HERTZ, JOSEPH (ca. 1806-?). Joseph Hertz, Jewish physician, was born in Hannover, Saxony, around 1806. On December 18, 1829, he and his brother Hyman Hertz^qv arrived in Nacogdoches, where Joseph set up a medical practice. During the early 1830s he treated patients in and around Nacogdoches, sometimes traveling up to sixty miles to reach outlying settlements. His patients also included Indians, and it is said that he sometimes traded his work for pelts and hides. The rough frontier conditions began to have an adverse affect on his health, and in 1835 he moved to Natchez, Mississippi. Several years later he returned to Saxony, where he remained for the rest of his life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Henry Cohen, "Settlement of the Jews in Texas," Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 2 (1894). Nacogdoches Archives, Steen Library, Stephen F. Austin State University; Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin; Texas State Archives, Austin. Natalie Ornish, Pioneer Jewish Texans (Dallas: Texas Heritage, 1989).

Christopher Long