Aaronsburg

Aaron Levy and the Founding of Aaronsburg

Figure 2: Aaron Levy, founder of Aaronsburg. Unknown Year. Photograph from the Centre County Historical Society.

Born in 1742 in the Netherlands, Aaron Levy immigrated to the U.S. in approximately 1760. There is historical debate surrounding whether he was of Sephardic, Central European, or Eastern European Jewish descent. For example, his family’s prayerbooks were based on Sephardic traditions, but several family documents were written in Yiddish, a language used by Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe.

Levy first settled in Pennsylvania in either Philadelphia or Lancaster. As early as July 3, 1772, Levy applied to purchase land in the frontier town of Sunbury in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Over the next few years, he owned nearly 1,000 acres of land in or near Sunbury and 1,300 acres in Lancaster County. By the spring of 1774, Levy resided in Northumberland and worked as both a merchant and land speculator. Levy and his wife, Rachel, left Northumberland around 1778 for Lancaster following the outbreak of the Revolutionary War due to fears of British-led Native American attacks against frontier communities, including Northumberland.

While living in Lancaster, on June 7, 1779, Levy purchased a three hundred thirty-four-and-a-half-acre lot, referred to as the White Thorn Grove, from John Weitzel of Sunbury with adjacent land granted to Levy from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on April 20, 1783. Located in Penns Valley in Potter Township, approximately thirty miles west of Northumberland, Levy, due to the area’s navigable water and projected place on a new highway between Philadelphia and Fort Pitt, later Pittsburgh, envisioned the area as an important trading community for farmers and as the potential seat for a new county. From this lot, Levy founded a town called “Aaronsburg,” reportedly called “Jewstown” in the early years after its founding. Levy used the town plans of both Sunbury and Northumberland as inspiration while designing Aaronsburg. His design included a central avenue extending north and south, named “Aaron’s Square,” with a central throughfare extending east and west, “Rachel’s Way,” named in honor of his wife. Levy divided the town into 612 individual plots with certain plots set aside for schools, houses of worship “of every denomination,” and cemeteries to attract settlers.

On May 23, 1786, Levy issued a circular informing the public of his planned town and advertised the distribution of lots through a lottery system. Each ticket cost six dollars with a yearly rent of one dollar. A resident could purchase their land, however, for twenty Spanish silver milled dollars. After three hundred tickets were sold, the drawing was held in early October of 1786. Aaronsburg’s town plans were registered in the Recorder’s Office of Northumberland County, on October 4, 1786, making it the first town in Penns Valley. All of Aaronsburg’s original deeds were signed by both Aaron and Rachel Levy, the latter signing in Hebrew, the only language she could alllegidly write in. By 1799, thirty-two families, predominately of Scotch-Irish and Central European descent, permanently settled in Aaronsburg and a post office opened the following year. Neither Aaron Levy nor his wife ever lived in Aaronsburg.

While Levy had high hopes for Aaronsburg to become the county seat, in August 1800, when Centre County was formed, Bellefonte, located approximately twenty miles from Aaronsburg, was selected as the county seat. The growth of the town was also slow, and some settlers did not pay their land’s rent, forcing Levy to take possession of these properties and sue them. A combination of Aaron and Rachel’s advancing age, the amount of time Aaron spent traveling to and from Philadelphia to address land officials and business matters, and potentially the absence of a Jewish community in Northumberland, led both the Levys to move to Philadelphia by 1796. The couple’s income, however, largely depended on the revenues from their properties in Northumberland and Aaronsburg. While in Philadelphia, Levy’s Central Pennsylvania affairs fell to his friend, Simon Snyder of Selinsgrove, and in exchange Levy dealt with Snyder’s business affairs in Philadelphia.

Aaron Levy died on February 23, 1815. He and Rachel, who preceded him in death on December 23, 1810, were buried at the Mikveh Israel Cemetery in Philadelphia. Aaron and Rachel had one adopted child, Simon Gratz, who served as the administrator of Aaron’s estate and inherited nearly all his property. At the time of Simon Gratz’s death in 1839, he had sold most of the land holdings he inherited from Levy.

