A Store at Every Crossroads: Documenting the Stories of South Carolina’s Jewish Merchants
A Store at Every Crossroads: Documenting the Stories of South Carolina’s Jewish Merchants is a traveling exhibition developed in partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina. The Dorchester Heritage Center will be hosting the exhibit this April-May.
For more than 300 years, Jewish settlers – from across the Atlantic and around the country – have made their homes in South Carolina. The earliest Jews populated Charleston, Georgetown, and later Columbia, where they held a variety of occupations and became immersed in civic life. After the Civil War, Jewish peddlers and merchants became more ubiquitous. Men and women fleeing oppressive governments in Central and Eastern Europe came to South Carolina determined to create better lives for themselves, their families, and the friends and neighbors who soon followed. By the late 1800s, Jewish merchants had set up shop on downtown streets in towns big and small, and more than 100 years later their legacy remains alive through their descendants.
The Jewish Merchant Project hopes to preserve memories of the men and women who have played vital roles in communities across South Carolina. In addition to the traveling exhibit, the project includes has an ever-growing database of history thanks to scholars and everyday contributors. The Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina has partnered with Historic Columbia and College of Charleston to undertake a state-wide survey of Jewish merchants, past and present. The foundational product of the survey will capture the impact of Jewish businessmen and women in communities, large and small, as well as the networks of family and friends that led Jewish men and women to call this state home.
The database is constantly expanding, and your help is greatly appreciated in submitting information relating to South Carolina’s Jewish merchants — whether your own family’s history or that of the merchants of your childhood memories. Individuals and institutions alike can contribute to this database by visiting their contribution web page at http://merchants.jhssc.org/
Their stories are our history.