BRIDGEPORT: Fairfield County

SYNAGOGUES:

See Fairfield County.

Mountain Grove Cemetery: Non-Jewish cemetery with some Jewish burials; source: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Park Cemetery - Adath Israel Cemetery: 620 Lindley Street Bridgeport, CT 06606. The inactive Orthodox cemetery is not land-marked. The last known Jewish burial was 1929. The urban cemetery location on a hillside is part of a municipal cemetery.

UPDATE: From the Jewish Ledger, Published: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 7:05 PM ED. "Loyalty Lodge adopts forgotten Bridgeport Jewish cemetery" By Cindy Mindell:  BRIDGEPORT "Martin Green is often asked to play detective in the Hebrew Sick Benefit Association cemetery on Black Rock Turnpike in Fairfield. As the financial secretary of the HSBA, and son of the late Abraham L. Green, a longtime Fairfield funeral director, Martin knows how to track down a gravesite or decipher an old death certificate. A year ago, Green got a call from a man looking for the grave of Ruth Coakley, a child buried somewhere in Bridgeport or Fairfield. Green first looked in the obvious places: the HSBA cemetery, and the adjacent Adath Israel plot n to no avail. A bit of history: HSBA, founded in 1895, started its cemetery in 1903. Six years earlier, Congregation Adath Israel, the first Orthodox synagogue in Bridgeport, was established on Washington Avenue. The congregation purchased a narrow strip of land in the multi-denominational Park Cemetery on Lindley Street. In 1906, the synagogue bought a section of the HSBA cemetery on Black Rock Turnpike, and continued to use the Park Cemetery plot until 1932. Adath Israel merged with another congregation in 1985, and its cemetery records and upkeep were eventually transferred to the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield. After several years, HSBA agreed to take over maintenance of the former Adath Israel cemetery on Black Rock Turnpike. Among the documents that accompanied the property transfer was a list of people buried in Park Cemetery. Neither the Jewish Home nor Park Cemetery knew who owned the plot, or why that burial list was included with the Adath Israel papers. Green checked the list for Ruth Coakley, and there she was, buried in 1918, aged 11 months. He found the narrow strip of land at the edge of the Bridgeport cemetery, and discovered a legible inscription on one of the headstones. When he tracked down the matching death certificate, he discovered the name of the cemetery owner: Congregation Adath Israel. Neglected and dormant for more than 70 years, the Jewish burial ground was barely recognizable. The chain-link fence surrounding the plot was rusty and leaning, many headstones broken or never erected, and the ground badly sunken from the adjacent I-95 Connector construction project in the 1960s. Green immediately wanted to adopt the cemetery, and his fellow Loyalty Lodge members agreed. "The people buried there ought to be remembered," he says. Loyalty Lodge paid for initial clean-up, and now, Green says, wants to raise funds to regrade the land, replace the fence, and repair broken headstones. Markers will be placed on unmarked graves n 111 children and 50 adults, out of a total of 158 burials. In addition, Loyalty Lodge will hold an annual fund-raiser to establish a perpetual-care fund. Green plans to rededicate the cemetery this fall. "We're hoping to track down some of the families with relatives buried there who will help us with the restoration," Green says. Now Green and Loyalty Lodge president Bernie Simmons have a new enigma on their hands: Charles W. Knopow was killed in action in France during World War I, just one month before the November 1918 Armistice. The 24-year-old Knopow is buried in the Adath Israel cemetery, beneath a tall grey-granite marker sculpted as a tree chopped off mid-trunk, the symbol typically used to connote a young life cut short. Green and Simmons have been unable to locate any of Knopow's relatives, but hope to learn more about the young Jewish soldier buried in Bridgeport." Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. at Martin H. Green Memorials, 6395 Main Street, Trumbull, CT 06611, 203-452-1221, who completed the survey on 4-10-2007. [June 2007]