Bryan, Leon, & Adolph Rosner

According to the 1900 census for Houston, Texas, Louis Rosner was a native of Austria and his wife, the former Ernestina (recorded as Austrena) Levy, was a native of Germany, both of whom immigrated to the United States in 1882. Louis’s occupation was listed as “scavenger collector” and later as “a prominent traveling man.” They were living on Alamo Street with their four children, Lena, Elsie, Tillie, and three-year-old William Jennings Bryan (named in honor of the 1896 Democratic presidential candidate whose rhetorical prowess earned him fame as “the Boy Orator”). In 1900 and 1903, Leon and Adolf joined the Rosner family.

In 1907, three years after Ernestina’s death, Louis placed his sons in the Home. While there, each boy attained a leadership position in the Home’s Golden City Brotherhood, and Adolph further distinguished himself by winning a National Boy Scout award in 1917 for having sold at least ten Liberty bonds to support the war effort.

Four years earlier, Bryan was discharged from the Home. The Houston Chronicle reported that Louis was on his way to the Home to visit his boys and retrieve Bryan. As the article further noted, Louis was carrying a letter, never before seen by his oldest son, in which the boy’s famous namesake thanked Louis for naming his son after him and “trusts that the boy will grow up to be a good citizen.” As it turns out, Mr. Bryan, who later served as U.S. Secretary of State before infamously prosecuting John T. Scopes, the Tennessee schoolteacher who taught evolution, had wisely placed his trust in the Rosner brothers.

By 1919, all three boys had returned to their father who had moved to Bellaire, Texas, today an independent city within Houston, which had been established one year earlier. Louis, together with his sons Bryan and Leon bought the city’s two-story general merchandise store which housed the post office. After briefly serving at Ellington Field Military Base in Olcott, Texas during World War I, Bryan became postmaster, a position he relinquished to Leon in 1935. In 1930, he married Marie C. Parrott, with whom he had two daughters. Over the next few years, Bryan joined Leon in investing in real estate in Bellaire and Houston. In addition, Bryan spent three decades employed by Standard-Southern Corporation and was an active member of American Legion John R. Burkett Post 77. Bryan died in 1994, at age 97. 

Leon followed in Bryan’s successful footsteps. In 1920, Leon married Luda Brandt with whom he raised a daughter. After succeeding Bryan as Bellaire’s postmaster, Leon held the position for 22 years, overseeing a significant expansion of the city’s postal services, including the building of a second post office in neighboring Brae Burn. Meanwhile, beyond his early years running Rosner’s Store, Leon was credited with “either launching, coming to the aid of, or having hand in practically every significant development of the Bellaire’s growing years.” The same 1977 article in The Bellaire Texan, which he helped found, listed Leon’s achievements: “postmaster of the Bellaire Post Office as well as the old Brae Burn Branch; member of the board of directors of First National Bank of Bellaire [which he helped found]; builder of the shopping center on Rice Avenue between Bassinet and Cedar with housed the Post Office in Rosner’s day; and the Chamber of Commerce’s first president.”  He also served as a captain in the U.S Army in 1942. In 1994, the Bellaire/Southwest Chamber of Commerce named its annual award for outstanding citizen in his honor. In 1996, the Texas Association of Homes and Services for the Aging presented Leon with its Philanthropist of the Year Award, recognizing his generous support and contributions to Clarewood House, where he had lived for more than 28 years. Leon died later that year, at age 96.

Adolph was discharged from the Home in 1918. In 1928, he married Verna Comeaux in Orange, Texas. By the early 1940s, they were living with their daughter, Adrienne, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he worked as a millwork salesman for Davidson Sash and Door Company. Adolph died in 1988 at age 85.