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Literally growing up as a notary's son helped FJD develop both a familiarity
with properties in the city and a keen understanding of the value of real estate acquisition. He came to know,
first hand, some of the problems peculiar to property-holding in this part of the state where drainage and flood
control plagued real estate speculators and developers. These were concerns that he made his own, concerns that
he turned into protective legislation in the late 1880s and 1890s when he entered public life.
Civic and social circles, meanwhile, began to widen for the young man. The Hebrew Benevolent Association predated
the Young Men's Hebrew Association in New Orleans, and many of its members became active in the YMHA, housed in
the 1890s in the Athenaeum, a large brick building on St. Charles and Clio. The structure housed superb athletic
facilities, including a large hall where different societies in the city organized indoor baseball leagues. Concerts
and even Mardi Gras balls were also held there. As a young man, FJD was active in the YMHA, in 1878--1880 serving
as its financial secretary, then as treasurer. At its reorganization, he became second vice-president.
FJD had done his apprenticeship as a clerk for ten years in his father's office before receiving his notarial commission
in 1881 from Governor S.D. McEnery. He subsequently became his father's partner. Under the Civil Code, the notary
was an appointed official whose commission made him a conveyor of deeds. Only a limited number of notaries were
appointed, and they wrote all deeds from marriage contracts to real estate transactions. The Dreyfous firm moved
several more times after FJD became associated with it, occupying "offices corner of Camp and Common Streets;
Liverpool & London & Globe Building," and finally relocating in the Canal Building which later became
the National Bank of Commerce Building.
During his long and extremely productive career, FJD passed more notarial deeds than any other notary in the city
before or since. The first act that FJD passed was a charter and constitution for the "First Agricultural
Colony of Russian Israelites in America," which became known as the Sicily Island Colony. Although this little
remembered venture ultimately failed, it is a fascinating slice of Southern Jewish Americana. According to Max
Heller's Jubilee Souvenir of Temple Sinai, in 1881, negotiations to resettle Russian Jews outside of the Northeast resulted in land
in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, being offered to some thirty-five families under the jurisdiction of the New York
branch of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. The land, originally belonging to Isidore and Henry Newman, was offered under generous
terms that permitted the Russian immigrants to work it for the first two years without paying taxes or rent. According
to the plans, as the immigrants' land became productive, they gradually could repay the Newman brothers out of
the profits. The Russian men arrived in New Orleans, then embarked upriver with a great deal of fanfare. They left
their wives and children behind in the city until the crops were planted and suitable housing could be erected
for them.
Although the newcomers worked hard and cultivated four hundred and fifty acres, they were lonely with their families
three hundred and fifty miles away and with no Jewish community nearby. Then when malaria hit and the Mississippi
flooded and broke through the levee not many months later, about half the colonists left to plow, not more promising
land, but the more auspicious and familiar fields of factory work or peddling. The remaining colonists scattered,
abandoning their hard work and their initial financial investment. The retreat from Sicily Island was a wise one;
farming in the region in the postbellum era was hard enough on small-scale native southern farmers. Jewish newcomers
to the South managed a great deal better in urban environments.
That the first deed FJD passed as a notary involved trying to help people in real estate negotiations, however,
presaged a lengthy career in which his advice would be sought after and appreciated by newcomers to New Orleans.
And, as Ruth mentions, although her father never socialized with Eastern European Jews, when a relatively large
number began to settle in the city after the turn of the century, FJD counseled a great many immigrants who followed
his advice and made successful real estate investments.
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