Today, a dispatch from Eureka, Nevada, 1876. Matilda Ashim and her family start to make Eureka a home, while Louis Monaco learns more about the Italian immigrants in town.
Dear listener,
When was the last time you decided to stay, rather than go? And in that moment, what tipped the scales for you? Was it inertia? Was it comfort? Or was it something else?
Matilda Ashim’s grocery store has only been open three months when she and her family receive news from Carson City.
A jury has found Elia Perasich, who had pursued their stagecoach last year, guilty of assault. Still, the verdict probably could have been stronger—prosecutors didn’t include the Ashims on their list of witnesses, and the witnesses that did testify told conflicting stories. In at least one witness testimony, Elia Perasich stopped the stage and asked Baruch to fight but never fired a single shot.
Elia walks away with only a fine.1 Still, the year begins with an ending, allowing Baruch and his family to finally banish the lingering ghost of last year’s trial.
His sister May, who survived the stagecoach attack and then sat through the trial, wastes no time putting it all behind her.
She’s 13 now, and she’s inherited her mother’s love of a big, theatrical show. She’s danced and sang on the main stages in town, and now she and her friends host a costume ball for the other teens in town.
They place an ad in the town newspaper that details the rules: Every guest will be anonymous, masks must stay on until the grand reveal at 11 pm, no one can pull masks or hair, and—most importantly—kissing is only permitted with masks on.2
The other girls show up in evening gowns and pink dresses, or as Little Red Riding Hood and a witch. But May shows up as a “wild school girl,” which requires lots of makeup and a big performance. The event is a success, and the newspaper notes that the kids outdo the adults at their own game.
The teenagers stay out until 1 in the morning. Some of the older kids play music and show off their gymnastics moves late into the night. May heads home in the dark icy chill, still in her costume.3
—
While Matilda Ashim sews costumes for the ball and the parades, and May Ashim performs with the kids in town, Solomon Ashim, brother-in-law and uncle, pursues the professionals.
Being a patron of the arts—even in this dusty town of 4,500 people—is important to Solomon. His brother Simon, Matilda’s husband, is content to play a supporting role around town, while Solomon plays the lead. His name is always popping up on various town committees and projects, and it’s Solomon that people think of first when they talk about the Ashim brothers.
For Solomon, though, there are two goals that still elude him: the first is to establish a proper Jewish congregation in town. The second is to attract performances by real actors on the town stage. And when Amy Stone comes to visit, he sees an opportunity for action.
Amy Stone isn’t the first professional entertainer to tread the boards in Eureka’s theaters, but she’s a step above the usual fare that comes through town. Of course, magicians like the Great Macallister delight the locals with disappearing coins and reappearing eggs.4 And in just a few months, another pair, Professor Baldwin and his wife Clara, are booked for a show where they will escape from ropes and padlocks, transform water into wine, and read minds.5
But Solomon wants to see Eureka as a destination that doesn’t just attract minor magicians and traveling mentalists. He wants to attract first-rate theater actors who have performed on stages across the country.
So, when Amy Stone agrees to perform in Eureka, Solomon is thrilled.
What he doesn’t know is that Amy Stone, despite her reputation for gracing the stage in California and New York, plays every mining town that she can—because she needs them as much as they need her.
Being an actor is a bit like being a priest—it’s a calling, not a career. And Amy Stone was born into this calling. Her grandfather was an actor and a playwright, most famous for writing successful plays for his friend Edwin Forrest, a leading man known for his temper and his good looks. Amy’s father also wrote plays, including “Cigarette,” a drama about the French Foreign Legion in which his daughter had a starring role.6
Amy started performing in New York City, where her grandfather had worked, but then headed west for new audiences, playing in Salt Lake City and Montana.7 Finally, 10 years ago, she made her debut in San Francisco, and that’s where her career hit a bump.
The review of her performance in the San Francisco Chronicle was tough. Here’s an excerpt:
“When Miss Amy Stone bounded onto the stage, and made a New England curtsy to the audience, a glance through an opera glass of but moderate power was sufficient to convince anyone that she had but few personal attractions to recommend her…
When she spoke, the words were filtered through her nose and reached the ears of the audience most unpleasantly deformed. In the scene which concludes the first act…when she turned her face toward the audience, it presented about as much expression of sorrow as that of a wooden doll. So much for the first act.
In the second act, Miss Amy Stone sang several times, much to the discomfort of the audience…In the fourth act, her madness is not so well simulated, and with no paint on her face, and her locks hanging disheveled over her shoulders, the spectators are too apt to regard…Miss Stone as an elderly idiot instead of an interesting maniac…We may hope that Miss Amy Stone may improve on acquaintance.”8
Still, being a professional actor requires a self-confidence that can’t be trampled by a bad review, or two, or three.
