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In the Rev. William Tieck’s book, Riverdale Kingsbridge Spuyten Duyvil, he wrote about the early Jewish Community in our area:
“Synagogue beginnings in the northwest Bronx go back much further than is commonly supposed–in fact, to the middle 1920’s. In those days, the small Jewish population in the region lived mostly on Marble Hill, Heath Avenue, and Bailey Avenue north of 238th Street, as well in the Spuyten Duyvil area.”
So I did not expect to see a reference to a place in Riverdale called “Jew Hill” that could be from an even earlier period. I found it among handwritten notes in the KHS archives that were written in the 1950s by Harry Emery, who was born in Riverdale in 1876. Emery mentioned Jew Hill on a list of Historic Places alongside others like P.S. 81 and Christ Church Riverdale. He described Jew Hill as: “West of Riv. Ave (Sigma Pl.).” But he did not include an explanation as to why the area around Sigma Place was called Jew Hill.
I consulted the 1880 census and found a listing for someone named Joseph Rosenthorn living near Sigma Place. Cross-referencing it to an 1885 map, you can see that much of the land in that section was owned by someone named Joseph Rosenthal. One of these names was probably a typo. Looking at the land deeds, I saw that the correct name was Joseph Rosenthal, not Rosenthorn, who owned the land known as Jew Hill. The census listed him as a flower merchant, who was born in Bavaria around 1827. He was married to Clara, also of Bavaria, and the couple had three kids. The deeds indicate that he was living in New York City prior to his first land purchase in Riverdale in 1869. Joseph Rosenthal seems like a very plausible Jewish name but I could not find any additional biographical information about him to confirm this. So I have hit a dead end. If anyone feels like digging deeper into this, please let me know if you find anything. Rosenthal is the most promising lead I’ve found that explains the name “Jew Hill.”
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Just as an odd side note, you can see on the map above that Rosenthal’s neighbor to the north was Thomas N. Cuthbert living on “Cuthbert Lane” (today’s W. 261st Street). It was on that property that a genetic mutation resulted in a special variety of raspberry bush: the Cuthbert Raspberry. Seedlings from that raspberry were grown on farms all over the country and it became the dominant raspberry in the market for over 50 years.
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I was curious and so did a query with Duck.ad, Grok, and ChatGPT regarding Thomas N. Cuthbert. Although there was information, including that he immigrated from Scotland, there seems to be no public information regarding his life. Being Scottish, I thought that he might have been a member of the Riverdale Presbyterian Church but their records aren’t digitized it seems. Do you think that there is more about him in the KHS archives yet to be discovered?
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There could be more in our archives on Thomas Cuthbert. I’ll let you know if I find anything. I suspect he is too obsure of a person for AI progams to be able to produce anything on him (since AI is just looking for what has already been written about him on other websites).
If you just use Google or another search engine, you can find some information on many of the people that lived on the large Riverdale estates at that time.
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At his home, Riverdale-on-Hudson, N. Y., Thursday, Feb.. 7, 1918, Thomas N. Cuthbert. Funeral service at Christ Church, Riverdale, Saturday, Feb. 9, 1918. I was not able to see the article, but by Google, he was an attorney and there are many hits on by his name & adding NY to the search. There was a notice that he represented a client that was denied a permit from the parks department from using Van Cortlandt Park to graze his cows
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A Google search for Thomas N. Cuthbert resulted in 222 “relevant” returns, none of them being for our desired gentleman. Apparently, our man left no mark in the pages of history other than, briefly, for the red raspberry. Presumably he died and was buried, but no one seems to know precisely when or where. Was he the first CIA plant? lol
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For a deeper dive on Google, you can also select “Books ” or go to https://patents.google.com/ to search Patents
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Thomas, this may be our subject’s son, Thomas W. Cuthbert who died on February 7,1918.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2W6M-CX4?lang=en
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Thank you, Blackbird1, for this information.
Regarding Cuthbert, I’m having a problem accepting the premise that the lawyer whose funeral took place on February 9, 1918 was the horticulturist who discovered the Cuthbert raspberry circa 1865.
What we know about a Thomas Newby Cuthbert is that he got an undergraduate degree in 1870 and a law degree in 1874, both from Columbia College and that he died on February 7,1918 (at the age of 68?).
We can assume that his age may have been 24 in 1874, making him only 15 at the time of discovery of the Cuthbert raspberry variant. It seems unlikely that a boy that young would have been that engrossed in horticulture. It seems logical to assume that it had been his father who was the horticulturist involved in the raspberry.
Any thoughts?
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