Alphonse Lazard
Alphonse Lazard was an early Jewish pioneer in Tucson who was celebrated for the establishment of Tucson’s first lumber mill as well as for his charitability.
Born in Sarreguemines, a town in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France in 1831, After traveling around Europe as a teenager, Alphonse departed to the United States in 1852. He was not the first member of his family to venture to the New World, as his cousins, Alexandre and Simon Lazard, founded the very successful Lazard Frères & Co. Their company dealt in dry goods, banking, and currency exchange and had branches in New Orleans (est.1847), as well as San Francisco and New York. Alphonse went to work in a New York office of Lazard Freres, but he was drawn to the West, in part by his brother Solomon who was living in Los Angeles. While making his way to the frontier, Alphonse manned Indian trading posts in several states, namely Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, with Kansas being his primary base of action.
By 1859, Lazard had reached Arizona, where he settled. He affiliated with fellow pioneer Sam Hughes, originally from Wales, and the two ended up forming a strong bond. Together with a man named Hiram Stevens, Lazard and Hughes started a butchery, but their partnership also expanded into mining, government contracts, trading, and agriculture, and lasted through the 1870s. Hughes had so much faith in Lazard that he even entrusted him with the safeguarding of his businesses when he fled Tucson upon the Confederates’ arrival in 1862. Lazard proved himself to be a good steward, and a relieved Hughes returned to Tucson with his businesses intact.
Lazard’s life in Tucson was interrupted by two different stints in Los Angeles, the first of which was a failed attempt to work with his brother in the dry goods business in 1864, and then another two-year period from 1876 to 1878. Both times, Lazard came back to Tucson, where there was plenty of business to be done. He had a dry goods store during the 1870s and until the 1880s freighting between Tucson and New Mexico was one of his most consistent business interests. He also helped Lionel and Barron Jacobs incorporate Tucson’s first bank in 1878. Lazard’s most important contribution to Tucson prosperity is likely the sawmill that he opened up in the Santa Rita mountains in 1869, located about forty five miles to the southeast of Tucson. Lazard’s enterprise was the first of its kind in the area. The mill lowered lumber costs considerably for Tucsonans, who had been importing lumber from El Paso, and also facilitated the construction of modern frame buildings in the city. A raid most likely committed by Apaches in 1870 proved to be only a minor setback for “Frenchy” as Alphonse had become known, and after having his mill rebuilt, he went on to work diligently in Tucson, with much of his own lumber and sometimes with his own labor.
Lazard remained a bachelor and enjoyed a positive reputation in Tucson as an honest businessman and generous philanthropist. Although he was certainly Jewish, he was not particularly religious. Falters in both his physical and mental health prompted him to move to San Francisco in 1894, and Lazard was admitted to the French Hospital. He ultimately died by suicide on March 11, 1895. In his will, he left $100 to Barron Jacobs, which Jacobs was directed to disburse to the poor of Tucson.
Cholent and Chorizo, by Abraham Chanin
Jewish Settlers in the Arizona Territory, by Blaine Lamb
Pioneering Jews: A New Life in the Southwest, by Harriet and Fred Rochlin
Photo credits: Arizona Historical Society