Unlike most of their Jewish brethren who remained on or near the East Coast in big cities, these first-time farmers boarded trains to the Great Northwest and staked their claims 20 years after McInstosh County was opened for homesteading. They settled in the stony, hilly area their welcoming German-Russian neighbors called Judenberg, or Jewish hills. The Jewish farmers faced inexperience, drought, prairie fires, early frosts, blizzards, the Spanish flue Pandemic, and the Great Depression, yet through hard work and God's blessings this stony ground bore fruit. Far from any major Jewish population center, the Ashley Wishek Jewish community retained its religious identity, becoming a nationally registered Jewish congregation in 1907 before owning a central building for worship or having a formally trained rabbi. They traveled on horseback to each other's sod houses and barns for a minyan, the 10-man quorum for certain prayers, and celebrated Jewish weddings outside on the prairie under the chuppah with sponge cake, homemade wine, and dancing to washtub drums and spirited violins. The homesteader families interred here include Auerbach, Becker, Bender, Berman, Bloom, Dorfman, Ewart, Filler, Friedman, Goldstone, Grossman, Jampolsky, Ourach, Parkansky, Raich, Reuben, Schlasinger, Silverlieb, Smilowitz, and Weil.