Subject: Scranton

Billhead - Circa 1860's...Simon Rice, Grocer...229 Penn Avenue, Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was one of the first permanent Jewish settlers in Scranton, Pennsylvania and very active in all Jewish affairs. Simon Rice was a German-born Jewish merchant who became one of Scranton, Pennsylvania's most successful wholesale grocers during the late 19th century. Born in Germany on April 22, 1842, Rice immigrated to the United States as a young man and married Fannie Levy in 1863. He arrived in Scranton during the 1860s, a pivotal time when the city was experiencing a massive post-Civil War economic boom fueled by anthracite coal mining, iron manufacturing, and expanding railroad networks.Rice capitalized on this rapid industrial growth by establishing his mercantile enterprise, Simon Rice & Bro., at 229 Penn Avenue. Located in what was then the primary retail and trading corridor of downtown Scranton, the business quickly evolved from a neighborhood retail grocery into a massive regional wholesale grocery and provisions warehouse. The firm grew to become one of the largest food supply operations in Lackawanna County, distribution networks that handled immense quantities of canned goods, flour, and dried provisions to feed the region's rapidly growing immigrant labor force. Beyond his commercial success, Simon Rice's Jewish identity is thoroughly documented through his extensive leadership, civic involvement, and philanthropic records in Pennsylvania and Ohio. During the 1860s and 1870s, he served as a key figure in organizing Scranton's early German-Jewish immigrant community. His family heavily supported the establishment and growth of Anshe Chesed (later known as Temple Hesed), which was Scranton's very first Jewish congregation. While the synagogue was originally founded with Orthodox traditions, Rice and other community leaders helped align it with the American Reform Movement by 1880. Rice's legacy is also preserved today in the University of Pennsylvania's Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica, which holds original 19th-century trade cards from his Penn Avenue grocery business.Upon his death on August 4, 1901, Rice made national headlines for an extraordinary act of religious philanthropy. Having amassed a fortune valued near one million dollars—an immense sum for the era—his final will structured a massive trust for educational and religious purposes. As reported on the front page of The New York Times, Rice stipulated that one-third of his entire estate be given directly to the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati. This historic bequest provided monumental financial support to North America's first Jewish seminary, permanently cementing Rice's role as a major benefactor in the development of American Reform Judaism.