The Founding of the Salem Evangelical Church

On November 16, 1789, Aaron and Rachel Levy donated two plots of land, plots 167 and 168, designated as plots reserved for religious purposes in the original plan of Aaronsburg, to Jacob Stober, Jr., and Michael Mootz. Recorded in Northumberland on November 26, 1789, the land was deeded for the use of the “Members in Communion with the Church commonly called the Lutheran Church.” The plots became the site of the Salem Evangelical Church, later the Salem Lutheran Church. The cornerstone of the church was laid on May 16, 1794, with Reverend Christian Espich, a neighbor of Levy and an Evangelical Lutheran preacher in Sunbury, conducting the ceremony. A scroll of the church’s history was placed under the cornerstone, a copy of which the church still maintains today.

At the church’s dedication in 1799, Levy presented the congregation with a pewter communion set crafted by William Will of Philadelphia, one of the most recognizable pewterers at the time. Christian community members perceived the offering as a generous gesture of goodwill and brotherhood between Christians and Jews. In 1914, during the church’s remodel, the congregation suggested selling Levy’s gift to raise money, but the congregation chose not to because they considered the communion set historically significant.

On May 20, 1796, the Levys also granted an additional two plots, numbered 344 and 345 to Adam Harper and Frederick Henney for the use of members of the Calvinist church. Following the death of Aaron and Rachel Levy, their adopted son, Simon, and his brother, Hyman Gratz, sold one lot, number 343, to John Nighdigh and Philips Dingis from the Presbyterian Congregation of Aaronsburg. All three churches in Aaronsburg were built on land either donated or sold from the Levy family or their descendants.

Discovering the Story

Aaronsburg’s Jewish founder was virtually unknown outside of Aaronsburg until the spring of 1945 when Arthur H. Lewis, a journalist and aide to Pennsylvania Governor James H. Duff, traveled through Aaronsburg on his way home in Pittsburgh. He stopped in Aaronsburg after reading a sign on Pennsylvania State Route 45 indicating the town was founded by Aaron Levy. Curious about the presence of a Central Pennsylvania town with a Jewish founder, Lewis asked a nearby resident, insurance salesman Albert “Al” Mingle, about the town’s founding. Mingle, whose great-great grandfather supposedly knew Aaron Levy, told Duff about the town’s Jewish founder.

Figure 3: The welcome sign currently located at both the east and west side of Aaronsburg along Pennsylvania State Route 45. This is potentially the sign, or a version of it, Arthur Lewis saw while driving through Aaronsburg in 1945. Photographed by Casey Sennett.

Fascinated by the history, Lewis returned to Aaronsburg later in the week to learn more about Aaronsburg’s history and met with Aaronsburg community members, including Reverend Shannon of the Salem Lutheran Church. To Lewis, “This tiny town, its beautiful setting, its Jewish founder, its attitudes, its mores, the history of Salem Lutheran. In fact, what Aaronsburg represents is so fundamentally American that is should be told everywhere” (The Aaronsburg Story by Arthur H. Lewis, page 30). Lewis, with Reverend Shannon’s support, wanted to host a celebration in tandem with the Salem Lutheran Church’s 150th anniversary to celebrate Aaron Levy and Aaronsburg’s religious tolerance. Upon his return to Harrisburg, Lewis told his boss, Pennsylvania Governor Duff, about the town’s history and Governor Duff supported Lewis’ plans to host a state-wide celebration.

Figure 4: Reverend Shannon of the Salem Lutheran Church sitting in the Salem Lutheran Cemetery in 1949 preparing for the Aaronsburg Story. The land for both the church and cemetery were donated by Aaron Levy. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Planning the Story

Lewis, in collaboration with Reverend Shannon, decided the celebration’s main event should be a historical pageant about Aaronsburg’s history. They recruited William R. Gordon, a professor of rural sociology at the the Pennsylvania State University, then the Pennsylvania State College, to write the three-hour pageant. Titled “The Issue of An Ideal: A Dramatic Ceremony Commemorating the Founding of Aaronsburg,” the pageant included nearly 1,500 costumed performers. Actor Cornel Wilde agreed to narrate the pageant.

In addition to the pageant, the organizers wanted several prominent speakers, including one Catholic, one Jewish, and one African American participant. These speakers included General William J. Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services, now the Central Intelligence Agency, from World War II; United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter; and Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Mediator of the United Nations Palestine Commission, who won a Nobel Peace Prize the following year. They later added Dan Poling, editor of the Christian Herald, as a speaker for Protestant representation.

