Notes
Matches 301 to 350 of 2,256
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| 301 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The youngest child of Sampson and Joy Franks Mears, Grace was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1694. Her family was part of the Atlantic community of Jewish merchants, moving freely through the Caribbean, North America and London. In 1718 she married widower Moses Levy in London. Levy, who had made his home in New York, already had four children from his first marriage. Grace moved with her husband to New York, and her relationship with her new stepchildren, especially daughter Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks, only two years her junior and who herself had just married a few years prior, was not without tensions. Together Grace and Moses had an additional seven children, and the family found itself at the center of the burgeoning Jewish community in New York. In 1728 her husband was seized with an illness. Several months later, two days after their youngest son, Joseph, was born, Moses died. During that same emotionally trying year, her brother, Judah, moved to New York. Though in his will Moses Levy had split his estate between Grace and his ten youngest children— the oldest two being already quite comfortable— she found it necessary to go into business to help support herself. Seven years later, at the age of thirty-nine, Grace remarried to widower David Hays. Her stepdaughter, Bilhah, the consummate gossip, with whom Grace had never had an easy relationship, had this to say on the subject: "I bleive you think wee have abounded in wonderful Marriages but Especialy david Hays and Mrs. Grace Levy Must be Something Surprising for my part I shall hereafter think nothing Imposiable." Ambassador Loeb who sponsored this site is a relative of Grace Mears Levy. | Mears, Grace (I388)
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| 302 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The youngest child of Sampson and Joy Franks Mears, Grace was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1694. Her family was part of the Atlantic community of Jewish merchants, moving freely through the Caribbean, North America and London. In 1718 she married widower Moses Levy in London. Levy, who had made his home in New York, already had four children from his first marriage. Grace moved with her husband to New York, and her relationship with her new stepchildren, especially daughter Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks, only two years her junior and who herself had just married a few years prior, was not without tensions. Together Grace and Moses had an additional seven children, and the family found itself at the center of the burgeoning Jewish community in New York. In 1728 her husband was seized with an illness. Several months later, two days after their youngest son, Joseph, was born, Moses died. During that same emotionally trying year, her brother, Judah, moved to New York. Though in his will Moses Levy had split his estate between Grace and his ten youngest children— the oldest two being already quite comfortable— she found it necessary to go into business to help support herself. Seven years later, at the age of thirty-nine, Grace remarried to widower David Hays. Her stepdaughter, Bilhah, the consummate gossip, with whom Grace had never had an easy relationship, had this to say on the subject: "I bleive you think wee have abounded in wonderful Marriages but Especialy david Hays and Mrs. Grace Levy Must be Something Surprising for my part I shall hereafter think nothing Imposiable." Ambassador Loeb who sponsored this site is a relative of Grace Mears Levy. | Mears, Grace (I388)
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| 303 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born around 1725, Martha Lampley was the daughter of Nathaniel Lampley, Jr. and Abigail Paxson, Episcopalians from Philadelphia. She was already the widow of James Steel Thomson when she married Samson Levy in 1752. Samson was the son of Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife, Grace Mears Levy, and half-brother of Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks. Samson was a merchant and signed the Philadelphia Non-Importation Agreement in protest of the Stamp Act. Martha and Samson had five children who lived to adulthood, including Samson Levy, Jr. and Judge Moses Levy. Although the couple had their first son, Nathan, circumcised in New York by Jacob Moses, the rest of their children were raised Episcopalian, attending Saint Peter's Church in Philadelphia. They were members of the Dancing Assembly, Philadelphia society's preeminent club. Despite it all, Samson Levy was still referred to as a Jew. | Lampley, Martha (I410)
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| 304 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born around 1725, Martha Lampley was the daughter of Nathaniel Lampley, Jr. and Abigail Paxson, Episcopalians from Philadelphia. She was already the widow of James Steel Thomson when she married Samson Levy in 1752. Samson was the son of Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife, Grace Mears Levy, and half-brother of Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks. Samson was a merchant and signed the Philadelphia Non-Importation Agreement in protest of the Stamp Act. Martha and Samson had five children who lived to adulthood, including Samson Levy, Jr. and Judge Moses Levy. Although the couple had their first son, Nathan, circumcised in New York by Jacob Moses, the rest of their children were raised Episcopalian, attending Saint Peter's Church in Philadelphia. They were members of the Dancing Assembly, Philadelphia society's preeminent club. Despite it all, Samson Levy was still referred to as a Jew. | Lampley, Martha (I410)
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| 305 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born in Cecil County, Maryland in 1756, Mary Pearce married Judge Moses Levy, son of Samson Levy and Martha Lampley Levy, in Philadelphia in 1791. That city, in which they occupied the highest strata of elite Episcopalian society, would remain home for them and for their daughters Henrietta and Martha. | Pearce, Mary (I1144)
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| 306 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born in Cecil County, Maryland in 1756, Mary Pearce married Judge Moses Levy, son of Samson Levy and Martha Lampley Levy, in Philadelphia in 1791. That city, in which they occupied the highest strata of elite Episcopalian society, would remain home for them and for their daughters Henrietta and Martha. | Pearce, Mary (I1144)
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| 307 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born in Strasbourg in 1753, it is uncertain exactly when Joseph Andrews arrived in America. By the 1790s he had settled in New York, and in August of 1794 married Sallie Saloman, the eldest daughter of Haym Salomon, "financier of the Revolution." Though twenty-nine years separated this couple, theirs would prove a fruitful marriage, marked by thirty years and twelve children. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Andrews was active in New York's Congregation Shearith Israel. Synagogue records have him criticizing the community's shohet for laxity of standards in 1808, and a year later signing a petition to bring under control the loud public financial pledges made during services in exchange for ritual honors. Other signatories of this petition included Israel Baer Kursheedt, Aaron Levy and Harmon Hendricks. By 1813 the Andrews family had moved to Philadelphia, where Joseph worked as a Hebrew teacher and a merchant. In 1816 he joined Mikveh Israel, a synagogue with which he again became deeply involved. Eldest son, Joseph I. Andrews, married the granddaughter of Revolutionary War soldier, Benjamin Nones. While a daughter, Deborah, married Jonas Horwitz, a physician and Hebraist who attempted, though ultimately gave up his plans, to publish the first Hebrew Bible in America. In a macabre turn, about which little is known, two of the Andrews children, Salomon and Eliezer Lewis, the latter married at the time, carried out a suicide pact on April 22, 1848. | Andrews, Joseph (I3962)
