Trying to keep kosher on Cape Ann many years ago
Photos at the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass.
(Left) Belmont Hotel, c. 1890s. Photograph by Walter Gardner. (Right) Belmont Clothing House, 1881. Photograph by Corliss and Ryan. Both were Jewish-owned.
The museum relates:
“As early as the 1860s, Jews have been a part of Cape Ann’s diverse economy. One of the first Jewish residents of Gloucester, Samuel H. Emanuel, started the S.H. Emanuel & Co Millinery Shop in 1868 after he and his wife, Delia, immigrated from Germany. Another early resident, Solomon Hochberger, opened a dry-goods shop in Lanesville in 1875. Hochberger later started a junk business with fellow Jewish resident David Heineman in 1887. Jews from the waves of Jewish immigration … made their living as peddlers, tailors and cobblers as well as owners of dry-goods shops, junk businesses, bakeries, grocery stores, clothing stores, hotels and summer camps. Many of these businesses, such as Harry Goldman’s clothing store (est. 1896), Joseph Bloomberg’s clothing store (est. around 1900), Louis and Leah Pett’s grocery store (est. mid 1920s), Bennie Schred’s Star Remnant Store (est. 1909), Samuel Feldman’s grocery store (est. late 1920s), and Bob Kramer’s haberdashery (est. 1948) became fixtures of the Jewish community. Jewish-owned bakeries, grocery stores, and restaurants were especially important when it came to Jews trying to keep kosher on Cape Ann. Unlike larger Jewish communities on the North Shore that were closer to Boston, access to kosher meat was difficult. Feldman’s grocery store was one of the few places on Cape Ann where Jews could find kosher meat”.