By Florence Ilfeld Beier, his granddaughter
When you search for Ludwig Ilfeld on the Internet, you’ll see a “cowboy” picture that appears authentic, unless you know that it is his costume for a Tom Mix movie. The most frequent photo is Teddy Roosevelt on Grandpa’s horse. Most impressive is his official portrait as fire chief, in a dark gray uniform with brass buttons, shiny badge, military hat with eagle insignia and gold letters on the stiff jacket collar over a starched white shirt. I know directly about my grandfather’s life from the time when we lived with him and Nana off and on from 1931 to 1935 and many visits from Taos to Las Vegas up through 1953, when he held my little son.
When I listen to the interview about his life, taped in 1954 by a Highlands University student, his intellect and humor remind me of the delight I felt in his presence. The Charles Ilfeld Company, by W.J. Parrish, a Harvard University Study in Business History, describes Ludwig in an analysis of Uncle Charlie’s New Mexico mercantile empire. Lilo Lang Waxman, a cousin from his German home town, whom Grandpa rescued from the Nazis, has told me about life there.
The rough cobblestones of the “Jews alley” in Bad Homburg reflected the gaslight of the narrow passageway out into the main street of the fashionable spa, where socialites from around the world came for water cures. Near the middle of the alley, the Ilfeld family lived over the butcher shop where Papa Wilhelm sold kosher meat to the observant or fastidious Jews of Bad Homburg. He also held the title of “Caterer to the Prince of Wales,” who fancied Wilhelm’s handmade spicy sausages. Mama Fredericka used lavender bunches to block the garlic smell which seeped through the floorboards.
Ludwig, born in Bad Homburg, Germany, April 21, 1874, was always on the go, managing five pursuits at a time. He learned French and English at school and by listening to the spa guests in the streets as he delivered meat for his father. When he graduated from the University of Heidelberg, he was one of the youngest students to do so. Even though he usually read adventure books hidden on his lap in the synagogue, he knew all the Hebrew prayers by heart and led the service brilliantly for his Bar Mitzvah.
Nestled at the foot of the verdant Taunus mountains just outside Frankfurt, Bad Homburg, where the Ilfeld family had lived for generations, had a history that stretched back to the Roman Empire. When the mineral springs were rediscovered in 1834, Bad Homburg quickly developed into an internationally fashionable spa. Jews were accepted there, but lived in a restricted part of town. (When I visited Bad Homburg in 1965, all that remained of the Judengasse (Jews alley)was a small blue and white sign in German, “Since the beginning of the 18th century this was the living area of the Jews of Bad Homburg.”)
But Bad Homburg was too predictable for Ludwig, whose restless energy never abated. As a Jew in Germany, he knew his opportunities would always be limited. Visions from books about prairies, cowboys, and Indians in western America filled his dreams. When letters came back from his uncles about enterprise in the mountains of New Mexico and wild horseback rides in search of sheep to buy, he could no longer be contained. Ludwig celebrated his sixteenth birthday on board the steamship Augusta Victoria on the way to America, arriving in New York on April 26, 1890. Ludwig immediately looked for a job, never doubting that he could earn the money he needed to head west. He soon found employment with the A.S. Rosenthal Company, a silk importing firm, assembling salesmen’s sample cases for three dollars a week. Packing scraps of silk into cardboard boxes twelve hours a day in a dusty basement was not what he had in mind at all. As soon as he could save enough for a train ticket, with a helpful subsidy from his uncles, Ludwig set out for New Mexico.
Ludwig’s uncles Herman and Charles had come to New Mexico back in the 1860s. Charles started out as a clerk for Adolph Letcher in Taos, bartering or taking in cash for items such as a silk dress ($100), straw hat ($1.25), gallon of whiskey ($6), or bottle of castor oil ($.25). Taos had been the main trading center for trappers, ranchers, and Indians in the early 1800s, but when the transcontinental railroad was routed through Las Vegas, Taos was on its way out as a center of commerce. In the spring of 1867 Charles and Adolph hauled their goods on almost one hundred burros over U.S. Hill and Holman Pass to Las Vegas.
