During Jewish-American Heritage Month, we’d like to recognize the legacy of Ruby Diamond. Miss Ruby, as she came to be known, was a lifelong citizen of Tallahassee and a 1905 graduate of what is now Florida State University. Perhaps best remembered for her philanthropy and the FSU concert hall named for her, Miss Ruby was also an important link between Tallahassee’s Jewish community and its 19th century beginnings.

She was born in 1886 to Henrietta and Julius Diamond. Her father emigrated from Prussia in the 1860s, but her mother was descended from two of the state’s pioneering Jewish families, who had moved to north Florida before the Civil War. In 1865, her maternal grandfather, Robert Williams, moved from Jasper to Tallahassee, where he became a prominent businessman, cotton planter, and civic leader.

He brought with him a Torah scroll that ensured Jewish worship could take place on the Florida frontier, and he himself often led prayers on Jewish holidays. Today, that same Torah resides in the Ark at Tallahassee’s Temple Israel, a congregation that Miss Ruby helped found in 1937.

Courtesy of the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources