Cleveland's Jewish Cemeteries

Willet Street Cemetery Fir Street Cemetery Mayfield Cemetery

We plan to report on only a few of our oldest cemeteries. For lists of Jewish cemeteries, see the Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland website and the Life Cycle section of The Source, a Cleveland Jewish News publication.

Willet Street Cemetery - 1840 1,500+ burials

Willet Street Cemetery was Cleveland's first Jewish cemetery. In 1840 the Israelitic Society (soon to become Anshe Chesed) bought for $100 from Josiah Barber an acre on Cleveland's near west side (then Ohio City), today just north of I-90, where Fulton Road (the new name of Willet Street) and Monroe Avenue intersect. View deed.

They had tried to buy land in the Erie (East 9th) Street Cemetery, in walking distance of the Jewish community, but were turned down by City Council. more (ECH) ... (For an example of community acceptance just a few years later, see our Great Gift page.)

In 1850 Tifereth Israel bought a 1/2 acre next to the Anshe Chesed land. Both cemeteries are now owned and maintained by United Jewish Cemeteries, which also owns Mayfield Cemetery.

Fir Street Cemetery - ca 1865 850 burials

Fir Street Cemetery at Fir Avenue and West 61st Street on Cleveland's West side, is the city's second oldest Jewish cemetery.

Oldest grave: 1865 Last burial 1969 0.9 acres

The cemetery has three sections:
   ● east (near West 58th) Heights Jewish Center
   ● center Hungarian Aid Society
   ● west (near West 61st) Anshe Emeth (Park Synagogue)

Graves include Herman Sampliner (1835-1899) the founder of B'nai Jeshurun Congregation and Harry Bernstein, (1856-1920) ward boss and councilman.

For a 2010 Plain Dealer story on how neighborhood groups have helped to restore this cemetery, click here.

Mayfield Cemetery - 1887 10,500 burials

In this Google Satellite View ® of Mayfield Cemetery in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, north is at the left, east at the top. Coventry Road, which runs north-south, is at the top. Mayfield Road, which runs east-north-east, is in the upper right. The Abba Hillel Silver plot is in the southwest (lower right) corner, marked on this image by a small gold circle.

In 1887 Tifereth Israel (today The Temple - Tifereth Israel) was on Huron Road and East 6th and their cemetery was just 1/2 acre, next to the Willet Street Cemetery (above). But a trend as old as Cleveland - the better-established residents moving east to newer housing - was accelerating as immigrants poured in to the low cost housing in the old neighborhoods. Tifereth Israel would soon buy land for a new synagogue on Willson Avenue (East 55th). Looking far ahead, they secured 20 acres of land for a cemetery on Mayfield Road, a mile beyond the city's eastern border. It was part of Lake View Cemetery that had been founded in 1869 by some of Cleveland's leading families and had nearly 200 acres, running from Euclid Avenue to Mayfield Road. It was a natural "fit" as sales were slow at Lake View, which was seen then as a place where only the wealthy were buried.

We show below a segment of an 1898 map of East Cleveland Township, showing Lake View Cemetery and its Jewish section, where Mayfield Cemetery is today. As no deeds can be found 1880 - 1890 for this land, we conclude that Lake View Cemetery sold the rights to the section, but continued to own the land. (We believe that this is how a congregation obtains a section of an existing cemetery; the land is not actually sold.)

From an 1898 map of East Cleveland Township Cleveland Public Library Digital Collection

The property was then in East Cleveland Township. (The hamlet of Cleveland Heights was created in 1901, incorporated as a village in 1903, and as a city in 1921.) Three years later Anshe Chesed (today Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple), then on Scovill Avenue at East 25th, joined in control of the Mayfield Cemetery through United Jewish Cemeteries. This joint control continues today.

For many years a funeral streetcar would bring mourners and the casket up Mayfield Road to the cemeteries and after the funeral, take the mourners back to town.

As Mayfield Cemetery was developed, some families reinterred their relatives there from Willet Street Cemetery. One example: Simpson Thorman, Cleveland's first Jewish settler. Originally open to nonmembers, the cemetery rules changed in 1928, limiting burials to members of these two Reform congregations.

Why this restriction and why in 1928?

History tells us that in 1890 the two congregations had a total membership of less than 400 families. But the great wave of immigration (1880-1924) would cause Cleveland's Jewish population to soar - from 3,500 in 1880 to 85,000 in 1925. Many new congregations, first Orthodox, then Conservative, would form. Yet for 97 years (1851 - 1947) no new Reform congregations would be started!

By the mid-1920s the congregations - Silver's and Brickner's as many called them - were among the nation's largest, with a combined membership of more than 4,000 families. From this we infer that while in the early years the cemetery's 20 acres would have been seen as more space than they would ever need, by 1928 it was regarded as not having enough room for nonmembers.

Online collection of nearly 800 images by Wendy Lang of Mayfield Cemetery monuments - grave markers.

Visit the Mayfield Cemetery (United Jewish Cemeteries) website.
More about the great wave of Jewish immigration
Cleveland's old synagogues
Lake View Cemetery in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History; the Lake View Cemetery website
1892 J H Beers Atlas of Cuyahoga County in the Cleveland Public Library Digital Collection

Credits: Willet Street Cemetery photos: Nate Arnold June 2010 ● Streetcar page: Pat Corrigan

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