Arpin (Wood County)
The former logging town was site of a Jewish farming settlement from 1904 until about 1922. Milwaukee businessman A.W. Rich, working with the New York-based Jewish Agricultural Society, bought 720 acres of subpar land for agriculture. From six to 15 Jewish families worked the land, receiving financial and emotional support from Rich. The Arpin Jews, most of them newly arrived Russian immigrants, built the county's only synagogue in 1915, opening it with a ceremony that attracted 300 Jews from the area and as far away as Milwaukee. The Jewish farmers got along well with their neighbors. Twenty Jews reportedly lived here in 1920. The farming settlement broke up as the Jewish farmers struggled to earn a living and sought better Jewish opportunities in Wisconsin Rapids and Milwaukee. Max Leopold remained in Arpin, operating a co-op and raising his family, until he retired to California.
Retired farmer Harold Zieher confirmed in an interview that his land was the site of an original Jewish-owned house that he and others razed. He used the lumber in building his current house. He added that the "Jewish church" was on his land. He remembered entering it with friends when he was young, in the 1930s, and throwing around the books, presumably prayer books. Zieher recalled that the abandoned "Jewish church" was sold to an Ollie Snordheim and used as a garage. Zieher recalled taking crops down to the co-op operated by Leopold, who spoke in a foreign accent. Zieher remembered attending school in the 1930s and '40s with Richard Leopold, son of Max.
All of these articles are always open to the addition of new information. Readers who have more data about, or documents or artifacts from, these communities are welcome to contact Leon Cohen at the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning at 414-963-4135 or lcohen@wsjl.org.