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| 308 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born to Jonas Phillips and Rebecca Machado Phillips, Rachel's earliest distinction was in constituting half of the family's only set of twins. Although, Sarah, her twin sister, would die in infancy, Rachel would not lack for siblings, with four already before her and another sixteen to come, including Naphtali, Manuel, Zalegman and Aaron. In 1787 she was married to Michael Levy. Levy's family had most likely emigrated from Prussia about the time that Levy was ten. He had grown up in Virginia and moved a few years earlier to Philadelphia. Benjamin Rush, a friend of Jonas Levy, was in attendance at the wedding, and described the event in wonderful detail: At one o'clock the company assembled in Mr. Phillips' common parlor…The company began with prayers in the Hebrew language…chanted by an old Rabbi…followed by the whole company…My attention was directed to the haste with which they covered their heads as soon as the prayers began…As soon as these prayers were ended…a small piece of parchment was produced written in Hebrew…which the groom subscribed in the presence of four witnesses…The ceremony was followed by the erection of a beautiful canopy composed of white and red silk in the middle of the floor. It was supported by four young men (by means of four poles), who put on white gloves for the purpose…The bride, accompanied by her mother, sister, and a long train of female relations, came downstairs. Her face was covered with a veil which reached halfways down her body…She was…a most lovely and affecting object. I gazed with delight upon her. Innocence, modesty, fear, respect and devotion appeared all at once in her countenance. After the wedding the couple moved into a house at 107 Vine Street. They had fourteen children, though four died in infancy. In 1802 Michael left congregation Mikveh Israel for the recently inaugurated Rodeph Sholem, an Ashkenazi synagogue. Four of the seven boys chose a life at sea: Benjamin Levy a merchant-ship captain, Morton Phillips Levy a steamboat driver on the Mississippi, Jonas Phillips Levy a merchant marine captain, and, most famously, Commodore Uriah P. Levy, maverick of the United States Navy. The latter two achieved an impressive degree of fame as captains, while the prior both met their fate sailing: Benjamin was assassinated in the harbor in Havana, while Morton disappeared at sea. After Uriah purchased and restored Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello, Rachel came to live there with her son. She spent her final years on the grounds of Jefferson's restored estate and is buried on the property. | Phillips, Rachel Machado (I2688)
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| 309 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Esther B. Seixas Phillips was the daughter of Benjamin Mendes and Zipporah Levy Seixas. Born in New York, she was one of eleven children, including Rebecca Seixas Hart and Moses Seixas. She married Naphtali Phillips in 1823. She was his second wife, the first having been her cousin, Rachel Seixas Phillips with whom he had already had eleven children. The new couple would add four more children to that brood. One of her children, Rachel, would marry Adolphus Simeon Solomons. Like Solomons' mother, Julia, Phillips followed her child to Washington, DC, where she died in 1872. | Seixas, Esther B. (I2918)
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| 310 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Esther B. Seixas Phillips was the daughter of Benjamin Mendes and Zipporah Levy Seixas. Born in New York, she was one of eleven children, including Rebecca Seixas Hart and Moses Seixas. She married Naphtali Phillips in 1823. She was his second wife, the first having been her cousin, Rachel Seixas Phillips with whom he had already had eleven children. The new couple would add four more children to that brood. One of her children, Rachel, would marry Adolphus Simeon Solomons. Like Solomons' mother, Julia, Phillips followed her child to Washington, DC, where she died in 1872. | Seixas, Esther B. (I2918)
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| 311 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Frances Tobias, known as Fanny by family and friends, was born in England, the eldest daughter of Tobias Tobias and Rebecca Levy Tobias. Her father came to New York around 1816, and Fanny, her mother and siblings joined him a few years later. In 1826 she married Uriah Hendricks, son of early American industrialist Harmon Hendricks. They had ten children. Hers was the first in a series of marriages between Tobias children and Hendricks children— her brothers Henry and Isaac married Hendricks daughters, and her sister Harriet married Henry Hendricks. | Tobias, Francis (I4065)
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| 312 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Gershom Mendes Seixas, America's first native-born Jewish clergyman, did not, in fact, bear the title rabbi, as is sometimes said. Indeed America was not to have an ordained rabbi until 1840. Rather, it was as hazzan— cantor, but also a leader, preacher and communal representative— that Seixas served New York's Congregation Shearith Israel for forty years. Seixas was born out of the controversial marriage of an Ashkenazi woman and a Sephardic man. His father, Isaac Mendes Seixas, a struggling merchant who'd set out from London to the Caribbean, eventually reaching New York in 1738, was of an elite Sephardic lineage. His mother, Rachel Levy, belonged to a family of merchants, who as Germans, however successful, were in the eyes of America's Sephardic majority socially inferior. "The Portugueze here where in a Violent Uproar abouth it," is how the scene around the Seixas-Levy union was described by Abigail Franks, Rachel's half sister. Gershom would certainly display the markings of this 'mixed' marriage— Yiddish words would dot his letters over the years, all the while serving as the hazzan of a Sephardic synagogue (admittedly New York's only synagogue at the time.) Seixas' education was at a small Hebrew parochial school, lasting most likely no later than age thirteen. He probably also received some Talmudic instruction from his father, but was otherwise self-taught in Jewish and secular literatures. He worked for several years as an apprentice to a craftsman until, at twenty-two, he was elected hazzan of Shearith Israel. In 1775 he married Elkaleh Myers-Cohen. However, these proved difficult times. Three weeks after his first child was miscarried, Seixas and his wife made the choice to flee New York as the British were poised to occupy the city. They stayed in Stratford, Connecticut for several years. There, Elkaleh gave birth to their second child, Sarah Abigail, who some believe was her father's favorite and who would marry future American Jewish leader, Israel Baer Kursheedt. In 1780 they quit Stratford for the revolutionary capital, Philadelphia. Here Seixas presided over America's second oldest congregation, Mikveh Israel. When the war ended, and displaced New Yorkers began to return, it was not without a struggle that Mikveh Israel allowed Seixas to leave Philadelphia. But leave he did; New York was to be his home for the rest of his life. He was to have two more children with Elkaleh and ten with his second wife, Hannah Manuel. His duties as hazaan were by no means limited to leading prayers; he was responsible for education, circumcision and slaughtering, and served as the leader of New York's small and tight-knit Jewish community. Seixas also functioned as a representative to the secular world. From 1784 to 1815, he served along side Alexander Hamilton and John Jay as a Regent of Columbia College, the first Jew to hold such a post. Characteristic of Seixas' service at Shearith Israel was his delivery of sermons, not something a hazzan had traditionally done. This was, no doubt, the influence of American Protestantism, as were the titles by which Seixas was most commonly known— minister or reverend. His sermons too, spoken in English, displayed the theological impact of Protestant thought as well as liberal Enlightenment ideals. Not to say that this was a conscious fusion; Seixas was echoing a process, or series of processes, well under way. Spanish, the communal language of Sephardic communities for centuries, was giving way to English as Ashkenazi Jews began to outnumber Sephardi, and as American Jews developed a greater feeling of comfort in this new country. And therein lies the ultimate significance of Seixas' mixed lineage, indeed of his tenure at Shearith Israel: the emergence of a distinct forms of American Judaism. | Seixas, Hazan Gershom Mendes (I1166)
