From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America
Timeline 1800s

1492-1695 | 1700s | 1800s | 1900s | 2000s

Year	World Events	American Jewish Events	American Events
1800		Jewish population estimated at 2,500 (.04 percent of total population)	Thomas Jefferson is elected president
1802		First Ashkenazic synagogue in America, Rodeph Shalom (Pursuit of Peace), is established in Philadelphia First American Jewish orphan care agency, the Hebrew Orphan Society, is incorporated in Charleston, South Carolina
1803			Louisiana Purchase expands U.S. territory west of the Mississippi River
1804	Napoleon is crowned Emperor of France		Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery begin their journey of exploration
1806	Official end to the Holy Roman Empire		Lewis and Clark return
1807	Napoleon convenes French "Sanhedrin," a council of Jewish notables
1812			Congress declares war on England
1813		Mordecai Manuel Noah is appointed United States Consul at Tunis in North Africa
1814		First American Hebrew Bible is published in Philadelphia by Thomas Dobson, using a text prepared by Jonathan (Jonas) Horwitz	British army attacks Washington and burns the Capitol and the Library of Congress
1815			War of 1812 ends
1817		First Jews settle in Cincinnati
1818	First Jewish Reform movement temple is established in Hamburg, Germany
1819		In Philadelphia, Rebecca Gratz establishes the first independent Jewish women's charitable society, the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society	Florida is purchased from Spain The Savannah becomes the first steamship to cross the Atlantic
1820		Jews from the German lands begin to immigrate to America in substantial numbers
1822
1823		The first American Jewish periodical, The Jew, is published in New York	Monroe Doctrine is publicly declared, announcing that the United States will not tolerate European interference in the Western Hemisphere
1824	Beethoven completes the Ninth Symphony	Isaac Leeser, later to become a leader of the traditional wing of American Jewry, arrives in the United States
1825		Mordecai Manuel Noah founds Ararat, a Jewish city of refuge on Grand Island in the Niagara River near Buffalo, New York Reformed Society of Israelites is established in Charleston	Erie Canal is completed
1826		Maryland Assembly passes the "Jew Bill," removing restrictions that prevented Jews from holding public office
1827	Jewish adolescents become subject to Russian conscription law, with military service beginning as early as age 12 and lasting more than 25 years
1828			Construction of first railroad, Baltimore-Ohio, in the U.S. Noah Webster publishes his American Dictionary of the English Language
1833		Penina Moise's Fancy's Sketch Book, the first book by an American Jewish woman, is published in Charleston, South Carolina
1837		First American Passover Haggadah is published in New York by Solomon Jackson
1838		Rebecca Gratz establishes the first Hebrew Sunday School in Philadelphia
1840	Jews are accused of murdering a Franciscan friar in the Damascus (Syria) blood libel, an ancient slander alleging that Jews murder Christians to obtain blood for Passover or other ritual use	Jewish population reaches 15,000 (.09 percent of total population) Abraham Rice, America's first ordained rabbi, emigrates from Bavaria. First organized movement by American Jewry to protest Damascus blood libel
1843		B'nai B'rith, a national Jewish fraternal organization, is organized in New York The influential monthly periodical, The Occident and Jewish Advocate, edited by Isaac Leeser, appears
1844			Samuel Morse sends first telegraph transmission from Washington to Baltimore, which reads: "What hath God wrought?"
