Pine Lawn Cemetery, Fort Scott, Kansas

The presence of Pine Lawn Cemetery near Fort Scott serves as a reminder of a former Jewish community that existed in this part of Kansas for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like in other small towns across Kansas, many German Jews came to the area seeking work and operating as merchants when the town was growing. In the decades that followed, the first arrivals or their children left for bigger cities where they joined more urban Jewish enclaves before and after the Second World War. No synagogue remains, and Pine Lawn remains the only physical marker of this Jewish community within Fort Scott.

Pine Lawn was founded about a mile south of Fort Scott in the late nineteenth century by the town's Hebrew Relief and Burial Society. Today, some residents of the area find it puzzling that there is a Jewish cemetery here at all since no Jews have lived in Fort Scott since before the 1960s. The history of their Jewish community has largely been forgotten. Much of the following was discovered by preservationist Kate Emmett-Sweetser, who set out almost 15 years ago to uncover these people's stories.

Fort Scott developed a significant Jewish community following the Civil War. Most of them were German Jews from states like Saarland and Prussia. This was true of most Ashkenazi Jews living in the county at the time, as Russian Jews did not come to America until later. They came to the area to work as merchants, hoping to make names for themselves in the growing town. Many succeeded, with one, Morris Cohen, even serving as the town's mayor.

The town's Jewish burial society founded Pine Lawn around 1870. There are about 200 graves there, of which ten percent or so are unmarked. Most of Fort Scott's Jews left town after World War II to seek opportunities in Kansas's larger cities, and almost all were gone by the 1960s. The local non-religious cemetery association has maintained Pine Lawn ever since then. The cemetery is mostly out of use now, although a few burials took place in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries for those whose family members are buried here.

The PINE LAWN Cemetery in FORT SCOTT, KS, USA, JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry. Accessed November 27th, 2022. http://data.jewishgen.org/imagedata/jowbr/USA-02886/pl.html.

Milken Center unveils Jewish history exhibit, The Fort Scott Tribune. April 18th, 2008. Accessed November 27th, 2022. https://www.fstribune.com/story/1395660.html.