Joseph Kaufman and Frances Munzesheimer planned to be married on March 7, 1875, but on March 6 announced that the wedding was “unavoidably postponed . . . on account of the illness and consequent non-arrival of the minister who was to officiate.”
Joseph was “a well-to-do merchant” who with his brother Samuel owned a dry goods and grocery store in the then-bustling port town of Washington. Frances, “one of the fairest maidens” of Opelousas, was the daughter of Frederick Munzesheimer, a popular and successful grocer there. As the Opelousas Journal put it, “The prospects of the happy couple were pleasant in every respect.”
The unexpected delay in their wedding seemed a calamity to the couple, but it wasn’t nearly as tragic as what happened on March 17, the day they were finally wed.
The rabbi finally made it from New Orleans, the evening wedding ceremony was beautiful, and the couple was tired and happy when they left the festivities just before midnight to make the short drive from Opelousas to Washington.
They were halfway home when they were met by a messenger “who announced the sad and startling intelligence” that Kaufman’s store and the newlyweds’ home had been destroyed by a fire believed to be the work of an arsonist.
“The store was filled with goods, having but recently been restocked,” according to another newspaper account. “The residence had just been refurnished with new and elegant furniture.” None of it was insured.
“Thus, in one short evening, when the cup of [their] happiness was filled up brimming and running over, the measure of [the couple’s] woes was made equally full. In one short hour [they were] reduced from affluence to relative poverty.”
Jos. Kaufman & Bro. Dealers in General Merchandise reopened in April in a leased store, “Casse’s Old Stand, Main Street,” in Washington, but there may have been trouble between the brothers. They dissolved their partnership in 1876. Joseph continued the business in Washington and Samuel went into business with his father-in-law.
Joseph and Frances had two sons, Albert Joseph, born in 1875, and Gustave Samuel, born in 1877, and appeared to be working back toward financial security when Joseph died in January 1882, only seven years after his marriage to Frances. He was buried in the Hebrew Rest cemetery in Washington.
Frances was remarried in Dallas in 1886 to Abraham Zadoc Rosenthal and they had a son, Zadoc Abraham, born in 1887. She was widowed again when Abraham died in 1893. She married a third time about 1913 to Nathan Bloom and was widowed a third time 10 years later. Her first son, Albert Joseph Kaufman, died in 1927 in Brownsville, Texas.
Frances died in 1946 in Dallas and is buried there.
I find no record of the discovery of the arsonist who reduced to ashes “nearly all of the earthly possessions” of the newlywed couple. We can only speculate on how that changed their lives.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
