Bailey Gatzert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bailey Gatzert was the eighth mayor of Seattle, Washington, serving from 1875 to 1876. He was the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, narrowly missing being the first Jewish mayor of a major American city (Moses Bloom became mayor of Iowa City, Iowa, in 1873), and has been the only Jewish mayor of Seattle to date.

Gatzert was born in 1829 in Darmstadt, Germany, and emigrated to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1849, coming west four years later. He married Babette Schwabacher in San Francisco in 1862, and in 1869 opened a Seattle branch of Schwabacher Brothers and Company, a hardware and general store he managed as partners with his brothers-in-law Abraham, Louis, and Sigmund Schwabacher.

In addition to being mayor, Gatzert was a charter member of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, served on the Seattle City Council, was president of Puget Sound National Bank and Peoples Savings Bank, and founded Washington's second synagogue, Ohaveth Shalom, which opened in 1892. Washington's first synagouge was built in Spokane.

Gatzert died in 1893.

This article about a Washington politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.