Solomon Stix

Solomon Stix was born in Demmelsdorf in Bavaria in 1788, the son of Coshman and Relia. In 1815 he married Deborah Cohen, daughter of Demmelsdorf’s rabbi. They had 10 children. One of their sons, Carl, immigrated to the United States in the 1830s, settling in Cincinnati, and was soon joined by his brother Louis. They found success as peddlers in Indiana and Ohio and then as shopkeepers in Cincinnati. And when they had saved enough money, Louis and Carl brought their parents and siblings to Cincinnati, in 1844.

In 1848 Solomon was one of 4 accorded the honor of opening the doors to the newly constructed building for congregation B’nai Yeshurun, Cincinnati’s second congregation.

Years later, Louis told the following story about the origins of theior unusual family name. Solomon had been born without a family name, and in 1813 the Jews of Bavaria had to adopt surnames. Solomon, according to Louis, who had “always had an aversion to long and unpronounceable names, was thus enabled to legally make his own selection, and in so doing, chose a name which has the merit of extreme brevity and entire originality. Though unknown when my father appropriated it, it has, I have heard, during the last century, been adopted by several families, both in this country and abroad. Yet it remained so rare that, in 1837, a cablegram sent to me by one of my daughters, from Carlsbad, Bohemia, addressed “Stix, New York,” reached me without requiring fuller address. May the name be transmitted in its original honor, unsullied by any unworthy act, as I received it from my parents, and hand it to my descendants, and may it continue to be esteemed no less proudly than by those who bore it in my generation.”

Solomon Stix

c. 1850