Charles Ilfeld next set up a mercantile enterprise on the plaza in West Las Vegas, whose main street was the Santa Fe Trail. When the railroad reached it in 1879, Las Vegas, New Mexico, (the only Las Vegas until 1905) was the biggest city between San Francisco and Independence, Missouri. It had a waterworks, a telephone company and at least six trains stopping there each day. But this was a wild and lawless place. The Las Vegas Optic catalogued 29 men either shot outright in self-defense or hanged by vigilantes in one month of 1880. As soon as Charles became established there, he returned to Germany to marry Adele Nordhaus and bring back his younger brother Louis. By the time Ludwig arrived in 1892, his uncles Louis, Noah, Herman, and Bernard had established an additional business in Albuquerque. Ludwig’s father Wilhelm, the oldest of the five brothers, came to Las Vegas for a visit in 1902, decided the Wild West was not for him, and returned to Bad Homburg.
When Ludwig reached New Mexico, he went to work as a bookkeeper for his Uncle Charles’s mercantile company in Las Vegas. Perched on a high stool, he poured over the piles of ledgers from early morning until late at night, and then walked home among the gamblers, prostitutes, and renegades. Uncle Charlie’s deals involved as many as 90,000 sheep, often herded through the muddy streets of the town. This was not Ludwig’s dream of life in the West. After residing in the United States for the required five years, he secured his U.S. citizenship and traveled back to Germany to visit his parents. His old hometown was as confining as ever, so he soon returned to Las Vegas and continued working for the Charles Ilfeld Company, with his eye out for other opportunities.
Ludwig later reported in an interview on the goings-on in the frontier town: “When I came to Las Vegas, it had become a virtual ‘No Man’s Land’ during the 17-year reign of terror of Vincente Silva and his gang. Peaceful folks just didn’t get out on the unlighted, unpaved streets after sunset. Crime and lust motivated the noisy parties in public dance halls and saloons. The barking of 45-caliber guns was as common as the sound of auto horns today. Stabbings, shootings and hangings could be expected at all hours. It was October 22, 1892, when one of the worst blizzards in history struck the town. During the night Silva and some of his gang hanged one of their own men on the Gallinas Bridge.”
But even in the heady atmosphere of Las Vegas, Ludwig grew bored with the drudgery of adding and subtracting numbers, so in 1897 he started his own business in Springer, New Mexico. When, after seven months, that did not bring the quick success he wanted, he sold his store to a Mr. Appel. Hopping on a train back to New York, he found an enticing job as European salesman for a New York bicycle exporting firm. His early education proved very helpful as he was able to speak several languages fluently including German, English, French, and Hebrew plus Spanish, which he had picked up in New Mexico. For a while, he traveled through France, Germany, Denmark, England and Sweden opening new bicycle agencies. “
Again Ludwig tired of his occupation, feeling rootless as he roamed Europe. New Mexico suddenly looked more appealing. In 1899 at age 25, Ludwig returned to Las Vegas and purchased a hardware store from David Wintornitz on Bridge Street. Swallowing his pride, Ludwig moved in with generous Uncle Charles, who welcomed the restless young man in his rambling brick home on Eighth Street. Also living with the Charles Ilfelds was Minna Schutz, a niece of Charles’ wife Adele. Their aunt and uncle were delighted when the two young people became romantically interested in each other and were married in Las Vegas. Because finding a nice Jewish girl to marry in the territory was not easy, many young Jewish New Mexicans chose to go back to Germany to find a suitable mate. By this time, with a number of German Jewish families having settled in New Mexico, the intermarriage was complex. Minnie, who was born in Silver City, was the daughter of Fannie Nordhaus and Aaron Schutz and granddaughter of Rabbi Jacob Nordhaus, whose other two daughters had married Charles and Noah Ilfeld.
Minnie’s mother had died when Minnie and her sister Clara were ages 4 and 2. Aaron Schutz then left his daughters to be raised by the Sisters of Loretto in Santa Fe. She was described in the newspaper account of her wedding as “widely known and respected as a young lady of great moral and personal attractiveness.” The Optic reported on the “sumptuous” wedding of Ludwig and Minnie at the Charles Ilfeld home in Las Vegas, mentioning that Charles gave them the money to build a house and Max Nordhaus, Adele’s brother (Minnie’s Uncle), gave them money to furnish it! The newlyweds moved into the William Springer home in West Las Vegas, until the completion of their new home at 1007 Eighth Street, five houses away from the Charles Ilfelds. Their three sons, my father Max, Carl, and Fred and daughter Florence grew up in that two-story house.
