Come to our Annual Meeting on Nov. 23 · more info >
The following article is from a monograph written for the Jewish Historical Society of the North Shore in 1982 by Stephen G. Mostov, Ph.D.
The Jewish community of Lynn in 1885 was remarkable only for its lack of development. There had been Jews in America for over two hundred years, and by 1880 the national Jewish population exceeded 230,000. Yet no more than twenty-five families had ever found their way to Lynn. Lynn’s “first” permanent Jewish resident — a Russian immigrant named Simon J. Weinberg — settled in 1855, and opened a dry goods store. Weinberg was later joined by a nephew and brother-in-law. A few other Jews filtered into Lynn during the 1870s and early 1880s, so that by 1885 the total Jewish population was about fifty.
Solomon Wysanski, nephew of Simon J. Weinberg, stands in front of his dry goods store on Market Street in Lynn, c. 1870.
Few Jews settled in Lynn or other New England towns prior to 1885 for the same reasons that most other European immigrants also stayed away. Either Jews settled in Boston to be part of its large, insular Jewish community — where they felt comfortable socially and religiously, and could find work through friends and relatives — or they headed westward in search of greater economic opportunities. In the first systematic survey of the nation’s Jewish population, taken in 1876, it was estimated that there were 7,000 Jews living in Boston, but only 1,500 in the rest of Massachusetts. This contrasted with larger Jewish populations in states such as Ohio, Illinois, and even California, which were considerably farther away from the immigrants’ ports of entry.
Jewish immigration to America in the mid-nineteenth century was primarily from the German speaking lands of Central Europe. The Jews who were coming were mostly young and ambitious, but had virtually no money. Most of the men had previously worked as petty merchants, traders, or artisans, and once they arrived sought to continue in the same types of trades. Many began as peddlers or tailors, or in other petty trades not requiring more than a few dollars investment. Most aspired to be settled merchants, and worked towards attaining that status. A large number of them remained and prospered in the large Eastern cities where they landed — especially New York — but many others moved to the rapidly growing cities of the West, such as Cincinnati and Chicago.
During the 1976 American Bicentennial, the Jewish Historical Society of the North Shore was founded as a non-profit volunteer organization. Its purposes are:
We are funded in part by the Jewish Federation of the North Shore.
