720 Blanding Street

Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery

Founded in 1822 as the Hebrew Burial Society, the Hebrew Benevolent Society established this cemetery in 1826 on land believed to have been donated by the DeLeon family. The extant brick structure, built about 1860, served as a meeting space and entrance to the original Hebrew cemetery. Phineas Solomon (1802-1850) served as the Society’s first president, and almost all of Columbia’s Jewish lawyers, politicians and businessmen, including Isaac, Henry and Jacob Lyons, Alexander Marks, Jacob and Lipman Levin, and Levy and Elias Pollock, were members during the antebellum period.