Dr. Aaron Caplan memoirs
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Slippery Rock is a borough in Butler County. It was settled in 1826 with a post office at Ginger Hill in Slippery Rock Township. It was incorporated as Centreville in 1841 and was renamed Slippery Rock in 1896.
The Slippery Rock State Normal School opened in 1889 as a teacher training school. The state purchased the school in 1926 and expanded into a four-year program. It became the Slippery Rock State College in 1960 and Slippery Rock University in 1983. The school was attracting Jewish students as early as 1896, according to newspaper notices, and several noted Jewish athletes attended the school, including Nat Singer and Tut Melman.
The associated Slippery Rock borough developed a small local Jewish population by the 1920s. Hirshel M. Friedman and Lesa Rebecca Friedman immigrated to Western Pennsylvania from Lithuania and settled in Slippery Rock. They had six children: Samuel P., Jacob, Philip, Anna, M. L., and Devorah/Dora. Jacob and Philip Friedman ran a store that also had a branch in Butler.
In the middle decades of the 20th century, Slippery Rock became a popular place for people from the Pittsburgh region to summer cabins, including many Jewish residents.
David and Rebecca (Silberman) Alper lived in Slippery Rock as early as the mid-1950s.
