The Grants, the Bibos, the Elsbergs, Ambergs, Spiegelbergs and Rosenwalds. They're all here, their stories fixed in New Mexico's soil, making their rounds by way of grandchildren and distant kin they never met. The five-year show tells the stories of the first openly practicing Jews who came to New Mexico in the 19th and early 20th centuries, establishing their own businesses, their own communities and, in essence, becoming a part of the state's civic fabric. Included among the pioneers are those who were first to arrive, those who first moved into rural areas or lived among the Indians, those who were the first to help establish community institutions, and those who were first to form religious congregations. Representing more than 100 families, the exhibit, which opened in October, tells their stories through the belongings they left behind.
Tobacco flasks, spyglasses, trunks, wedding dresses, prayer shawls.
Without divulging too many secrets, they speak softly about the people to whom they belonged. A worn, upright piano poses next to a window, its elegant ivory keys yellowed from time. Rosalia Hersch brought the mid-19th century instrument from the East Coast to Santa Fe on the back of an ox train in 1869. Nearby, Anna Staab's white, paper-thin negligee, adorned with satin roses and lace trimming, lifelessly drapes over a seamstress' mannequin, its fabric frail with age. Enclosed in a glass case, a delicately beaded bag designed to hold dried corn leaves for rolling tobacco reveals the story of Willi Spiegelberg, a leading merchant in Santa Fe who did business with several Indian tribes and received the bag as a gift from one of the tribal chiefs in the early 1870s.