[1] In September of 1848, his family (himself, three sisters, and his parents) emigrated from their small village in Abenheim, near the city of Worms in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, to the United States via France, fleeing growing anti-Jewish sentiment, revolutionary turmoil, and the fear that the government would punish them for the revolutionary activities of their firstborn son Marcus Spiegel, who had participated in an unsuccessful uprising against government troops in the state of Baden with Franz Sigel's liberal-democratic Landsturm regiment.

[1] They settled in the Jewish community on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where his father Moses sold needles, thread, and cloth.

[1] Joseph Spiegel worked as an apprentice in several retail stores in New York until 1862, and in 1863 he enlisted in the 120th Ohio Volunteers.

He served in General Ulysses S. Grant's army in Louisiana where he acted as sutler to his brother's regiment,[7] witnessed his brother's death in battle, and was later captured and sent to the prisoner of war camp at Camp Ford, Texas, where he remained until May 1865.

His grandson, Sidney M. Spiegel Jr. co-founded the Essaness Theatres chain with Edwin Silverman in 1929.