Bernard Henry Gotthelf

Birth Date

1819-02-03

Death Date

1878-09-07

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

Louisville, Kentucky, Jewish rabbi and U.S. Army chaplain. Native of Bavaria. Married to Sophia Landau Gotthelf in 1839. Father of Dorothea Gotthelf, Joseph Gotthelf, Isaac Gotthelf, Clara Gotthelf, and Rosa Gotthelf. Emigrated to the United States in 1840. Ministered to the Keneseth Israel Congregation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1842 to 1849. Relocated to Louisville in 1849. Cantor and shohet of the German Hebrew congregation of Adath Israel in Louisville from 1849 to 1871. Chaplain for United States Army hospitals in and around Louisville from May 1863 to August 1865.

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, District 2, p. 177.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States_ (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Ward 4, p. 28.
Letters Received by the Commission Branch of the Adjutant General's Office, 1863-1870, NARA RG 94, Microfilm Series M1064, Roll 0024.
“Kentucky,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, ed. Isidore Singer, vol. 7 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co, 1906), p. 467.
Leo Turitz and Evelyn Turitz, Jews in Early Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983), p. 45.
Lee Shai Weissbach, "Kentucky Jewry During the Civil War," in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 110, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 165-84.
Find A Grave, "Rabbi Bernhard Henry Gotthelf (1819-1878)," Memorial #11094135, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11094135 (accessed June 21, 2017).

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