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| 313 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Gershom Mendes Seixas, America's first native-born Jewish clergyman, did not, in fact, bear the title rabbi, as is sometimes said. Indeed America was not to have an ordained rabbi until 1840. Rather, it was as hazzan— cantor, but also a leader, preacher and communal representative— that Seixas served New York's Congregation Shearith Israel for forty years. Seixas was born out of the controversial marriage of an Ashkenazi woman and a Sephardic man. His father, Isaac Mendes Seixas, a struggling merchant who'd set out from London to the Caribbean, eventually reaching New York in 1738, was of an elite Sephardic lineage. His mother, Rachel Levy, belonged to a family of merchants, who as Germans, however successful, were in the eyes of America's Sephardic majority socially inferior. "The Portugueze here where in a Violent Uproar abouth it," is how the scene around the Seixas-Levy union was described by Abigail Franks, Rachel's half sister. Gershom would certainly display the markings of this 'mixed' marriage— Yiddish words would dot his letters over the years, all the while serving as the hazzan of a Sephardic synagogue (admittedly New York's only synagogue at the time.) Seixas' education was at a small Hebrew parochial school, lasting most likely no later than age thirteen. He probably also received some Talmudic instruction from his father, but was otherwise self-taught in Jewish and secular literatures. He worked for several years as an apprentice to a craftsman until, at twenty-two, he was elected hazzan of Shearith Israel. In 1775 he married Elkaleh Myers-Cohen. However, these proved difficult times. Three weeks after his first child was miscarried, Seixas and his wife made the choice to flee New York as the British were poised to occupy the city. They stayed in Stratford, Connecticut for several years. There, Elkaleh gave birth to their second child, Sarah Abigail, who some believe was her father's favorite and who would marry future American Jewish leader, Israel Baer Kursheedt. In 1780 they quit Stratford for the revolutionary capital, Philadelphia. Here Seixas presided over America's second oldest congregation, Mikveh Israel. When the war ended, and displaced New Yorkers began to return, it was not without a struggle that Mikveh Israel allowed Seixas to leave Philadelphia. But leave he did; New York was to be his home for the rest of his life. He was to have two more children with Elkaleh and ten with his second wife, Hannah Manuel. His duties as hazaan were by no means limited to leading prayers; he was responsible for education, circumcision and slaughtering, and served as the leader of New York's small and tight-knit Jewish community. Seixas also functioned as a representative to the secular world. From 1784 to 1815, he served along side Alexander Hamilton and John Jay as a Regent of Columbia College, the first Jew to hold such a post. Characteristic of Seixas' service at Shearith Israel was his delivery of sermons, not something a hazzan had traditionally done. This was, no doubt, the influence of American Protestantism, as were the titles by which Seixas was most commonly known— minister or reverend. His sermons too, spoken in English, displayed the theological impact of Protestant thought as well as liberal Enlightenment ideals. Not to say that this was a conscious fusion; Seixas was echoing a process, or series of processes, well under way. Spanish, the communal language of Sephardic communities for centuries, was giving way to English as Ashkenazi Jews began to outnumber Sephardi, and as American Jews developed a greater feeling of comfort in this new country. And therein lies the ultimate significance of Seixas' mixed lineage, indeed of his tenure at Shearith Israel: the emergence of a distinct forms of American Judaism. | Seixas, Hazan Gershom Mendes (I1166)
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| 314 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Harriet Tobias was born in London to Tobias Tobias and Rebecca Levy Tobias. Her father came to New York around 1816, Harriet, her mother and siblings joined him a few years later. In 1829 she married Henry Hendricks, son of early American industrialist Harmon Hendricks. Hers was the second in a series of marriages between Tobias children and Hendricks children, preceded by her sister Frances' marriage to Uriah Hendricks and followed by brothers Henry and Isaac's marriages to Rosalie and Hermoine respectively. Harriet and Henry had eight children. | Tobias, Harriet (I1397)
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| 315 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Henry Hendricks was born in New York to Harmon and Frances Isaacs Hendricks. He was to follow his brother Uriah and his father— who in turn had followed his father— into the copper business, creating a firm that would remain in family hands for another two generations. In 1829 Hendricks married Harriet Tobias, whose sister Fanny had married his older brother, Uriah, three years prior. They had eight children and raised them in New York. In addition to the inheritance in manufacturing, Henry would also take from his father a sense of charitable duty. Along with his father-in-law, Hendricks became an officer in the Society for the Education of Poor Children and Relief of Indigent Persons of the Jewish Persuasion, one of the country's first Jewish charities. He joined his sister Emily's husband, Benjamin Nathan, in founding the Hebrew Benevolent Society in New York in 1823, modeled after that created by Rebecca Gratz in Philadelphia. He was also cofounder in 1852 of the Jews' Hospital, later Mount Sinai, the oldest Jewish medical institution in the country. | Hendricks, Henry (I1396)
