The oldest document signed by our pioneer Jews and its story. 

Introduction

Historical Background

Early in 1839 there were only a few Jews in Cleveland, notably Simson Thorman from Unsleben, Bavaria. After two years fur trading in Missouri, he settled here in 1837 and bought property. He wrote home, inviting relatives and friends to join him.

On July 12, 1839, when the ship Howard arrived in New York from Hamburg, Germany with the Alsbacher Party of 19 Jews from Unsleben, Thorman met them and led 15 of them to Cleveland. He had a personal reason to be there, for Reichel (later Regina) Klein was in the group. A few months later Simson and Reichel would be engaged.

Cleveland's Jews soon formed the Israelitic Society. (update 4/1/2025: An online Google book dated 1869 shows an Israelitic Society of Unsleben.) Thorman, only 28, was its leader. A Jewish burial ground was a priority, perhaps out of fear of child mortality, for there were no elderly among the Jewish settlers. (Infections took a terrible toll in those days of poor sanitary conditions, no vaccinations and no drug cures. One-third of children died before their 18th birthday.)

The Unsleben Bavaria Thorman and others had left did not have a Jewish cemetery and would not have one until 1856. Its Jewish dead were laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery of Kleinbardorf, about 15 miles (a three-hour trip) to the southeast. But here there was no Jewish cemetery even a day (40 miles) away from Cleveland. Their cemetery would serve many communities.

In 1840 Cleveland's Jews lived in what we now call the Gateway area. When community leaders learned that the city cemetery on nearby Erie (now East Ninth) Street would be adding eight acres of burial sites, they hired a 'scrivener' (a writer of legal documents and letters to courts) to write a petition to City Council asking for a half-acre Jewish section. The leaders and many members, seventeen in all, signed the document dated April 1, 1840.

Strangers in a strange land, only 30 in a town of 6,000, they stepped forward to make a request to their new government. Their 1840 Petition is an example of vision, unity and courage.

The Petition

The document is about 9 by 12 inches. These slightly enlarged web-resolution images are displayed with permission of the Clerk of Cleveland City Council.  The left and right ends of the lower image are blank and not shown.

      
Why did City Council reject the petition?

On April 7, 1840 City Council referred the petition to its Committee on Public Grounds. We can see their decision: "The committee to whom this petition was referred Report that it is inexpedient to grant the prayer of the petitioners."

Members of the committee may have thought the request was too large, 30 Jews asking for room to bury 500 of their persuasion, or wondered if these newcomers, many of them peddlers, could raise $1,250, the price of 500 cemetery plots.

The committee's ruling "inexpedient" is explained by city law. To make its cemetery a benefit for as many Cleveland families as possible, it had restricted the sale of burial plots to persons or families, with a six-grave limit. Allowing an organization to buy a large section would violate that policy. To grant the half-acre the Israelitic Society asked for would mean saying "no" to more than 80 requests for family plots. Perhaps the newly-arrived Israelites were not aware of this city policy, for no other organization petitioned for burial space.

The Israelitic Society resumed its search for burial grounds and by July found one: the Willet Street Cemetery.
 

    •  The Alsbacher Document
    •  The Israelitic Society
    •  Cleveland Cemetery Laws 1840 (pdf)
    •  The Discovery of the 1840 Petition
    •  The Signers of the 1840 Petition
    •  Willet Street Cemetery 

 

Arnold Berger    August 24, 2017 Revised April 1, 2025 Thanks to Martin Hauserman and Chuck Mocsiran, the former and current Archivists of Cleveland City Council, for their help.