthur.

C.T:

Arthur married someone and eventually immigrated to what's now Israel and has, as far as I know, an only son who still lives there. His aunt, my Cousin Emily, used to always refer to him as Louis of Jerusalem. Of course, she had another nephew named Louis who lives in Washington. I take that back. I believe that was Lincoln. I think that was Cousin Lincoln who moved to Jerusalem. Cousin Arthur was the father of the other Louis who lived in Washington. As far as I know, 50:00he's an attorney with the Federal Reserve Board, and he had a sister too, whose name is Salom, who was also attorney who lives in New York. Now, I don't know what ever happened to Clay.

C.T:

Then the three sisters were kind of fascinating. The oldest was named Stella, who was the only sober one as far as I can tell. She worked from year to year to year for the Kentucky Trust Company in some capacity and eventually retired. I remember here as a child, although I don't remember very well. She and Cousin Emily lived together. Emily was the youngest. They lived here in Louisville. Emily never married either. Annette, however, was the middle one and she did marry. She lived in Philadelphia for a long time.

C.T:

Well, anyway, around the time I can first begin to remember they were dependents of the rest of the family. There was never any money. Someone must've had a 51:00little retirement, maybe not. I don't even know that. Everybody else chipped in to support Stella and Emily and Annette. This was pretty far flung. This included Justice Brandeis. He left some legacy funds, but that didn't last forever either. It included his daughters and their own nephew and niece, Louis, and whatever his sister was named, and then all of our Brandeises here.

C.T:

Cousin Emily, I was told she didn't die till about 1962 or '3, I think is when it was. I remember where I was at the time. I guess you really would have to say she was neurotic. She was a Christian Scientist, very ardent Christian Scientist, but she also believed strongly in calling a doctor whenever she was sick. Often the practitioner and the doctor would pass each other on the steps. 52:00My Grandfather Brandeis was a first cousin with her, but I don't remember that side of the family ever taking much interest in it. But Grandfather Tachau did, and my father did too.

C.T:

I particularly remember that during the 1937 flood, Cousin Emily and the cousins all lived in an apartment house, if I'm not mistaken, at that time at the corner of 5th and St. Catherine. I guess I don't know if it's been torn down. I'm not positive they live there now. They did live there a good while. They may have lived somewhere else that time. But anyway, wherever they lived they were flooded out. My grandparents, Tachau, had gone to Florida, and my Cousin Florence went, as I mentioned, a doctor who was pretty old herself at the time. She made a request for Cousin Stella and Cousin Emily to be moved down and live in my grandparents' house, and my Grandmother Tachau really never forgave her 53:00for that. And they never go to Florida again for fear something like that would happen.

D.C:

The fact that she was gone.

C.T:

I really don't know what they did that was so awful, but my grandmother did not want them out there. Really, they had to go someplace though. Anyways, eventually my father took some responsibility for them, and after he died, my mother did. By that time my grandfather was way too old, although he was still putting up money for them until he died. My nephew Louis of Washington, not Louis from Jerusalem, he was kind of the administrator of all that. That's all of their story, but their father was an interesting guy. He wrote a couple of books, one called Kentucky Jurisprudence and one called Kentucky Land Titles or maybe Land Titles in Kentucky or something like that, which were very highly 54:00respected law books in the last quarter of the 19th century, perhaps later than that.

C.T:

You probably know there's a custom in Judaism that at the Seder the youngest, I guess, male child asks certain questions as part of the ritual. This was how it went at that time. I don't know how it goes on today. My father loved to describe how he was pressed into service for this purpose at a Seder at Uncle Louis' house when he was a small child. Apparently, there were no male children at Uncle Louis' home that particular year, maybe more than one year, and my father was pressed to do it and had to memorize these questions in Hebrew, which 55:00he didn't know any of the language at all, so he just had to memorize them by rote and what a chore this was.