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| 316 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Isaac Touro arrived in Newport in 1758, the answer to this burgeoning Jewish community's request for a spiritual leader. Although a congregation— Yeshuat Israel— seems to have been established as early as 1658, a century later the sixty to seventy families that made up the affluent community found themselves in need of a hazzan and a synagogue. Touro would help with both. Touro, then twenty years old, was from a Dutch Sephardic family— who in Spain had been the de Toros— and had trained in Amsterdam for the rabbinate though was never ordained. Before his arrival in Newport, Touro seems may have spent time in Curacao, Suriname or New York, and certainly in Jamaica. It was from there that he arrived in 1758, as city of Newport reached its commercial peak. He developed a close friendship with Aaron Lopez, the "merchant prince" of Newport who along with Jacob Rodriguez Rivera served as one of the major benefactors for the erection of Newport's Jewish house of worship. Construction of the synagogue began the following year, and upon its completion in 1763, Touro dedicated the building, which stands today as the oldest in the United States. In attendance that day was Ezra Stiles— Congregationalist minister, academic, theologian, and later president of Yale College. The service, he wrote, "could not but raise in the mind a faint idea of the Majesty and Grandeur of the Ancient Jewish Worship mentioned in Scripture." Indeed, Touro and Stiles developed a very close friendship. They carried on theological discussions, and Touro helped Stiles with his Hebrew studies. Stiles, who had profound interest in Jewish texts and communal life, would become a very accomplished Hebraist and a professor of Semitic languages at Yale, possessing some level of mastery or proficiency of Aramaic, Arabic, Chaldean, and Amharic as well. Indeed, as president of Yale, on several occasions he delivered his commencement address in Hebrew, and required for several years that all students learn Hebrew. This, however, did not go over quite as well as he had hoped. "From my first accession to the Presidency," Stiles wrote, "I have obliged all the Freshmen to study Hebrew. This has proved very disagreeable to a Number of the Students. This year I have determined to instruct only those who offer themselves voluntarily." In June 1773, Touro married Reyna Hays, sister of Moses Michael Hays. They would have three children together Abraham, Judah and Rebecca. A Loyalist, Touro remained in Newport when the British took over the city in 1776. Many of his congregants, however, fled to Massachusetts or Philadelphia. Facing financial uncertainty, he moved first to New York and then to Jamaica, where he briefly served as hazzan. He died there at age forty-six. Touro's wife and children would return to America live with Hays. Touro's legacy, in many ways, was secured by his sons, both of whom would become successful businessmen and generous philanthropists. In his will, Judah left a large sum for the maintenance of the Jewish cemetery and synagogue in Newport over whose dedication his father had officiated— vestiges of a once wealthy and vital Jewish community, largely dormant at the time of Judah's death. In the years since, the synagogue has come to be popularly known as the Touro Synagogue, and it stands as a centerpiece of American Jewish iconography. | Touro, Hazzan Isaac (I616)
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| 317 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Miriam Etting was the second of Solomon and Reyna Simon Etting's children to survive infancy. At three her mother died, and the following year her father remarried to Rachel Gratz Etting. The family then left Lancaster, Pennsylvania— the city of Miriam's birth— for Baltimore, where Solomon's mother, Shinah Solomon Etting, had settled more than a decade earlier. She would, over the course of the next twelve years, gain seven half siblings from her father's new union, including Richea Gratz and Kitty. At nineteen she married Jacob Myers of Georgetown, South Carolina, where the Myers family had settled in the mid-18th century. Georgetown, unlike Charleston, had a rather small Jewish presence, though it was the second oldest community in the state. Jacob is recorded in the Georgetown Gazette in 1800 as captain of the Winyah Artillery Company, a local militia. He also served as a member of the Library Society, "for the gradual establishment of a library inn Georgetown." A mere two years after she was married, Miriam, aged twenty-one, died from complications giving birth to their second child, echoing her own mother's tragically early death. | Etting, Miriam (I2012)
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| 318 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 More than any other figure of the period, Judah Touro stands as the prototype of the American Jewish philanthropist. Born in 1775, Touro was the second son of Isaac Touro, hazzan of Newport, Rhode Island's synagogue Jeshuat Israel. The Dutch-born, Sephardic Isaac had arrived in Newport in 1758 at the height of the city's bustling commercial prosperity. He had come, perhaps, at the invitation of parnas Aaron Lopez, and over his years in Newport became intimately acquainted not only with city's prominent Jewish merchants— the Harts, the Riveras the Lopezes— but also with another of Newport's clergymen, one of late 18th-century America's great intellectuals, theologians, lawyers and the future president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles. 1773 had seen Isaac's marriage to Reyna (Richea) Hays, daughter of merchant Michael Hays and brother of Moses Michael Hays. The following year their first son, Abraham, was born. With the coming of the Revolutionary War, Isaac, a Tory, opted to remain in Newport, even as many of the city's residents fled. The war was economically straining on the city and the Touro family was reduced to poverty, reliant on the charity of British soldiers. Eventually the Touros were able to relocate to Jamaica, where Isaac officiated until his death in 1784. On Isaac's death, Reyna brought the family back to New England, moving in with her brother Moses Michael Hays in Boston. Soon after, she too passed away, leaving Hays the responsibility of raising her three children along with his seven. Reyna was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Newport which years later would serve as the subject of a Longfellow poem. Though Hays, a prosperous merchant and financier, would pass on to Touro his mercantile acuity as well as his commitment to civic and Jewish life, the relationship between uncle and nephew would not always be harmonious. Having been raised in the family business, and in 1798 entrusted with a major cargo shipment to the Mediterranean, Touro was at twenty-five discharged by his uncle and compelled to leave home. The cause for this sudden break was Hays' daughter Catherine. The cousins had fallen in love and wished to marry. Hays disapproved of the relationship, and his decision to expel his nephew from the family business and home would prove a transformative moment in Touro's life. In 1801 Touro, seeking out opportunity, moved to New Orleans, in the still French territory of Louisiana, and the two cousins never saw each other again. Neither one of them married— tradition has it, out of devotion to each other Touro established himself as a merchant and shipper in the growing port city at the mouth of the Mississippi. The Louisiana Purchase followed his arrival by two years, and with the American acquisition of the territory, New Orleans experienced a tremendous influx of investment and flurry of speculation. Touro profited significantly from these boom years. In the War of 1812 Touro fought under Andrew Jackson as a volunteer. In the battle of Januray 1, 1815 Touro was, in the words of a contemporary observer, "struck in the thigh by a twelve pound shot which produced a ghastly and dangerous wound." He was carried from the battlefield by his friend Rezin D. Shepherd, who then spent the next year nursing Touro back to health. With his recovery, he resumed his business activities, now investing extensively in real estate in and around the rapidly expanding New Orleans of the 1820's and 30's. As Touro entered middle age, he embarked on what would amount to a second career in philanthropy. Initially the objects of his generosity were non-Jewish institutions: a public library in his birthplace of Newport and one in his adopted home of New Orleans— the city's first. He provided support for various churches in New Orleans and $10,000 to complete the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. Then, in his early 70's, Touro made the acquaintance of two leaders of the American Jewish community— Gershom Kursheedt and Isaac Leeser. They convinced Touro of the importance of financing Jewish institutional