William Sterne Friedman served Denver's Congregation Emanuel for almost 50 years. He had been born in Chicago in 1868, but was raised in an orphan asylum. When he graduated from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, he took his first pulpit in Denver.
He was active in charitable work from the outset. He served as Vice President of the COS from 1890 to 1901 and as President of the State Board of Charities and Corrections from 1904 to 1910. He held numerous other charitable agency posts, and was a founder of the non-sectarian tuberculosis hospital, the National Jewish Hospital, in Denver in 1890.
Although Rabbi Friedman had a lengthy and significant association with COS, he was not one of the founders. COS was founded in 1887 (hence the centenary and the stamp for United Way in 1987), before Rabbi Friedman graduated from Hebrew Union. His arrival in Denver was noted by the Jewish Voice of March 15, 1889. "Mr. Friedman left last morning for Denver, where he will preach next Saturday, and where in all probability, he will be elected to become their rabbi after he will have graduated next June."
Here's the Jewish connection for the United Way stamp: Another Jew was involved in the founding of COS in Denver in 1887.
Historian Marjorie Hornbein summarized the process of the founding of COS as follows:
The next important undertaking by the [Denver Ladies'] Relief Society was the establishment of one community association to handle all of the city charities. It had been tried in other cities with considerable success ... By 1887 the idea had enough support so that three of the city's leaders were able to organize the Charity Organization Society. These three were Rev. Myron Reed, Father William O'Ryan and Frances Jacobs, who, in 1887, was the First Vice President of the Denver Ladies' Relief Society.
In her history of Judaism in Colorado, titled Pioneers, Peddlers, and Tsadikim, Ida Uchill provides a similar account:
In 1881, Denver held its first charity ball, which [the Frances Jacobs] family helped stage. From that time on there was a steady effort to combine and unify the charity work... The Ladies' Relief Society was an important force by the time it held its fourth public meeting at the Tabor Grand Opera House House in 1887. More than 2,000 came to the meeting, and many were turned away from the overflowing opera house. The twenty-two different charities were considered, and the idea already in the minds of some of them was formulated by Rev. Myron Reed and Father William O'Brien. The two men discussed their idea and "sought and found Mrs. Frances Jacobs, first vice-president of the Ladies' Relief Society, and a woman who shared their ideas ... These three formed a tri-unity, and the start toward the organization of Denver's charity." They were joined by Dean Martin Hart and another Catholic priest. Hart, who was from London, had some background in the English idea of federation. Together these five achieved the first federation in Denver, The Charity Organization Society in 1887, and possibly...the first successful plan for financing a federated charitable organization, through which teams of workers solicited men in different lines of business and other citizens to raise a set sum.
For fifty years, others than these five have been honored as the founders of the Community Chest in Denver. The most popular and recurring acknowledgement is to: "two Protestant ministers, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi." There was no rabbi in the group. Frances Jacobs was the "queen of the Charities" and the founder of the forerunner of the Community Chest. The COS, as it was called, became a federation of most of the philanthropic societies and institutions of the city...Until her death, Frances Jacobs served as secretary of the COS.
Frances Jacobs was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky on March 29, 1843, to Leon and Rosetta Wisebart, who came to the United States from Bavaria.
Her father, a tailor, had moved his family to Cincinnati where she grew up. Her husband, Abraham Jacobs, was born in Germany and came to the United States in 1843. He settled in Colorado in 1859. Frances' brother Ben became a partner in Jacobs' Denver clothing store in 1862. In 1863 Jacobs returned to Cincinnati to marry Frances. They moved to Denver and then to Central City, Colorado where he owned another store. They moved to Denver in the early 1870s.
Jackobs soon earned her reputation as the "Mother of Charities." She helped found the Hebrew Ladies' Benevolent Society in 1872. In 1874 she helped form the Denver Ladies' Relief Society, of which she became an officer serving until her death in 1892. In 1881 she was a "patron" of Denver's first charity ball. She helped establish the first free kindergarten in Denver in 1885. Five years later, she helped establish the Jewish Hospital Association of Colorado, which built the non-sectarian tuberculosis hospital known as the Jewish Hospital.
Her record of charity and concern for women and the poor was recognized. When Frances Jacobs died on November 3, 1892, more than 2,000 people attended her funeral services at Denver's Congregation Emanuel. Rabbi Friedman and three leading Christian clergymen spoke. A memorial service was held a week later at the First Congregational Church (Rev. Reed's congregation), at which both Colorado's governor and Denver's mayor spoke.
The Jewish Hospital, whose cornerstone was laid less than a month before her death, was to be named in Jacobs' honor. However, because of the financial panic of 1893, the hospital did not open as planned. By the time it did finally open its doors in 1899, the hospital had become a project of the national B'nai B'rith and did not bear her name. However, Jacobs' likeness is represented on 16 stained-glassed windows portrait dedicated in the Colorado capitol rotunda in Denver, built in 1899.
Links:
© 2001, J-Stamps/Murray Frost. All Rights Reserved.
froststamps@yahoo.com
of the Charity Organization Society (COS) in Denver, even though the concept of a unified charity appeal had been tried earlier elsewhere. An official history, People and Events: A History of the United Way, credits four clergymen who "got together to work out a plan for organization." They were two Protestants (Revs. Myron W. Reed and Dean H. Martin Hart) a Catholic (Msgr. William J. O'Ryan) and a Jew -- Rabbi William S. Friedman.