The first Jewish congregation in St. Louis, Mo., was organized about the same time as that of Cleveland, though individual Jews were living there more than thirty years before. The Bloch, or Block, family of Schwihau, Bohemia, settled there about 1816, the pioneer being Wolf Bloch. Eliezer Block was an attorney-at-law there in 1821. Most of the early arrivals intermarried with Christians, and were lost to Judaism. It was not until the Jewish New Year in 1836 that the first religious services were held, when ten men rented a little room over a grocery store at the corner of Second and Spruce streets. The Achduth Israel or United Hebrew Congregation was organized in 1839, Abraham Weigel (d. 1888) being the first president and Samuel Davidson the first reader. Services were held for many years in a private house in Frenchtown. The first building used as a synagogue was located in Fifth street, between Green and Washington avenues. According to Markens (p. 108), Bernard Illowy (b. in Kolin, Bohemia, 1814; d. near Cincinnati, O., 1871), one of the leading conservative rabbis of America in his time, a pupil of the great Rabbi Moses Sofer (1763–1839), of Presburg, Hungary, was elected to the rabbinate of the St. Louis congregation in 1854. Its temple on Sixth street, between Locust and St. Charles streets, was dedicated in 1859. Rev. Henry J. Messing (b. 1848) held the position of rabbi for about thirty years. The B’nai El congregation, which was organized in 1852, moved into its own house of worship in 1855. Rabbi Moritz Spitz (b. in Csaba, Hungary, 1848), editor of the “Jewish Voice,” has been at the head of this congregation since 1878. The third of the earlier congregations, Shaare Emet, was organized in 1866, with H. S. Sonnenschein (b. in Hungary, 1839; d. in Des Moines, Ia., 1908) as its first rabbi.