And so Amy Stone persisted in San Francisco, until she hit another immovable object: Thomas Maguire, the man responsible for booking actors in the best productions in town. Maguire already had a leading lady in his stable, and he wouldn’t book Amy on a competing production. So, Amy did what any headstrong young actor would do: she booked her own performance across town. This one was filled with jeers and boos from the audience, which Amy said were plants from Maguire. Either way, it was clear that she needed a new town and a new set of critics.9
Stockton took her in first, mostly out of spite against the San Francisco elite, then she went back to Salt Lake City for four months, and the reviews started to improve:
“Amy, if not a great actress, was at least a fascinating one. She was blessed with a superb form and an attractive face; she fairly reveled in parts where she could wear tights and display her shapely form, and it must be frankly confessed that “the folks” loved to see her in that kind of attire. She was more at home in it than in an evening dress with a bothersome train; there was a freedom of movement and a candor of expression about Amy that was positively refreshing, and we all liked her and got along with her with very little trouble.”10
Now, two years later, Amy Stone is still playing the mountain towns and mining camps out west.
But she’s starting to understand the audiences—and they are starting to love her. There isn’t much room for subtlety or delicacy in these performances. The bigger, the louder, the funnier, the better. And while the San Franciscans might roll their eyes at her dramatic flair, these mountain town audiences appreciate that she is showing up, year after year, to entertain them.
When a fire sweeps through a mine in western Nevada, killing more than 30 miners, Amy Stone plays a benefit show to raise money for their families. The town is so honored that they throw a celebration in her honor a few months later.11
And when she returns to Stockton, which first took her in seven years earlier, she receives the first rave reviews of her career:
“Seldom if ever has the Stockton Theater witnessed such a crush as it did last night on the occasion of the grand welcome benefit to Stockton’s favorite Amy Stone. Every seat was crowded, and scores of people were compelled to stand during the performance…Her rendition…was a magnificent piece of acting and would have done credit to any actress on the American stage.”12
So, now in Eureka, Amy Stone and her traveling troupe of actors perform for ten days. She packs crowds into the town’s largest theater hall and sells out eight of her ten performances.13
All of this is such a thrill that Solomon Ashim and other business owners around town write an open letter to the actor and her company. They ask her to return for another performance—and she does at the end of the month.14
This is the kind of validation that Amy Stone understands now: Solomon Ashim and the people of Eureka feel cosmopolitan and important in her presence, and she feels valued and celebrated, surrounded by her people in the boomtown music halls and theaters of towns like Eureka.
—
Of course, if you ask the folks back east, towns like Eureka are full of shootouts in the afternoon and visits to the brothel in the evenings. But life in Eureka is a little more subtle than the Eastern newspapers would have you believe.
Yes, the town is packed with single, unattached men who like to drink and fight and screw. But plenty of legitimate businesses also run here, and locals take pride in their scrappy little theaters, opera houses, jewelry stores, and dress shops.
And when it comes to sex work, it’s not exactly advertised in the open. Instead, lining the eastern side of Buel street, not far from Main, is a row of what locals call hurdy houses.15 The name comes from the hurdy-gurdy, a raspy string instrument that used to accompany the women who are paid to dance here. These days, though, the hurdy girls are probably dancing to a house band of violin, trumpet, and piano, playing Irish and German and English songs designed to keep you drinking, dancing, and spending money.16
No one ever calls the hurdy houses brothels, and not every hurdy house has a back room or an ulterior motive. Some of these spots offer nothing more than a dance with a pretty girl and a strong drink. Others offer more.
But what all the hurdy houses do provide is an outlet. Eureka exists, in one way or another, almost entirely for making money. And it’s easy for tempers to flare when you’re struggling in the mines each day, watching other men hit rich ore strikes while you end up with nothing but dirt and rock, over and over again. Add to the mix miners and workers from all over the world, pushed to their limit in summers that are too hot and winters that are too cold.
In the hurdy houses, though, the band is always playing, the hurdy girls are always dancing, and the liquor is always ready to be poured. And so it’s no surprise, then, that when the carbonari—the town’s charcoal burners—do come into town, these places are some of their first stops.
Many of the charcoal burners are young—in their twenties and early thirties—and they spend most of their time living and working in the elements on the outskirts of town. The finer restaurants and stores and theaters might look sideways at a burner, struggling to speak English and still dirty from the coal pile, but the hurdy houses welcome anyone, as long as they can pay. Here’s how the local newspaper describes it:
“The boys seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the gentle hurdy smiled upon the festive coal burner and her heart beat responsive to his as long as his coin lasted.”17
Dancing and drinking in town are welcome diversions from day after day spent tending to the charcoal fires. With each year, the burners have to move farther out to find wood to burn even while the market price of charcoal drops. The price is now somewhere around 25 cents per bushel, which leaves the burners with even less to earn once the teamsters get paid.18
Louis Monaco talks with the burners when they come into town in their northern Italian dialect. Sometimes he travels out to the countryside to photograph them standing near their massive charcoal piles or kilns.
These men come from the same part of the world that he does. Many of them have worked the hard soil in the foothills of the Alps like his family had, and many have left for the United States looking to keep their families back home fed and alive. Monaco has gotten lucky. So far, many of these young men have not.
