Ferber Family

Edna Ferber’s Kalamazoo Story

“Kalamazoo is one of those words that, once spoken, is seldom forgotten. ‘I have immensely enjoyed having hailed from so improbable-sounding a place as Kalamazoo,’ said the author Edna Ferber of her birthplace.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 26 May 1963

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was born in Kalamazoo on 15 August 1885. Despite Edna’s brief time here, we are able to uncover several historical details regarding the Ferber family, and their brief time in Celery City. Over the years several of the celebrated novelist’s works (So Big, Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant, Ice Palace) were adapted for the silver screen, none more noteworthy than Giant (1956), a film starring Hollywood icons Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson.

1881-1888

Jacob Charles Ferber (1852-1909) was a Hungarian-born salesman of women’s undergarments and children’s furnishings. In the late 1800s, the term ‘fancy goods’ was used to describe the kinds of women-focused apparel that Ferber sold. Jacob immigrated to the United States around 1870 according to the 1900 Federal Census, listing his place of origin as “Austria.” He married Julia A. Neumann (1860-1949) in Cook County, Illinois in February 1881. Julia hailed from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both Jacob and Julia were of the Jewish faith, she of German descent. A newspaper article from 16 October 1887 identified the Ferber’s as attendees of a party thrown by the Alemania Society, a local organization comprised of many of Kalamazoo’s Jewish families.

Ferber’s Kalamazoo clothing bazaar was located on the ground level of 109 E. Main, next door to the Masonic Hall building. He later moved into a building across the street at 114 E. Main. An article in the newspaper on 23 February 1881 announced Ferber’s commercial presence, mentioning that he was replacing Morris Miller, a “well known fancy goods dealer” and that “Mr. F. comes highly recommended by those who have known him for years, and by the press where he has been doing business for the past few years.” Upon arriving in Kalamazoo, the young couple lodged at a downtown boarding house called The International.

In 1882, Julia gave birth to their daughter Fanny J. Ferber. For the next couple of years, the couple and their young daughter lived at 103 W. Lovell Street. Edna would later honor her older sister with a book titled Fanny Herself (1917), a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel that is set in a Midwestern town.

Two years before Edna’s birth, Jacob purchased the property of Professor Charles W. Tufts, the high school’s principal, for $3000. According to an interview with Ferber in 1965, she suggested that it was her mother Julia that “took a fancy to a house located on South Park St.” The address was 825 S. Park Street, just east of Ranney St, and where Edna was born. The Ferber family would only occupy the large (“monstrosity”), two-story home for a couple of years before selling it. Interestingly, it appears that this house was removed, possibly cut in half, and relocated somewhere nearby around 1910, when the lot was subdivided to make room for the building of two smaller homes in 1915. In 1992, the occupant of 901 S. Park, the home where Edna’s birthplace once sat, suggested that his home, and the one next to it, may have included lumber from Ferber’s first home. 

The Ferber family’s last known residence in Kalamazoo before leaving for Chicago in 1888, and then later to Ottumwa, Iowa, and lastly in Appleton, Wisconsin, was listed as 323 W. Dutton Street. The move to Chicago was in part driven by Jacob’s belief that the upcoming Chicago World’s Fair, slated for 1893, would provide him and his family greater business opportunities than would Kalamazoo’s smaller market. Edna wrote in her 1939 autobiography about her father’s regret at leaving Kalamazoo, saying, “My father was off for days at a time looking for a business location. He realized that he might much better have stayed in Kalamazoo, but it was too late to think of that now.”

After graduating high school in Wisconsin, Edna went on to become a journalist, and then a popular author of novels, short stories and plays. By the 1960s, Ferber was one of the biggest-selling American women authors of all time.

Article written by Ryan Gage, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, October 2024