Portland’s
Jewish Cemetery
by Doris Sherrow, March 2000
Just over
the brow of the hill on William Street, 3/10 mile east of the driveway
for the Swedish Lutheran Cemetery, is Portland’s tiny Jewish cemetery.
I attended the ceremony in 1980 when a plaque was put up on the site during
the country’s Bicentennial pondering of its past. The names of those
interred were read to the gathered crowd: "Lillie Zogorskie. Ida
Silterman. [no first name] Hoffman. Rosa Ellis. Bessie Masser.
Samuel Fierberg. Charles Luntz. Samuel Markowitz." Old peoples’
names, I thought. But it bothered me that Hoffman had no first name, so
I went to Portland’s vital records to investigate.
Hoffman, it turned out, was a 1-day-old
baby, dead too soon to be named, born to a Hungarian shoemaker and his
wife. Lillie Zogorskie was three days old; her twin brother "Jo"
had survived. Samuel Markowitz was three months old, and Samuel Fierberg
was fifteen months old, having been born in "Roamania." Charles
Luntz’s death was listed in East Hampton’s vital records: he
was 2½. Rabbi Morris Silverman’s Hartford Jews, 1659-1970
suggests that Rosa Ellis may also have been a baby. Only Ida
Silterman and Bessie Masser were adults; they were young housewives
in their 20s. Bessie left a two-year-old daughter.
This was a cemetery of babies!
The Jewish community of Middletown had been
authorized to use an eastern section of Indian Hill Cemetery since 1879.
Beth Israel cemetery in Hartford had been open since the 1840s; why was
a cemetery established in Portland? As it turns out, there was a small
but thriving Jewish community in Portland in the 1890s.
The plaque at the little cemetery reads,
"Here lie those of Jewish faith who came here from eastern Europe
to seek employment in the Eastern Tinware Co. (organized in 1888) and
to begin a new life. May their souls rest in peace."
Eastern Tinware, located on Freestone Avenue Extension, produced stamped
and enameled tin kitchenware, decorative ware, and "self-righting
cuspidors." It was owned by Joseph Scheider, born in Bohemia
in 1841, and brought to the US when he was 7. By 1900, his occupation,
as listed on the census, was "capitalist." He had purchased
the factory in 1874, and by the 1890s, was New York based, with nine branches
between Portland and St. Louis, Missouri. When he lived in Portland, he
lived in the elegant Erastus Brainerd house, the easternmost of
Elmcrest’s three historic buildings (the one with the cupola) on
Marlborough Street.
The immigration process was harrowing. As
people got off the boats, anyone over the age of two was made to walk,
and all were carefully observed for limps, odd behavior, or signs of mental
retardation, anything which might render the immigrant unable to support
himself. If any of these signs were perceived, a large chalk "X"
was drawn on the person’s coat, and he was held for further examination
and possible deportation. Children ten or older would be deported without
a parent. Many families had to make heart-rending choices: should they
all go back with their disabled child? Should the father stay? Should
he keep one or more of the other children with him?
If they successfully negotiated this process,
there were men like Joseph Scheider, or his agents, or perhaps less scrupulous
men, waiting near the docks to offer employment in their factories. Unless
the immigrants had valuable skills, command of English, and the resources
to set up their own business in America, the factories were their best
option.
Portland’s 1890s Jewish community was
concentrated in the area of Freestone Avenue and High Street, and along
Ingersoll Avenue and Prospect Hill, two long-gone streets which existed
east of High Street and north of Freestone Avenue Extension and the tinware
factory.
On March 13, 1897, Samuel Meirowitz and
Benjamin Enowich purchased the land for the cemetery. Meirowitz had
come from Austria and worked at Eastern Tinware. Enowich had worked at
Eastern Tinware until 1891, when as a "green hand employed on a stamping
press …one day he got his hand under the drop, with the result he
lost two fingers." Thus ran the article in the April 21, 1892 Middletown
Press. It continued, "Since that time Ben has made a precarious living
by peddling notions about town in a basket. He now proposes to collect
[$10,000] from Mr. Scheider or bring suit for the amount. Ben expressed
himself to a Press reporter as in the position of one who was disposed
to be lenient under the circumstances, and thought that $10,000 was a
small sum for the disfigurement to his hand…"
Two days later, the amount had risen to
$20,000: "Ben is left handed and the loss of two fingers on that
hand is looked upon as a greater source of regret than such a catastrophe
would prove to the majority of men. Ben says that if some one does not
kill him in the meantime he proposes to have the money; if he gets the
money he will not peddle any more and if some one kills him, why of course
he won’t have to peddle any more. Ben is considerable of a philosopher
in his way…"
Five years later, Ben was not only still
among the living, but he was well-entrenched enough in the community to
be one of the purchasers of the little cemetery plot. Curiously, none
of his family members, nor Meirowitz’s, were ever buried there. Meirowitz
moved to Derby. Eastern Tinware moved to Middletown in 1902, and the Jewish
community followed. Enowich, who had feared for his life in 1892, survived
until 1918, running a clothing store with Roger Kennedy, and is
buried in the section of Middletown’s Indian Hill Cemetery that was
set off to the Jewish community in 1879.
