73
In Memoriam of Eberhard Niemann.
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Mr. Eberhard Niemann was one of the successful business
men of Baltimore City. He was born in Quakenbruck in 1834,
a small country town in what was then the Kingdom of
Hanover, and his father was a merchant of that place. After
he finished his education he went to Bremen, where he entered
his mercantile career, and came to Baltimore in about the year
1854 or 1855 In 1858, he with Mr. Gustav Gieske established
the well known Leaf Tobacco Commission House of Gieske
& Niemann, which is one of the leading houses in that line.
Mr. Niemann was an active accountant and book-keeper,
filling several very responsible positions here before he went into
business on his own account, and attended to this part of the
work for his firm personally for many years. He married a
sister of his partner in business, shortly after the firm had
been well established, but never had any children. In later
years he travelled extensively for pleasure, both in this country
and in Europe, and in the year 1898 withdrew from business
altogether. Afterwards he resided most of the time in Wies-
baden, where he died September 9, 1906.
He was well known in all leading German circles, both
in society and charity organizations, having been an active mem-
ber of the Germania Club as long as he was in this country,
and also always took an active part in the German Society of
Maryland, being its Secretary for a long time. He was also
a member of the Historical Society.
Upon his death he willed a large portion of his wealth to
The General German Aged People's Home, The General German
Orphans' Association and the German Society of Maryland.
He was Treasurer of the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland from its organization until February 1890.
75
In Memoriam of Georg Wilhelm Gail.
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In the death of Georg Wilhelm Gail we deplore the loss
of the first Vice-president, one of the founders and charter
members, and a most constant attender at meetings of the Society
of the History of the Germans in Maryland. Mr. Gail always
took a deep interest in the affairs and history of the German
element of the United States and by his extensive travels in
his earlier years and reading of publications relating to German
settlements in our country, had acquired a large fund of in-
formation not published in historical works. Whilst he did
not contribute any written articles of historical research, he
made our meetings attractive and instructive by his interesting
remarks upon historical matters under consideration, based
largely on personal reminiscences of his fifty-seven years'
residence in this country. His wealth and social position, but
more his liberal, agreeable, modest manner and generous hos-
pitality, made him popular and won him hosts of friends in
our City. Authors, literary men, and men of distinction of
this country and from the old fatherland, sojourning in our
City, were welcome guests under the hospitable roof of his
magnificent dwelling. His unassuming geniality and frankness
soon converted the strangers into friends, made them feel at
home and kept green the memory of the pleasant hours and
days spent with him.
Mr. Gail had no political aspiration, but he took a very
active part and a deep interest in public works and affairs
which were for the good of the people and for better govern-
ment in general and local affairs. He was one of the or-
ganisors and managers during his life of the Civil Service
Reform Association of Maryland, of the Baltimore Reform
League and contributor to many patriotic and public spirited
undertakings. He was a good and true American citizen by
choice and adoption, a friend and benefactor of our institutes
of learning and with others instrumental in obtaining the
76
famous Bluntschli Library for the Johns Hopkins University.
He
also bought the large Library of Professor Dillmann, decea-
sed, of Germany and presented it to the University and later
when the University became financially embarrassed, he as well
as another member of his family came to its aid with a large
contribution. As a matter of course his affinities were and
remained with the German-Americans; he was one of them in
every sense of the word, took part in their general festivities
and demonstrations, worshipped in the German Evangelical
Lutheran Zion Church, was a leading member of the
Germania
Club. Above all he manifested his generous heart by his liberal
aid to organized charity to the poor; for many years he con-
tributed to the German Society of Maryland instead of Five
Dollars, the regular annual membership dues, the sum of Three
Hundred Dollars a year; being one of the managers and Vice-
President of the Society he knew that every dollar of it would
go to the support of poor widows with their children and to
sick or helpless deserving poor families. He was also a liberal
contributor and member of the General German Orphans'
Asylum and General German Aged Peoples' Home and many
acts of private charity and kindness of heart to those in need
are known of him. When the news of his death came, the
whole City felt that one of its best citizens had departed and
the expression of grief and sorrow was general. His funeral
was attended by rich and poor and no less by his native fellow-
citizens than by those who, like him, had crossed the Atlantic
Occean to become members of the great American Nation.
