Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Mission, Vision, Values
    • FAQs
    • Officers, Board, and Staff
    • Affiliations
    • Rules & Regulations
    • Cincinnati’s Jewish History
    • 200th Booklet
  • Products & Services
    • Monuments & Markers
    • Pre-Arrangements
    • Other Services
  • Our Cemeteries
    • Loveland Cemetery
    • Walnut Hills Cemetery
    • Montgomery Cemetery
    • Hamilton Cemetery
    • Price Hill Cemeteries
    • Covedale Cemeteries
    • Clifton Cemetery
    • Chestnut Street Cemetery (1821-1849)
  • Genealogy
  • Programs
    • Preserving Your Family History through Storytelling
    • Jewish Cemetery Tours
    • Customs and Traditions of Mourning
    • Genealogy
  • Donate
    • Friends Campaign
    • Legacy Gifts / CYJL / Guardians Legacy Society
  • Newsletters
    • Current
    • Archives
      • October 2021
      • June 2020
      • March 2020
      • November 2019
      • July 2019
      • March 2019
      • December 2018
      • August 2018
      • May 2018
      • February 2018
      • December 2016
      • April 2016
      • July 2016
      • December 2015
      • September 2015
      • June 2015
      • February 2015
      • November 2013
      • July 2013
      • March 2013
      • December 2012
    • Directory
  • Contact
Home / Chestnut St. Cemetery History

Chestnut St. Cemetery History

JCGC imagesIt’s a small town . . . with a population of just 9,642 people. It’s a pretty rough-and-tumble place, made up mostly of people who wanted to get away from the big population centers. They were willing to come to a place where most people were farmers, although both a merchant class and an intelligentsia were beginning to emerge by 1821.

It was an accepting community, which even tolerated six men of Jewish persuasion. Of course, it wasn’t possible to live a traditional Jewish existence in such a place, where Saturdays were the big market days, and there weren’t enough people to form a minyan.

Benjamin Lieb – or perhaps it was Laib or Lape – was in his 70s, and not doing well. He called Morris Moses and Joseph Jonas to visit him, and explained that he expected to die soon. He had married and lived his adult life as a Baptist, he told them. . . but his wife had preceded him in death, and his daughters had moved away. He wanted to be buried as a Jew, according to the traditions of his family in the old country, and he wanted to buy a grave in the Jewish Cemetery.

JCGC imagesBut there was a problem: the thriving little city of Cincinnati, on the far Western U.S. frontier, with only six Jewish men, didn’t have a Jewish cemetery. It didn’t even have a synagogue.

Jonas and Moses realized that they, too, would die someday, and they went to the largest landowner in the area, Nicholas Longworth, and negotiated the purchase for $75.00 of a 25 x 50 foot plot way out on the western edge of the community, on what later became Chestnut Street, 75 feet from the corner of what later became Central Avenue.

A few years later, they bought two more 25-foot lots, and Chestnut Street Cemetery – later called The Old Jewish Cemetery – became the first Jewish burial ground west of the Allegheny Mountains.

JCGC imagesThe same English immigrants, Joseph Jonas and Morris Moses, who bought the land for the cemetery, were among the small group of Jews who, in 1828 — seven years after the cemetery was created — formed Kehal Kodesh Bene Israel – the Holy Congregation of the Children of Israel – the first Jewish congregation west of the Alleghenies. K.K. Bene Israel today is known as Rockdale Temple.

By 1850, the population of Cincinnati had grown to more than 115,000 people, and Cincinnati was competing with San Fransisco to be the second largest Jewish Community in the nation. Cincinnati fell victim to a terrible cholera epidemic which caused thousands of deaths from 1847 to 1850, and as a result, Chestnut Street became filled. Between 1821 and 1849, when the last burial took place, some 85 Jews were laid to rest there.

As we look at it now, a brick wall surrounds two sides and part of a third side, and across the front is a chain-link fence that is actually owned by the City of Cincinnati. The brick wall was erected around 1873, and is not in good condition. The cemetery has a gate which is kept locked (the only one of JCGC’s cemeteries that is locked). Any one wishing to visit the cemetery may request the key from the JCGC office, and as the cemetery is very small, you can see it very well through the fence without being on the grounds.

  •  

    Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial
    Facebook   DONATE FIND A GRAVE

     

  • News & Info

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati

    2 weeks ago

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati
    Reminder for this morning ... See MoreSee Less

    Photo

    View on Facebook
    · Share

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati

    2 weeks ago

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati
    Please join JCGC and B'nai B'rith of Greater Cincinnati in honoring our Jewish Veterans this Sunday at the Covedale Cemeteries ... See MoreSee Less

    Photo

    View on Facebook
    · Share

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati

    2 weeks ago

    Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati
    JCGC was honored to have Edie serve as our 2023 HUC Fellow this year. Mazel Tov Edie!Honoring our newest Rabbis, class of 2023/5783:Rabbis: Rebecca Benoff, Anna Meyers-Burke, Matthew Derrenbacher, Ashley Englander, Remy Liverman, Benjamin Rosen, & Edie Yakutis. Mazel Tov! ... See MoreSee Less

    Photo

    View on Facebook
    · Share

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Quick Links

  • American Israelite Newspaper
  • Weil Kahn Funeral Home
  • Genealogy Database
Mail icon
Subscribe to our mailing list

Join our mailing list to get newsletters delivered to your email inbox.

Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati
3400 Montgomery Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45207
513-961-0178

©2023 • Site Map