Marjory Rothschild Freiberg was daughter of Alfred P. and Maude Hess Rothschild. Her father, with his father Phillip and brother Louis, operated Rothschild & Sons clothing store, founded by Phillip in 1853 in Kansas City, Missouri, then moved in 1855 to Leavenworth, Kansas, a town six months old. In 1901 Alfred headed the store’s move back to Kansas City, where its flagship store became a fixture at Tenth and Main streets in downtown Kansas City, known for personal service and meticulous tailoring by the alterations department. Eventually the store expanded to four in Kansas City and four in Oklahoma.
Marjory's parents married in the mid-1910's. The family was active in maintaining and beautifying downtown Kansas City and held a prominent place in civic and social affairs. They were members of Congregation B’nai Jehudah, oldest synagogue in the Kansas City area. Marjory had one sister, Nancy, who died in infancy in 1922, and an older half-brother, Alfred P. Rothschild, Jr, who died in 1954.
Marjory attended the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City, graduating in 1935, and Mills College, graduating in 1939. In January 1941 at Oakwood country club Marjory married Harry A. Freiberg, Jr. of Cincinnati, Ohio. The bridal dinner, wedding and the couple’s planned honeymoon to Guatemala and British Honduras were detailed by Kansas City and Cincinnati papers. They lived in Cincinnati and New Orleans and had two children, a son, still living at this writing, and a daughter, Jill Freiberg Kemp, who died in February 1981. The couple divorced in 1957, after which Marjory lived for a time in California and then in New York city, where for the later years of her life she lived at 185 E 85th street, Apt 7e.
I didn’t know the Rothschilds, but I enjoyed trips with my grandparents to Rothschild's in downtown Kansas City and later on the Country Club Plaza. Their stores hummed with elegant efficiency. My grandfather told me that when Alfred P. Rothschild rebuilt the downtown flagship store in the 1920s he had it designed in two sections so that it could be erected in sequence, without closing the store.
Thanks, Rothschilds, and rest in peace.
