Jette Sternberg

UNKNOWN – 1871

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Click here to view a PDF version of Jette Sternberg’s biography.

According to the 1870 census record, Jette Sternberg was born in Prussia around 1806. Jette married her husband, Jacob Sternberg (click here to view his biography), in an unknown year and they had at least one child, Adolph Sternberg, who was born in Germany in approximately 1833. It is unknown what year she and her family immigrated to the U.S.

In her son, Adolph Sternberg’s, obituary in the Democratic Watchman, Adolph immigrated from Germany to the U.S. as a young man and settled in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Adolph moved from Lock Haven to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in approximately 1868 to engage in the “mercantile business,” where he formed a partnership with Simon Brandeis and later opened A. Sternberg & Co. It is unclear if Jette immigrated to the U.S. with her son or if she and her husband immigrated to the U.S. at another time.

Jette presumably lived in the U.S., however, by May 1864, which is when her husband, Jacob, was listed as a peddler in Bellefonte in the IRS Tax Assessment List. In the 1870 census record, Jette is listed as living with her husband, Jacob, their son, Adolph, their daughter-in-law, Jette, six of their grandchildren, and two boarders, Mary Cox and Gustave Lyons, in Bellefonte.

According to her headstone, Jette died on December 18, 1871, at 65 years of age of an unknown cause. She was buried in the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte.

Four years after Jette’s death, on May 3, 1875, her son, Adolph, took office as the first Jewish mayor of Bellefonte. Adolph served as mayor, known as chief burgess at the time, for one term. According to the website Borough of Historic Bellefonte, within weeks of taking office, Adolph established the borough’s police department on May 18, 1875.

Hugh Manchester, in the Centre Daily Times, named Adolph as one of the first, if not the first, Jewish mayors in the United States. In the January 1, 1995, Centre Daily Times article, Hugh debated whether Adolph was the first Jewish mayor in Pennsylvania, and the greater U.S., or if the honor should be bestowed upon David Lowenberg, who was elected as president of the town council of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1874. Hugh was unsure, however, if David’s role as president of the town council was equivalent to mayors since legislation was never passed equating the two while in 1966 all chief burgesses in Pennsylvania were equated to mayors.