life in America, a task that he would take to passionately and with unprecedented generosity. Though New Orleans already had a synagogue— Shanaria-Chasset— Kursheedt persuaded Touro of its inadequacies, impugning it's rabbi for eating "whatever comes before his maw." Touro helped found the new congregation Nefuzoth Yehuda, providing the funds for a building, lands for a religious school and a cemetery. He also began regularly attending services there. He next donated the money for the establishment of New Orleans' Jewish hospital, the Touro Infirmary. In death, Touro set the bar for American Jewish philanthropy, and his will, in a sense, remains one of the great documents of institutional Jewish history in the United States. He left $100,000 to the leading Jewish congregations and benevolent societies of New Orleans. He willed a further $150,000 to Jewish congregations and charitable institutions in 18 other American cities and $60,00 to help relieve the poverty of the Jewish population in Palestine. Touro also left money to non-Jewish institutions, such as the Massachusetts General Hospital that his brother had helped found. He was buried with his family in Newport, and his bequest to the abandoned synagogue there, where his father had officiated, made possible its reopening and continuity to this day. In the popular consciousness, if not officially, it now bears his name— the famous Touro Synagogue of Newport— and is the oldest standing synagogue in the United States. | Touro, Judah (I630)
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| 319 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 One of the four children of Reyna Hays and Isaac Touro, Abraham was born in Newport. It is a city with which his legacy would be forever connected, though his time there was ultimately quite short. His father, Isaac, a Dutch-born Sephardi who had been living in Jamaica, had arrived in 1760 at the bequest of the city's growing Jewish community. As their wealth and numbers had increased, largely from shipping, they had decided to build a synagogue, Jeshuat Israel, and Isaac Touro was to serve as hazzan. Thirteen years after his arrival in Rhode Island he married Reyna, daughter of Rebecca Michaels and Judah Hays. The following year their first son, Judah, was born. Soon after, the Revolution broke out, and the British occupied Newport. The majority of the city's Jews, Whigs, fled. Isaac Touro, however, was a Loyalist, and remained in Newport. Times were hard during these years, as the city's economy ground to a halt, and after the births of Abraham and his sister, Rebecca, the family moved down to British-controlled New York, where they often had to rely on the charity of soldiers to eat. The family's next move was back to Jamaica, however, Isaac died less than a year after their arrival. And so Reyna, with four children now, returned to New England, to Boston this time, where she took refuge in the home of her brother Moses Michael Hays. Hayes, a shipper and merchant, who had evacuated Newport ahead of the British, welcomed the five into his home, which already had seven children, and after Reyna died in 1787, took full responsibility for the upbringing of his nieces and nephews. Abraham followed his uncle and his older brother, Judah, into business. He worked as an agent for Judah's firm, and pursued his own opportunities as a merchant and shipbuilder. With financial success, Touro began to develop another interest, and one for which he, like his brother, would be best remembered— philanthropy. He financed the construction of roads, bridges and theaters around Boston and Medford, Massachusetts, where he had his shipyard. When Touro was forty-five, he was thrown from his horse while watching a parade. He eventually died from wounds sustained during the accident. In his will he left ten thousand dollars to the Massachusetts General Hospital and fifteen thousand dollars in a trust for the upkeep of the Jewish cemetery in Newport and the synagogue there, now known as Touro, after the benefaction of Judah and Abraham. Touro Streets in Newport and Medford are also named for him. | Touro, Abraham (I631)
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| 320 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Son of Abraham Rodriguez Brandon and Sarah Esther Lopez Brandon, Isaac was born in Barbados. His family, as with nearly all Jewish families in the thriving British island colony, was involved in slave-based sugar production and trade. Though both parents were also Barbados born, the Brandon family maintained strong ties throughout the Caribbean and to New York, where they often traveled. His father, in addition to serving as parnas of Nideh Israel in Bridgetown, Barbados, made donations, including a brass chandelier, to Shearith Israel in New York. In 1817 Brandon's sister Sarah married Joshua Moses, the son of distinguished New York merchant Isaac Moses and Reyna Levy Moses. Seven years later, Isaac Brandon married another of Isaac Moses' children, Lavinia. Theirs was to be a tragically short union. Lavinia died giving birth to their second child, a daughter who would in turn bear her mother's name. The younger Lavinia only lived to the age of two, and Brandon never remarried. | Brandon, Isaac Lopez Rodriguez (I2524)
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| 321 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Jochebed Levy and Moses Seixas, Rachel Hannah Seixas would remain in Newport, Rhose Island, where her father was a leading Jewish figure, until her 1797 marriage to Naphtali Phillips. After her marriage to Phillips, the couple moved first to his hometown of Philadelphia and then to New York where he ran a newspaper. They had eleven children together. In 1822 she passed away and Phillips remarried her cousin, Esther B. Seixas. | Seixas, Rachel Mendez (I2115)
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| 322 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Jochebed Levy and Moses Seixas, Rachel Hannah Seixas would remain in Newport, Rhose Island, where her father was a leading Jewish figure, until her 1797 marriage to Naphtali Phillips. After her marriage to Phillips, the couple moved first to his hometown of Philadelphia and then to New York where he ran a newspaper. They had eleven children together. In 1822 she passed away and Phillips remarried her cousin, Esther B. Seixas. | Seixas, Rachel Mendez (I2115)
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| 323 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Joshua Isaacs and Justina Brandly Lazarus Isaacs, Frances was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where her father had served in the militia during the Revolution. ?She grew up in New York, in the Jewish community centered around congregation Shearith Israel, where father was a key donor and served as parnas. At seventeen she married Harmon Hendricks, who would distinguish himself as the founder of the American metallurgic industry. Her brother Solomon would help Hendricks create the one of the first copper mills in the United States. The couple had thirteen children, including Uriah and Henry Hendricks who would continue their father's business. | Isaacs, Frances (I1399)
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| 324 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Joshua Isaacs and Justina Brandly Lazarus Isaacs, Frances was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where her father had served in the militia during the Revolution. ?She grew up in New York, in the Jewish community centered around congregation Shearith Israel, where father was a key donor and served as parnas. At seventeen she married Harmon Hendricks, who would distinguish himself as the founder of the American metallurgic industry. Her brother Solomon would help Hendricks create the one of the first copper mills in the United States. The couple had thirteen children, including Uriah and Henry Hendricks who would continue their father's business. | Isaacs, Frances (I1399)