Ludwig operated his hardware and furniture store on Bridge Street in the “old town” part of Las Vegas for about fifteen years until in 1915 he transferred his stock to the present location on Douglas Avenue. The Ilfeld children attended public school.. “I was proud of my family but I never claimed to be a prize parent,” Ludwig reported. “With three boys and a girl there was never a dull moment at our house. I remember I built a big sled and when the heavy snows came, I harnessed a horse to this sled and took my kids and many of the neighbors’ for a ride over the streets of the town. The railroad hauled ice from the ponds in Gallinas canyon, and the children would ride out to Montezuma on the train or peddle out on their bicycles for picnics. They cooked potatoes for their lunch in the water of the hot springs.”
Max, my father, studied civil engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and right out of college got a construction job, which then folded when the Depression hit. With no other choice, he took his wife and two small children back to Las Vegas to live with his parents. From ages two to five I either lived there or stayed while my father was off building railroad underpasses for the New Mexico highway department. The Ludwig Ilfeld house on Eighth Street is included by Las Vegas “Citizens’ Committee for Historic Preservation” in their brochure of notable homes. The living room was crowded with Victorian furniture. A carpeted staircase, with a polished wood banister, ascended to the upstairs bedrooms, where my parents, my brother, and I lived when we arrived homeless and broke from Boston in 1931.
Perhaps the architecture fit a standard description, but the fragrance of my grandparents’ house was unique, a potpourri of lemon furniture oil, roasting meat, lily-of-the-valley, perfume, damp wool carpet, and vinegar, with a faint overtone of wood smoke and chocolate. My favorite dish was Nana’s sweet-and-sour green beans. Grandpa prepared some kind of meat for every meal, usually a giant beef prime rib. Ludwig and Minnie’s second son Carl stayed home and ran the hardware store. Fred, the youngest child, went to Harvard Medical School, (based on a letter sent along by his father saying, “This is my son Frederic. He should study at Harvard.”) When Florence died at age 17, probably of kidney failure, her death was a devastating blow to her mother, leaving Minnie sad and uninterested in outside activities. She continued, however, to keep house and enjoy her grandchildren, especially a granddaughter named Florence. Nana died of heart failure when I was ten.
Grandpa, although forceful with others, was patient with me. He let me stand next to him in the white-tiled kitchen at the back of the house while he precisely cut a bone from a roast. His cooking was enchanting, stuffing pungent homemade sausage into pork intestines, laying up garlicky dill pickles, and showing me how to slice up a chicken. His beef and lamb roasts were famous, but I liked the crunchy grilled cabrito (baby goat), whose juice tasted like chicken soup. Meanwhile Nana quietly prepared green beans or cabbage and mashed potatoes.
Grandpa was always addressed as “Chief” only partly from his position as proud leader of the local fire fighters. In 1901 he had joined the E. Romero West Las Vegas Fire Department, where he was immediately appointed fire chief. He headed the volunteer firemen for 53 years. His recollections included the big livery stable fire in the early days near the corner of Railroad and Douglas Avenues, where only the work of the faithful volunteer firemen prevented the whole town from going up in smoke. In 1925, when the New Mexico State Fire Association met for the first time in Santa Fe, the minutes report that the meeting was called to order by Mr. Ludwig Ilfeld from Las Vegas. When representatives of seventeen cities formed an organization to consider legislative issues and fire prevention, they elected Ludwig Ilfeld as president.
For Grandpa promoting his home town was an obligation. In 1899, with the help of the Optic, he sponsored one of the first rodeos in Las Vegas. He even ran in the foot race at this rodeo, though he much preferred riding his horse. As director of the annual Cowboys Reunion Rodeo he led the rodeo parade on horseback for almost 60 years. The parade from downtown out to the rodeo grounds primarily consisted of the cowboys who would be riding the bucking broncos, bull-dogging, and roping calves. Grandpa also conducted many local fund-raising campaigns, such as the drive for polio research and the Red Cross. He was a life member of Chapman Masonic Lodge #2 A.F. & A.M. and a member of Elks Lodge #308 for 38 years, serving as Exalted Ruler three times. One of his regular contributions was preparing and serving roast beef feasts for members of these organizations or as fund-raisers.