1846	Potato famine in Ireland, through 1849	Isaac Mayer Wise, later a leader of the Reform wing of American Jewry, arrives in the United States A mutual aid society for Jewish women, later known as the United Order of True Sisters, is founded in New York, with lodges in major cities. It becomes the first national Jewish women's organization	U.S.-Mexican War
1848	Political upheaval in Central Europe	Influx of Jews from German lands, spurred by political unrest in central Europe	California Gold Rush begins First women's rights convention in U.S. is held in Seneca Falls, New York
1849		First High Holiday services are held in San Francisco
1852		Washington Hebrew Congregation is established, the first synagogue in the District of Columbia	Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published
1853	Crimean War begins between Russia and the Ottoman Empire	Isaac Leeser publishes his translation of the Bible from the Hebrew into English
1854		Isaac Mayer Wise begins publishing The Israelite
1857		Isaac Mayer Wise introduces his "Minhag America" (American Rite) prayer book, hoping (in vain) that it would be adopted by all of America's Jews	Supreme Court denies citizenship to African Americans
1858	Edgar Mortara, an Italian Jewish child, abducted by Papal Guards, is placed in a monastery, and ultimately becomes a priest
1859	Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection is published	In response to the Mortara Affair, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, American Jewry's first national "defense" organization, is formed
1860		Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall becomes the first Jewish clergyman to deliver a prayer at the opening of a session of the House of Representatives Jewish population: between 125,000200,000 (.40.63 percent of total population)	Abraham Lincoln is elected president
1861	Serfs are emancipated in Russia		Civil War begins
1862		Judah P. Benjamin is appointed Secretary of State of the Confederacy Jacob Frankel is appointed first Jewish chaplain in the United States Army General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11 expelling Jewish civilians from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi
1863			Gettysburg Address President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery
1864	International Red Cross is founded in Geneva, Switzerland Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization
1865	Transatlantic cable is successfully laid		Abraham Lincoln is assassinated Civil War ends
1866			Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee to maintain "white supremacy"
1867	Karl Marx's Das Kapital is published	Isaac Leeser founds Maimonides College in Philadelphia, the first rabbinical school in America	U.S. buys Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million
1869	Suez Canal opens		First transcontinental railroad is completed
1870	Ghetto of Rome, established in 1555, is abolished Franco-Prussian War begins
1871		First Hebrew periodical in America, Ha-Zofeh ba-Eretz ha-Hadashah (The Watchman in the New World) is published in New York
1873		Union of American Hebrew Congregations is founded by 34 congregations across the United States. Although its founders hope that it would embrace all American synagogues, it soon became the Reform Jewish congregational union
1875		Isaac Mayer Wise founds Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, which becomes, the rabbinical seminary of the Reform movement
1876	Abraham Goldfaden establishes the Yiddish theater in Romania	President Ulysses Grant and his cabinet attend the dedication of Washington D.C.'s Adas Israel Hebrew Congregation	Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
1877		Joseph Seligman, a prominent New York banker, is barred as a Jew from registering at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, marking the growth of social anti-Semitism in America New Hampshire grants Jews political equality	Thomas A. Edison invents the phonograph Emile Berliner's invention of the microphone makes the telephone practical and radio possible
1879		The American Hebrew newspaper begins publishing in New York	Thomas A. Edison invents the light bulb
1880		Jewish population: between 230,000-300,000 (.46-.60 percent of total population)
1881	Pogroms (massacres often with government collusion) and anti-Jewish persecution in Russia after assassination of Czar Alexander II and the ascension of his successor, Czar Alexander III	Massive migration of East European (especially Russian) Jews to America begins, impelled by persecution and lack of economic opportunity
1882	Onset of "First Aliyah" (immigration of Jews to Holy Land) in which approximately 25,000 Jews emigrate from Eastern Europe to the Holy Land (through 1903)	First professional Yiddish theater production is staged in New York
1883		A banquet celebrating the first ordination class of the Hebrew Union College features non-kosher (trefa) fare, triggering an uproar, a walk-out by traditional attendees, and a call for a more religiously traditional seminary
1885		Pittsburgh Platform articulates the tenets of American Reform Judaism	The first skyscraper, The Home Insurance Building, is built in Chicago
1886		Etz Chaim (Tree of Life), the first yeshiva for Talmudic studies in the U.S., is established in New York	Statue of Liberty is unveiled in New York harbor
1887		The Jewish Theological Seminary opens in New York
1889	Eiffel Tower is completed in Paris, France	The Hebrew Educational Aid Society, antecedent of the Educational Alliance is founded on the Lower East Side to assist Eastern European Jewish immigrants
1891	Beginnings of wireless telegraphy	Establishment of Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York and the Jewish Colonization Association in Paris to assist emigrants and promote Jewish agricultural settlements
1893		Hannah Greenebaum Solomon establishes the National Council of Jewish Women at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago	World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
1894	Alfred Dreyfus, a French general staff officer, falsely accused of selling secret documents to Germany, is sentenced to life on Devil's Island
1895		Social worker Lillian Wald founds Henry Street Settlement on New York's Lower East Side The American Jewess is published, the first English language periodical for American Jewish women
1896	First modern Olympic games (Athens) Theodore Herzl publishes The Jewish State		Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, issues ruling that "separate but equal" facilities for whites and blacks are constitutional Henry Ford builds his first car
1897	First Zionist Congress is held in Basel, Switzerland Yiddish Socialist Labor party (the Bund) is founded in Russia	The Yiddish language Jewish Daily Forward is founded in New York The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary begins training Orthodox rabbis
1898			Spanish-American War
1899	Aspirin is manufactured