Korn Siblings
Rabbi Jacob Korn, a scholar, linguist, and conservatory-trained cantor, married Anna Bernstein, the daughter of the chief rabbi of Breslau, Germany. By 1891, several years after coming to America, the family settled in Woodville, Mississippi, where Jacob served as rabbi. In October, weeks after giving birth to their ninth child, Marcus, Anna was admitted to the state mental hospital in Jackson, Louisiana.
Over the next year, unable to care for his large family without his wife, Jacob admitted Marcus and his five other youngest children (Hyman, Judith, Abraham, Miriam, and Esther) into the Home. While in the Home, twelve-year-old Hyman died while being treated at Touro Infirmary for an unrecorded illness; mother Anna died in 1898. By 1906, Judith, Abraham, Miriam, Esther, and Marcus were discharged to older siblings in New Orleans, where they kept close family ties.
Rabbi Jacob Korn, c. 1890. Courtesy of great-grandson, Hank Greenwald.
Anna Bernstein Korn, c. 1890. Courtesy of great-grandson, Hank Greenwald.
Marcus Korn (#6) is shown here with the Home band in 1903 in the orphanage courtyard. Henry Hirsch (#1) later went into the insurance business and married Home alumna Bertha Seligman. Although Marcus never married, his sister Judith married Home alumnus Leslie Greenwald. Also pictured are Julius Stabinsky (#2), bandmaster Professor Johann Wunsch (#3), Harry Caplan (#4) and Harry’s younger brother Mike Caplan (#5).
This 1915 photo, courtesy of Hank Greenwald, reflects the close family ties retained by the Korn siblings. Outside the family’s Perrier Street home, from left, Montague Korn (an older sibling who did not live in the Home), stands next to brothers Marcus Korn (holding sister Esther’s son) and Abe Korn (holding his daughter) and brother-in-law Leslie Greenwald (holding his nephew). In front, from left, are Abe’s wife Sara Parody Korn, Miriam Korn, Rosa Korn (who also did not live in the Home), Esther Korn Graff, and Judith Korn Greenwald. For more family history, visit Hank Greenwald Stories.
After her discharge, Judith worked as a stenographer for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. In March 1912, she married fellow Home alumnus Leslie Greenwald, who owned a retail grocery store at Cadiz and Liberty Streets. In the presence of relatives, friends, and resident children, Superintendent Rabbi Leon Volmer officiated the ceremony in the Home’s synagogue. The Korn-Greenwald nuptials caught the attention of the local press, who claimed it to be “the first wedding to take place within the walls of the Home.”
Sadly, Judith and Leslie’s marriage was cut short by her death at age 34 in 1920. Leslie later remarried, again choosing a woman with whom he shared child experiences. He wed Lillian Neuberger Dover, who had lived in the Home from 1890 to 1901.