In the early 1900s, dozens of Jewish families living in crowded cities in the eastern U.S. attempted to resettle on the high plains of eastern Wyoming.
Among the first of the homesteaders were Ukrainian immigrants Samuel and Rachel Paris, who left Pittsburgh with their six children to establish a sheep ranch outside of Torrington, Wyoming, in 1906.
Later the same year, the Parises welcomed their seventh child — a baby boy. He was the first Jewish baby born in the state of Wyoming, which had been admitted to the union in 1890.
What was he named?
Wyoming Benjamin Paris.
Wyoming-the-baby didn’t live in Wyoming-the-state for very long, though, because the Paris family returned to Pittsburgh in the 1910s. (Most of the other Jewish settlers eventually gave up and moved elsewhere as well.)
But Wyoming “Wy” Paris did go on to become a star semi-pro basketball player in the 1920s and ’30s. In fact, he was inducted into the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1990.
Sources:
- “Wyoming B. Paris: Basketball star known as ‘Masked Marvel’.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 25 May 2001: B-5.
- Paris, Barry. “Song of Squirrel Hill.” Pittsburgh Quarterly 20 Feb. 2006.
- Wyoming Benjamin Paris (1906-2001) – The Strangest Names In American Political History
- Paris, Barry – 1998 – Tape 1, Side 1 – Historic Pittsburgh
- Hallberg, Carl V. “The Jews of Huntley, Wyoming.” WyoHistory.org 21 Dec. 2015.
Image: Adapted from Enoch Rauh Club 1919-20 (public domain) via Historic Pittsburgh