C.T:

There are many fascinating stories of my mother I remember knowing about. In addition to all these others eccentricities, [inaudible 00:55:18]. One of the stories I remember is he was finally persuaded by his wife to teach one of the sons to swim. He took him down to the river and throwing in was the standard way to teach somebody to swim but then forgot about him and went off and left him. Luckily, somebody else pulled him out and other stories of that kind that circulate. My uncle, the justice, was working and had a lot of feeling for that relationship.

C.T:

There was another group of cousins who shared about the family ties. There were three old ladies, who were widowed sisters who lived together, and they were first cousins of my Grandfather Tachau on the Tachau side. They weren't named Tachau, but their mother was a Tachau, so sisters of my great-grandfather. Their father was a Wehle, probably his mother's aunt, I guess, or uncle. Anyway, I remember them very well. Cousin Alice, Cousin Bertha and Cousin Emily. They lived somewhere around Central Park all together and were really very kind old ladies. If I closed my eyes, I'd see them. They were very handsome, had white hair and old-fashioned but handsome ladies.

C.T:

I don't remember anything much about their personalities, although I was 12 57:00years old when Cousin Emily died because I remember doing some of the legal work that my grandfather connected me with. I remember them more as a child. I remember one time they were all three for some reason, no particular reason, invited to my grandparents' house for dinner one night on a Thursday night when all of us, that is my immediate family, always went there on Thursday night. There wasn't all that many of us. It was my father and mother and my brother and sister and I, my uncle, his wife and two daughters. We always had to go every Thursday night. Eventually that did get to be a pretty large group because eventually most of my generation married and had a couple children before that really stopped.

C.T:

But anyway, to go back, this particular night my grandmother, who was always a little on edge about whether people were going to be nice to relatives or not... My uncle came into the room before supper and before he had a chance to do 58:00anything, my grandmother said to him, "Say how do you do to the ladies." He was about 45, 50 years old at the time. That was always a bad word in the family, but he was very indignant. There were a lot of those relatives and folks, and they would gather.

C.T:

Of course, the thing I just mentioned about the fact that we went to my grandparents' every Thursday night of the world. Really, you had to have an ironclad reason not to go until really they were in their 90s, I would say, certainly their late 80s. Then people married into the family. I guess my mother and my aunt were very used to it because they put up with it for 40 years, I suppose, but the next generation's in-laws were a little testy about this. But 59:00still, they did and we always got a good meal. We weren't expected to stay very late. We could leave as soon as we ate.

C.T:

We also when I was younger as a child, we also went every other Sunday to my Grandmother Brandeis's for dinner in the middle of the day. That of course, I can hardly remember my grandfather. I was about five or six when he died, but my Grandmother Brandeis presided over that. Of course, there were the two unmarried aunts, but the two married sisters were invited on alternate Sundays. So it wasn't quite such a big number of people. That was really because the two sons-in-law were not very good friends. Just considered better with it... The whole family would go there on Thanksgiving, Christmas time. My father and uncle 60:00and aunt didn't get along very well and were not required to meet very often, practical. Then very often there would be cousins there from St. Louis visiting. That was more when I was small.

D.C:

When we started out when I interviewed you on another case, the Black History Project, and figured I was here to talk with Reverend Charles Tachau of the St. George Episcopal Church in Louisville about the Jewish community in Louisville. And I guess someone coming in cold and the one that was doing that, yeah. I guess the question I want to ask is, it's not a hundred percent comfortable question to ask, but can you talk about Reverend Charles Tachau, Episcopal 61:00priest from one of the oldest Jewish families in Louisville, how you and your family came to move away from Judaism?

C.T:

Well, as far as the family is concerned, I really don't know very much about it. I've already mentioned that aside from the Levys, my Grandmother Tachau's side, and Uncle Louis Dembitz, I don't know of anybody that actually practiced Judaism in the family since they came to America. Why that would be, I don't really know. It was sort of the age where educated people considered religion as a myth 62:00and that they were beyond it. Whether that really was the case in their case, I don't know. Presumably, Judaism at that time, you either chose to be pretty Orthodox or you dropped out. And that may have been part of the reason, though that cannot be entirely it because of course Adath Israel was a Reform congregation probably pretty much from the beginning. I'm not really sure what difference that would've made.

