In brief
Henry Lehman (September 29, 1822 – November 17, 1855) was a German-born American merchant who founded the precursor to Lehman Brothers, initially as a dry goods store that transitioned into cotton brokerage.
Born Hayum Lehmann to Jewish parents Abraham and Eva in Rimpar, Bavaria (now Germany), he immigrated to the United States in 1844 at age 22, anglicizing his name upon arrival. He settled in Montgomery, Alabama, a hub of the antebellum cotton economy, and established a general store selling dry goods, tools, and supplies to local farmers and planters.
Henry Lehman was born Hayum Lehmann on September 29, 1822, in the village of Rimpar, located in Lower Franconia within the Kingdom of Bavaria (present-day Germany). He was the son of Abraham Löw Lehmann, a Jewish cattle merchant who operated in the local economy of Rimpar, and Eva Rosenheim. Abraham had adopted the surname Lehman from the German word for "loan" or adapted it from his Yiddish given name Löw, reflecting common practices among Ashkenazi Jews in the region.
The Lehman family belonged to Rimpar's modest Jewish merchant class, which comprised a small but established community amid Bavaria's rural Franconian landscape. Abraham and Eva had at least nine children, with Henry among the younger sons; his siblings included Emanuel (born 1827) and Mayer (born 1830), both of whom would later pursue similar mercantile paths influenced by their father's trade. The family's livelihood centered on cattle dealing, supplemented by local commerce such as wine trading, in a context where Jews were often confined to itinerant or intermediary roles due to legal restrictions on land ownership and guild membership.
Formal education for young Henry would have been limited, as was typical for Jewish boys in early 19th-century rural Bavaria, where state policies emphasized religious instruction and practical apprenticeships over secular schooling. Community life revolved around synagogue activities and familial preparation for trades like animal husbandry and market dealings, fostering self-reliance amid periodic economic hardships and anti-Jewish regulations enforced by Bavarian authorities.
