Pictured here is Charlotte (Lotte) Hammes, born into a Polish Jewish family in 1808. In 1827 she married Philipp Hammitz, a watchmaker from Breslau, and the young couple moved to Kalisz, where they had three daughters. In the late 1850s, with anti-Semitism increasing, they emigrated to New York and then to California, changing their name to Hammes along the way. They were one of the first familes to settle in Anaheim, and daughter Amalie’s marriage to fellow Jewish pioneer John Frohling, in September of 1859, was the first wedding performed in the newly established town. Frohling, along with German Jewish immigrant Charles Kohler, was one of the two founders of the wine colony, and was also Anaheim’s first vintner. A
