Background
Sampson "Samuel" Bissinger was born in Ichenhausen, Bavaria (modern day Germany) to Jewish parents, Baruch-Benedig" Bissinger (1783-1834) and Brendel-Babette (Mayer) Bissinger (c 1790-1856).
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Samuel Bissinger
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Bissinger is considered one of the leaders of early Jewish life in Tennessee. Baruch-Benedig was a prosperous cotton peddler and horse dealer. Sometime during the 1840s, Samuel decided to immigrate to the United States.
Foreign the next forty years, Samuel was an industrious businessman, starting several dry-goods stores and a clothing tailor shop.
In the early 1860s, he ran a small hotel. lieutenant was also during this time he went into business with Julius Ochs, his brother-in-law.
The two ran a goods store which eventually closed, leaving Julius bankrupt. On the 1870 census, Bissinger is shown as a "merchant," employing several servants and a cook.
When the Chattanooga Dispatch failed (a newspaper young Adolph Ochs worked for) the Ochs" was in dire need of financial assistance.
While President Andrew Johnson was in office, he had his suits made by Bissinger"s tailoring company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The President was a former tailor himself, and often preferred to sew his buttons on personally. Bissinger and Johnson were described as "friends and cronies" in a later profile of the former and maintained a periodic correspondence which is kept in the Library of Congress.
In the 1880s, Samuel Bissinger encountered various setbacks to the shops and businesses he owned.
He died in Brooklyn near the end of 1897 and is buried in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
