Major Immigrant-era Settlements: Earliest Known Settlement Dates

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The early Jewish settlers (particularly from the influx escaping the problems of eastern Europe) came as small merchants and trades people. Few, if any, worked in Manchester's huge Amoskeag textile mills. The first peddlers became merchants, and the downtown areas of Manchester, Nashua, Dover, Portsmouth. Keene, and Claremont soon had numbers of Jewish entrepreneurs. The early settlers’ children, first generation Americans, became lawyers, physicians, dentists, and teachers.
 

Berlin: In 1915, Beth Israel congregation was founded.
 

Bethlehem: In 1916, Isidor Lusher bought the Alamont Hotel and in 1920, the Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation was founded.
 

Concord: On September 19, 1907, 11 Jewish men met at 16 Water Street in Concord. They called themselves the “Base of Jacob”. Initially they met in individual homes. In February of 1917, ten years after that day in September, Base of Jacob became Temple Beth Jacob.
 

Derry: In 1902, Louis and Bella Lewis became the first permanent Jewish family to settle in the town.
 

Keene: In 1887, a group of about ten Jewish peddlers began holding services every Saturday morning in a clothing store at the head of Central Square. In 1895 Hayman H. Cohen opened a clothing store in

Peterborough, thereby becoming the first Jewish resident in the town.
 

Manchester: In 1862, a minyan had gathered in Manchester to observe the holidays, but there was no further report until 1880, when J. Wolf is listed as the first recorded permanent Jewish resident. In 1891, the Manchester community records listed 21 adult working Jewish men, nine of them heads of families. In 1892, Manchester has their first rabbi, Peter Axel, and the first Jewish wedding was conducted on March 19, 1893 (Rebecca Pines and Samuel Rosenblum).
 

Nashua: In 1895, 15 families originally from Boston moved to Nashua and got together in an effort to "keep a Jewish way of life alive."

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Portsmouth: In the late 1880s, approximately 16 families were living in Portsmouth. In order to conduct religious services, the men would meet at various private homes. In 1910, Temple Israel was founded.
 

Somerworth: On July 3,1849, the Hebrew Society of Somerworth was founded, the first in New Hampshire, and on July 12, 1856, the first Jewish cemetery was established.