Tel-Chai Nation

The Nashua Telegraph has a history article about a lake of water that may be known today as George O. Carlton Park, but in the early 20th century, circa WW1, was known as "Jew Pond" (edit: for some reason, the paper types in the name without a letter U, which has to be mistaken. I've tried to correct the error on my part):

MONT VERNON – The news that a small pond in Mont Vernon was closed last week due to an algae bloom drew attention, but not just for environmental reasons. Another attention- getter was the water body’s name: Jew Pond.

That name, says Mont Vernon Historical Society President Keith Pomeroy, dates to World War I, when the quarter-acre pond was made by owners or operators of the nearby Grand Hotel during the town’s heydey as a summer vacation spot for people from Boston, New York and beyond.

The hotel operators were Jewish, Pomeroy said, “and so the town just called it Jew Pond.”

The name stuck – although it is not widely known, even in Mont Vernon – and has long been on the U.S. Geological Survey list of places in New Hampshire. It is the only name containing the word “Jew” among almost 12,500 New Hampshire rivers, ponds, mountains, buildings and various other USGS landmarks.

There’s some irony in the history of the name, because the Grand Hotel wouldn’t take Jewish guests during at least part of its three-decade history.

The hotel printed a brochure every year, and one copy in the town museum includes a small sentence in the back saying guests of “Hebrew persuasion” are not allowed.

Good grief, were these self-haters or something?!? Aside from that, the way they titled the pond is insulting, certainly by today's standards.

The brochure is not dated and a number of other Grand Hotel catalogs exist that do not include any note about religion, so it’s not clear whether that note was an error, a one-time anomaly or an unspoken practice brought to light.

Oh, here's where confusion reigns supreme: what has religion got to do with this? If the hotel was discriminating, it was likely against race first. This could be another case of blurring the differences between Jewish race/religion (Judaism), all because they sound so similar. Ahem: there is a difference, and the way this is written makes it sound like they don't understand that.

There's more in the article about potential discrimination and forms of segregation (you'll be surprised to find that an interviewee for it may have used a word considered insulting to Polish), that's worth taking note of as well. For now, that's some of the history of what early 20th century America had problems with.

Labels: anti-semitism, racism, United States