The Origins of Princeton’s Jewish Community

The earliest documentation of Jews in the Princeton area comes from the diary of a traveler through the area in 1744 who encountered a French Jew at a Kingston inn and the account book of a Jewish merchant from New York in 1737 that mentions "Judah Mears of Prince-Town." When, in 1845, John Potter Stockton married Sara Marks, a seventeen-year old Jewish woman from New Orleans, the union was considered scandalous. Despite her subsequent conversion to the Episcopal Church, she was still described with condescension as “Jewish” by members of Princeton society, if only in private. Sara’s father, an actor and occasional rabbi, was himself baptized in late May 1850, prior to his death and burial in Princeton Cemetery.

As Jewish immigration to America increased after 1880, a trickle of Jewish immigrants began to settle in Princeton, most of them small shopkeepers and craftsmen, such as furniture dealer Israel Cohen, who had a storefront on "Nassau opp College," according to an 1886-7 directory.