Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in matching funds to promote vocational or technical education. In 1919 he was appointed to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. He was also the principal founder and backer for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, to which he gave more than $5 million and served as president from 1927 to 1932. Early life Julius Rosenwald was born in 1862 to the clothier Samuel Rosenwald and his wife Augusta (Hammerslough), a Jewish immigrant couple from Germany. He was born and raised just a few blocks from Abraham Lincoln's residence in Springfield, Illinois, during Lincoln's presidency. In 2020, the house, formerly known as Lyon House, was renamed in his honor, and a plaque erected. By his sixteenth year, Rosenwald was apprenticed by his parents to his uncles in New York City to learn the clothing trades. While in New York, he befriended Henry Goldman and Henry Morgenthau Sr. With his younger brother Morris, Rosenwald started a clothing manufacturing company. They were ruined by a recession in 1885. Rosenwald had heard about other clothiers who had begun to manufacture clothing according to standardized sizes from data collected during the American Civil War. He decided to try the system but to move his manufacturing facility closer to the rural population that he anticipated would be his market. He and his brother moved to Chicago, Illinois. Once in Chicago, the Rosenwald brothers enlisted more help from a cousin, Julius Weil; together they founded Rosenwald and Weil Clothiers. Marriage and family In 1890, Rosenwald married Augusta "Gussie" Nusbaum, a daughter of a competing clothier. Together they had five children: Lessing J. Rosenwald, Adele (Rosenwald) Deutsch Levy, Edith (Rosenwald) Stern, Marion (Rosenwald) Ascoli―second wife of Italian American journalist Max Ascoli―and William Rosenwald. Their son Lessing Rosenwald became a prominent businessman, following his father in the chairmanship of Sears, Roebuck & Company (1932–1939). Edith married businessman Edgar B. Stern Sr. One of his grandchildren is Nina Rosenwald. Another was the Hollywood film producer Armand Deutsch, who believed that he was the intended target of the thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, who kidnapped and murdered his schoolmate Robert "Bobby" Franks on May 21, 1924. Sears, Roebuck & Company