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| 325 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The first child from the union of New York Jewish patriarch Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife Grace Mears Levy, Rachel was born in London a year after her parents' wedding. The three of them soon crossed the Atlantic, and upon arrival in New York, mother and daughter met for the first time their new step children and half siblings, including Abigail Levy Franks. Though it proved difficult, sometimes futile, for Grace to win over these new relatives, Rachel was well loved throughout the family. In 1740 she married a Portuguese-born merchant who had, after some time spent in Bordeaux and then England, recently made the journey to New York— Isaac Mendes Seixas. The marriage evidently caused something of an uproar among the Sephardi old guard of New York's Jewish community, who objected to Seixas' taking an Ashkenazi wife. Abigail Franks, tireless observer of her world, not to mention a relentless gossip, recorded that Seixas' uncle Rodrigo Pacheco was "displeased" by his nephew's marriage to a German Jew, and furthermore, "the Portugueze here where in A Violent Uproar abouth it for he Did not invite any of them to ye Wedding." It was not just the "mixed-marriage"— that transgression of contemporary ethnic and class barriers— that troubled some about the union. Abigail declared that Isaac had an "Untractable Dispossion." However, after visiting with the young couple for a week at their new home in New Jersey, where Isaac opened a "Small Country Store," Abigail characterized Isaac as "A person of his Temper Soe much Mended," and that "they Seem to be very happy in each other." They would have eight children, including Gershom Mendes Seixas. | Levy, Rachel (I404)
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| 326 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The first child from the union of New York Jewish patriarch Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife Grace Mears Levy, Rachel was born in London a year after her parents' wedding. The three of them soon crossed the Atlantic, and upon arrival in New York, mother and daughter met for the first time their new step children and half siblings, including Abigail Levy Franks. Though it proved difficult, sometimes futile, for Grace to win over these new relatives, Rachel was well loved throughout the family. In 1740 she married a Portuguese-born merchant who had, after some time spent in Bordeaux and then England, recently made the journey to New York— Isaac Mendes Seixas. The marriage evidently caused something of an uproar among the Sephardi old guard of New York's Jewish community, who objected to Seixas' taking an Ashkenazi wife. Abigail Franks, tireless observer of her world, not to mention a relentless gossip, recorded that Seixas' uncle Rodrigo Pacheco was "displeased" by his nephew's marriage to a German Jew, and furthermore, "the Portugueze here where in A Violent Uproar abouth it for he Did not invite any of them to ye Wedding." It was not just the "mixed-marriage"— that transgression of contemporary ethnic and class barriers— that troubled some about the union. Abigail declared that Isaac had an "Untractable Dispossion." However, after visiting with the young couple for a week at their new home in New Jersey, where Isaac opened a "Small Country Store," Abigail characterized Isaac as "A person of his Temper Soe much Mended," and that "they Seem to be very happy in each other." They would have eight children, including Gershom Mendes Seixas. | Levy, Rachel (I404)
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| 327 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The Hendricks family story is intimately tied up with America's rise to economic, industrial and military prominence. And within that narrative, Harmon holds a place of prominence— transforming his father's business of importing metal from England into homegrown manufacturing, which his sons and grandsons would continue to advance. Born in New York, Harmon was the son of and Eve Esther Gomez and Uriah Hendricks, a Dutch emigrant. A few years before Uriah's birth, his father, who served as parnas of Shearith Israel, had left the dry goods business for metals, importing copper and brass from England. Upon his father's death in 1798, Hendricks, the only surviving son of eight children, took over the business. In 1800 Hendricks married Frances Isaacs, daughter of Justina Brandly Lazarus and Joshua Isaacs. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, the significance of developing American industry and freeing the nation from dependence on imports became pressing. However, in the early nineteenth century, the techniques of metallurgy remained largely unknown, the domain of the English, the world's industrial power. Still, Hendricks set to work and developed with his brother-in-law Solomon Isaacs one of the country's first successful copper rolling mills. His innovations made possible the abandonment of iron for copper in the construction of steam boilers, allowing the boilers to safely reach higher temperatures. Among his friends and customers was Paul Revere, and most likely Revere fashioned church bells in Philadelphia, Boston and New York with Hendricks copper. He too supplied the copper for the construction of several Navy ships that proved crucial to the American war effort, possibly even for the Constitution, now known as Old Ironsides, still sitting in Boston Harbor. Yet another customer was Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamship. The boiler driving the Clermont, the world's first inland steam powered packet boat, was fashioned from Hendricks copper. Harmon and Frances had thirteen children, including sons Uriah and Henry who would carry on the family business. Hendricks maintained an involvement with New York's Jewish community, like his father serving as parnas of Shearith Israel. | Hendricks, Harmon (I1398)
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| 328 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The Hendricks family story is intimately tied up with America's rise to economic, industrial and military prominence. And within that narrative, Harmon holds a place of prominence— transforming his father's business of importing metal from England into homegrown manufacturing, which his sons and grandsons would continue to advance. Born in New York, Harmon was the son of and Eve Esther Gomez and Uriah Hendricks, a Dutch emigrant. A few years before Uriah's birth, his father, who served as parnas of Shearith Israel, had left the dry goods business for metals, importing copper and brass from England. Upon his father's death in 1798, Hendricks, the only surviving son of eight children, took over the business. In 1800 Hendricks married Frances Isaacs, daughter of Justina Brandly Lazarus and Joshua Isaacs. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, the significance of developing American industry and freeing the nation from dependence on imports became pressing. However, in the early nineteenth century, the techniques of metallurgy remained largely unknown, the domain of the English, the world's industrial power. Still, Hendricks set to work and developed with his brother-in-law Solomon Isaacs one of the country's first successful copper rolling mills. His innovations made possible the abandonment of iron for copper in the construction of steam boilers, allowing the boilers to safely reach higher temperatures. Among his friends and customers was Paul Revere, and most likely Revere fashioned church bells in Philadelphia, Boston and New York with Hendricks copper. He too supplied the copper for the construction of several Navy ships that proved crucial to the American war effort, possibly even for the Constitution, now known as Old Ironsides, still sitting in Boston Harbor. Yet another customer was Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamship. The boiler driving the Clermont, the world's first inland steam powered packet boat, was fashioned from Hendricks copper. Harmon and Frances had thirteen children, including sons Uriah and Henry who would carry on the family business. Hendricks maintained an involvement with New York's Jewish community, like his father serving as parnas of Shearith Israel. | Hendricks, Harmon (I1398)
