When Harris Kempner arrived at Ellis Island in 1854, he was an uneducated
immigrant teenager escaping anti-Semitism and conscription into the czar's army. When he died forty years later, he was a millionaire and had instilled in his descendants the ideals of private enterprise, public service, and harmonious family cohesion that have made the Kempner family a major force in Galveston for a century.
After establishing himself as a peddler in East Texas and later expanding his business as a cotton factor and wholesaler and relocating to Galveston, Kempner had risen high in Island...