Spiegelberg Brothers

It was a thriving wholesale merchant partnership which included a grocery and dry goods store across from the Governor's Palace[1][2] It was the first Jewish mercantile company in Santa Fe.

[6] By 1852 Solomon Jacob was doing well enough to advance the territorial legislature four thousand dollars to pay its members salaries, until repaid within the following year.

[5] Floyd S. Fierman wrote that the Spiegelbergs revolutionized the retail business and its territory, attracting many Spanish-Americans from the villages into the towns, where they could buy either for cash or on credit without feeling cheated, or losing their land if they fell behind in their payments.

[4][8] Willi's wife, Flora, recalled that all five brothers joined the Masonic order, and that in the early fifties, Solomon was among its first members.

[6] During the Civil War, Levi, while en route to Chihuahua with a wagon train of merchandise, was captured by General Henry Hopkins Sibley's Confederate forces near Socorro, within days following the Battle of Valverde.

The Spiegelbergs issued their own highly respected company scrip as substitutes for legal tender in 1863, when the territorial legislative assembly granted a provisional charter to create the Bank of New Mexico, but failed to gain congressional approval.

In 1870, the First National Bank of New Mexico received a charter under Lucien Maxwell in Santa Fe, which was taken over within months by Thomas B. Catron, one of the largest individual landholders in U.S. history, with Stephen Benton Elkins and others.

The Spiegelbergs quickly formed the Second National Bank of New Mexico in 1872, with principal (and majority interest holding) stockholders, Lehman and Willie in Santa Fe, and Solomon and Levi, in New York.

[10] Lehman wrote the Commerce of Sta Fé, MS., a sketch of his journey across the plains, and his observations of trading matters in early times, with a general idea of the country's progress in other respects.