Frank Silver 1862-1927

Family- Grandchildren, Pat Silver and Sadie Goodman

Silver came from Lithuania, where he studied to be a rabbi. He was part of a group that broke away from the Durham Hebrew Congregation for a while. He served as a cantor for the group. He also taught some of the children and was qualified as a kosher butcher. Frank used to travel to all the small Jewish communities in the South for the High Holidays or for B'nei Mitzvah. Preserving Judaism was very important to him. He was a member of a lodge called B'rith Sholem which purchased an additional chunk of the Maplewood cemetery from the city of Durham in 1916 for a Jewish cemetery.

He had known Harry Levin in Lithuania. Their son and daughter later married in Durham.

Silver always kept his big white beard. According to Sadie Goodman and Pat Silver, he was a "gorgeous man."

He ran a general store on Main Street, which was one of many dry goods stores that lined East Main Street.