Greenville

Greenville is a borough in northwest Mercer County. It was incorporated as West Greenville in 1836, as a community was emerging to accommodate commercial traffic associated with a stop on the Erie Extension of the Pennsylvania Canal. It became Greenville in 1865.

The earliest Jewish settler in Greenville came in 1850, when the Henlein family arrived in the area. By the Civil War, Greenville had a small Jewish population group with as many as 20 residents. Following a dip, it grew to about 70 by World War I and reached a peak of 79 in 1956. The small Jewish population never established an independent synagogue, school, or cemetery, and members generally travelled to nearby Sharon, Oil City, or Youngstown, Ohio, for their religious needs. Greenville likely had the largest Jewish population of any municipality in Western Pennsylvania without a synagogue or a formal Jewish institution.

Between the 1910s and 1950s, Greenville had several short-lived Jewish organizations, including the Black and White Club, the Greenville Jewish War Relief Committees, Jewish Women’s Study Group, the Greenville Jewish Sabbath School, the Greenville carpool, the Greenville Jewish Group, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Between the mid-19th century and the early 21st century, nearly 450 Jewish people resided in Greenville and surrounding towns for some length of time, ranging from a few days or weeks to many decades. Known surnames include Ackerman, Adler, Allen, Appel, Arnsthal, Astmann, Auerbach, Baker, Barton, Bell, Bender, Bender Theodore, Binyart, Blau, Bloomberg, Bolotin, Braunschweiger, Brody, Brown, Childs, Clark, Cohen, Cushner, Davis, Dreesen, Dresen, Eisenberg, Falkinson, Feigenbaum, Feldstein, Frank, Freidman, Friedman, Garson, Gelb, Ghoodwin, Gillis, Ginsberg, Gitsky, Glasgow, Glickman, Goldberg, Goldsmith, Goldstein, Goodstein, Hannach, Harris, Henlein, Herman, Hesse, Hirsch, Hirschberger, Hirschhorn, Hoffman, Horovitz, Hyman, Jaffe, Josephson, Kain, Kapitman, Kaplan, Keeti, Keller, Kingsbacher, Klein, Kohn, Kornblum, Krieger, Kurlander, Lang, Levick, Levine, Levison, Link, Lipman, Lobel, Lobell, Loeb, Lurie, Mannheimer, Mark, Mehr, Mehr Michael, Moses, Myers, Neiman, Ohlman, Paroshinkly, Paroshinsky, Pearlman, Poze, Rabin, Rabinovitz, Rabinowitz, Rado, Ritter, Robbins, Robbiond, Robins, Rosen, Rosen. Marlene, Rosenbaum, Rosenberg, Rosenblum, Rosner, Ross, Routman, Ruben, Rubin, Salkin, Salm, Samuels, Schoenfield, Schwelling, Shapiro, Shoenfield, Shonfield, Shuklansky, Silverberg, Silverman, Sirota, Sleisenger, Slesnick, Slifkin, Slifkin. Ellen, Solomon, Stecher, Steil, Stein, Stern, Stiel, Techner, Weintraub, Weiss, Werner, Winsberg, Witten, Wolfe, Wolk, Yasgur, Yorke, Zeve, and Zinner.

For a biographical account of each individual person and family, please see “Origins, Belonging, Moving On: Jewish Life in Greenville, Pennsylvania and Nearby Communities,” by Charles A. Salkin and Samuel J. Salkin (online).

Bibliography

• Chazz Salkin Ephemera Collection [MSS 1315].

Exhibit history

• Author: Chazz Salkin, Sam Salkin, Eric Lidji
• Original: May 13, 2026
• Current: June 9, 2026

Acknowledgements

• This entry was created through a Jewish Community Priorities grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.