Abraham Watters
Abraham Watters
WS 22/3173
Values Codes - I-E-L-P
Born in the Prussian-occupied Polish town of either Popowja or Rogasen in 1809, Abraham Watters settled in England in the 1830s.
By 1837 he was in America.
In the 1840s he lived in Georgia and Missouri, and was naturalized in St. Louis in 1847.
Abraham Watters came to San Francisco in 1849.
Commercial
In 1850 Watters was a partner of Lewis Newfield. Their store featured jewelry and clothing and was located on Kearny between Clay and Commercial.
In the mid-1850s Abraham Watters and his brother Ichel operated a hotel in Sacramento.
Abraham Watters was also involved in jewelry ventures in Guaymas, Mexico in the 1850s, and at Caracas, Venezuela in the 1860s.
In 1866 Ichel and Abraham Watters opened a jewelry business in Salt Lake City, and the latter divided his time between that city and San Francisco until 1878 when he returned to England. He lived there until 1888 when he returned to Utah to live with his brother.
Community
In January 1850 Watters helped organize the First Hebrew Benevolent Society and became its Vice-President, and in the fall, was elected President.
The Society established San Francisco’s first Jewish cemetery in April 1850 (Vallejo & Gough), which served the community until 1860.
In 1851, Abraham Watters presided over the meetings held to form a United Congregation in the Bay City, which resulted in disagreements that led to two Congregations in April 1851: Congregation Sherith Israel and Congregation Emanu-El.
Watters, (a Pole), became the founding Vice-President of Congregation Emanu-El under Abraham C. Labatt (a Sephard).
But as its membership was mainly Germanic at that time, Watters soon associated with Congregation Sherith Israel.
When Congregation Sherith Israel built a new synagogue at Post and Taylor in 1870, a number of its members decided to stay with the old 1854 Sherith Israel building on Stockton Street, and they formed a new Orthodox Congregation, Shaare Zedek, of which Abraham Waiters became the first President.
Fraternal
Abraham Watters attended the first meeting of a Masonic Lodge in the Far West in 1849
He was active in the Masonic and Odd Fellows orders, and in the Kesher Shel Barzel (Hebrew for “Band of Iron”).
Watters had been President of the California branch of that Jewish fraternity.
Abraham Watters Tomestone, Salt Lake City, WS 9/1304
Abraham Watters died in Utah in 1893.
More information can be found in the following issue of Western States Jewish History:
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Watters, Abraham, Pioneer Jews of San Francisco, Part Two, M-Z, Norton Stern, 41/2
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