The Maier Zunder paper trail is taking over a lot of our downstairs office. And I still need to reaed July-Dec issues of the New Haven Journal and Courier and the New Haven Palladium. I have two big binders with newspapers articles and I'm going to have to go to three soon.
Now some of this doesn't directly name him; some portion of it is directly about the devotional exercise controversy. But he will play a pivotal role in the resolution.
But a lot is about him.
It occurs to me that I certainly could not have built a paper trail of this magnitude about my father or my grandfathers. Let alone my mother and grandmothers. This group certain did have their successes. Really no shirkers.
But I can pick up just about any book about the 19th century Jews in America and look in the index and there's "Zunder, Maier" with a sentence about how he was the first Jewish member of a Board of Education. He also had a successful merchant business and was president of a bank. His brother, step-sons and sons worked in his enterprises. He made sure that his daughters and step-daughters married well and were provided for.
Shocking, really, to think about how my grandmother, his granddaughter, was thrown into such an impoverished state during the depression.
Meanwhile, my Maier Zunder stuff is swallowing up our downstairs.
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