Wolff & Simon

Henry Wolff (1848-1914) was born in Rogowo, Prussia (present-day Rogowo, Poland) in 1848. At eighteen years of age, in the summer of 1866, he boarded the ship Saxonia in Hamburg, Germany, and left Europe for the United States. On August 5 of that year, Henry arrived in New York, where he would remain through at least 1870. According to various family letters and census records, while in New York, he worked as a butcher with his cousin/business partner, Moritz Sellig, of Darmstadt, Germany. By 1871, Henry was living in Augusta, Georgia. There, he operated a clothing and dry goods store at 156 Broad Street. In 1874, he married twenty-three-year-old Emily Myers (1852-1875). Emily died the following August, possibly in childbirth.

Sometime after his wife’s death, Henry moved to Allendale, SC, some fifty miles away, where he opened a general merchandise business with Jewish merchant Joseph A. Simon, whom he met in Augusta. In 1885, Henry bought out Joseph’s share of the business and continued operating it under his own name.