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Since Napoleon had emancipated the Jews, Abel, like other French boys,
could attend a Jesuit school. Early on, he displayed the intelligence, independence and industriousness later so
predominant in Felix. By the age of ten, he was working as a petit
clerc for a notary as well as going to school. In 1834, at the
age of nineteen, he was ready to leave France and embarked on a ship headed for New York. He spent about a year
in the city working in a dry goods store, but he found that the job and the environment were, in his words, "not
to his liking." He then moved to Long Island to work on his English language skills so that he might prepare
himself to become an attorney. There he learned about the Crescent City where French was spoken and French culture
thrived, and he moved South to pursue a career among those who would respect and appreciate the world from which
he came.
Arriving in New Orleans in 1836, Abel pursued two careers. Already familiar with the soap-making process, he and
another young French immigrant became partners as very small-scale soap manufacturers to provide them with the
wherewithal for room and board. The other venture, as a clerk in the notarial firm of Joseph Cuvillier, proved
a more fruitful direction. Abel found that his early training in Belfort was useful in his new home since Louisiana
was under the same Civil Code with which he was already familiar in Alsace. At the end of his first decade in New
Orleans, Abel had already won a notarial commission from the governor, Alexander Mouton. After receiving his commission,
Abel became a partner of the man who had been, until then, his employer. The firm of Cuvillier and Dreyfous was
large and well-respected.
Abel had to wait five years before becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. To receive his certificate
of citizenship, he returned to New York because that was where he originally entered the country. On the twenty-fifth
of September, 1839, he formally gave up the allegiance for France and officially became an American.
Now that he had secured citizenship and a solid financial footing, Abel could begin to consider marriage. In 1846,
three years after his commission was in place, he married Alice Brunswig. The couple had two children, Cécile
R. and Alice, and, although they were strong enough to survive during an era when yellow fever was running rampant,
Alice mere was
not. She died while her daughters were still quite young.
In the meantime Caroline Kaufman, a lovely young woman, had arrived in New Orleans in 1848, having immigrated from
Bavaria with her family. Two years later when she was sixteen, Caroline and Abel married. Already a mother to Abel's
two daughters, this remarkably mature young woman and her new husband began to raise a family of their own. Caroline
gave birth to nine children, but only the first seven survived to adulthood. Born in 1851, the year after Caroline
and Abel married, Emile was the oldest, and the family increased methodically every other year. Two daughters preceded
Felix; Amélie was born in 1853, and she was followed by Anna. Felix was the middle child of this union.
His brother, Jules, was next, while two sisters, Rose and Blanche, completed the household. Caroline's younger
children gave her an early brush with the tragedies that many mid-nineteenth century New Orleanian families had
to endure. As she was giving birth to her ninth child, Martha, the youngest brother, Charles, lay dying of yellow
fever in the adjoining bedroom. Martha, too, did not survive past childhood.
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