By Danny Crownover
David Reuben Loveman (1827-1898) had been a Hebrew teacher in Hungary, where he married and had two children. He eventually got divorced and emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio in 1859. The following year, Loveman married Ernestine Schwartz (1836-1921), also a native of Hungary. The couple had two children, Linka and Robert.
After the Civil War in 1865, Lovemans moved to Dalton, Georgia, where Ernestine bore another daughter, Anna (1873-1920), and four more sons: Morris (1866-1943), Samuel (1869-1904) Louis Napoleon (1870-1944) and Berthold Auerbach (1876-1950).
Louis Napoleon Loveman was the owner of Herzberg-Loveman Dry Goods located on the corner of Broad and Third streets in downtown Gadsden. After Louis died in 1944, one of his sons, Eugene David Loveman (1900-1971), who had worked in the business since the 1920s, decided to close the store after he had rebuffed several offers to purchase it.
David Reuben Loveman founded Loveman’s Dry Goods Store on Hamilton Street in Dalton in 1865. The store offered “a full line of clothing, parasols, shoes, sateens, wallpaper and other goods” and soon became the community’s leading retail outlet. Friedman, who was married to Ernestine’s sister Adele until her death in 1879, later married Linka and become Loveman’s son-in-law. The firm eventually became Loveman and Sons and passed into the hands of Loveman’s son, Samuel.
Contact The Vagabond at dkcrown@bellsouth.net.