The event included the participation and assistance of nearly every local civic organization, such as the Kiwanis Clubs and volunteer fire companies, as well as state and national organizations, such as the National Conference of Christians and Jews and B’nai B’rith. The vice chairman of the planning committee, former Presbyterian minister J.W. Claudy, was the warden of the Western State Penitentiary in Pittsburgh at the time, and used a group of inmates to coordinate the committee’s correspon­dences. The committee also worked to attract news organizations, such as local papers, like the Centre Daily Times, as well as national papers, such as The New York Times, New York Herald-Tribune, Philadelphia Inquiry, and Boston Post.

Figure 5: Reverend Shannon of the Salem Lutheran Church (center) with S. Ward Gramley, co-chairman of the observance, (left) and A. E. Mingle, a church trustee, (right) looking over the proposed layout of the amphitheater for the Aaronsburg Story pageant. The Salem Lutheran Church is visible in the upper-left corner of the photograph. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

The Story

In the 1950 census record, an estimated 321 people lived in Aaronsburg. Lewis anticipated an additional 5,000 people would come to Aaronsburg for the Aaronsburg Story event, but on October 22, 1949, the day before the event, 5,000 people seemed unlikely. On October 22, high winds and rain swept through Aaronsburg and destroyed the stage settings, decorations, electrical wires, and tents for the event. The organizers were worried the speakers would be unable to fly into the State College airport, which had no paved runways at the time. They considered canceling the event, but community members of Aaronsburg worked throughout the night to repair the storm damage. On October 23, 1949, more than 30,000 people from Central Pennsylvania and the surrounding area joined the residents of Aaronsburg for “The Aaronsburg Story.”

Figure 6: The Salem Lutheran Church in 1949. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

At 8:45am, the event began with a worship service held at the Salem Lutheran Church. The speakers included Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein of Rochester, New York, and Dr. Frederick Keller Stamm, a former pastor of the First Congregational Church in Chicago, Illinois. Following the service, at 10:00am, participants convened at the pageant grounds for the “Public Meeting Dedicated to Religious and Racial Understanding.” Governor Duff introduced the four keynote speakers: Poling, Frankfurter, Bunche, and Donovan.

Figure 7: Dr. Ralph Bunche giving his keynote address at the Aaronsburg Story event on October 23, 1949. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University Library.

At 11:00am, three “Brotherhood Institutes” were simultaneously held at each of Aaronsburg’s churches. The first, “Techniques of Handling Prejudice and Prejudiced People,” was held at the Salem Lutheran Church with Rabbi Philip D. Bookstaber of the Temple Ohev Shalom in Harrisburg, Dr. Andrew Gottschall of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Myra Blakeslee of the Division Against Discrimination, Julius Thomas of the National Urban League, and General William Donovan as the speakers. The second panel, “Religious Intolerance and American Society” was held at the Evangelical and Reformed Church with Maurice Fagan of the Fellowship Committee, Sir Muhammed Zafrulla Khan of the United Nations General Assembly, Allyn P. Robinson of the Commission on Religious Organizations, John Sullivan of the New York State Commission Against Discrimination, Rabbi D. A. Jessurun Cardozo of the Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, and Dr. Frederick Keller Stamm of the First Congregational Church as speakers. The third panel, “How to Assure Minority Groups Their Rights and Dignities as Americans” was held in the Evangelical United Brethren Church and included J. Harold Saks of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Russell Bradley of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Bernstein of Rochester, Dr. Channing H. Tobias of the NAACP, and Marjorie Penny of the Fellowship House.

After a lunch break, the pageant began at 2:00pm. It recounted the history of Aaronsburg, especially Aaron Levy’s communion gift and the first worship at Salem Lutheran Church. Wilde served as the narrator and was accompanied by Penn State’s Blue Band. At 5:00pm a symposium was held at the Salem Lutheran Church about “Brotherhood for Peace and Freedom.” Governor Duff, Sir Muhammed Khan, Dr. Tobias, and Dr. Abram L. Sachar, President of Brandeis University, presided over the event. Governor Duff offered closing remarks declaring the last Sunday of October as “Tolerance Day” to be observed annually in Pennsylvania.

The event also included an exhibited display by Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach of Philadelphia, Honorary President of the American Jewish Historical Society. The objects included Levy’s Hebrew Bible, his portrait, documents, and other family memorabilia. The display also included the pewter communion set Aaron and Rachel donated to the Salem Lutheran Church at the church’s dedication in 1799.

