(AMERICAN-JUDAICA)
Rosanna Dyer Osterman. Autograph Letter Signed, written in English to her brother in ...

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA)
Rosanna Dyer Osterman. Autograph Letter Signed, written in English to her brother in Baltimore, Leon Dyer.


Osterman sends news of cholera epidemics in the South that have abated. She requests copies of Isaac Leeser’s The Occident that she is missing, as well as a volume of the Jewish Orthodox Magazine of Liverpool edited by D. M. Isaacs and Moses Samuel. She also asks her brother to bring a Siddur for her when he visits, “a German and Polish Prayer Book such as I has [sic] always used.”
pp. 3. 4to.
Galveston, Texas: January 14th 1848
Rosanna Dyer Osterman (1809-66) is described as “a unique character in the records of womanhood” (Henry Cohen, Settlement of the Jews in Texas, PAJHS 2, 1892). Along with her husband Joseph, Rosanna was a founder of the first Jewish community in Texas. Possessed of means, she shared her generosity and also gained renown as a nurse in times of crisis. During a malaria epidemic in 1853, she set up tents on her property turning her home into an impromptu hospital. Osterman was killed in a steamboat explosion in 1866 and left much of her fortune to charity. Her brother Leon Dyer (1807-1883) served as acting mayor in Baltimore in 1834, a very trying period where hunger and rioting was rampant. It is said that he quelled the unrest by the force of his personality. Dyer later served as an officer in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War.
Rosanna Dyer Osterman (1809-66) is described as “a unique character in the records of womanhood” (Henry Cohen, Settlement of the Jews in Texas, PAJHS 2, 1892). Along with her husband Joseph, Rosanna was a founder of the first Jewish community in Texas. Possessed of means, she shared her generosity and also gained renown as a nurse in times of crisis. During a malaria epidemic in 1853, she set up tents on her property turning her home into an impromptu hospital. Osterman was killed in a steamboat explosion in 1866 and left much of her fortune to charity. Her brother Leon Dyer (1807-1883) served as acting mayor in Baltimore in 1834, a very trying period where hunger and rioting was rampant. It is said that he quelled the unrest by the force of his personality. Dyer later served as an officer in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War.