As a large part of the Jewish immigrants then took to peddling or other forms of trade on a small scale, it was natural for them to disperse over all the states and territories, though, as we shall see farther on, many settled in the larger cities, in which the number of Jews soon rapidly multiplied. The problem of congestion never arose, or could arise, among business people, no matter how small their business might be at the beginning. It arose at a later period of immigration, which brought to our shores large numbers of laborers, both skilled and unskilled, with whom living near their centers of occupation was an economic necessity as well as a convenience. This is why no artificial aid or encouragement was at that time necessary to the scattering of Jewish immigrants over all habitable places, and why many of them became pioneers and early settlers in new communities. The same thing happens now, too, with that small part of the immigrants which still take to trading as their first vocation.
Thus we find in Chicago, the future metropolis of the great Middle West, a Jew by the name of J. Gottlieb, arrived within a year after its incorporation as a town, in 1837. Isaac Ziegler (1808–93), a peddler, came there in 1840; in the same year came also the brothers Benedict (d. 1854) and Nathan Shubert and P. Newburg, tailors. The last named became a tobacco dealer and later removed to Cincinnati. Benedict Shubert became a leading merchant tailor and built the first brick house in Chicago, on Lake street, where he carried on his business for a number of years. About twenty Jews from Germany, including Jacob Rosenberg (d. 1900) and the brothers Julius, Abraham (b. in Bavaria, 1819; d. in Chicago, 1871) and Moses Kohn, came to Chicago between 1840 and 1844, and about as many in the following three years. A “Jewish Burial Ground Society,” of which Isaac Wormser was president, was organized in 1845, and bought from the city one acre of ground on the north side (now within the confines of Lincoln Park) for a cemetery. It was abandoned in 1857, when it was already within the city limits.
The first religious services were held in a private room above a store on Wells street (now Fifth Avenue) on Yom Kippur of the same year, Philip Newburg and Mayer Klein officiating as readers. Only an exact minyan or ten men attended those services, which had to be discontinued whenever one left the room. The second services, with about the same number of attendants, were held on Yom Kippur, 1846, also in a private room, above the dry goods store of Rosenfeld & Rosenberg, 155 Lake street, Philip Newburg and Abraham Kohn officiating. A scroll of the Torah which the brothers Kohn had brought with them from Germany was used on both occasions.
The “Kehillah Anshe Maarab” was organized with about twenty members in 1847. L. M. Leopold (b. in Würtemberg, 1821; d. in New York, 1889) was the first president, and Rev. Ignatz Kunreuther (1811–84) was elected rabbi, shochet and reader. He held the position six years, when he retired to private life, and later engaged in the real estate and loan business. The first synagogue, which was built on Clark street, between Adams and Quincy streets (where the new post office now stands), was dedicated Friday, June 13, 1851. Rev. Liebman Adler (b. in Saxe-Weimar, 1812; a. 1854: d. in Chicago, 1892), father of the prominent architect, Dankmar Adler (1844–1900), was the second rabbi of the congregation, and held the position for more than twenty years. The Hebrew Benevolent Society was organized in 1851 and is still in existence. The second congregation, under the name “B’nai Sholom,” consisting mostly of natives of Prussian-Poland, was established in 1852. The “Jüdische Reformverein,” which subsequently led to the organization of the Sinai Congregation, was organized in 1858, with Leopold Mayer as president and Dr. Bernhard Felsenthal (b. in Germany, 1822; d. in Chicago, Jan. 12, 1908) as secretary. The Hebrew Relief Association, which later built the Michael Reese Hospital, the first Jewish hospital in Chicago, was instituted in 1859. Henry Greenebaum (b. in Germany, 1833) was its first president. Isaac Greensfelder became treasurer, and Edward S. Salomon, who afterwards served with distinction in the Civil War, was brevetted to the rank of Brigadier-General, and later served for four years as Governor of Washington Territory (1871–74), was its first secretary. Salomon was elected Clerk of Cook County in 1861.[30]
The oldest Jewish congregation in Illinois outside of Chicago is that of Peoria, surnamed Anshe Emet, which was organized in 1860.
In the neighboring State of Indiana, which was admitted to the Union in 1816, Jews began to settle about the same time as in Illinois, and there are four communities which date back to the period before the Civil War. The oldest Jewish congregation in the state is the Achdut we-Sholom of Fort Wayne, which was instituted in 1848. The Congregation Ahawat Achim of Lafayette is but one year younger, while the congregation of Evansville dates from about the same time. The first Jewish settlers in Indianapolis, the capital, which now had the largest community, were Moses Woolf, and Alexander and Daniel Franco, who came there from England in 1849. A family of Hungarian Jews named Knefler arrived soon afterwards. Adolph Rosenthal and Dr. J. M. Rosenthal came in 1854, and Herman Bamberger, who later became a leading merchant, arrived in 1855. The first congregation was organized in 1856, but more than a decade passed until it was housed in its own building.