C.T:

My mother more or less on her own became a Christian in her girlhood, an Episcopalian. She dropped out of the church due to a disagreement with a priest pretty much at the time she married, and we were not raised with any religion at all anymore than my father had been or than she had been for that matter. My own 63:00involvement is purely a personal thing that I sort of worked out and developed myself, although I suppose going into the Episcopal Church was kind of because mother was or had been, but even that I really don't remember that that had much influence with me at the time. I don't know that I would have a whole lot else to say about that.

C.T:

My mother has come back in the church and has been very active now and is very active for the past 20 or so years, but nobody else in the family really is very much except my sister's children, most of whom have gone to Episcopal Church really more under mother's influence. My sister and her husband profess no religion. My brother and his wife are Unitarians, and their children are. That's my understanding, almost more of a political thing with them than it is religious, though that may be unfair.

C.T:

Uncle Louis's family are sort of still nominally connected with the temple, and in fact Ellie's husband is very active, I believe. On my mother's side, her only sister also is an Episcopalian. I don't know. It isn't very easy to explain. I guess one thing, this is leaving that and going off to another, but I ought to talk about a little bit and perhaps the last thing I can think of, and this again would... Well, let me just say briefly about the Brandeises that in spite of the fact that to my knowledge they, my mother's parents, were not ever active in Jewish affaris, or rather theJewish religion, they did take some part also in 65:00Jewish community affairs.

C.T:

Both my grandparents are listed on that list in some capacity or other, Alfred and Jenny. They were also very active in civic affairs, and their brother, the justice, as is well known, became a very prominent leader of the Zionist movement in this country. And his older daughter particularly has carried on that interest. Well, she recently died. Of course, they didn't live in Louisville. On the other hand, that was an occasion of some breach between the two brothers, that is my grandfather, the justice. My grandfather was never a Zionist and was rather, as I understand at least, actively opposed to that. He and his brother simply eventually had to agree to disagree about that.

C.T:

Then very briefly, the Levy family I've kind of slighted. The truth of the 66:00matter is I don't know very much about them. There are more of them perhaps still living in Louisville than any other of my more distant relatives. They have been more actively involved in Jewish affairs, more actively identified as Jewish people here perhaps than any other people I'm related to, and it's quite a tribe of them.

C.T:

Now, of course it's a very common Jewish name. Not all Levys are related to us, at least as far as I know. But certainly I know of no connection between our family and Jake Levy and son, whoever they are, that have the building supply business. There may be some. Levy Brothers clothing store is part of our original family. My great-grandfather was one of the original Levy brothers. There were several of them. Also, the Bensinger family, the furniture stores, if you go far enough back one of the ancestors of that family was a Levy, or Levis 67:00we pronounced it, but I think they...

C.T:

Colonel Fred Levy was a fairly prominent businessman here in his day, my grandmother's brother, whose dates would've been something like 1875-1955 or something like that. He was a big operator, owned a lot of property and speculated. He had a big interest in the movie business in Hollywood. I don't mean to say that they would've regarded him as very big, I don't know, but he was very involved and was generally considered the wealthiest member of the family. They did live in a very elegant home up on Douglas Boulevard. They even had a number of servants and things. They seemed to live in considerably higher style than our family.

C.T:

He had a son and a daughter who to some extent have carried it on. They're still living, as far as I know. I'm sure they are. Frederick lives in California. He's one of the main owners of the Los Angeles Rams, as I understand it, unless he 68:00sold it. His daughter, Lucille, married a Hecht from Baltimore, which is a very prominent merchant family there. There's a Hecht Brothers store and so forth, very big place in Baltimore.

