Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1896 — WEIRD FAMILY LEGEND. [ARTICLE]

WEIRD FAMILY LEGEND.

The Goldsmids Said to Have Been Strange* ly Shadowed, Mr. H. W. Lucy, in his article “From Behind the Speaker’s Chair,” in the Strand Magazine, tells a creepy story in connection with the Gdldsinid family. For more than a hundred years, it was said, a fatal spell hung over the Goldsmids. Toward the close of the eighteenth century there died in London the Kabbi de Falk, who enjoyed high reputation as a seer. He left to Aaron Gildsmid, great-grandfather of the late member for St. Pancras, a sealed packet, with injunctions that it was to be be carefully preserved but never opened. The old Dutch merchant who founded the branch of the Goldsmhl family in this country was warned that as long as this order was obeyed, so long would the Goldsmids flourish like a young bay tree. If it were disregarded, ill-fortune would for all time dog the footsteps of th* race. Aaron Goldsmhl kept the packet inviolate for some years. One day, curiosity becoming ungovernable.lie opened it, When his servant came to call him lie was found dead. Aaron Goldsmhl left a large portion of his fortune to two sous, Benjamin and Abraham. These went into business on the London Stock exchange, and vastly increased their patrimony. Benjamin founded a Naval college, and performed many acts of less known generosity. He lived long, but the curse of the cabalist overtook him. Enormously rich, the delusion that he would die a pauper fastened upon him, and to avoid such conclusion of the matter, he, on April 15, 1808, be’ing in his fifty-fifth year, died by his own hand. Two years later his brother, Abraham, being concerned in a ministerial loan of fourteen millions, lost his nerve, blundered and bungled, sank into a condition of hopeless despondency, and on September 28, 1810, a day on which a sum of half a million was due from him, he was found dead in his room. The fortunes of the family were restored by Isaac Goldsmid, nephew of the hapless brothers and grandson of the founder of the English house. Like all the Goldsmids, Isaac was a man of generous nature and philanthropic tendencies. With him it seemed that the curse of the cabalist had run its course. It is true that before he died he lapsed into a state of childishness. But he had at the time passed the limit of age of fourscore years, after which, as one of the kings of his race wrote centuries back, man’s days are but labor and sorrow. Isaac Goldsmid was succeeded in his fortune and his baronetcy by his son Francis, on whom the curse of the cabalist seemed to fall when he was fatally mangled between the engines and the rails at Waterloo station.