Cleveland's Jewish community played an active role helping Soviet Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union and resettle in the United States, and especially in Cleveland, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Approximately 12,000 Soviet Jews came to Cleveland during these years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the emigration continued, though at a slower pace. This collection, a project of the WRHS Cleveland Jewish Archives Advisory Committee, includes oral histories with Soviet Jews from the Greater Cleveland area and related materials. The collection consists primarily of abstracts, article drafts, correspondence, descriptions of the project, a dissertation, information sheets, interview protocols, lists, minutes, newspaper clippings, notes, oral history user agreements, procedures, programs, progress reports, reports, a script, a student paper, and transcripts of interviews.
Ruby L. Terry was a former engineer and marketing executive for Bell Laboratories and the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, later Ameritech/SBC, and currently AT&T. She was responsible for generating $300 million in annual revenues from the engineering of large communication systems for such corporations as East Ohio Gas, Cleveland Clinic, Timken Company, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber. She also was assigned by her division engineer to design the first cable television system for cities in the northern and southern Ohio Bell service area. As an engineer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she had to overcome many obstacles as both an African-American and as a woman. This oral history was conducted by Celeste Terry, daughter of Ruby Terry, at Western Reserve Historical Society on July 28, 2018.
The Connecticut Western Reserve was the area of northeast Ohio that Connecticut had reserved for her citizens in 1786 in exchange for ceding all western land claims to the U.S. government. The area comprised all land south of Lake Erie to 41' latitude and within 120 miles of Pennsylvania's western border. The Connecticut Land Company (1795-1809) was authorized by Connecticut to purchase and resell most of the Western Reserve, and received title to all Reserve land except for the 500,000-acre Firelands on the extreme west which was reserved for Connecticut victims whose lands were burned by the British in the Revolution. Gen. Moses Cleaveland, a company director and its general agent, led the first company survey party to the Reserve in 1796 and founded the settlement of Cleveland at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River., Featured in the "Cleveland Starts Here" Exhibit
The Joseph and Feiss Company was established in 1841, by Caufman Koch and Samuel Loeb, as a general store in Meadville, Pennsylvania. In 1845 they moved the store to Cleveland, Ohio, and began specializing in tailored men's clothing. The company underwent several name changes before becoming Joseph & Feiss in 1907. The collection consists of photographs of various operations, functions, facilities, events, and staff of the Joseph and Feiss Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Included are exterior and interior views of the factory; individual and group portraits of the founders of the company, other executives, and employees; views of employees at work and at various recreational activities; views of medical and sanitary facilities, the nursery, lunchrooms, and language and other classes for employees; views of machinery used in clothing manufacturing at the plant; and views of production and employees during World War II.
The Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation was founded in 1925 by Leo Weidenthal as the Civic Progress League. In 1926 the name was changed to the Cleveland Cultural Garden League, and in 1952 to the Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation. Weidenthal conceived the idea of a series of gardens, each having a central theme concerning the history of a single nationality group in Cleveland, Ohio. The City of Cleveland and the Work Projects Administration did much of the work on the earlier gardens after a 1927 ordinance set aside areas of Rockefeller Park next to the Shakespeare Garden for the development of similar gardens with ethnic themes. The collection consists of articles of incorporation, constitutions, minutes, correspondence, histories, speeches, financial records, proclamations, publications, clippings, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous material including membership lists, resolutions, press releases, certificates, programs, and invitations. The minutes and correspondence contain information on the role of the Work Projects Administration in helping to build the gardens.