Three Anniversary Addresses for the Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans of New Orleans [1857, 1861, 1862]

1) First Anniversary of the Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans of New Orleans, January 8th, 1857. Including the Oration of D. C. Labatt, Esq., and a List of Members and Contributors. Published by order of the Board of Officers of the Association. New Orleans: Printed by E. C. Wharton, 41 Camp Street, 1857.

2) Oration delivered on the Fifth Anniversary of the Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans: January 8th, 1861. By Rev. James K. Gutheim. Published by order of the Board of Officers of the Association.

New Orleans: Clark & Brisbin, Printers, 19 Commercial Place, 1861.

3) Oration delivered on the Sixth Anniversary of the Home for Jewish Widows & Orphans, January 12, 1862. By Rev. Dr. Bernard Illowy.

New Orleans: Clark & Brisbin, Printers, 19 Commercial Place, 1862.

Three early printed addresses documenting the formative years of the Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans of New Orleans. The first purpose‑built Jewish orphanage in the United States, the Home was founded in the wake of the city’s mid‑century yellow fever epidemics and opened in 1856 at Jackson Avenue and Chippewa Street. The Home and its successor organizations served families across the Gulf South through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; in 1887 the institution moved to a new building at 5342 St. Charles Avenue, and it ultimately evolved into today’s Jewish Children’s Regional Service (JCRS).

Together the pamphlets trace the Home’s rhetoric of benevolence and support in its crucial first decade: the First Anniversary (1857) preserves attorney D. C. Labatt’s address and, importantly for prosopography, a roster of members and contributors that maps the city’s Jewish philanthropic network; the Fifth Anniversary (1861) records a wartime‑eve oration by Rev. James K. Gutheim, then New Orleans’s leading Jewish pulpit orator; and the Sixth Anniversary (1862) prints a Civil War–era address by Rabbi Bernard Illowy, who served in New Orleans from 1861 to 1865. Both the 1861 and 1862 items are Confederate New Orleans imprints by Clark & Brisbin.

The addresses illustrate how the Home presented its mission to the public and mobilized support amid the upheavals of secession and occupation. Together they preserve primary voices central to the religious and civic leadership and philanthropic activities of the Gulf South’s Jewish communities.

Physical Description

Three pamphlets, 8vo (210 x 130 mm).

(1) 28 pp. First Anniversary… New Orleans: E. C. Wharton, 1857. Includes list of members and contributors.

(2) 17, [1 blank] pp. Fifth Anniversary… New Orleans: Clark & Brisbin, 1861. Singerman 1739.

(3) 15, [1 blank] pp. Sixth Anniversary… New Orleans: Clark & Brisbin, 1862. With tipped-in errata slip.

1 and 3 listed in Robert Singerman, Judaica Americana: A Bibliography of Publications to 1900 (digital 2nd ed., JA2), nos. 1496 and 1862, respectively.

Binding: 1857: bound in modern full brown morocco; gilt-titled on the front cover. 1861 and 1862: bound in modern full brown cloth; gilt-titled on the front cover.

Literature

Wendy Besmann, “The ‘Typical Home Kid Overachievers’: Instilling a Success Ethic in he Jewish Children’s Home of New Orleans,” Southern Jewish History 8 (2005), 121–159.

Marlene Trestman, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans' Home of New Orleans (New Orleans, 2023).