Solomon Ulmer

Solomon Ulmer was born on 18 February 1856 and came to the United States in 1874. The place of his birth is not settled. A 1929 Hungarian Jewish lexicon names him as a native son of the Pétervására community; the Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography gives Derecske in Heves county; and the 1945 Ohio death certificate of his daughter Martha Ulmer Klein, completed by her husband, gives Eger. The 1856 Jewish birth register has not been read.

In Cleveland, Solomon became a mortgage banker and president of S. Ulmer & Sons. The firm worked in real-estate mortgages and bonds from the Ulmer Building on Public Square. A letter he sent on 26 September 1922 to Dr. Ludwig Venetianer in Újpest bears the firm’s letterhead and asks for the return of a prepaid Rotterdam–New York passage so that it could be refunded.

Solomon served as a trustee of the Federation of Jewish Charities and the Board of Jewish Education in 1924–25, and as vice-president and finance chair of the Cleveland Hebrew School. At the Hollenden Hotel on 15 June 1926, he spoke for Palestine Securities mortgage bonds and subscribed $5,000. The American Jewish Year Book later remembered him in one line as a Cleveland communal and Zionist worker.

Solomon’s 1937 Ohio death certificate names his parents as Wolfleb Ulmer and Deborah Desburg, both born in Hungary. The 1902 Pétervásár marriage act for Soma Ulmer names the groom’s parents as Ulmer Farkas and Deszberg Borbála. Farkas corresponds to Wolf, while the two records preserve Hungarian and American forms of Deborah’s name. The matched couple establishes Soma and Solomon as brothers; it does not replace the unread 1856 birth register. Solomon died in Cleveland on 20 July 1937 and was buried at Glenville Cemetery. His stone reads “FATHER / SOLOMON ULMER / 1856 — 1937.” His wife, Laura Glick or Glueck Ulmer, lived from 1859 to 1949 and is also buried at Glenville.

The family remembers deaths in the Shoah on both sides of the family. The 1902 act records Soma’s marriage to Róza Edelmann. A 1944 victim list for Pétervására later names Ulmerné Edelmann Róza, born in 1880, with her mother recorded as Schenk or Senk. The matching married name, birth year and mother identify the 1944 name as the same Róza and Solomon’s sister-in-law. The list is the last record used here.