His body was buried on the 16th day of October, 1905,
at the Greenmount Cemetery of our City, in the presence of a
large concourse of people.
-------------
Biographical Sketch.
Georg Wilhelm Gail was born in the small University Town
of Giessen, Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, on the eighth day of
July, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-eight. He was
the eighth child and youngest son of Georg Philip Gail and
Susanna (née Busch) his wife. His father conducted and was
77
the owner of a large Tobacco Factory, a man of great enter-
prise and success in life, who in 1840, commenced to import
tobacco for his factory direct from the United States. He
gave his son Georg Wilhelm a thorough commercial education
and especially early instructions in the English language with
the design to make him the purchasing agent for his factory,
in the United States. He therefore employed him when fifteen
years of age in his factory and counting-room to make him
familiar with the business; in 1845, when he was seventeen
years old, sent him to a business friend, a Tobacco Broker, in
Amsterdam where he received instruction in the import trade
of tobacco. The son remained in Amsterdam until the fall of
1846 when he went to Bremen, also a shipping port of Ameri-
can tobacco, to make himself familiar with the import trade.
It was then determined by his father that he should, in the
spring of 1847, go to America to buy the tobacco for their
factory in Giessen. His father accompanied him to Liverpool,
where he was to embark on the Cunard Liner "Caledonia,"
with the declared intention to see his son safely depart on
board of the steamship. When they arrived in London and
on their way to the Office of the Company, his father, not
familiar with the English language, told him to secure cabin
passage for two instead of one, and then, to his great and
pleasant surprise, he learned that his father would join him
in his journey to the strange distant country. The Cunard
was then the only steamship line to America in existence and
dispatched a ship on the 4th and 19th of every month from
Liverpool by Halifax N. S. to Boston, Mass. They left on
April 19th, 1847, and landed at Boston on May 6th. On the
10th of May they arrived in Baltimore where they stayed at
Barnum's City Hotel. There were at that time and for many
years prior, quite a number of Bremen merchants in the export
of tobacco located here, and the father, after visiting the
various tobacco markets of Maryland and Virginia, seeing his
son introduced to the trade and making friends, returned to
Germany again during the following month of July. The son,
then only nineteen years of age, with zeal and energy entered
upon his duties to select, buy and export tobacco for their
home factory. He made many friends among his fellow German-
78
Americans and heard them often complain that the smoking
tobacco manufactured here did not suit their taste. He
thereupon conceived the idea that a manufactory like the one
at home in Giessen, established here, would he a financial
success, and wrote to his father about it. His father approved
of the plan and with his consent the son returned in the fall
of 1849 to Giessen to make arrangements for the new enter-
prise. He worked during the next winter in the home factory
to make himself more thoroughly familiar with the manual
work and details of the manufactury of smoking tobacco, bought
the requisite machinery and tools and selected an experienced
man named Heinrich Deibel to go with him to Baltimore to
erect the machinery and be the foreman of the new factory.
Georg Wilhelm Gail returned to Baltimore in the spring of
1850. Mr. H. Deibel, with his wife and children, came with
the machinery and implements in a sailing vessel in the follow-
ing summer. Mr. Gail rented a building, No. 181 West Pratt
Street, between Hanover and Charles Streets where the Factory
was established. Leaving Mr. Deibel in charge of the Factory,
Mr. Gail in December of 1850 made an extensive business tour
to the Northern and Western cities, returning by way of
Cincinnati and Louisville, introducing his smoking tobacco and
opening business connection. The prospects were so encour-
aging that he wrote to his father to send him a reliable man
to fill the position as travelling salesman for the new business.
