The first Jew
known to have settled in Hagerstown, and arguably the most
colorful personality in Hagerstown's Jewish history, was Levy Andrew Levy,
a conveyancer
and former Indian trader who resided here with his wife and children
from 1785 until shortly
before 1800.
A continual Jewish presence in Hagerstown, however, began with the
immigration of German Jews in the late
1830's only. Probably the
first
Jewish couple to settle in Hagerstown were Gerson and Sarah Levi in
1839. By 1850 the Jewish population of Hagerstown was the largest in
the area - no more than about 50 people in a town of 4000 inhabitants.
In 1855
an American Jewish journal, the Occident
and American Jewish Advocate, lists Hagerstown as one of the few
places in Maryland with "many Israelites", a description that is
indicative of the sparsity of Jewish population at that time.
The Jewish families of mid-19th century Hagerstown were closely
bound
together by kinship. While there was no formally organized community,
Jewish services were
held off and on at the Presbyterian church on S. Potomac Street, which
was rented for these occasions. Gerson Levi and his brother, Solomon
Loeb Levi of Clear Spring, Md., both having received rabbinical
training in
their home country, officiated at services and other religious
ceremonies. Meetings of the Benevolent Society, which administered the
Jewish cemetery of Chambersburg, were often
convoked in Hagerstown, and sometimes during a holiday season, so that
Jewish holiday services drew worshippers from a wider area.
Although never numerous, Jewish-owned stores were highly visible in
mid-19th century Hagerstown. In 1864 Hagerstown's merchants were hit
hard by the
Confederate occupation, and Jewish storekeepers seem to have suffered
more than others. In the course of that year Gerson Levi
and his
relatives
and competitors in town, his brother Abraham Levi,
his brother-in-law Nathan Kahn, Seligman Dettelbach,
and Raphael Drifuse all declared they
were about
to
close their businesses. In the post-Civil War years Marks Hirsh
Fellheimer was the last prominent German Jewish businessman of
Hagerstown.
Almost all Hagerstown Jewish families of the German Jewish era belonged
to the Benevolent
Society. Their dead were buried in Chambersburg, as a Jewish cemetery
did not
exist in Hagerstown before 1894.
By the close of the 19th century none of the German Jewish families
remained. Their place was taken, and a new chapter in Hagerstown's
Jewish history was opened, by Russian Jewish immigrants who had
arrived since the 1880's. Congregation
B'nai Abraham was founded in 1892. There were 209 Jews in
Hagerstown in 1902. Some parts of town, like certain sections of South
Mulberry Street, were even "heavily Jewish" at that time.
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The
1850
census lists these Jewish families and individuals in Hagerstown:
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