Jewish immigrants also soon penetrated west of Illinois, into that part of the Louisiana Purchase which was organized as the Iowa Territory in 1838. Its pioneer Jew was Alexander Levi (b. in France, 1809) who arrived to this country in 1833 and kept a store in Dubuque in 1836. He was the first foreigner to be naturalized in Iowa, and was a justice of the peace in 1846. A Mr. Samuel Jacobs was surveyor of Jefferson County in 1840, and Nathan Louis and Solomon Fine are mentioned as peddlers in Fort Madison in 1841. They settled in Keokuk and later in McGregor, both of which places had a number of Jews in those early days. It is stated (see Glazer, The Jews of Iowa, Des Moines, 1905) that about one hundred Jewish peddlers arrived in Iowa in the decade following its admission as a state (1846). Burlington and Keokuk were the centers for peddlers, who were mostly from Poland and Russia, while most of the German Jews preferred Davenport, which was largely settled by Germans. According to the above-mentioned authority, the first minyan was held in Keokuk in 1855, on Passover, and in that year the Jews of that place organized a society which later became the Congregation B’nai Israel. In Davenport a congregation having the same name was organized in 1861, which is still in existence. Among those who participated in public affairs was William Krouse (b. about 1823), who arrived in Iowa in 1843, and furthered the movement to remove the capital from Iowa City to Fort Des Moines, where he resided. He was the founder and one of the directors of the first public school in that city. His brother Robert was one of the earliest settlers of Davenport. Farther to the north, there were only individual Jewish traders in Minnesota before the Civil War, and the three brothers Samuels, from England, who had an Indian trading post at Taylor Falls, on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River, seem to have been the first Jewish settlers in that state. Morris Samuels, a captain in the Union army, was one of them. Isaac Marks, who resided in Mankato about that time, had a trading post near that place. About 1857 some Jews came to St. Paul and engaged in general business, which likewise consisted mostly in trading with the Indians. But there was no communal organization there or in any other part of the state until about fifteen years afterwards.
There is a record of one Jew who resided in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as early as 1792. His name was Jacob Franks (see “Publications,” IX, p. 151, ff.). But we know little of other Jews there prior to the time of its admission to the Union in 1848. Shortly afterward the Congregation Bene Yeshurun was organized in Milwaukee by Löbl Rindskopf, Leopold Newbauer, Emanuel Silverman and others. Alexander Lasker and Marcus Heiman were its first cantors, in the order named. Isidor Kalish, M. Folk, Elias Epstein and Emanuel Gerechter later succeeded one another as rabbis.
Still farther to the north, Michigan, which became a state eleven years before Wisconsin, received its first Jewish settlers about the same time. About a dozen families of Bavarian Jews settled in Detroit in 1848. According to an account written by Dr. Leo M. Franklin (b. in Cambridge City, Ind., 1870; rabbi of Temple Bet El, Detroit, since 1899), it was due to Isaac Cozens, and more especially to his wife, Sophie, with whom he arrived in Detroit from New York about 1850, that the Bet El Society was established in that year. In April, 1851, steps were taken to incorporate the congregation by “the undersigned Israelites of the City of Detroit for the purpose of forming a society to provide themselves a place of public worship, teachers of their religion and a burial ground, and give such society the name of Congregation ‘Bet El’.” The signatures attached to the petition for incorporation are those of Jacob Silberman, Solomon Bendit (d. in St. Clair, Mich., 1902), Joseph Friedman, Max Cohen, Adam Hirsch, Alex. Hein, Jacob Long, Aaron Joel Friedlander, Louis Bresler and C. F. Bresler; an exact minyan, or the minimum number, required for the formation of a synagogue. Like most congregations of that period, Bet El was Orthodox in its ritual, but it was not long before the Reform spirit began to create divisions in the community. In 1861 a large number of the members withdrew because of the introduction of an organ and a mixed choir into the synagogue, and they formed the Congregation Shaare Zedek, of which Rev. A. M. Hershman is now the rabbi. The first rabbi of Congregation Bet El was Rev. Samuel Marcus, and he was followed by a number of well known rabbis, including Liebman Adler, Isidor Kalish, Kaufman Kohler, Henry Zirndorf and Louis Grossman.
A large number of Jews crossed the continent or came by boats from various parts of the world, along with the heavy tide of travel towards the Pacific Coast, when the discoveries of gold in California in 1849 began to attract great multitudes. There was a minyan in San Francisco on Yom Kippur of that year in a tent owned by Louis Franklin. Among those who participated were H. Joseph and Joel Noah, a brother of Mordecai M. Noah. The organization of the Jewish community was completed between July and October of the following year, when two congregations came into existence about the same time. The Shearit Israel congregation, which comprised the Polish and English elements, was organized in August, 1850, under the leadership of Israel Solomons. The Germans and Americans united in the Congregation Emanuel, the name of whose president, Emanuel M. Berg, is signed on a contract dated September 1, 1850, for the renting of a room on Bush street, below Montgomery, as a place of worship. About a dozen “mining congregations” sprang up in as many different places in California in the following ten years; Sonora had a Hebrew Benevolent Society as early as 1851; Stockton, a Congregation Re’im Ahubim in 1853. In Los Angeles the founding of a benevolent society was brought about by Carvalho, a Sephardic Jew, who was a member of General Fremont’s expedition. Religious services were held there in 1852. In Nevada City a Hebrew Society was organized in 1855, which numbered twenty members about two years later. In Jackson a congregation was organized for the autumn holidays in 1856, and it erected the first synagogue in the mining districts. The building still stands, but it is used for other purposes, as the Jews have left the place long ago. Fiddletown, Grass Valley, Shasta, Folsom, Marysville and Jesu Maria all had temporary congregations which did not long survive the “gold fever.” (See “Jewish Encyclopedia,” s. v., California.) Sacramento is the only place in the state outside of San Francisco which has Jewish organizations—a congregation and two societies, which originated in this period.