Background
He was born on August 11, 1827 at Baiersdorf, Bavaria, Germany, a son of David and Fanny (Steinhardt) Seligman and a younger brother of Joseph Seligman.
He was born on August 11, 1827 at Baiersdorf, Bavaria, Germany, a son of David and Fanny (Steinhardt) Seligman and a younger brother of Joseph Seligman.
He graduated from the Gymnasium at Erlangen.
He joined his brothers in the United States in 1841, spending some years in Alabama with several of them and in 1848, with his brother Henry, moving to Watertown, New York. Here they opened a dry-goods store and Jesse became intimate with U. S. Grant, a friendship which was later renewed in California.
In 1850, a year after the beginning of the gold rush, Jesse and his brother Leopold went to San Francisco with a supply of merchandise and established what rapidly became a very lucrative business. Jesse Seligman showed his good judgment by selecting as his store the only brick building in the town, with the result that his business was the only one which escaped in the fire of May 1851.
He was an active member of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee and became a member of the famous San Francisco Committee of Twenty-one, which in 1857 effected the election to both municipal and state offices of candidates pledged to clean and honest government.
Later he became an active member of the importing and clothing firm of which his brother Joseph was the head. He brought a large sum accumulated in California as his contribution to this enterprise and to its successor, the banking firm organized in 1862 under the style of J. & W. Seligman & Company. From the beginning of the banking venture he was an important factor in the main office in New York City, and after the death of Joseph Seligman in 1880, he became head of the firm, continuing in that capacity until he died.
Jesse Seligman was a vice-president of the Union League Club of New York for many years, but resigned in 1893 when his son was blackballed because of his race.
He served for several decades before his death as president of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum of New York City, and was selected by Baron de Hirsch in 1891 as an original member of the Board of Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, but his philanthropies were not limited by race or creed.
He died at Coronado, California.
Seligman married in Munich, October 18, 1854, Henrietta Hellman, who with six of their seven children survived him.