Jewish Orphans’ Home

In the 1840s and 1850s, yellow fever epidemics resulted in many children being orphaned. Thus, in 1855 the Jewish community of New Orleans organized the “Jewish Orphans’ Home,” as a part of the Hebrew Benevolent Society. Men seemed to have led the group and women were rarely mentioned in official minutes.

At right, however, two nineteenth century images allow a glimpse of the women volunteers who managed the “domestic economy” of the Jewish Orphans’ Home, supporting the hired matrons (also women) who cared for and were responsible for the welfare of the children living there. The images come from A Century of Progress in Child Care, a Jewish Orphans’ Home publication from 1955. By the turn of the twentieth century, once the youngsters in the Home were school age, they attended the Isidore Newman Manual Training School—later, Isidore Newman School—originally founded to educate them so that they could become useful and productive local citizens.

For a listing of their names, and possible first and maiden names, click here.

For yet more on the Home, see the forthcoming (2019) book by Marlene Trestman, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: New Orleans’s Jewish Orphans Home, 1855-1946.