Joe Weisman and Company

The store stayed in one family for most of a century. The Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities says Joe Weisman and Daniel Dopplemayer ran Weisman and Company as partners for 17 years, and that Joe Hirsh's sale of the business in 1972 ended 94 years of single-family ownership. It describes the Kahn brothers, Lionel, Emanuel and Abraham, as another Jewish merchant family who moved to Harrison County from Lorraine and entered retail. Wikipedia's history of Marshall calls J. Weisman and Co., opened in 1878, the first department store in Texas.

What the plaque says

Joe Weisman and Company Jewish merchant Joe Weisman (1847-1918), born in Syracuse, New York, was one of seven children of Meyer and Mary Doppelmayer Weisman. Joe studied at Bryan-Stratton Business College before following an uncle, Daniel Doppelmayer, to Marshall, Texas in 1866. Five of his siblings followed him to Texas. In 1878, Joe formed Joe Weisman and Company. Three of his brothers worked with him at the mercantile store, located on the north side of Peter Whetstone Square. In 1881, Weisman wed Lena Young (1858-1930), and the couple had four daughters: Hallette, Estelle, Edith and Valrie. Joe and Lena were active at Temple Moses Montefiore and contributed greatly to the community, assisting with fundraising efforts for local churches, charities and schools, including the College of Marshall (later East Texas Baptist University) and Wiley College. In 1900, Weisman relocated the business, which had grown into a department store, to this site. Joe Nathan Hirsch (1883-1966), who began at the store as a stock clerk before opening his own mercantile, wed Valrie Weisman (1890-1963) in 1910. He returned to Weisman and Company and took over its management in the mid-1910s. He and Valrie had four children and continued the business for more than 50 years. They and their extended family also maintained the Weisman-Hirsch commitment to community service and were active in local groups including fraternal organizations and the Marshall Symphony. Martin (1912-1968) and Joe (1923-1994) Hirsch continued the business after their parents' deaths. Joe sold it in 1972, but it was operated by subsequent owners until 1990. The city restored the building, designed by C.G. Lancaster, and it remains a commercial landmark. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harrison County Historical Museum — steps away
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.4 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• James L. Farmer, Jr. — steps away
• The Hub Shoe Store — steps away
• First Telegraph Office in Texas — steps away
• The Library Movement in Marshall — steps away