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David and Isaac Wallace (né Wallach) were Jewish immigrants from Germany who operated a retail and wholesale mercantile house in Statesville beginning in 1859. In the cash poor economy after the Civil War, the brothers began to accept for payment bartered medicinal herbs, barks, berries, and roots from customers in exchange for merchandise. After the burgeoning success of their business, the brothers, along with botanist Mordecai E. Hyams, established what would become the largest herbarium in the world. By 1890, the Wallace Brothers herbarium was processing over 2,000 varieties of herbal ingredients. Their “Botanic Depot,” which was located on the corner of Meeting and Walnut Streets in Statesville, was over 40,000 square feet in size.
The success of the Wallace Brothers’ herb trade and wholesale business was due in part to the efforts of Charleston-born Mordecai Hyams. During his tenor as the Wallace’s botanical manager, he went on long expeditions through the Appalachian Mountains to identify and arrange the purchase of herbs, barks, and roots. Over the course of his journeys, Hyams developed a wide-spread network of country pickers and shopkeepers throughout western North Carolina who he trained on how to identify, preserve, and prepare medicinal plants. With the help of this extensive network, the Wallace Brothers’ herbarium was able to supply botanical material to more than one hundred local distilleries and pharmaceutical factories. Their agents opened markets across America and Europe, and they shipped ginseng by the ton to China.
With Hyams’ help, the Wallace Brothers saw success and acclaim on a national and international level. A Wallace herb display was the centerpiece of the North Carolina exhibits at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and the 1878 Paris Exposition, winning gold medals at each. They also exhibited at the 1893 Chicago and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fairs.
The success of the herbarium and the herb trade helped keep rural North Carolinians afloat during the economic panic of the 1870s. Wallace Herbarium gave work to “women, children, and maimed or broken down men” and David Wallace was described as “a friend at all times to every call of the poor and needy.” However, in 1895 the Wallace Brothers went bankrupt. The company was saved by an investor from New York with the Wallace brothers and family hired on as employees, but this marked the end of the Wallaces’ monopoly on the market. Both David and Isaac passed away within the next decade, and their descendants carried on the company into the mid-twentieth century.
In 1883 the Wallaces led efforts to found Statesville’s Jewish congregation, which first met in Isaac’s home, and in 1892 were benefactors of the building of Congregation Emanuel, still in use.
Although the advent of synthetic drugs has since largely reduced the demand for herbal remedies, the legacy of the Wallace Brothers and the impact they along with Mordecai Hyams left on North Carolina and the field of botany continues to live on today. Hyams’ efforts helped to foster and preserve a long-standing tradition of cultivating native botanicals in North Carolina. Likewise, Harvard botanists credit Hyams with identifying 166 new varieties of flora in North Carolina, including the re-discovery of a rare plant, Shortia galacifolia, and ascertaining its location within McDowell County. Among the institutions holding Wallace specimens in their botanical collections are the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural History.
REFERENCES
Gary Freeze. “Roots, Barks, Berries, and Jews: The Herb Trade in Gilded-Age North Carolina.” Essays in Economic and Business History Volume XIII (1995): 106-127.
“Herbs,” NCPedia available at https://www.ncpedia.org/herbs.
“Hyams, Mordecai E.” NCPedia available at https://ncpedia.org/biography/hyams-mordecai-e.
Luke Manget, “Root Diggers and Herb Gatherers: How Wild Plants Shaped Post-Civil War Appalachian Society.” Lecture at Mars Hill University. Sept 15, 2015. Available at https://lukemangetdotcom.wordpress.com/papers-and-presentations/root-diggers-and-herb-gatherers-how-wild-plants-shaped-post-civil-war-appalachian-society/.
Leonard Rogoff, Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina, 2010.
“Jewish Brothers Spur NC Economy, Garner International Attention,” Jewish Heritage North Carolina, December 6, 2021 blog available at https://jewishnc.org/jewish-brothers-spur-nc-economy-garner-international-attention/.
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