C.T:

The thing I wanted to close with though was my grandfather's birthday party. This is my Grandfather Tachau. This was a terrific family tradition that you could not vary from by an iota as far as I recall. It was a birthday party. His birthday was the 10th of December. The birthday party was always held on the day, and exactly the same people were always invited. And exactly the same menu was always served. I don't remember how many people there would've been, but it would certainly have been over 30 who would sit down to dinner. The older ones and the immediate family in the dining room and younger generation friends who would gradually be added from year to year were at card tables in the front hall.

C.T:

I don't believe there were any gentile people that were invited to that particular... I can't remember anybody unless, well, like my brother's wife is a gentile. Eventually, she would be included, but I can't think of anybody else. Most of them were my grandfather's old friends. Well, of course he lived to a great age and outlived most of them. Some of them who were his friends and considered to be his generation were quite a little younger than he. Well, I can even think of Mrs. Louis Cole, who's still living, I believe. She was considered part of that. Well, these would be for the most part ladies who had married men quite a bit older than themselves and whose husbands therefore were my grandfather's friends.

C.T:

The menu, I'll run down that, was country ham, which is not kosher. Well, there was no pretense it was kosher, and cold turkey. Then I don't remember really what vegetables, but the thing that was a big fetish about was the pickled beets. Now, why they were such a big deal I don't recall. Then the other thing that I particularly remember was always schnecken for dessert. You know what they are?

D.C:

No.

C.T:

It's kind of a cinnamon bun, but it's twisted, as many are, with a good deal of syrup and nuts on it. It's twisted and looks sort of like a snail, and that's what schnecken means is a snail. I guess that's a plural. Everything was fixed at home, and that was the meal, though there was more to it than that. I don't remember everything else. I also remember some kind of funny thing that looked sort of like potato chips but was really shrimp. I don't know how you made that. 71:00Maybe they bought those. We always had those.

C.T:

Then as soon as dinner was over, Mrs. Joseph Seligman, who was one of these people sort of like Ms. Cole, who was quite a bit younger than my grandfather actually but considered to be part of his generation, and she was extremely clever. She would read sort of a paper in which she made the most outrageous fun of everybody there. She was not always equally inspired by everybody, but nobody was left out. Everybody was lampooned in this paper. Sometimes shed have a theme. I remember one time, for instance, all of the jokes or something were parodies of Gilbert and Sullivan songs. This is the kind of thing she would do, or they'd all be letters to the editor and things of that kind.

C.T:

Another thing that happened, I suppose I was probably just old enough to come to 72:00that. Grandchildren were not invited to that until we were just about grown. Of course, I was the oldest, and we all came at the same time. So maybe the others weren't quite grown, but my guess is this would've been right after World War II around 40s. '46 would've been a good time because that would've been pop's 70th birthday, I think.

C.T:

At that time there were eight people who came and announced themselves as the interlopers, and they crashed the party and brought their own meal. They were the next generation, kind of. They were my father's generation. There was a good deal of looking down her nose at this on the part of my grandmother, but eventually they became regularly invited and did not have to bring their own meal after that. Let me see if I can remember who they would've been. It would've been Dan and Mary Helen Bick and Doanie and Doug Greenbath and George Cohen and his wife. Oh yes, and she was a gem. That may have been all, but it 73:00seems to me there were four couples. I can't think who the other one are. Well, luckily that did get established because by the last few birthday parties they were the oldest people there. Because I remember that we still had one on his 90th birthday.

D.C:

Which would be when?

C.T:

'56. Yeah, '46 was when he was 80. '56, I remember we still had it then. I think we had two or three more after that. I remember Dr. Ralph being invited to that one, which was rather special because he didn't usually come. Let me see if I can run down the list of some of the other people who were there, that were always there. There was a lady name Alma New, who was a first cousin of my grandmother, I think, but I don't know exactly what connection. And her brother and sister-in-law, Uncle Fred and Aunt Maude. Aunt Maude was a Berger. That was a prominent local Jewish family too. She was a sister to Victor Berger of the tax and printing company. Then was Joe Opper, and their mother was an Och of the 74:00New York Times Ochs family and came out of Chattanooga, I believe, or maybe Knoxville, Tennessee.