Figure 8: The four keynote speakers, Daniel Poling, William Donovan, Ralph Bunche, and Felix Frankfurter, with Pennsylvania Governor James Duff holding pieces of the pewter communion set Aaron and Rachel Levy donated to the Salem Lutheran Church. The photo is from a New York Times article published on October 24, 1949, about the Aaronsburg Story from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 9: Reverend Shannon of the Salem Lutheran Church and an unknown boy with the pewter communion set Aaron and Rachel Levy donated to the Salem Lutheran Church in 1799. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library. 

The Aaronsburg Assembly

Local leaders, including Reverend Shannon, and national leaders, such as Pennsylvania Governor Duff, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and UN Mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche, who attended the Aaronsburg Story in 1949 were inspired by the event’s discussions that they organized a continuation of the event. Reverend Shannon branded the first annual Aaronsburg Assembly, a three-day event in June of 1953, as a “sequel” to the Aaronsburg Story and “…a lesson in friendliness and brotherhood.” This first assembly brought together one hundred ‘outstanding men’ in the fields of government, worship, education, work, recreation, and home together with one hundred residents of Aaronsburg and Centre County. They were tasked with exploring “…the problems, needs and possibly the solutions of the differences and forces which must be overcome to make our world a better place in which to live.”

Prior to the start of the Aaronsburg Assembly on Friday, June 19, while not officially part of the Aaronsburg Assembly events, Rabbi Philip Bernstein of Rochester, New York, Rabbi Joseph Shubow of Boston, and Rabbi David DeSola Pool of New York City, conducted a Shabbat service at the Hillel Foundation in State College. The start of the assembly on June 19 included an opening address by Pennsylvania Governor John Fine and Penn State President Milton Eisenhower. The keynote was given by Mrs. Oswald Lord, U.S. Representative to the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations. Rabbi Philip Bernstein, William Donovan, former Governor James Duff, Reverend Daniel Poling, and Dr. Channing Tobias discussed what brought them to Aaronsburg Story in 1949 and what brought them back for the assembly. The events on Saturday, June 20, included six seminars, focused on overcoming prejudice in the economy, home and community, education, religious life, recreation and communication, and government, with sixteen to seventeen distinguished panelists and an even number of Centre County residents in attendance for each. Notable participants included: Dr. Charles Thompson, the Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University; Michael Masaoka of the Japanese American Citizens League; Ronald Regan of Hollywood, California; Dr. Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Dr. Robert Weaver, of the John Hay Whitney Foundation; and Herman Long, director of the National Congress of the American Indians.

The assembly concluded on Sunday, June 20, with the religious sermons and addresses at different Centre County religious organizations. There was also a dedication service held in Aaronsburg in the afternoon, including reenactments of parts of the pageant from the original Aaronsburg Story event in 1949. At the end of the pageant, congregants of the Salem Lutheran Church presented Rabbi David DeSola Pool of the Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City with a pewter Kiddush cup, to emulate the exchange between Aaron Levy and early Salem Lutheran Church congregations in 1799 with his donation of the pewter communion set. The donation of the Kiddush cup was to celebrate Shearith Israel’s three hundredth anniversary.

Figure 10: Part of the pageant reenactment on June 20, 1953, at the Aaronsburg Assembly. Aaron Levy (on the left, played by Nathan Krauss) is holding the pewter communion set he is to give the pastor of the Salem Lutheran Church (on the right, played by Francis Stover) in their pageant scene. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

In late January of 1955, the Aaronsburg Story committee met at the Bryn Mawr’s Harcum Junior College in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to organize a new series of events, the Aaronsburg National Assemblies, aimed a spreading the mission of the Aaronsburg Story throughout the U.S. They hoped the first assembly, scheduled for October of 1955, would bring together 100,000 men and women “…of all faiths, colors, social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds in 350 communities throughout the United States.” The Pittsburgh Assembly of the Aaronsburg Story held an event on September 28 and 29 in 1956 at the Hotel Penn Sheraton in Pittsburgh.

While no Jewish community has ever existed in Aaronsburg, the Jewish identity of the town’s founder has left a permanent legacy on the town. Levy’s donations of land, as well as religious objects, to Aaronsburg’s churches marked an important event in the history of Aaronsburg and the town’s conceptualization of religious tolerance and Jewish-Christian relations.

