Exploring the Waco Jewish Community with the Texas Jewish Historical Society

By Paul Fisher, Processing Archivist

On January 24, The Texas Collection welcomed the Texas Jewish Historical Society to a special display of materials on Jewish life and faith in Central Texas. Members of the society viewed many different kinds of materials, including:

• a letter to a German Jewish family by the German secret police, warning them to leave the country (they later came to Waco, Texas),
• an elaborate green velvet scrapbook with photographs from the 1800s of the Goldstein family in Waco,
• photographs of Jewish-owned businesses in Waco, such as the Goldstein-Migel and Sanger Brothers department stores,
• membership cards and past meeting pamphlets from the Texas Jewish Historical Society, and
• photographs of Temple Rodef Sholom and Congregation Agudath Jacob in Waco from the early 1900s.

All together, The Texas Collection has more than 20 Jewish-related collections available for researchers to explore. Most of these collections are unprocessed, meaning they are not yet described through a finding aid in BARD or housed in modern acid-free boxes and folders. However, two Jewish collections have been processed recently, the De Cordova Family papers 1845-1956 and the Waco Chapter of Hadassah records 1928-2009, and we hope to process the rest of them soon. Stay tuned for more news about our Jewish collections!