Balls Pond Road London? Or Ayres Quay Sunderland? Which is the true burial place of David Johnasson?

The cemetery at Ayres Quay Jewish Cemetery in Sunderland, presently classed by Jewish Heritage UK as a "site at Risk" was closed in 1856.

However, a space was reserved for a memorial to David Johnasson, a local landowner, ship owner, owner of the Usworth Colliery, and a senior member of the community, who died in London on 25th July 1859.

Only a stump remains of the once imposing obelisk, raised in his memory by his children, but earlier photographs can be seen here.

David Johnasson (Jonassohn) appears to have been quite out of the usual run of early nineteenth century Anglo-Jewry.

A notice of his marriage in Hamburg to Charlotte, 2nd daughter of Mr. J Bouer of that city, appears in the Newcastle Courant on 15 July 1826, suggesting that, although still a young man, he was already an established figure in the North of England.

By the mid 1840's he was already the ow ner of an estate which included a fine property, Usworth House, later known as Usworth Hall and it was here that he sunk a Colliery which he ran for many years.


Pit accidents were far from rare at this time; how often this was due to lack of knowledge, and technology and how much to bad management, is hard to judge.

The raw facts reported by the Durham Mining Museum show that the one at Usworth on 5 June 1850 was caused by a naked flame resulting in the deaths of 12 men and one boy, from the 160 working the pit that day.

But the boss, David Jonassohn, was also possessed of a paternalistic streak. The Preston Guardian of 8th Feb 1851 reports:

".....Mr David Jonassohn and Partners have erected a large and commodious Chapel with school rooms for the alternate use of the Wesleyans and the Primitive Methodists".

In similar benevolent fashion, the following week, the Newcastle Courant reports that on the occasion of her marriage, the eldest daughter of D. Jonassohn Esq. of Usworth Place gave half-a-crown each (2 shillings and sixpence) to the poor widows and old people in the villages of Usworth and Usworth Colliery as well as £2 to the inmates of the Chester-le-Street workhouse.

David Jonassohn was still living at Usworth in 1851, but evidently moved to London some time prior to his death there on 25 July 1859. The stone, erected in his memory in the Balls Pond Road Jewish cemetery, is still standing.


In the English inscription, he is identified as DAVID JONASSOHN Esq. of Usworth DURHAM. and, this is repeated in the Hebrew inscription:

resident Durham

So, it would seem that, whilst his physical remains were laid to rest in London, his heart belonged to the North East of England.

Further information on the Jonassohn family can be found on www.genpals.com Cemetery Project see here. Our thanks to Shaun for the use his photos.
ALS

Beyond the high wall, Alderney Road Jewish Cemetery

It would have been around 1991 that I first visited the Jewish Cemetery in Aldernery Road, London E., the oldest Ashkenazi burial ground in Britain, dating from 1696\7. We came upon it, quite by chance, on our way back from the Tower Hamlets Family History Library in Bancroft Road. There was a door in a wall, a small sign, and a bell. We rang, not expecting an answer, but before long the gate was opened by an elderly woman, wearing slippers, followed by a large, mournful dog. She looked us up and down, nodded and let us in. For more than half an hour, we wandered, unimpeded, round the crumbling stones: just the two of us, under a blue sky, with the birds singing in the trees, and the deep, quiet layers of history beneath our feet. A magical experience! But not, apparently unique.

In 2001, a decade after our visit, the German author W. G. Sebald published his strange, disturbing and, ultimately, tragic novel 'Austerlitz'. A few pages before the end of this extraordinary book, is an unidentified photograph of an old Jewish cemetery and the following text:

......... And then he gave me the key to his house in Alderney Street.......And I should not omit, he added, to ring the bell at the gateway in the brick wall adjoining his house for behind the wall, although he had never been able to see it from any of his windows, there was a plot where lime trees and lilacs grew and in which members of the Ashkenazi community had been buried, including Rabbi David Tevele Schiff and Rabbi Samuel Falk, the Baal Shem of London. He had discovered the cemetery......only a few days before he left London when the gate in the wall stood open for the first time in all the years he had lived in Alderney Street. Inside, a very small, almost dwarf-like woman of perhaps seventy years old - the cemetery caretaker, as it turned out - was walking along the paths in her slippers. Beside her, almost as tall as she was, walked a Belgian sheepdog now grey with age who answered to the name of Billie and was very timid. In the bright spring light, shining through the newly opened leaves of the lime trees, you might have thought, Austerlitz told me, that you had entered a fairy tale which, like life itself, had grown older with the passing of time....."

When I read this sentence, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck! I have been back to the cemetery a couple of times since but, today, in the interest of security and conservation, all our old burial grounds are permanently locked and entrance is only possible by pre-arranged appointment : the mystery and the magic are still there, but you are unlikely to be alone and you may have to half close your eyes and ears before you can capture it.

A.L.S

• 'Austerlitz': W.G.Sebald. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell. Published by Penguin Books 2001 ISBN 0-14-029799-5
• In the book, both the cemetery and the road are called Alderney Street
• United Synagogue Burial Society.
• Susser Archive, Alderney Road Monumental Inscriptions
  

Intro

Welcome to our blog.

We have started this as a place to publish items that would not really fit in with our main website which is a database of inscriptions from Jewish Cemeteries throughout the UK, including mini family trees created from a variety of sources. Along with general photos of the cemeteries and short histories.

So we hope they interest you as much as they do us.

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