At least for one night, though, they can come to town and dance with the hurdy girls until they forget.
—
The Ashim family have had a good year, certainly better than the last. But as the summer starts to fade out into fall, they’re facing a decision, along with the hundred other Jews in town.
For the past four years, the Jewish community in Eureka has marked the high holidays and other religious dates together, often in each other’s homes. They have tried, and failed, to persuade a rabbi to lead them. But one step they have never taken is to form an official congregation, with actual leadership, bylaws, and rules. Like the Ashims, almost all of the Jews in Eureka have relocated here from other boomtowns, dispersed by fires and floods and mining busts into this new place. Forming a congregation means they are committing, at least for now, to staying put and making Eureka an actual home.
And so on Sunday, August 13, 40 members of the town’s Jewish community—all men—decide to make it official. Eureka will have a formal congregation. The president, vice president, and secretary of the new congregation are all business owners. Pepi Steler, the watchmaker from Budapest who lived near the Ashims in Hamilton, is also part of the leadership. And, of course, Solomon Ashim is there, too, serving as treasurer. Together, they have formed the first Jewish congregation in all of Nevada.19
With the congregation made official and a small meeting hall reserved, they face another question: which form of the Jewish faith fits them best?
There’s the Orthodox movement, the most traditional version of the faith that itself is splintered into multiple viewpoints. And then there is a growing movement to adapt Judaism to the moment, changing the strict rules around what you can eat, what you can wear, and when you can pray to better fit a new world. In this new way of thinking, being Jewish is centered around your individual experience of faith and your commitment to improving the world around you.
This is known as Reform Judaism, and comes mostly from Germany, where Jews have tried to integrate into mainstream European life.20
The Eureka congregation leans towards the reform camp, and in particular, they admire Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, probably one of the most famous religious leaders in the United States and the face of Reform Judaism in the country.21
The changes that Wise is making in his own synagogue in Cincinnati make sense for the small Jewish congregation in Eureka. A few of the reforms that Wise is making include counting women alongside men as part of a religious service and allowing men and women to worship together in the same room.22
Practicing Judaism in these boomtowns has always required some degree of improvisation, of a willingness to worship the best way possible instead of strictly by the book. Now, it seems, the Ashims and the rest of the Eureka congregation have found a version of their faith that embraces the unpredictability of their own lives.
—
As fall approaches, the Eureka Jewish congregation—now just two months old—marks Simhat Torah, the celebration of another year of reading and studying the Torah. The Jews of Eureka, like other congregations, will recognize this celebration each year. Among other things, it’s a reminder that they never really master their holy text. Still, the act of spending time with the Torah, of trying to understand the scripture and follow its guidance even if you fall short, that’s worth celebrating.23
And because Eureka never turns down a party, the congregation rents out the town theater and throws a ball to ring in the occasion. The place is full that October evening, with music, dancing, and, of course, a meal prepared by Matilda Ashim and the other women in the congregation.24
It has been four years since the Ashims arrived in Eureka from Hamilton. Since then, they have survived a flood, a murder trial, and a shooting. They have also found moments of escape, of beauty, and of grace, too, from May’s dancing and singing to Matilda decorating the town parades. And they have made a living here, also, with both Matilda and Simon running their own stores.
And now, they have a congregation behind them, in this place that, as uncertain as it may be, they call home.
If you’d like to learn more about the complex history of the Jewish faith in the United States, check out American Judaism: A History by Jonathan D. Sarna.
Works Cited:
1. Eureka Daily Sentinel, February 13, 1876
2. Eureka Daily Sentinel, January 18, 1876
3. Ibid.
4. Eureka Daily Sentinel, September 21, 1876
5. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 27, 1876
6. Robert Edward Ericson, “Touring Entertainment in Nevada During the Peak Years of the Mining Boom, 1876-1878,” University of Oregon, 1970.
7. Ibid.
8. San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 1867
9. The Record, April 22, 1911
10. John S. Lindsay, The Mormons and the Theatre; or, The History of Theatricals in Utah (Salt Lake City: Century Printing, 1905).
11. Gold Hill Daily News, October 15, 1869
12. Stockton Daily Evening Herald, May 29, 1874
13. Robert Edward Ericson, “Touring Entertainment in Nevada During the Peak Years of the Mining Boom, 1876-1878”
14. Eureka Daily Sentinel, June 20, 1876
15. Eureka Daily Sentinel, April 20, 1879
16. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 29, 1873
17. Eureka Daily Sentinel, November 8, 1876
18. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 3, 1878
19. Norton B. Stern, “The Jewish Community of Eureka, Nevada.” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Summer 1982.
20. “Our History,” Roots of Reform Judaism.
21. “Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900),” Jewish Virtual Library.
22. Ibid.
23. Samuel L. Boyd, “Simchat Torah: A Jewish holiday of reading, renewal and resilience,” Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, October 2022.
24. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 11, 1876