BINSWANGER, ISIDORE

BINSWANGER, ISIDORE (1820–1890), U.S. businessman and communal leader. Binswanger was born in Wallerstein, Bavaria. He immigrated to the United States in 1841, living first in Baltimore, then in Philadelphia, and finally in Richmond, Virginia. In 1869 he became president of the Richmond Granite Company, a position he held until shortly before his death. Binswanger was chairman of the board and later president of the Hebrew Education Society in Philadelphia, and president of the board of trustees of Maimonides College. He was also active in various aid societies and helped organize relief measures in the early 1880s for Jewish immigrants from Russia. His three brothers, Lewis, Samuel, and Harry S., settled in Richmond too, where they also went into business and were active in local Jewish life. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H.S. Morais, Jews of Philadelphia (1894), 250–2; I. Markens, Hebrews in America (1888), 200.