Dr. Samuel Adler (b. in Worms, Germany, 1809; d. in New York, 1891) was a preacher and assistant rabbi in his native city until 1842, when he became rabbi of Alzey, Rhine Hesse, and remained there about fifteen years. He also participated in the rabbinical conferences in Germany, in which the Reform movement was to some extent systematized; and he was considered one of its representatives there when he was called, in 1857, to ♦become rabbi of Congregation Emanuel of New York. This was the first avowedly Reform congregation in the city, and has since become the wealthiest Jewish congregation in the country. It was organized in 1845. Its first place of worship was a private house on the corner of Clinton and Grand streets, and its first rabbi-preacher, L. Merzbacher (d. 1856) began his duties at a salary of $200 per annum. Dr. Adler was brought as his successor, and held the position until he was retired as rabbi emeritus in 1874, being succeeded by Dr. Gustav Gottheil (b. in Pinne, Prussian-Poland, 1827; d. in New York, 1903). Adler was in his time practically the only Reform rabbi in New York, and neither his disposition, which was that of a scholarly retired man, nor the local circumstances, which were influenced by the fact that the Poles and Russians had a large majority even in the supposedly German period, were favorable to the spread of Reform. He was the possessor of a large library of rabbinica, which was after his death presented by his family to the Hebrew Union College. Dr. Felix Adler (b. in Alzey, 1851), the founder of the Society for Ethical Culture, is his second son.