Beni Israel Cemetery - Eudora, Ks. - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

From Wikipedia:

"Beni Israel Cemetery, also known as Cemetery Beni Israel, is an historic Jewish cemetery located at 1301 E. 2100 Road in Eudora, Douglas County, Kansas. It was founded in 1858 by German Jews who were a part of the German Immigrant Settlement Company from Chicago that had founded Eudora in 1856. One year-old Isaac Cohn who died September 5, 1858, was the first person buried in the cemetery. Burials ceased for decades in 1928 until being reactivated in 1978 when responsibility for the cemetery was taken on by the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation of nearby Lawrence.

On January 2, 2013, Beni Israel Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places."

From the National Register application:
(visit link)

"The Beni Israel cemetery is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of two gravel roads (E. 2100 and N. 1300 Road). The burial ground is protected by a steel chain link fence approximately four feet high. There is a southeast entrance gate and an entrance with paired gates to the northeast. Most of the stones are clustered in the southeast corner of the cemetery. The southeast gate and a pathway lead directly to this group of graves and markers. Headstones are arranged in rows oriented north-south with some irregular spacing and a few stones facing west. There are some family plots. Several contemporary graves have been integrated in available plots with the historic burials. In August, 2012, there were thirty-six burials in the southeast section of the cemetery, seventeen were historic burials and nineteen were contemporary burials interred after the cemetery was reactivated in 1978. There are five contemporary burials in the center section marked by the driveway. A few plots are reserved for future burials in the historic southeast section and some plots are reserved in the center section.

Every congregation member has a right to be buried in the cemetery and it is intended to serve the needs of all Jews who live in the area, including those from nearby communities such as Topeka.1 The space available will serve the Jewish community for years to come. As cemetery sexton Neil Schanberg commented in 2005, “what we’re doing today will have importance decades from now.”

In 1978 the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation (LJCC, then known at the Lawrence Jewish Community Center) assumed responsibility for the cemetery. In 2005 the LJCC launched a capital campaign to raise $40,000 to improve the cemetery’s appearance. A water meter for Rural Water District #4 was installed to provide a water supply for sustaining new plantings of native prairie grass, evergreens, and about forty deciduous trees. The entire cemetery is grassed with a number of small evergreen trees and bushes planted around the east and south sides of the perimeter. Other plantings and small deciduous trees border the central driveway and a few are scattered through the west and north sections of the cemetery. There are water hydrants in the southeast and northeast corners and the center section of the burial ground.

According to the Overall Cemetery Plan, the cemetery has been surveyed and organized into seven sections with 93 blocks subdivided into individual plots. In a contemporary landscape design, a driveway was laid out to the north that accesses the center of the tract, forms a squared circle, and re-connects with the driveway. The driveway eliminated several sections that had been laid out as potential gravesites. Also, a genizah, a depository for worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics, is located in the southeast section of the cemetery."

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