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 1840 Petition for a Jewish Section of the City Cemetery

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

The story of this 184-year-old document, discovered in 2017, should be shared far beyond these pages.

     • It is not on public display.    
     • Iits story has not appeared in print.
     • The descendants of its signers don't know about it.

Arnold Berger
Posted August 24, 2017  Revised September 15, 2024

Introduction

The April 1, 1840 Israelitic Society petition to Cleveland City Council for a Jewish section of the city cemetery is our oldest Cleveland Jewish historical document.

Here's the historical background, the petition and the reason why City Council could not accept it.

Historical Background

Early in 1839 there were only a few Jews in Cleveland, notably Simson Thorman from Unsleben, Bavaria. After two years in Missouri, fur trading, 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 they would be engaged.

Following the custom of Jews in Bavarian towns to organize to deal with communal matters. Cleveland's Jews soon formed the Israelitic Society. (Here less than a year, they would have called it the Israelitische Verein.) Thorman, only 28, was its leader. A Jewish burial ground was a high 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.

The text of the petition

To the Hon, The City Council

The undersigned respectfully represent that they are citizens of Cleveland, of German birth, and of that class of persons denominated Jews. That the number of that class now resident in the City of Cleveland is about thirty and will be further augmented by immigration from Germany.

They would further represent that their religious customs do not permit the burial of their dead promiscuously with those of other persuasions, but require them to have separate burial grounds. They have therefore sought in both Cleveland and Ohio City, to obtain by gift or purchase, ground for such purpose but without success - objection being made to the multiplication of burial grounds as injurious to the value of grounds adjacent. It has, however, been kindly suggested by citizens of other persuasions that the City burial ground is extensive and, if requested, the City Council would apart a portion to the Jews.

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.

And your petitioners will ever more pray to Cleveland.

April 1, 1840

      
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.

Learn more on these pages

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


Thanks to Martin Hauserman and Chuck Mocsiran, the former and current Archivists of Cleveland City Council, for their help.
 

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