Shearith Israel Synagogue

Wharton's Jewish families came as peddlers and storekeepers, and by the 1930s they dominated the courthouse square. Louis Peine, a jeweler who arrived in 1876, is the first documented family. In 1908 the congregation met in the Masonic lodge, seated on planks across beer barrels, and Masons laid the 1921 cornerstone. The Institute of Southern Jewish Life says Henrietta Szold spoke to the women's sewing circle in 1914 after her Houston effort failed; a chapter was chartered in 1919. The congregation closed in 2002 and fire took the empty synagogue in 2010. The marker stands at the cemetery.

What the plaque says

Shearith Israel Synagogue Jewish families in Wharton began meeting together for worship services about 1899. The congregation received its official charter in 1913 and was registered as Shearith Israel Synagogue. A synagogue building was erected on S. Rusk Street in 1921, and J. Keilin was the first rabbi. A cemetery was established on N. Alabama Rd. in 1937. A new synagogue in the shape of the shield of David was built on Old Lane City Rd. in 1956. The congregation continues to draw members from numerous towns and is a leading force in area civic and religious activities. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 29 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 35 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Wharton — 0.4 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 1.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Wharton — 1.3 mi
• Texas Gulf Sulphur Company-Newgulf — 1.3 mi