Isadore Trager
Among Cincinnati's business men who have worked their way upward from humble positions to one of the affluence, success coming as the merited reward of close application and unfaltering industry intelligently directed. Isadore Trager was numbered. He was among the worthy citizens that Germany furnished to the new worked, his birth having occurred in Elberfeld in 1845. Only ordinary educational opportunities were afforded him and when still a youth he crossed the Atlantic to the new world, making his way to Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived for a numbers of years. For thirty-five years prior to his death, however, he was a resident of Cincinnati, and during the early period of his stay in this city he traveled for the firm of A. Senior & Son Company. He then embarked in a business for himself and in the line of trade which he chose made steady advancement, securing substantial success as the years went by. He was the founder and the president of the I. Trager Company of Cincinnati, which in 1886 established a wholesale liquor house with which he was actively connected until his demise. His name was also known in financial circles of the city as that of a director of Peoples Trust & Savings Company.
Mr Trager was the father of two sons and three daughters, namely: Newton; J Garfield; Mrs. Ethel (Trager) Krammer, of St. Louis; Mrs. Blanch (Trager) Gugenheim; and Miss Elma Trager. One of the sources of Mr Trager's satisfaction in his success was that it enabled him to provide liberally for his family, to whom he was most devoted. He was also greatly interested in religious and charitable work and was a member of the board of directors of several Jewish institutions. He was also prominent in Masonry, attaining the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite and also crossing the sands of the desert with the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He likewise held membership with the Benevolent and protective Order of Elks. he was a trustee of the Ben Israel congregation, a trustee of the Cleveland Orphan Asylum and of the United Jewish Charities. As he prospered he gave generous of his means for the benefit of others, his sympathy reaching out in a generous support to the institution and projects providing for the relive of the destitute or those upon whom an untoward fate imposed heavy burdens of life.
From Cincinnati, The Queen City, Vol. 3; by Rev. Charles Frederic Goss, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912