Abram M. Rothschild

Abram M. Rothschild was born to a Jewish family in 1853 in Nordstetten (today a district of Horb am Neckar), Kingdom of Württemberg, the youngest child in a family of thirteen.[1][3] In 1856, he immigrated to Davenport, Iowa where he joined his brother, Emmanuel, who had founded a retail store.[1] The store was renamed to E. Rothschild and Bro.[1] After the Great Chicago Fire, the brothers established a branch operation on the near west side of Chicago which soon morphed it into a clothing manufacturing operation.[1] In 1881, they liquidated their retail operations and went solely into clothing manufacturing with their company, the Palace Clothing Company; Abram served as president and built production facilities in a number of cities.[1] He served as a director of the Columbian Exposition and Vice President of the National Bank of the Republic.[1] In 1895, he built a retail store under his name, A.M. Rothschild Company, with his father-in-law Nelson Morris and his brother-in-laws Edward Morris and Ira Nelson Morris as silent partners.[1] It became one of the largest retail stores in Chicago.[4]

In 1882,[2] he married Augusta Morris, daughter of Nelson Morris, the founder of the Chicago meatpacking company Morris & Company;[5] they had one child, Melville Nelson Rothschild.[2] Rothschild committed suicide by revolver on July 28, 1902, in Chicago.[6][7] After his death, his wife married his cousin, Maurice L. Rothschild.[8][9][10]