Washington Street at site of UM Horace W. Rackham School of Graduate Studies
In the 1830s the village of Ann Arbor had a public cemetery and a private cemetery. In 1848 or 1849, five Weil brothers acquired a block of land in the Private Cemetery for use as a burying ground by the Jews Society of Ann Arbor, as indicated by Jacob Weil, the last surviving brother. A map of Ann Arbor from 1870 shows the Private Cemetery at the corner of Ingalls and Washington Streets and the Public Cemetery next to it. (South Ingalls Street used to run from Huron to North University.)
Purchase details are rather confused. A notary public acknowledged in 1870 that the land was acquired in December 1853. This date was chosen possibly because the land was not purchased outright until then, although rights to the land may have been acquired earlier, or maybe the exact date was lost to memory. In the deed, which was recorded in 1870 and possibly back-dated, the land was described as being in the Eastern Addition of the Village now City of Ann Arbor being Block number three South in range number three and four East in the private cemetery [see Helen Aminoff's article]. In 1871 the block was acquired by William P. Groves in a foreclosure sale. In 1894 the land was sold to Samuel Langsdorf of Ann Arbor. As part of the deed, which was recorded in 1899, Mr. Langsdorf was to arrange for the removal of the bodies buried there and their reinterment in Forest Hill Cemetery. This was accomplished in 1900.
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The Old Jewish Burial Ground," David Erik Nelson. 2024. One of a series of digital historical articles commissioned by the Ann Arbor District Library for the project called Ann Arbor 200, Celebrating Ann Arbor's Bicentennial 1824-2024.
Photo Credit: Dwight Burdette,
CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