But he was not satisfied with just leading local activities, so he also helped establish a national event with the gathering of soldiers from an American victory. On June 24, 1899, Ludwig Ilfeld initiated the first Rough Riders encampment in Las Vegas. The Rough Riders were a unique cavalry company composed of volunteers from the Southwestern U.S. and led by Colonel Teddy Roosevelt. The U.S. and Spain were at war following the sinking of the battleship Maine in San Juan Harbor in February 1898. Perhaps the most famous battle of the SpanishAmerican war was the Rough Riders’ victory at San Juan Hill on July 1, where, according to Roosevelt’s own account, the first guidons (location flags) were planted by the three New Mexico troops. The first Rough Rider killed was a Jewish boy named Jacob Wilbusky. Because Las Vegas could be a convenient meeting place for the veterans of the Cuban adventure, the first Rough Riders encampment there brought together Roosevelt and 623 veterans there for a three-day convention. All 75 of the annual Rough Rider reunions were held in Las Vegas. The photo of Roosevelt at the 1899 reunion shows him comfortably seated on Maude, my grandfather’s sorrel horse. This photo, which pops up on the internet all over the place, never fails to give me a nudge of pride about my famous forebear, or at least his famous horse.
When Colonel Roosevelt was entertained by Ludwig in his home, they enjoyed discussing sports. Invited as an honored guest to Roosevelt’s Presidential inauguration in 1904, Grandpa rented a colonel’s uniform and rode in the parade.. As one of two delegates from New Mexico to the inauguration, Ludwig recalled, “It was a bitter cold day, and we rode in the parade behind the delegations from Kentucky. One of the Kentucky riders had a quart of whiskey tucked under his cape and this was passed around. I took along the picture of Colonel Roosevelt on my horse Maude so that President Roosevelt might recall that occasion. I was a guest of President Roosevelt during my stay in Washington and was never more highly entertained.”
In 1911, Ludwig joined the New Mexico National Guard. Five years later, he was in the first regiment to be sent south after Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Just before dawn on March 9, 1916, a band of Mexican revolutionaries loyal to General Francisco “Pancho” Villa had crossed the border into the United States and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Within a matter of hours, 17 Americans and 67 Mexicans lay dead. The next day, President Woodrow Wilson announced the formation of the Punitive Expedition under the command of General John “Blackjack” Pershing. Within three months, over 150,000 U.S. national guardsmen and army regulars would be mobilized in what was the largest troop deployment in the United States since the Civil War. Ludwig had enlisted in the New Mexico National Guard as a private and advanced to major during his active service. Except for the photos of Ludwig leading the troops out of Las Vegas and another of him with some soldiers and his six-yearold son Frederic sitting on some steps in Columbus, I have no other details of my grandfather’s military experience.
Although Jews were a small minority in New Mexico, Ilfeld relatives were numerous in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos as well as in Las Vegas. My family tree looks like a spider web with cousins, double-cousins, aunts by marriage and by blood, spread out over a five-foot computer print-out. The family gathered for weddings and funerals. At the family retreat at Trout Springs many jolly parties took place. The large property spreads along the Gallinas River, about 20 miles up into the mountains west of Las Vegas. Broad grassy meadows surround the group of dark-stained wood structures, with new wings, guest houses, and improved plumbing an on-going construction. One time Ludwig and Minnie drove up in their car, which got stalled fording the river, so Ludwig tied it to a tree and they walked the rest of the way. When the flood subsided the car was still tethered, but the motor was destroyed.
