Colorado Citizen, April 3, 1879, May 1, 1879, July 10, 1879, August 14, 1879, August 21, 1879, August 28, 1879, September 11, 1879, April 13, 1882; Colorado County Deed Records, Book V, p. 30; Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 1727: State of Texas v. Leopold Burgheim, Minute Book H, p. 110. Though the lodge is not named as the purchaser of the cemetery tract, the deed does say that Joseph G. Rosenfield, the lodge's president at the time, paid for the tract. The other inaugural officers of the lodge were Louis Mendel, I. Mehringer, David Steiner, Nimon Rosenfield, Joseph Frankel, Max Hirsch, Henry M. Ehrenwerth, and James Burgheim. Charles Wessolowsky, who toured the south on behalf of the Jewish South newspaper and of the B'nai B'rith in the late 1870s, was in Columbus the week before and the week after the Columbus lodge was formed. He reported that he found in Columbus "about twelve Jewish families and a number of young men who were all in full anticipation of glee and joy" at the prospect of the lodge being formed (see Louis Schmier, ed., Reflections of Southern Jewry: The Letters of Charles Wessolowsky 1878-1879 (Mercer University Press, 1982), pp. 93, 97).