Jewish Farmers in Connecticut
Recently I caught a very interesting episode on the History Detectives which I watch on a regular basis. One of the reasons that the show is appealing to me is that the history detectives frequently use libraries and librarians in their investigations.
This particular investigation was of a farmhouse in East Haddam, CT. The current owner knew something of the prior history of the farmhouse and was wondering why it had changed hands so frequently around the turn of the 20th century. The names that were associated with the frequent turnovers were Eastern European or Russian. The investigator uncovered the fact that there was a program to aid Jewish immigrants to move from New York City into the New England countryside and become farmers. The mortgages for the East Haddam property came from the Baron de Hirsch Fund and the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society. Baron de Hirsch was a Jewish philanthropist who wanted to help Eastern European Jewish immigrants become established in their new home. In Connecticut "yankee farmers" were selling their farms and moving west or taking factory jobs in the cities. Individual Jewish farmers owned land throughout New England . But the greatest number was located in Connecticut. But the land had been used hard for over 200 years which helps to explain the rapid turnover . The Hirsch Fund and the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society tried to help the farmers by producing a newpaper in Yiddish called The Jewish Farmer which was the first Yiddish agricultural magazine in the world and produced in Connecticut.