Fifty years of successful achievement  in business is a record  of which  any man has reason to be proud and it is a record which Moritz Spier can justly claim.

He was born in Cassel, Germany, August 10, 1850, a son of Ascher and Bertha (Fleischhacker) Spier, who were natives of Germany, where they remained throughout their en tire lives. The father was a well known educator and in the latter part of his life conducted a boarding school for American boys. He was a graduate of the University of Marburg, Germany, and was well known in the educational field, lie passed away in 1892, at the age of eighty years, his birth having occurred in 1812. His wife died in 1896, at the age of seventy-six years.

Moritz Spier was the fifth in their family of five sons and a daughter. He was ap-prenticed to the wholesale dry goods business, but, attracted by the opportunities of this country, he sailed for New York, where he arrived on the 28th of August, 1867. He came to New Haven, where he joined his brother, but after two weeks went to the home of an uncle at Norwich, Connecticut, who was at that time proprietor of a large dry goods store there. After two months spent in his uncle's employ he returned to New Haven and in 1868 became an employe of Julius A. Preston, a coal merchant. After a brief period he started in business on his own account as senior partner in the firm of Spier & Bulford, and a little later he entered into another partnership under the firm style of Lewis & Spier. At that time they opened an office in the Hoadley building, of which they were the first tenants.

Mr. Spier's association with Mr. Lewis covered a few years, at the end of which time Mr. Lewis disposed of his interests to Mr. Spier, who has since been sole proprietor. He is one of the few coal dealers of the city that during the panics have carried on their books accounts of hundreds of families, enabling them to pass through the periods of depression until times improved. It is said that no other coal dealer in the city has been as generous to the poor as Mr. Spier, assisting them with gifts of fuel, again and again, when aid was needed.

On the 25th of November, 1875, Mr. Spier was married to Miss Fannie Asher, of New Haven, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Asher, and they have three children: Leopold A., who was born in New Haven in 1877 and married Miss Hattie Shenfeld, of Brooklyn, New York; Benjamin H., born in 1879; and Elsie C., the wife of Louis Bamberger, of St. Marys, Ohio. The sons are high school graduates and the daughter completed a course in Miss Cady's Boarding School.

Mr. Spier is a member of the Royal Arcanum and a member of the Harmonie Club and was president of the Temple Mishkan Israel for seven years. He furthered the building of the Jewish Temple on Orange street and he is perhaps best known outside of business relations by reason of his charities and benevolences, yet his giving is always of a most unostentatious character. During the administration of Mayor Driscoll he served on the board of charities as its superintendent. He is always ready to extend a helping hand to those who need assistance and his is a nature that sheds around much of the sunshine of life.