Nathan Straus (January 31, 1848 – January 11, 1931) was an American merchant and philanthropist who co-owned two of New York City's biggest department stores, R. H. Macy & Company and Abraham & Straus. He is a founding father and namesake for the Israeli city Netanya. Biography Nathan Straus was born to a German Jewish family in Otterberg in the former Palatinate, then ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria (present-day Germany), the third child of Lazarus Straus (1809–1898) and his wife, Sara (1823–1876). His siblings were Hermine Straus Kohns (1846–1922), Isidor Straus (1845–1912), and Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926). The family moved to the U.S. state of Georgia in 1854. After losing everything in the American Civil War the family moved to New York City, where his father formed L. Straus & Sons, a crockery and glassware firm. The Straus family owned slaves and conducted business with other slave owners, taking several formerly enslaved people to the North with the family following the defeat of the Confederacy. On April 28, 1875, Straus married Lina Gutherz (1854–1930), with whom he had six children: Jerome Nathan Straus (1876–1893); Sara Gutherz Straus (1877–1878); Sara "Sissie" Straus (1879–1950), married to Irving Lehman (1876–1945), Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1940 until his death; Roland Straus (1881–1884); State Senator Nathan Straus Jr. (1889–1961); and Hugh Grant Straus (1890–1961). Macy's and Abraham & Straus Straus and his brothers sold crockery to R. H. Macy & Company department store. The brothers became partners in Macy's in 1888 and co-owners in 1896. In 1893, he and Isidor bought Joseph Wechsler's interest in the Abraham and Wechsler dry-goods store in Brooklyn, New York, which they renamed as Abraham & Straus. Public service and philanthropy In the late 1880s, Straus began a period of philanthropy and public service in New York City. He served as Parks Commissioner from 1889 until 1893, president of the Board of Health and Commissioner of the Department of Health in 1898, and in 1894 he was selected by Tammany Hall to run for Mayor on the Democratic ticket, but withdrew from the race when his friends in society threatened to shun him if he did. In 1892, he and his wife privately funded the Nathan Straus Pasteurized Milk Laboratory to provide pasteurized milk to children to combat infant mortality and tuberculosis. In his battles with the disease he opened the Tuberculosis Preventorium