Judge Jacob Jerome Hahn (1868-1938) was the second person of the Jewish faith to be admitted to the Rhode Island Bar. He served on the state superior court from 1931-1935. He purchased the historic spring and land for a memorial in 1930. Judge Hahn hired architect Norman Isham(1864-1943) to design a classical revival garden. He gifted the small park to the city of Providence in memory of his father, Isaac Hahn (1845-1909), the first Jewish person to be elected to public office in Rhode Island, serving on the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1884-1886. Roger Williams Spring Park opened in 1932 and today is known as The Hahn Memorial. You can find it within the larger Roger Williams National Memorial which was established by Congress on Oct. 22, 1965, and officially by the National Park Service in 1984.Judge Hahn used to say that “the spring, where in 1636 Roger Williams. landed, was and is one of the truly hallowed spots on this continent." Judge Hahn donated the park in an act of “gratitude to the people of Rhode Island who honored him as well as his father with offices of public trust" and as an “homage to the spirit of Roger Williams who first in this hemisphere transformed liberty from a private luxury into a commodity available to all." The first Jewish settlers in New England settled Rhode Island in the 1650s, seeking freedom from persecution.
Hahn is hardly the only Jewish American to memorialize the contributions of Roger Williams. Oscar Solomon Straus, the first Jewish Cabinet secretary of the United States, wrote a book called Roger Williams: The Pioneer of Religious Liberty in 1894 and in 1899 memorialized Williams on a plaque in the London Charterhouse School, commemorating Williams not only as an alumnae of Charterhouse school and the founder of the state of Rhode Island, but also as “the pioneer of religious liberty in America."Roger Williams was particularly unique in his time for his ideas on Jews. The first Jews seeking religious freedom arrived in New Amsterdam (New York City) and soon faced attempts by the Dutch colony to have them removed. While it was rare for Christians to advocate for religious liberty to all denominations Christians, extending religious liberty outside of Christian sects and into the non-Christian world was rarer still.
In Williams’s own words:“I affirm, that all the liberty of conscience, that I ever pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges -- that none of the papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's prayers or worship, nor be compelled from their own particular prayers or worship."
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service