Recently I was introduced to a family that I had no previous knowledge of, the family of Samuel Henry Gluckstein and his wife Hannah Jacobs. Samuel was like to so many others, the son of immigrants who moved to Spitalfields to work in cigar manufacturing. He was born in Prussia, 1 of 8 children, moving to England at the age of 20, he stayed in the home of his aunt Julia Joseph. He must have enjoyed the stay as he married her daughter, Hannah, on 25 May 1845. Samuel and Hannah had 12 children, two of whom died in infancy. In addition to finding the family in the records of The Great Synagogue, the family can be found in all of the traditional civil records, i.e. census, probate, civil registration, etc.
Samuel and his brother Henry started their own cigar making business at 35 Crown Street. They later moved the business to Leman Street in Aldgate. Disagreements over the business led to it being dissolved in the Chancery Court and the assets dividing. It was at this point that Samuel started another cigar manufacturing business that would soon establish the family name in english history. Samuel, with his two sons, Isidore and Montague and his son-in-law Barnet Salmon formed what would become the J. Lyons Company Limited.
These few short paragraphs are not meant to tell the family story, it would take volumes to do so. Instead, I hope to bring attention to a source, I for one have not used enough, corporate business records. While searching for more information on this family I discovered the J. Lyons Company Limited website http://www.kzwp.com/. The records found at this site are incredible, from a history of the company to a collection of obituaries of some of the prominent employees. I cant imagine that any search of this family would be complete without a complete search of these records.
The records of this family are ine The Jews of the British Isles.
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