Siegel was born on March 17, 1852 to a Jewish family in Eubigheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In 1867, he immigrated to the United States where he worked as a clerk by in Washington, D.C., Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Lawrenceburg, Pennsylvania. In 1876, he co-founded Siegel, Hartsfield & Company in Chicago. In 1887, he co-founded the Siegel-Cooper Company, also in Chicago, with Frank H. Cooper and Isaac Keim. In 1896, Siegel-Cooper opened a store in New York City in the Ladies' Mile Historic District. In 1902, Henry Siegel sold the company to one of his major stockholders, Captain Joseph B. Greenhut and his son Benedict J. Greenhut, who merged the store with B. Altman across the street in New York City creating a mega-store. In the same year, Siegel bought the Simpson Crawford Company and the Schlesinger and Mayer Company and moved to New York City. In 1905, Siegel founded The Henry Siegel Company and opened a large store in Boston at 600 Washington Street; he also created a holding company, the Siegel Stores Corporation, as the parent for his retail investments in New York, Chicago, and Boston. In 1913, Siegel-founded banks which had over 15,000 depositors and were operated in conjunction with his stores collapsed. Siegel was convicted and served a short jail sentence for using false financial statements to obtain credit. After he served his sentence, he re-opened a haberdashery with one employee.
Personal life
Siegel married three times. His first wife Julia Rosenbaum died in 1885; they had one daughter, Julia Florence Siegel Cavendish. In 1898, he married his second wife, Marie Vaughan Wilde; they divorced in 1918. Also in 1918, he married his third wife, Henrietta Struble, a 40 year old telephone operator from Geneseo, New York. They divorced in 1927. His daughter married, Tyrell William Cavendish, son of Charles Tyrell Cavendish and grandson of Richard Cavendish of the British noble Cavendish family; she survived the sinking of the H.M.S. Titanic while her husband perished.