His father selected Mr. Christian Ax, a commercial traveller
of considerable experience in Germany, and known to father
as being a brother to one of his sons-in-law. Mr. Ax arrived
here in the spring of 1851 and entered successfully upon his
career as salesman of the German Smoking Tobacco manu-
factured by Georg W. Gail, visiting most every town and city
in the Union. In 1854 G. W. Gail married Miss Marie Sophia
Felgner of Baltimore. In the same year Mr. Ax made a visit
to Giessen, Germany and there married Carolina Bertha Susanna
Gail, a sister of G. W. Gail, and on his return to Baltimore
was admitted as a partner in the business, simultaneously with
G. W. Gail on January 1st, 1855. The business, however, was
continued under the name of G. W. Gail until January 1st,
1860, when the firm name of G. W. Gail & Ax was adopted.
79
In 1852 G. W. Gail began the importation of Cigars made in
Germany, and soon developed so large a trade in that article
that they imported as many as thirty-six million cigars a year,
until the war tariff of 1861 put a complete stop to further
importation. The firm then manufactured domestic cigars, and
in addition to their so called German Smoking Tobacco, which
was of American leaf, prepared and put up in a manner popu-
lar in Germany, they now prepared different grades of fine cut
chewing, smoking tobaccos and snuffs, also importing pipes,
etc. In 1864 their output was 2,634,000 pounds of smoking
tobacco and in 1891 it had increased to five million pounds a
year.
Business expanded so rapidly that within two (2) years
after the small beginning in a dwelling on Pratt Street, Mr.
Gail erected in 1853 a factory building on the South side of
Barre Street of forty feet front extending 183 feet to Welcome
Alley; it was surmounted by a bell tower with a clock striking
every quarter of an hour. Within six years thereafter this
factory was too small for their volume of business and it was
decided to increase it fourfold, by adding to it in 1859 an
extension of one hundred and four and one-half feet on Barre
Street by one hundred and eighty-three feet depth, to the East
of the first building. The reliable quality of the goods manu-
factured and the rectitude of character of the members of the
firm continued to increase their business and make them known
and famous all over the country They required assistance in
their larger affairs and on April 2nd, 1882, took in Ernst
Schmeisser, a son-in-law of G. W. Gail, as Junior member of
their firm. Mr. Schmeisser, since 1877, had been a member
of the successful firm of
Lauts and Schmeisser in the tobacco
commission and shipping business in Baltimore. In the year
1886 the firm again added a large addition to their factory,
extending it to the West on Barre Street to Charles Street and
on Charles Street to Lee Street. In the following year, 1887,
Mr. Christian Ax died and on the 2nd of January, 1888, Georg W.
Gail, Jr. and Christian Ax, Jr. were admitted as members of
the firm. In the year 1891 the firm sold their business and
factory to the American Tobacco Company who now conduct
it as a branch in the name of the old firm. Mr. G. W. Gail
80
retired from business. Mr. Schmeisser remained with the
American Tobacco Company as one of the Managers of their
branch of the old firm's former factory.
Mrs. Marie Sophie Gail, the wife of G. W. Gail, departed
this life on the 9th of March, 1891, leaving him five children
surviving: Mr. Georg W. Gail, Jr., now City Fire Commissioner,
Mrs. Ernst Schmeisser, Mrs. John C. Hinrichs, Mrs. Nanny
Gail Meyer and Miss Mary Gail.
Mr. G. W. Gail, while on a visit to the old fatherland in
1892 married again on the 16th of October Miss Emma Land-
mann who survives him as his widow and gave him one son,
Georg Philip Gail, surviving. He left fifteen grand children.
G. W. Gail, fond of his old fatherland, of his native city
and associates of his youth frequently made summer trips to
Europe. In 1905, he, with his wife, his son Georg Philip and
a Governess, again went abroad. On the 2nd of October, he
embarked for his home trip with his wife and son on the
North German Lloyd S. S. "Brandenburg" from Bremen to
New York. Mr. Gail who always enjoyed good health, then
complained of slight illness, proper precautions for his health
were taken, but notwithstanding all care and the best medical
attention given him, the illness developed into acute pneumonia
and on Thursday, October 5th, 1905, he died at high sea on
board of the ship. His end was painless. His wife and son
were at his bedside. His body was embalmed and taken to
Baltimore and interred in Greenmount Cemetery.
LOUIS P. HENNIGHAUSEN.