"Through my research to date, I am aware of seven generations of Allenbergs, spanning almost 200 years.
Our oldest known ancestor was Seligman Allenberg, born in Germany in 1806. Little is known about him except
that he married a woman whose last name was Barman, and together they had a son, Lazarus, in 1839. Seligman
died in 1882 at the age of 76.
Seligman and Lazarus are both Sephardic names. I suspected their earlier ancestors came to Germany upon fleeing
the Spanish Inquisition. It was in Germany, that they probably added the German derivative, Burg, to their name.
Lazarus and his wife, Johnetta Burman, had nine children in Germany:
Regina (1863)
Carrie (1865)
Theresa (1867)
Henry (1868)
Herman (1873)
Louis (1876)
Eugene (1879)
Sigmund (1882)
William (1884)
Julia (Unknown)
The family left Heidleheim Germany sometime in 1883 in search of a better life in America. They entered this country
through the port of New York at Castle Garden and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, close to relatives named Marx in nearby Covington, Kentucky.
In the years that followed, the family left Cincinnati, spreading west and south across the country. After only a year
or two in Cincinnati, Lazarus and Johnetta took sons Henry, Herman, Eugene, Louis and Sigmund west to Ellwood,
Indiana. There, another son, William, the 10th child, was born in 1884. The family may have been in the liquor business as evidenced by a photograph dated 1895 in front of what appears to be a liquor store.
As for the girls, Regina and Carrie, they knew that finding husbands would be difficult since the family was too poor to afford dowries. So together in a covered wagon, they headed west to work as domestics for relatives in Portland,
Oregon.
THE ALLENBERG FAMILY-A BRIEF HISTORY
The following history was taken from a booklet prepared by Joan Allenberg Giraud, "Allenberg-Seven Generations".