A major portion of this collection reflects the geographical and chronological boundaries of Rochlin's book, Pioneer Jews : a new life in the Far West --the American Far West, Texas, North and South Dakota, Sonora, Mexico, and the Spanish and Mexican West, from the late 16th century to 1912. Pre-American visuals, from as early as 1571, include reproductions of maps, lithographs, watercolors and drawings related to Secret Jews in Spanish Colonial Mexico, Jews in the Mexican New Mexico, Texas and California, and land developers in the Texas. Starting after the U.S./Mexican War (1846-1848), Jews joined the rush to California and subsequent mineral rushes elsewhere in the Far West between 1849 and 1880. A handful spearheaded the development of the Western mining industry. Thousands of Jewish men and women pioneered other enterprises--merchandising, manufacturing, banking, roads and railroads, land development, ranching, and utilities. Photographs over slung-together tents and slapdash stores attest to the humblest of beginnings and others trace the growth of one- or two-man operations into Western conglomerates. Hundreds of images also document the presence of Western Jewish women of diverse origins and classes. Photographs of newly-married couples, brides, wedding parties, ketubas--marriage contracts--honeymoon trips abound. Family and clan portraits, shot in studios and in Western outdoors were also popular. Women's philanthropic and cultural groups also lined up for group photographs. Early Jewish pioneers served their communities as volunteers, ran for public office, and were frequently elected. Photographs document the positions held by them. In erupting communities, with fire and crime a constant threat, Jews joined volunteer fire fighter groups and vigilance committees. Others served in law enforcement as chiefs of police, sheriffs and police officers. Jews served as mayors, and some filled state and national posts as governors and U.S. congressmen and senators. Arranged chronologically, images related to Jewish organization in the newly American West illuminate extraordinarily rapid growth. The first public Jewish worship service in the Far West took place in September, 1849 in a tent store in San Francisco. The first two congregations in San Francisco were organized in April, 1851. Reproduced drawings document the construction of the first two synagogues in the Far West, and photographs track the arrival of the first ordained officiants. Cantors, ritual circumcisers, ritual animal slaughters, teachers for the religious schools were duly photographed, and members of benevolent societies also lined up for their pictures. Other congregations and Jewish communities soon organized all over the West. Between 1881 and 1924, a spill-off of the mass Jewish exodus from Eastern Europe filtered into the Far West, multiplying the Jewish population three-and four-fold. Yiddish-speaking synagogues and communities sprang up everywhere. Finally, what would become one of region's leading industries, the film business, was founded, in the main, by Eastern European Jews.
