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Bailey Gatzert




Bailey Gatzert was the eighth Mayor of Seattle, Washington , serving from 1875 to 1876. He was the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, narrowly missing being the first Jewish mayor of a major American city (Moses Bloom became mayor of Iowa City, Iowa , in 1873), and has been the only Jewish mayor of Seattle to date.

Gatzert was born in 1829 in Darmstadt , Germany , and emigrated to Natchez, Mississippi , in 1849, coming west four years later. He married Babette Schwabacher in San Francisco in 1862, and in 1869 opened a Seattle branch of Schwabacher Brothers And Company , a hardware and general store he managed as partners with his brothers-in-law Abraham, Louis, and Sigmund Schwabacher.

In addition to being mayor, Gatzert was a charter member of the Seattle Chamber Of Commerce , served on the Seattle City Council , was president of Puget Sound National Bank and Peoples Savings Bank, and founded Washington 's second Synagogue , Ohaveth Shalom, which opened in 1892. Washington's first synagogue was built in Spokane.

Gatzert died in 1893 .