The memorialization of Aaronsburg’s founding with the Aaronsburg Story in 1949 also marked the first major public event acknowledging Central Pennsylvania’s Jewish history. While Jewish communities were located throughout Central Pennsylvania as early as the mid-nineteenth century, no formal attempts to preserve the region’s Jewish history occurred until the mid to late twentieth century. None of these later attempts to preserve the Jewish history of Central Pennsylvania, which largely included the writing of Jewish community histories and memoirs, amounted to the success of the Aaronsburg Story, and its subsequent events, which brought together thousands of people throughout the U.S. to remember Aaronsburg’s Jewish founder and discuss national issues, such as religious and racial tolerance, within the lens of rural American communities.

Figures

Figure 1: A. Pomeroy & Co., Aaronsburg map, 1874, Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: from actual surveys via the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/maps1/id/25454.

Figure 2: Aaron Levy, n.d., photograph, Centre County Historical Society, https://centrehistory.org/article/aaron-levy/.

Figure 3: Casey Sennett, Aaronsburg Welcome Sign, personal photograph, March 29, 2023.

Figure 4: The Pennsylvania State College, The Land That Levy Gave, 1949, photograph, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Call Number 01196, Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs Box 1, Folder: Aaronsburg.

Figure 5: The Pennsylvania State College, Looking Over the Layout, 1949, photograph, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Call Number 01196, Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs Box 1, Folder: Aaronsburg.

Figure 6: The Pennsylvania State College, Salem Lutheran Church, Aaronsburg, 1949, photograph, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Call Number 01196, Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs Box 1, Folder: Aaronsburg.

Figure 7: Max Kade, Ralph Bunche Keynote Address, 1949, photograph, The Pennsylvania State University, https://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-1E0F.

Figure 8: Warren Weaver, “Town Celebrates Long Fight on Bias: Lutheran Church Helped by Jew 150 Years Ago in Aaronsburg, PA, is Hailed By 20,000,” New York Times, Oct 24, 1949.

Figure 9: The Pennsylvania State College, Pewter Communion Set, Aaronsburg, 1949, photograph, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Call Number 01196, Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs Box 1, Folder: Aaronsburg.

Figure 10: The Pennsylvania State College, The Aaronsburg Assembly Communion Set Reenactment, June 1955, photograph, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Call Number 00753, Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 6, Folder: Photographs, circa 1949-1953.

Works Cited

Adler, Cyrus and A. S. W. Rosenbach. “Levy, Aaron.” Jewish Encyclopedia, n.d. https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9869-levy-aaron.

Fish, Sidney. Aaron Levy: Founder of Aaronsburg. New York: American Jewish Historical Society, 1951.

Heffentreyer, Sally. “Aaron Levy.” Centre County Historical Society, updated September 29, 2021. https://centrehistory.org/article/aaron-levy/.

Heffentreyer, Sally. “Aaronsburg Story.” Centre County Historical Society, updated February 21, 2022. https://centrehistory.org/article/aaronsburg-story/.

Kurtz, Fred. Centennial History of Centre County: 1800-1900. Bellefonte: Centennial Executive Committee, 1900.

Lewis, Arthur H. The Aaronsburg Story. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1955.

Ostlund, O.M., Jr. “Aaronsburg: Birthplace of an American Ideal.” Grit News Section, July 19, 1981.

Postal, Bernard and Lionel Koppman. A Jewish Tourist’s Guide to the U.S. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1954.

The Aaronsburg Story. Aaronsburg Assembly. n.d. List from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00753. Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 1, Folder: Guest Panel Members 1953 Assembly.

The Aaronsburg Story. Background Information on the Aaronsburg Story. June 1, 1953. Press release from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 0075. Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 6, Folder: Background Story June 1, 1953.

The Aaronsburg Story. For Immediate Release – January 20, 1955. Press release from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00753. Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 5, Folder: News Release January 20, 1955.

The Aaronsburg Story. For Release Monday, June 1, 1953. Press release from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00753. Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 5, Folder: News Release June 1, 1953.

The Aaronsburg Story. The Aaronsburg Assembly. n.d. Pamphlet from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00753. Aaronsburg Story, Inc. Records Box 5, Folder: Programs and Pamphlets 1949-1956.

“The Aaronsburg Story Historical Marker.” Explore PA History, n.d. https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-29.

Weible, Robert. “The Aaronsburg Story.” Pennsylvania Heritage, 1999. http://paheritage.wpengine.com/article/aaronsburg-story/.