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| 329 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The oldest of Harmon and Frances Isaacs Hendricks' sons, Uriah was named for his paternal grandfather. But he inherited more than just a name; his legacy also included copper. His grandfather, patriarch of a great American Jewish family, had arrived in New York from Holland and eventually established a business importing metal from England. His father and uncle, Solomon Isaacs, established one of the first copper mills in the Unites States, and helped launch America on the path to industrialization. When the partnership between his uncle and father dissolved, Uriah and his brothers joined the firm. Harmon soon retired and the company was renamed Hendricks and Brothers, which continued as one of the country's largest copper suppliers. In 1861, when brother Henry died, the firm changed its name again, this time to Hendricks Brothers. Still, the business was not to be merely a three-generational enterprise— Uriah's sons Edmund, Joshua and Harmon Washington would continue to run the business after their father's death, and Joshua too would pass the reigns to his sons Edgar, Henry Harmon and Clifford Brandon. Uriah and Henry both married into the Tobias family, taking Fanny and Harriet as their respective wives. Uriah and Fanny had seventeen children. | Hendricks, Uriah (I4064)
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| 330 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The second of four children born to Rachel Franks (first cousin to the Franks children) and Haym Salomon, Sallie came into the world at a time of strife and uncertainty. The Revolutionary War was raging, and hers was a family deeply ensconced in the patriot cause. Her uncle Colonel Isaac Franks fought battles in New York and Massachusetts, and served several months in a British prison. Her father, who would become the famed "financier of the Revolution," had since 1772 been a member of the Sons of Liberty, a secret society of patriots. He too found himself behind bars on account of his political sentiments— first in a makeshift prison created in an old warehouse where Salomon may have contracted pneumonia, and later in the Provost, the main British prison in New York. Because Hessian soldiers were being used as prison guards and few if any of the British officers spoke German, Salomon, who did speak the language, was let out of his cell and made a translator. It wasn't too long before he managed to escape. Salomon fled British-controlled New York for the revolutionary capitol, Philadelphia, leaving behind his wife and month-old son, Ezekiel. He soon managed to smuggle wife and son to Philadelphia, and the following year Sallie was born. In Philadelphia Salomon established a brokerage firm and despite the continuing war found success in finance. He soon began making increasingly significant loans to members of Congress and to the military. Among his contributions was $20,000 to Washington's troops to finance their campaign at Yorktown, making possible the American victory and Cornwallis' surrender. After playing a crucial role in the patriot cause, Haym died at age forty-five, leaving Rachel with three children, a fourth on the way and over $50,000 in debts. This issue of debt would consume the energy of several generations of Salomons, as they vainly sought recompense from Congress for Haym's efforts in the Revolution. Rachel had to bring the three children home to her family in New York to await the birth of her fourth child. The following year she married David Heilborn, who helped bring up Sallie and Rachel's other three children. In 1794 Sallie was married to Joseph Andrews. Together they would have eight children, including Joseph I. Andrews. | Salomon, Sallie (I3961)
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| 331 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Uriah P. Levy's life was marked by obstinacy, a quick temper, and fierce individualism— not necessarily qualities that one associates with military service. And yet, he became the first Jew to achieve the rank of commodore— then the highest in the U.S. Navy. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Uriah was the son of Micael Levy and Rachel Phillips Levy, daughter of Jonas Phillips. Phillips was said to have had a particular fondness for Uriah, and likewise, the grandson was inspired from a young age by tales of his grandfather— shipping tycoon and Revolutionary War hero. Perhaps with these things in mind, and certainly with a sense of adventure, Levy left home at ten and found work as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He returned to Philadelphia to celebrate his bar mitzvah, and spent the next few years apprenticing with a family friend and ship owner, sailing first as a seaman, then a second mate. At the end of his apprenticeship, in 1811, he became part proprietor and captain of a schooner, the George Washington. With the outbreak of war the following year, Levy volunteered with a Naval ship named the Argus, where he was quickly promoted to acting lieutenant. The ship was captured and Levy and the rest of the crew spent the war in Dartmoor Prison. After his release and return to America, Levy served aboard the Franklin as sailing master. It was there that he had his first run-in with anti-Semitism. Levy had attacked an officer who had drunkenly hurled an epithet at him. Challenged to a duel, Levy accepted and killed the man. He was arrested and eventually acquitted. This was the first of numerous fights and trials that would mark Levy's Naval career, including one court martial that would have to be overturned by President Monroe. He next served as second lieutenant on the Cyane. While the ship was docked in Brazil, Levy famously freed an American soldier impressed into the Brazilian Navy. Not only did the incident win him the admiration of his crew, but so impressed was Emperor Dom Pedro by Levy's courage that he declared no American should ever again be forced to serve in the military in Brazil. He also offered Levy a post as captain in the Imperial Brazilian Navy; an offer which Levy legendarily rejected by saying, "I would rather serve as a cabin boy in the United States Navy than hold the rank of Admiral in any other service in the world." Levy later took a leave of absence and during this period made a fortune in New York real estate. He spent two years living in Paris during which time he commissioned a statue of his hero, Thomas Jefferson. It was also during this break from naval service that Levy first visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate, and found it in terrible disrepair. He soon purchased the property and invested in its restoration. In 1838 he was given command of the Vandalia, and here he instituted a series of innovations governing conduct and discipline, the start of a naval reform campaign for which he would be best remembered. At the heart of the reforms Levy instituted aboard the Vandalia was his ban on flogging. These ideas proved heatedly controversial, and soon enough Levy found himself once more before a court martial. This time he was dismissed from the Navy. And then, for the second time in his controversial career, a ruling against him was overturned by a United States president. Tyler not only reinstated Levy, but promoted him to captain. As Levy continued to petition the Navy for active assignment, he busily published articles and pamphlets condemning the practice of flogging. He was able to