INTRODUCTION |
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Early in 1839 there were only a few Jews in Cleveland, notably Simson Thorman from Unsleben, Bavaria. On July 12, 1839, when the ship Howard arrived in New York with 19 from his home town, Thorman met them and led 15 of them to Cleveland. They formed the Israelitic Society, with Thorman, then only 28 years old, as its leader. On April 1, 1840, when there were perhaps 30 Jews in a city of 6,000. they petitioned City Council for a half-acre section of the city's Erie Street Cemetery. It was an unusual request, for Jewish custom is for separate cemeteries. Perhaps they knew of the plan to expand the cemetery, opened in 1826, from two acres to ten. They lived nearby in what we now call the Gateway area. For 177 years the petition was safe but unnoticed in
the Archives of Cleveland City Council. Then on the morning of August 1, 2017
Archivist Martin Hauserman sent an email to me and to
Jeffrey Morris, with the two images below. Now, to tell
the story of that petition which might be summarized as
petition failed. community thrived. |
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To read the text of this handwritten petition, click here. |
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The above
web-resolution images are displayed
with permission of the Clerk of Cleveland City Council.
THE TEXT OF THE PETITION |
To the Hon, The
City Council
The
undersigned venture therefore to pray Your Honorable Body to
take the subject into consideration and if consistent to
apportion and set apart one half acre of the City
burial ground to be used by the Jews of this city and
vicinity, as burial ground, in accordance with their
religious customs. |
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WHY DID CITY COUNCIL REJECT THE PETITION? |
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To understand the rejection of the petition it helps to know that at the time of the petition only two of Erie Street Cemetery's ten acres had been laid out into burial plots. Though most family plots may have been nearly empty, there were few new plots for sale. The city code for its cemetery reflected the shortage of plots. The largest plots for sale had room for only six graves, at $2.50 each. Further, the law limited one person or family to buying only one plot. Thus, City Council could not grant the petition. There was no provision for selling a half-acre section. Perhaps the petitioners knew that eight unused acres of Erie Street Cemetery would soon be divided into burial plots. They may have thought their request was well timed. |
Yet City Council, an elected body, could not grant this request without inviting the established churches and societies to make their own requests for space. Council may have thought that the size of the request was unreasonable: 30 immigrants asking for room to bury 500 of their persuasion. How could they allot so much space to a small group? Further, how could 30 newcomers, some of them peddlers, pay more than $1,000 for burial plots? Was there a reluctance to have Jews buried there? Note that the cemetery entrance (see photo at the top of this page) built in 1870 had a cross at its top. Would City Council members have explained this by quoting the petition, "Jews must have separate burial grounds?" |
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AFTER THE PETITION WAS REJECTED |
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