September Rivah Visitor's Guide - The Rappahannock Record

It happened here
by Larry S. Chowning
There were two attempts to establish Jewish colonies
in the Water View area of Middlesex County, and
both times they failed.
As early as 1876, Joseph Friedenwald and David
Weisenfeld, two Jews from Baltimore purchased farmland
at Water View. They first purchased “Buckingham,”
the site of the colonial home of the legendary Corbin
family. Other than the Wormeleys of Rosegill, historically
the Corbins were as noted as any family in colonial
Middlesex.
In August of 1882, Friedenwald purchased “Inglewood”
at Water View, and between 1882 and 1889 he settled a
number of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrant families
on the land. They arrived by steamboat from Baltimore
to the Water View Steamboat Wharf with high hopes of
establishing a colony.
Inglewood consisted of 485 acres of timber and grazing
land. The farm had two dwellings, a workshop and a mill
house. Up to 15 families settled on the farm and lived in
one-room or two-room shanties built in a row. Each family
owned a horse and a cow given to them by Friedenwald.
After four or five years, some of the settlers became ill
and died. Others left by steamer and went back to Baltimore.
In December of 1937, one of the coldest winters on
record, 15 Jewish families moved to Weeks Farm near
Water View from Saginaw County, Michigan, in what was
to be a last-ditch effort to create a Jewish “promised land”
in Middlesex County.
The families were members of the Sunrise Cooperative
Farm Community, which was an organization formed in
the early 1930s in Detroit that was designed to create a
new social order for Jews.
Their vision was to establish a community that was
completely self-sufficient and completely independent of
the outside world. It would produce its own food, educate
its own children, and provide its own cultural development.
It was to be a Jewish Utopia that would provide all mankind
with a living example of the ideal of a better humanity.
When they arrived at the 642-acre Weeks Farm, they
moved into three dormitory-style buildings that had no
electricity or plumbing. The roads in Middlesex were
either made of dirt or oyster shell. By 1937, the steamboat
had stopped frequenting Water View Wharf.
The winter of 1937 was one of the worst on record and
the colonists’ plan to build a Utopia was thwarted. The
entire area was covered with ice and snow for months.
The families stayed at Weeks Farm for a little over a year
before leaving for other areas.
In April of 1940, the land was sold and just eight years
later, a new Jewish nation was started across the ocean. It
was named Israel.
It happened right here in Rivah country!
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