MANUSCRIPT: Memo, May 8, 1860.
Gratz, Rebecca. Manuscript memo signed, “Rebecca Gratz,” addressed to “The Board of Managers of the Foster Home” [the Jewish Foster Home], May 8, 1860; one leaf, recto only; faint spotting, one folding crease.
Rebecca Gratz writes to “The Board of Managers of the Foster Home” with news of a recently hired teacher at the Jewish Foster Home, the first in the United States. Even at 79, Gratz shows her continued involvement in Jewish education through this formal memo to be distributed to the board that describes the teacher’s qualities and her salary.
The memo reads in full:
The Education Committee have the pleasure to inform the Board of Managers of the Foster Home that they have engaged the services of Miss Amelia La[nferty?], a young lady highly recommended, a graduate of the High school, who commenced her duties as teacher at the Home on Monday the 7th of May at a salary of $100 per ann.
Rebecca Gratz
May 8th, 1860.
The Philadelphia foster home, founded in 1855, educated Jewish orphans from different locations in the United States and Canada. Gratz served on the school’s Education Committee with her niece Louisa, Mrs. Henry Cohen, Mrs. Abraham Hart, and Evelyn Bomeisler. She retired from the Jewish Foster Home in 1866.
Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women’s Judaism in Antebellum America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997, p. 219-225.
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