C.T:

Then there were the three Seligman brothers and their wives. That was Mr. Alfred, Mr. Bernie and Mr. Joe. Alfred and Joe were prominent attorneys, partners, and Mr. Bernie was the Snead Architecture Ironworks. They were three brothers. Al Seligman was the father of Doanie Greenbath, whose husband then was Sam. They've since been divorced. Then there were two brothers named Ike and Willie Trost, and Sarah Trost was the wife of one of them, but I don't remember which one. Whichever one it wasn't...I think Willie was her husband. The other 75:00one was a bachelor. They all lived together anyway. They were the parents of Milton Trost, who's a fairly prominent businessman here with Stein Brothers and Boyce.

C.T:

Certainly were a good many others if I can think of them. Oh yes, Ms. Milton Barkhouse and I presume her husband at one time, but he was dead long before I remember. Seems to me there ought have been others, but there were not very many relatives though. These were all kind of drinking buddies, you might say, of my grandfathers, although the nearest relatives but not any of the more distant ones. Well, of course the crowd was swelled by two children, two sons, two daughters and along five grandchildren as well as the so-called interlopers. I'm 76:00not sure that the last few parties they didn't even have a few more interlopers. It seems to me a fellow named Joe Eberhardt and his wife. I've seen her not long ago. He was a partner of the Seligman's. I believe maybe they were invited towards the last. I wouldn't be sure of that. There may have been a few others like that.

C.T:

Then there were some people that seemed to me to have had just as much claim that never came to that, like oh, what was their name? Darn, I know them so well too. They were good friends of the family. Oh, Leopold, Lawrence Leopold and his wife. Well, she and for that matter the Bergers, they were good friends. That was Aunt Maude's brother and his wife, Victor and Aline Berger. Aline's still living, I think. Mr. Leopold's wife was a sister to Aline Berger. He was a prominent lawyer. Maybe that's why he wasn't invited. Maybe the Seligmans didn't want him. They were friends, it seemed to me, of my grandfather's just on about 77:00the same level. There must've been a few others, but I can't remember that. Oh well, of course I mentioned Louis and Minna Cole, and Minna Cole's father was one of my grandfather's closest friends. She is certainly a full generation younger than he.

C.T:

I guess maybe we're really done. I could've gone on a little while longer. I don't think I have any really important stuff.

C.T:

Oh. I was going to say something about Mr., what was his name, Dreyfus, who is Ms. Cole's father. Well, I don't know very much about him. He must've been a very charming and funny guy because my grandfather always talked a lot about him. He died, as far as I know, before I was born or anyway, about that time. His name, he was called Louie Dreyfus, and my grandfather reminisced constantly 78:00about him and was always the funny stuff he pulled.

C.T:

The Coles were somehow or other regarded as my grandfather's contemporaries, though they obviously were quite a bit younger. Perhaps Mr. Cole was old enough, enough older than Mrs. Cole would've been at the time. He was supposed to have had and probably did have, he looked like it, a stomach ulcer. That was the joke that Ms. Seligman always made about him, that he burped at inconvenient moments and so forth.

D.C:

Well, I've enjoyed hearing all these stories.

C.T:

Well, I don't know what you can make of all of this.

D.C:

Well, I think it'll be a good supplement, for instance, to go with the pictures that we have.

C.T:

Yeah.

D.C:

I remember the woman who put those together for microfilming did a good bit of 79:00genealogical work in trying to arrange them in some sort of order.

C.T:

Yeah. I remember noticing how when she brought them back to... You don't have to record this. There were a lot of...