Wahrhaftig (Moses) papers, 1848-1967.

In 1882, Moses Wahrhaftig emigrated to the United States from Russia. He worked as a printer in California and Oregon, before being admitted to the California bar in 1897. He was the first Russian Jew to become an attorney on the West Coast and he practiced law in Sacramento. He also helped found the Mosaic Law Congregation and he served as a secretary-treasurer of Sacramento’s Hebrew Free Loan Society. In addition, the Wahrhaftig family had strong ties, through friendship and marriage, to David Lubin.

Volumes of professional correspondence (1903-1906), including letters to Jacob Voorsanger, Jacob Nieto, Samuel Dinkelspiel, and others concerning the successes and failures of the agricultural settlement of Jews from Kishinev near Colusa, Calif; land deeds and titles; photographs of Moses and Irma Wahrhaftig; a history of Mosaic Law Congregation, Sacramento; a book of caricatures of Sacramento personalities; and the transcript of an interview between Felix S. Wahrhaftig and Norton Stern, which took place on 22 July 1967.