Clarion County Men of Company D
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Clarion, Pa. was settled in the mid-19th century and incorporated as a borough in 1841. The borough grew as the region became home to the lumber, coal, oil and natural gas operations in the late 19th century.
The earliest Jewish resident in Clarion was likely Charles Kaufmann, who opened a closing store in the borough in 1853. The discovery of oil in northwest Pennsylvania in 1859 brought more Jewish families to the area, but unlike nearby Jewish communities in Clearfield, DuBois, Franklin and Oil City, the Jewish community in Clarion was never large enough to support an independent congregation or a religious school. The American Jewish Yearbook did not include Clarion in population surveys in its 1907-1908, 1918-1919 or 1928-1929 editions but counted 32 people for the survey in its 1940-1941 edition.
The Wein family ran a department store in Clarion until as late as 1996. The Wein family attended Tree of Life Synagogue in nearby Oil City, Pa. and but oversaw a B’nai B’rith lodge in Clarion. The lodge was the most enduring Jewish communal organization in Clarion. Starting in the late 1960s, the lodge joined other lodges throughout the region to form the Northwest Pennsylvania Council.
