He was the most important Charlotte citizen of the 19th century. He was the first elected president of the Charlotte chamber of commerce. He served as city alderman. He founded the first building and loan association in the south. He helped found the Charlotte Country Club. He was a close friend of Zebulon Vance who helped found Excelsior 261. Most of all to his Masonic brethren, he was elected the first master of that lodge.

Wittkowsky came to Charlotte in the mid-1950s from Prussia, his birthplace. He worked for Levi Drucker, a leader of the Charlotte Jewish community and owner of a mercantile establishment. There he met Jacob Rintels.

In 1857 the two young men former a partnership to open a general store in Ellendale, a small town in Alexander County. Their operating capital was less than $500. They dissolved that firm in 1859. Rintels moved to Statesville and married Bettie Wallace. In 1862 Rintels returned to Charlotte to partner again with Sam Wittkowsky, this time for good.

Wittkowsky & Rintels on South Mint Street prospered to become one of the major wholesalers in North Carolina. Both men became brethren in the newly founded Excelsior 261 in 1867. They expanded into retail business in 1874, leasing a building near the square on West Trade Street.

The Daily Charlotte Observer began featuring large front-page ads describing the “new and desirable goods” the firm received by rail from New York. Both men bought a house and lot at 406 West Trade Street, but only Rintels and his family—Bettie and six children—lived there.

On June 13, 1876, Rintels suffered a stroke and complete paralysis. A week later he was dead at the age of 40.

Excelsior 261 was very much part of his funeral. Rintels’ and Wittkowsky’s brothers formed a procession from the Masonic Temple building, marching to the house where Rabbi Mendelssohn from Wilmington, NC, conducted the service. Following that, a funeral cortege was formed, consisting of a line of carriages nearly a mile long, as well as a large number of mourners on foot. Interment was in the Hebrew Cemetery on McCall Street, a mile and a half north, the first burial in that cemetery.

Wittkowsky, true to his obligation, moved into a house next door soon after his partner’s death, to assist the widow and children. He continued to be eminent in Charlotte business affairs until his own sudden death from a heart attack on the afternoon of February 13, 1911. He, too, was buried with full Masonic honors.

He rests atop the Elmwood Cemetery hill that overlooks uptown Charlotte.