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478 Baltic

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Baltimore

The commercial affairs of the Baltic Jews were long governed by "kahals," who were abolished sia.

June

While the legal status of the Jews of 5, 1893. the Baltic Provinces has varied under different rulers, they are not included in the list of governments issued by Russia in 1890, but belong to the Pale of Settlement. Jews from other governments have no right to live there. In Courland as well as in Shlock, only those have the right of permanent settlement who were registered in the census of April From among the Jews of Shlock, only 25, 1835. those may permanently reside in Riga (Livonia) who actually lived there before Dec. 29, 1841. Among the Slavonic inhabitants of the empire, the Baltic Jews are treated with more toleration than the others, as they have generally passed as Germans in the interior of Russia. large number are artisans, and when Emperor Nicholas I. issued the order, April 13, 1835, permitting his Jewish subjects to join the peasant class in New Russia in agricultural colonies, the first who sought to be colonized were seventy families from Courland. The Jews of the Baltic Provinces are fond of emigrating, and are occupied as artisans, teachers, clerks, bookkeepers, and small traders all over the world. In the United States alone, according to the " Courlander Vereine," and congregations, there are probably about 25,000 Jews from the Baltic Provinces, and about 10,000 of that number live in Greater New York and

A

vicinity.

From

the Church statutes of the archbishop Henit is evident that Jews lived at that time in the Baltic Provinces as But they did not settle there occasional traders. permanently until the adoption of Courland by Poland in 1561. Even later they were without clearly defined privileges, with the exception of the district of Pilten and the town of Hascnpot, where they enjoyed the rights of citizens. On the annexation of the " Inflandt " territory by Russia under Peter the Great, no reference was made to the Jews; but under Anna Ivanovna the deputies of the Livonian nobility complained of the influx of foreigners to the senate, and especially of Lithuanian and Cour-

ning of Riga for the year 1428,

land Jews. For a detailed history of the Jews in the separate governments of the Baltic Provinces, see Couui.and,

Riga, Mitau. Bibliography: Mysh, Rukovaditvo k Russkim Zaknnam o Yevreyakh, 2d ed„ pp. 21, 57, 1.J5, 214, 216, 221, St. Petersburg, 1898 Anutchin, in Eutziklopedieheski Slnvar, xxvii. 133 Orshanski, Ru^kite ZakonodateMvo o Yevreyakh, pp. 374-385, Si. Petersburg, 1877 A. Pumpyanski, Yevrei Llfiyandskoi i Kurlyandakoi Guhemi.U in Yevrehskiya Zapiaki, 1881, pp. 1-ti Vaxkhnd, 1885, pp. 2, 3, 7, 8 Rizhski, Vyestnik, 1886, Nos. 224, 232; Weissenberg, Die Slld-Rusxixchen Ju;









den, 1895, paxsim; Blecnmann, Ein Beitrau zur Anthrnpologie der Juden, p. 47, passim, Dorpat, 1882 Wunderbar, Geschichte der Juden in Liv.- und Kurland, Mitau, 1851.

h.r.

M. Ro.

BALTIMORE

Port of entry and principal city of the state of Maryland, situated on an estuary of the Patapsco river about 12 miles from Chesapeake bay. It can not be determined when Jews first settled in There were none among the buyers of Baltimore. lots when Baltimore Town was laid out in 1729-30

but as Jews are known to have been resident

in

Mary-

478

land in the middle of the seventeenth century (see America), it is not hazardous to suppose that the quickly growing town attracted some of their descendants early in its history. Family traditions, not yet verified, seem to point to the presence of Jews in Baltimore in the middle of the eighteenth century. In his " The Hebrews in America " (p. 93), Isaac Markens mentions Jacob Myers as the earliest Jew in Baltimore, probably basing his assertion upon the following passage from Griffith's "Annals of Baltimore" (1824), p. 37: "In 1758 Mr. Jacob Myers took the southeast corner of Gay and Baltimore streets and built an inn. " There is reason to " The believe, however, that Myers was not a Jew. Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser " the the first isearliest paper published in Baltimore sue of which appeared in 1773, shows by its advertisements for that year that Jews were then settled

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