Las Vegas had culture. The Duncan Opera House, opened in 1884, was the one show stop between Kansas City and Los Angeles, according to Grandpa, with appearances by George M. Cohan, Eddie Foy, and Fannie Brice among others. Ludwig also acted in amateur productions there, noting, “During the years 1902 to about 1910 lots of local talent plays were given in Vegas. We organized what was known as the ‘Cavalry Players,’ and we gave performances every so often. I was usually the villain.” Grandpa’s interest in drama did not end on the stage. He probably was back of the arrival about 1912 of a prominent Hollywood figure, Romaine Fielding, who came to Las Vegas as actor and producer with a small company. He filmed two plays just west of town with the help of hundreds of local citizens. Ludwig then played the part of the surveyor in the two-reel drama, “The Rattlesnake,” produced by Lubin Films in Las Vegas in 1913. In 1915 Ludwig helped bring Tom Mix and his company representing the Selig Picture Co., to Las Vegas to film a movie. “I rented the stone house at 920 Gallinas Street, where Tom and his company stayed during their months of picture- making. Most of the outdoor scenes were filmed outside Vegas, where Tom demonstrated his marksmanship. A stage was set up at the rear of the quarters on Gallinas Street, where the dialogue parts were filmed.” In addition to the regular members of the company, so many local citizens were employed as extras that each Friday the First National Bank of Las Vegas arranged to have from $6,000 to $10,000 on hand to meet the payroll of the Tom Mix operation. Ludwig acted as an extra in this movie, and the picturesque photo of him dressed as a cowboy comes up on several websites.
Grandpa was prominent in “Congregation Montefiore,” the first synagogue in New Mexico. Las Vegas had a much larger and more established Jewish population than Albuquerque by 1880, with more children needing formal religious education. In October 1884, the Jewish community in Las Vegas formed a congregation and Joseph Glueck became its rabbi. In January 1886, the congregation began an appeal for a building fund and drew pledges from Las Vegas residents, with half of the donations from non-members. The congregation took the name Congregation Montefiore after Sir Moses Montefiore, who was a much-admired, philanthropic Jewish leader. Although Ludwig’s formal education had stopped by age 16, he had learned Hebrew from the prayers in the synagogue. Because he remembered almost every detail of the Reform Jewish services that he had attended in Bad Homburg, he was able to conduct services in Las Vegas when there was no longer a permanent rabbi for the congregation. He presided at weddings and funerals, and even instructed Jewish boys for their bar mitzvah. However, he apparently did not insist that his sons go through this process. Their mother, who had been raised by Catholic nuns, was not at all religious, although the nuns always told her she could not join their church because she was Jewish. The first time I was in the synagogue in Las Vegas was for the wedding of Lilo Lang and Arnold Waxman. Grandpa loved his seven grandchildren, and enjoyed his great grandchildren, too. Grandpa liked my husband Rolf (who came from Germany), but they never spoke German together.
A man of Grandpa’s virility, who had a delicate wife and was a widower for many years, no doubt had some kind of sex life. When he was 82, a local woman claimed he was the father of her new baby and that she deserved financial support. My uncle Fred, a Beverly Hills physician, immediately took charge. He tried to prove that grandpa was too old to sire a child, but medical tests showed exactly the contrary. So Fred whisked Grandpa to California until a settlement could be worked out.
Ludwig never slowed down, even as hearing loss made it hard for him to converse. He drove his Cadillac at top speed around the countryside, went to work in the store every day, and continued to cook huge meals for his clubs and acquaintances. He rode horseback and was an avid fisherman with trips to Mexico, for deep sea fishing plus lake fishing in Elephant Butte Dam and trout fishing on the Gallinas River. He had started a polo team and played polo well into his seventies. In 1960, he developed a kidney problem and landed in the hospital with tubes to drain the infection. He’d have none of that treatment, pulled out the tubes, and died several days later at age 86.
Grandpa’s funeral, the largest in Las Vegas in many years, rated a front page banner headline in The Optic. His heavy copper casket was borne to the cemetery on the huge white fire truck recently purchased by the E. Romero Hose and Fire Company. Firemen were honorary escorts, preceding the funeral cortège on a red fire engine, followed by city and state police cars. Both my grandparents are buried in the Montefiore Jewish cemetery in Las Vegas. Large granite monuments and family plots edged by stones are dedicated to early New Mexico families. The graves of Ludwig, Minnie, Florence, Carl, Max, and my mother Bertha are simple stone markers set into the parched, hard-packed soil.