Frontier Jews of Indiana
The first Jews attached to what is now Indiana were not settlers, but rather land speculators and developers. Many land development companies in the eastern states with Jewish investors and partners. These investors, however, rarely if ever made a trek out to the land they invested in and no record of them in Indiana exists.
John Jacob Hays is believed to the be first Jew to settle in what is now Indiana when it was still part of Indiana territory (which stretched from near Cincinnati to the boundary waters in modern-day Minnesota). Hays lived in Cahokia (now part of the St. Louis metropolitan area) from 1814-1822 before moving to Fort Wayne to serve as an Indian Agent.
Though Hays was the first recorded Jew in the Indiana Territory, the first Jew to settle in what constitutes the present boundaries of Indiana was Samuel Judah, the son of a prominent Canadian Jewish family. Judah arrived in Vincennes in 1818, four years before Hays moved to Fort Wayne.
Arrival of German Migrants
The first Jewish communities in Indiana developed as part of the wave of German Jewish immigration in the 19th century. Due to the flow of American migration down the Ohio River, most of the earliest Jewish communities in Indiana developed in the southern parts of the state. Jewish families began settling in Evansville in the 1830s and in Vincennes by the 1840s. Though the earliest communities were in the southern portion of the state, the largest Jewish communities like Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, and Lafayette were further north.
Despite this, southern Indiana was home to a number of prominent figures in American Jewish life.
