Constitution der Israelitischen Fraueun Unterstuetzungs-Gesellschaft von Paducah, KY.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Bloch

Cincinnati

1870

Text in German. With list of the 16 founding female members.

Singerman 2232.

An uncommonly early American Jewish woman’s organization. The Constitution of a Jewish Women’s social support group situated in Paducah, the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, which is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio Rivers. The present population is some 25,000 and in 1870 when this Constitution was published, the city population was just under 7,000. Paducah resonates in Jewish history for during the American Civil War, General Ulysses Grants issued his infamous Order no. 11 which expelled “the Jews, as a class…within twenty-four hours” from their homes in Paducah, Kentucky, due to the perception of profiteering with the rebels of the South. Subsequently, a group of Jewish merchants from Paducah, led by Cesar J. Kaskel, sent a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln in which they condemned the order as “the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it”. See Jonathan D. Sarna, When General Grant Expelled the Jews (2012).