The Jewish Cemetery

Henry Michael Hyams, who came up from New Orleans in 1830 and later served as lieutenant governor, is counted among the first Jewish settlers in the Alexandria area. Rapides Parish had 24 Jews in 1850 and 157 in 1870. The cemetery grew from a Hebrew benevolent society formed in 1852 to provide a burial ground, and its chartered association dates from 1859, the year Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim formed across the river. The Jewish population of Alexandria reached about 600 by 1905, and the Orthodox members who left the congregation in 1913 founded B'nai Israel.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 0.6 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.8 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.7 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 4.3 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Rapides Cemetery — steps away
• Red River — 0.4 mi
• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — 0.4 mi
• The Hotel Bentley — 0.5 mi