Details
Title Potsdamer, Theodore
Date May 1842-November 5, 1919
Description Theodore Potsdamer, proprietor of the Philadelphia lithographic firm Potsdamer & Co., was born May 1842 in Wansteck, Hamburg, Germany. Son of Bethel/Berthold (b. ca. 1819), a capmaker, and Rebecca (b. ca. 1824), Potsdamer arrived in Philadelphia with his family before 1850. By 1861, Potsdamer worked as a clerk and then salesman for the cap manufactory co-owned by his father, Potsdamer & Bro. As a salesman, he earned a decent living, and his income and a gold watch, were taxed in 1864.
In the retail cap business until ca. 1871, Potsdamer entered the lithographic trade when he partnered with Alfred T. Jones in Jones & Potsdamer (321 Chestnut Street) ca. 1872. In 1875 Jones left the partnership and Potsdamer continued the business as Potsdamer & Co., which specialized in advertising ephemera and job printing for Jewish organizations. In 1885 Potsdamer, his health in decline, disposed his firm to the Ketterlinus Company where he took over as manager of their Commercial Lithography department. Potsdamer continued in the lithographic trade with Ketterlinus until shortly before his death in 1919.
Before 1870, Potsdamer married Hannah Shonenman (ca. 1846-1904) with whom he had two children Clara (b. ca. 1869) and Joseph (b. 1870), also a lithographer. During the time with his father's business, Potsdamer mainly resided with his family at 628 Marshall Street, before relocating ca. 1873 to 1644 North Eighth Street with his own family and a servant, where he remained until 1910. He also had a summer home at Wyncote, where his wife died in 1904. As of 1910, he and his son lived with his daughter and her husband, merchant Alfred Klein at 1921 Girard Avenue.
A member of the Rodeph Shalom congregation and the charitable Excelsior Lodge No. 21 of Improved Order of the Free Sons of Israel, Potsdamer died at his Girard Avenue residence on November 5, 1919 following weeks of illness after years of declining health. He was buried at Mt. Sinai Cemetery.
Is part of Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
References See Jones & Potsdamer and Potsdamer & Co.
Call number Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
Bibliographic citation Census 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910
Jewish Exponent, November 7, 1919
Last, 220
Library Company of Philadelphia research file
Morais, The Jews of Philadelphia, 331-333
Philadelphia Business and City Directories 1861-1919
Philadelphia inquirer, November 7, 1919