 One of Texas' earliest and most generous benefactors was Rosanna Dyer Osterman. She was
born February 26, 1809 in Germany, and married Joseph Osterman in Baltimore on February
23, 1825, at age 16. Her older brother, Major Leon Dyer, had escorted the captured Santa
Anna to Washington late in 1836.
At Leon's urging, her Dutch-born husband traveled from Baltimore to Galveston to
establish a business in the new Republic of Texas, and the next year, 1838, Rosanna
traveled to the Gulf port to join him. In Galveston she helped her husband in his
business, just as she had done in Baltimore.
When the Civil War broke out, military forces blockaded Galveston, and business came to
a standstill. During battle, many Galvestonians evacuated to the mainland. Rosanna stayed
to nurse the sick and wounded of both sides, After Galveston fell to Union forces, she
acted as a courier of military information to Confederate officials in Houston. Her
military intelligence helped the Confederates retake Galveston on New Years Day in 1863.
Three years later, Rosanna drowned after the explosion of a steamboat on the
Mississippi River near Vicksburg. She was 57 years old.
In her will she left a fortune to medical facilities throughout the United States. She
bequeathed several gifts of $3000 each. These went to Jewish hospitals in New York, New
Orleans, and Cincinnati. Her funds formed the Hebrew Benevolent Society in Galveston that
fed, clothes, and sheltered the impoverished, nursed the sick, and performed merciful
deeds for the needy of all faiths. The gift was timely, because fifteen months later a
yellow fever epidemic's large toll included forty members of the Jewish community.
Her bequest also left funds for the founding of a nondenominational Widow's and
Orphan's Home in Galveston, funds to a Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia (see the review
of a biography of
Rebecca Gratz, on this
website), $5000 to build a brick synagogue in Galveston, $2500 to build a synagogue in
Houston, $1000 to the first "Jewish Benevolent Society" in Houston, and funds to
similar charities in New Orleans and Philadelphia. Her gifts also included $1000 to the
Galveston Sailors Home.
At the time of her death in 1866, the Galveston News paid her
this tribute: "The history of Rosanna Osterman is more eloquently written in the
untold charities that have been dispensed by her liberal hands than by any eulogy man can
bestow." It said her work made her distinguished for "unselfish devotion to the
suffering and the sick."
This excerpt is from Pioneer Jewish Texans* by Natalie
Ornish. Used with permission.
The Houston Weekly Telegraph wrote this eloquent tribute on
June 26, 1866:
It is an unjust and ungenerous thing to assert that "with insults you cannot make
a Jew fight." How little has the Jew had to fight for in most countries? In our late
war, we have stood side by side with the Jew in battle, and we have never seen men more
gallantly than they, bare their breast to blue lead and cold steel. In charity and
kindness their women have often rivalled our own. Every one resident in Galveston during
the war, whether soldier or civilian, knows that among the very foremost in deeds of
kindness to our suffering, sick and dying soldiers, one to whom the poor Confederate
soldier never applied in vain, one whose heart overflowed with all the kindliest active
charities, was a Jewess, equally distinguished for her piety and careful observance of all
the ceremonial duties of her religion. (courtesy of
Bill
Lowen)
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