Marco Ross Newmark

It is fitting that we dedicate this first issue of the Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly, published by the Southern California Jewish Historical Society to Marco Ross Newmark. He was one of the chief organizers of the Society and its first honorary president. His work has constituted a major contribution to the field of Los Angeles and Southern California Jewish history.

Marco's father, Harris Newmark (1834-1916), compiled his monumental Sixty Years In Southern California, 1853-1913, and Marco and his brother Maurice co-edited this important reference, preparing it for publication. After the first edition, issued in 1916, was exhausted, the brothers re-edited the book for the second edition, which was published in 1926. Finally, in 1930, the third augmented edition was prepared by Marco, his brother Maurice having passed away in 1929. This book remains the most valuable single source book of Southern California history, being constantly used by historians, librarians, genealogists, and researchers.

In 1929, Marco and Maurice co-edited the Census of City and County of Los Angeles, California for the Year 1850. The manuscript of this first U.S. census taken in Los Angeles was recovered just before its intended destruction as part of a large collection of discarded papers. The Newmark brothers realized the importance of this material and made it available by publishing it, together with an analysis of the material it contained. Los Angeles had a total of 3,530 inhabitants, including Indians, at the time. Eight were Jews, all single men, two having been born in Poland, six in Germany.

Marco Newmark's articles of Jewish interest in the Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, the Masonic Digest. The Jewish Merchant, and in the Jewish press, provide excellent material for Jewish historians today. Articles such as "Pioneer Merchants of Los Angeles," "Pioneer Clubs of Los Angeles," "Life in Early Los Angeles," "Medical Profession in the Early Days of Los Angeles," "Wilshire Boulevard Temple: Congregation B'nai B'rith, 1862-1947," contain much valuable material. His historical profiles which included such Jewish figures as Kaspare Cohn, Michel Levy, Max Meyberg, Harris Newmark, and Louis M. Cole, add important elements to our knowledge of these worthies.

Jottings in Southern California History, authored by Marco Newmark in 1955, contains considerable material of Jewish history interest, with a special section being devoted to Isaias W. Hellman. Though he was a highly successful businessman, Marco was an historian at heart and his intellectual pursuit of historical problems and endeavors was a major theme of his life.

But Newmark was no "Ivory Tower" intellectual. He was an active and spirited leader within the Jewish community. He was one of the early Zionists of Los Angeles, having been a speaker or master of ceremonies at numerous Zionist affairs. He served a term as president of the Los Angeles District of Z. O. A., and was active with the Jewish National Fund. On April 10, 1921, he chaired a banquet for Chaim Weizmann at the Biltmore Hotel.

In 1933 Marco Newmark was elected president of the Federation of Jewish Welfare Organizations and served in that capacity until 1938. In 1920, he served as the president of Los Angeles B'nai B'rith Lodge No. 487. He was on the board of the Jewish Home for the Aged and honorary secretary for the Vista del Mar orphanage. For years he provided the New Year's Day dinner for the children resident at Vista del Mar, an institution of which his father had been a major benefactor.

Newmark was a thirty-third degree Mason. He held office as Master of Westgate Lodge No. 335 in 1936 and was a Shriner, a member of the Al Malaikah Temple from 1917. He edited his lodge bulletin for many years and served as librarian at the Scottish Rite Library.

Marco R. Newmark was the first of our people to serve as president of the Historical Society of Southern California in 1940, 1941, and 1942. From 1952 to 1956, he was the curator of that society and filled numerous committee assignments in addition.

A few of the other organizational and community posts which he held were : president of the Los Angeles Produce Exchange, president of the Midnight Mission, member of the Los Angeles County Grand Jury in 1934, director of the Fiesta Association, and vice-president of the National Wholesale Grocers' Association.

Marco R. Newmark was a proud Jew. He gloried in his heritage and was especially appreciative of his own family's role in the building of Los Angeles from the modest village it was when his uncle, father, and grandfather arrived. The first Newmark in California was Joseph P. Newmark, Marco's uncle, who had arrived in the United States in 1848 and in 1851 settled in Los Angeles. His younger brother Harris (Hirsch) followed him in 1853 and in 1854 their uncle Joseph and his family arrived in the Angel City. From the time of his arrival in 1854 until 1862, Joseph Newmark acted as the lay rabbi of the small Jewish community. In 1862, at the time of its organization, he became the first president of Congregation B'nai B'rith (now known as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple) . Marco was very proud of this great uncle who was also his grandfather, since Harris married his first cousin Sarah, the second daughter of Joseph. The fact that his grandfather was the volunteer spiritual leader of the community and his father was an important civic and business figure of Los Angeles, impelled Marco to carry forward in his life the qualities exemplified by these pioneers.

After his education in the Los Angeles public schools, Marco attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1902. In 1903-1904, he attended the University of Berlin, then returned to Los Angeles to work in the wholesale grocery business established by his father in 1856. In 1906 he married Miss Constance Meyberg, daughter of a prominent Los Angeles Jewish businessman, Max Meyberg, famous for originating the Fiesta in 1894. Mrs. Marco R. Newmark, we are proud to say, is an active member of the Southern California Jewish Historical Society and supports the same cultural and philanthropic interests which so distinguished her husband's career. Mrs. Justin Scharff and Mr. Harris Newmark are their two children.

In his devotion to communal and charitable causes, in his loyalty to the continuity and the enrichment of Jewish life through leadership within the community, and especially in his creative work in the area of local and regional history, Marco Newmark personified all that was noble in Jewish life. In 1952, when the Southern California Jewish Historical Society was founded, he spoke to Lorrin L. Morrison of his desire to see a regional Jewish historical periodical established. Thus, our Quarterly is but a belated creation of that for which Newmark realized the need years ago. So it is that we take pleasure in dedicating this initial issue to the memory of Marco R. Newmark, first Jewish historian of the Southland.

Endnotes: None

Placing a bronze plaque at the site of the 1873 synagogue of Congregation B'nai B'rith on Broadway between Second
and Third Streets in Los Angeles (see page 9). Standing (left to right): Rabbi Edgar F Magnin, Newmark, William R. Blumenthal, Julius Bisno (rear), Aaron Riche, City Councilman Edward Royball, and Benjamin Dwoskin. Kneeling:
City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman and Justin G. Turner.