Deborah Stix was daughter of Conendal Moses Cohen of Demmelsdorf in Bavaria and Aaron Cohen, rabbi of the synagogue there. In 1815, Deborah married Solomon Stix. They had ten children, and in the 1830s the two oldest sons to have survived childhood—Carl and Louis—established themselves first as peddlers and then as shopkeepers in Ohio and Indiana. In 1844, the rest of the family joined the two sons in Ohio, where they became involved with Cincinnati’s new congregation B’nai Yeshurun.