JCGC Genealogy Project on Display at the Mayerson JCC

A Cincinnati organization’s project will soon be on display to raise awareness about the city’s lengthy and storied Jewish history. 

Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati is creating a display of local Jewish genealogy, on display in the lobby of the Mayerson JCC for the month of April. 

JCGC, whose mission is to preserve and honor the history of the cemeteries overall, as well as the individuals who have passed and are buried in the cemeteries, believes the project will raise awareness about the local community past and present.

“We’re proud and honored to have community luminaries buried in our cemeteries: influential rabbis, political figures, successful businesspeople and innovators, such as the Manischewitz family,” said David Harris, JCGC’s executive director. “We’re also honored to have veterans and to have veterans memorials, including for the Civil War and the Jewish Union soldiers, including a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, David Urbansky.

“Each person has a story and each person holds a special place in the hearts of their family and friends.”  JCGC’s genealogy efforts are numerous. The organization has been updating its website and trying to make the user interface on its genealogy page and search feature more user-friendly.

In addition, all 35,000 JCGC burials are entered in a database and information from each is available online. “That includes a photograph of the monument or marker, the location of the grave and any information we have on other family members buried in our cemeteries, as well as obituaries or other documents available,” Harris said.

In case of missing information or errors, there is a way of submitting corrections so JCGC may update it.

“We hope to expand and improve upon these features and are open to hearing how JCGC can improve upon this service that it provides to the community and to researchers around the world,” Harris said. “Our genealogy page is our most visited page and we’re working with other sites, such as JewishGen, to make sure that their users know about this resource, which many cemeteries do not have available to the public.

In the coming year, JCGC will be hosting an information session to help people get started on doing genealogical research in general and using its site and materials, in particular.

The JCGC genealogy display includes the family of Charles Stix, who now lives at the Kenwood and just celebrated his 93rd birthday.

His ancestors immigrated from Demmelsdorf, Germany, in the 1840s and his family members were among the founders of Plum Street Temple and United Jewish Cemeteries.

Marriages connected those family members to other prominent Jewish community families, including the Dryer, Fechheimer, Freiberg and Krohn lines. Charles’ grandfather, also named Charles, was president of United Jewish Charities, a precursor to Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.

Charles Stix is a past-president of the JCC, where his children spent much time while growing up, and a proud veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. In 2008, he helped JCGC rededicate the Veterans’ Memorial in Walnut Hills Cemetery.