Seligmann emigrated to the USA in 1845. He made his way to the west coast and was a businessman with his brother Sigmund. They set up the store “E.D. Cohn & Co” in Eagle Creek, Oregon, around 1872.
“He first went to New York, where [his Uncle] Lehmann Heilner worked as a choirmaster, and then seems to have gone to stay with relatives in Cincinnati. A series of business failures caused him to go to California, where gold was discovered in 1848. By 1853 at the latest, Seligmann was running a clothing and textiles business named E.D. Cohen in Crescent City, a harbour town in Northern California, supplying the prospectors at a nearby dig.
“In January 1855, [Seligmann and his brother Sigmund] met in San Francisco. Together they travelled to Crescent City and then further north a few months later, to the prospecting town on Althouse Creek in south-western Oregon, where a branch of their business was set up.
“The spread of mining and the pressure to settle had an adverse effect on the living conditions of the [Indigenous people] there, and in 1855 the Rogue River War broke out. During the conflict, which lasted until 1856, Sigmund supplied the volunteers with weapons and ammunition. Even though mining at Althouse Creek had passed its heyday by that time, Seligmann was still successful in business. In 1856 and 1859 the brothers were able to afford a large contribution to the dowry of their sisters Regina (married Feifer Gutmann from Karbach in 1857) and Carolina (married Max Stiefel from Hochhausen in 1862). In the summer of 1860, having sold his business and safely invested the proceeds, Seligmann travelled back to Germany. From Urspringen, he announced the possibility of going back and founding a business in Germany, but this seemed rather unpromising in view of the global recession of 1857. It was also difficult for Seligmann – who like his brother had adopted US citizenship in 1859 at the latest – to become accustomed to the very different conditions in Germany. In April 1862 he returned to America.
“The most important consequence of Seligmann’s trip home was the creation of a family fund for joint projects in 1862, which was financed by money from America and administered by Aron Heilner. In May 1863 this fund contained 25,000 guilders, and 15,000 were transferred back to America to help new business start-ups.
“Seligmann, who stayed mostly in California, returned to Oregon in 1863 when Sigmund sold the business in Browntown to invest completely in mining. They placed their hopes in the “Enterprise Quartz Company” and the “Heilner Quartz Mill” in Enterprise, to the north of Althouse Creek, but these were finally dashed in 1866. This was followed by many years of travel as they searched for some new means of income. In 1866/67 Sigmund was in Little Dalles in Washington, where he kept a store, and travelled through Washington and Montana as a peddler selling goods purchased in Portland. During this time he excelled as a landscape and portrait painter. Seligmann stayed in Enterprise initially, but then spent most of his time in Nevada. From 1868 onward Sigmund lived in California, mainly in Brooklyn, today a suburb of Oakland. The store there, in which Seligmann also worked from time to time, was destroyed in an earthquake and a fire in 1869. In 1870/71 Sigmund worked in Portland for the “Alaska Fur Company”. In the summer of 1871 he visited his parents and family in Germany. He saw no future for himself in the brothers’ firm and thus returned in early October to Portland, where Seligmann was also living. With 2,500 guilders start-up capital from the family fund, Seligmann and Sigmund moved to Sparta in the east of Oregon, a flourishing mining community on Eagle Creek. The two of them worked as traders here, too, and set up a store named “E.D. Cohn & Co”. They were supported during these years and until 1877 by further payments from the family fund.” -“The Heilner Brothers from Urspringen” by Leonhard Scherg