Greenfield Family papers

The earliest known origin of the Greenfield family is in Tsfat, Palestine, in 1882. The Greenfields were a family of rabbis with Eliezer Greenfield being the most well-known. The Greenfield children began immigrating to the United States in the early twentieth century.

Oyser (Oscar) Greenfield was the first to immigrate – entering through the port of Galveston in 1906. Oscar was born in Palestine in 1879. He married Chaya Rochel (Rachel) Cohen and the two had nine children between 1900 and 1919. Rachel died in Houston on 22 December 1946 and Oscar died on 23 January 1956. Both are buried at Adath Israel cemetery in Houston. The rest of the Greenfield family, including Oscar’s five sisters and two brothers, immigrated over the next decade. Eventually, Rabbi Eliezer Greenfield came to the United States around 1928. He died in 1930 and is buried in Safed, Israel, with his wife Rachel Nathan Greenfield.

Oscar Greenfield’s younger brother Morris was born 1893, in Palestine and immigrated to the United States around 1912. He married Bessie Peters (Polycov) in Houston, May 1915. The couple had two sons, Max and Joseph. Morris and his nephew, Nathan Lohr, opened Greenfield Bros. General Merchandise on Runnels Street in Houston shortly after arriving in the United States. Later, Morris owned and operated a junk yard for many years and owned a liquor store at the time of his death in 1964. Bessie was born in 1897 and died in 1960. Both are buried at Beth Yeshurun cemetery in Houston along with other members of the Greenfield family, including Morris’s younger brother, Jacob Behr Greenfield. Jacob Greenfield donated $50,000 for the chapel located in the old Southmore Blvd. location of Beth Yeshurun, known today as the J.B. Greenfield chapel.

Max Greenfield was born 18 March 1916, in Houston. He married Francine Loeser in 1938 and the couple had two children, Larry (b. 1939) and Ronald (b. 1943, d. 1992). Francine was born in Louisville, Kentucky, 12 July 1917, and grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. Max worked in real estate in the Houston area and died 5 August 1967. Francine died in 1997, and is buried with Max at Emanu El cemetery in Houston.

Larry Greenfield grew up in Houston and attended Sunday School at Congregation Beth Israel as a child. He has been a member at Congregation Emanu El since 1950 – bar mitzvah there in 1952, and confirmed in 1956. Larry’s future wife, Marianne Duval, joined Emanu El the year before he did and the two married in 1959.