attract enough attention to the issue that a limitation on flogging was tacked on to the 1850 Naval Appropriations Bill; a complete ban would have to wait until 1862. In 1853 he married his niece Virginia Lopez. The couple would not have any children. Two years following the marriage, Levy received a letter informing him that he had been removed from the Navy by the Naval Board of Officers. Levy petitioned Congress, and after convening a court of inquiry, they restored him, once more, to active duty. A few months later he received his orders— Levy was to take command of the Macedonian, and sail for the Mediterranean. In 1860 Levy was promoted to the rank of commodore and became flag officer of the Mediterranean squadron. He returned to America after the outbreak of the Civil War, and offered his services to the Union. Instead, Lincoln appointed him to the Court-Martial Board in Washington— this for a man who had himself been court-martialed six times. Levy is remembered for his pioneering reforms and for saving and preserving Monticello. His name has been honored adorning the Jewish chapel at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, the Jewish chapel and learning center at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and on the USS Levy, which hosted the Japanese surrender ceremony during the Second World War. | Levy, Uriah Phillips USN (I2698)
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| 332 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 When Duarte Lopez fled Portugal with his wife Anna and daughter Catherine, he was, of course, fleeing the persecution of the Inquisition. However, he was also moving towards economic possibilities offered by the city of Newport, where his brother Moses arrived several years earlier and his cousins, the Riveras, were well established in shipping. As soon as the family arrived in America, they abandoned the Christian mores they had known in Spain, and even changed their names— Duarte was now Aaron, Anna Abigail, and Catherine Sarah. The family connections proved indeed helpful, and Lopez quickly emerged as one of the leading businessman in his new home, closely associated with his relative Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. Established in the slave and sugar trade, Lopez soon counted among his holdings numerous ships sailing back and forth to the Caribbean and commanded, as well, whaling fleets dispatched to the Arctic. In addition to his prominence in business, Lopez also found himself among the leaders of Newport's Jewish community. He served several times as the parnas of the congregation then called Nefutse Yisrael— the Scattered of Israel— though it would later be renamed Jeshuat Yisrael— the Salvation of Israel. Lopez even had the honor of laying the cornerstone of the building when construction began on the synagogue. After living nine years in Newport, Lopez applied for naturalization. His request, along with that of another Jew, Isaac Elizer, was denied by the Rhode Island Superior Court. They appealed to the legislature, which agreed to approve their applications if the men would return to court and take an oath of allegiance, adding the following qualification concerning Lopez's appeal: Inasmuch as the said Aaron Lopez hath declared himself by religion a Jew, this Assembly doth not admit himself nor any other of that religion to the full freedom of this Colony. So that the said Aaron Lopez nor any other of said religion is not liable to be chosen into any office in this colony nor allowed to give vote as a free man in choosing others. However, when their appeal was heard in the upper house of the Rhode Island Legislature, it was deemed within the jurisdiction of the courts, not the legislature. The Superior Court agreed to re-hear the case. Ezra Stiles, a friend of Lopez, was present that day and recorded his observations. After several felons— thieves and arsonists— were sentenced to hang, Lopez's appeal was heard. "The Jews" Stiles recorded, "were called to hear their almost equally mortifying sentence and Judgment: which dismissed their Petition for Naturalization." The court when on say: Further by the charter granted to this colony, it appears that the free and quiet enjoyment of the Christian religion and a desire of propagating the same were the principal views with which this colony was settled, and by a law made and passed in the year 1663, no person who does not profess the Christian religion can be admitted free [that is, as a voter or office holder] to this colony Stiles mused on the verdict: "I remark that Providence seems to make every Thing to work for Mortification to the Jews, & to prevent their incorporating into any Nation; that thus they may continue a distinct people." Lopez, however, found himself less contemplative about the matter. Having exhausted the possibilities in Rhode Island, he successfully applied for naturalization in Massachusetts in 1762. That same year tragedy struck, and his wife, Abigail, only thirty-six, died. The following year he remarried to Sarah Rivera, daughter of his friend and associate Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. They had nine children together, the same number he had from his first marriage. When the British occupied Newport during the Revolution, Lopez and his family fled to Leicester, Massachusetts. They waited out the war there, and on his return to Newport, Lopez died in a tragic carriage accident. Stiles wrote of Lopez, upon hearing of his death, that he was an "amiable, benevolent, most hospitable & very respectable gentleman … without a single Enemy & and the most universally beloved by an extensive Acquaintance of any man I ever knew." | Lopez, Aaron (I2021)
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| 333 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 While not unprecedented, the marriage of Isaac Mendes Seixas, a Sephardi, and Rachel Levy, an Ashkenazi, in 1740 marked a symbolically significant union of traditions, and a step in the long process toward the erasure of certain distinctions in favor of an American Judaism. Seixas was born into a converso family who had fled Portugal for London in 1725, after his father was accused of crypto-Jewish practices. Five years later Seixas left for New York and eleven years after his arrival married Rachel Levy, daughter of wealthy New York merchant Moses Raphael Levy. Among their six surviving children were Gershom, who was to become one of the leading figures in early American Jewish life, and their youngest, Grace, whose life would be marked by a passionate engagement with Judaism and literature. When the Revolution erupted, she and her family, like many supporters of the patriot cause, left New York for Philadelphia. There she met and married Simon Nathan. They returned to New York after the war, and she gave birth to her only child, Seixas. ? Profoundly interested in literature, Grace left us a large corpus of letters and an unpublished collection of poetry. Engaged with contemporary developments in arts and letters, she wrote to her niece, "I have read the whole of Lord Byron's work very lately indeed and I recommend them to you." She imbued her family with this love of literature, an influence that can perhaps be traced through the generations to her descendent Emma Lazarus whose poem the "New Colossus" sits inscribed in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Grace also cultivated a relationship with Judaism. In a letter she wrote to her son at the end of her life she said, "I die in the full faith of my Religion. Need I exhort you to the full cultivation of your endearing children and give them a just idea of their religious and moral principles, these being the corner stones of all good." | Seixas, Grace Mendes (I910)
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| 334 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 While not unprecedented, the marriage of Isaac Mendes Seixas, a Sephardi, and Rachel Levy, an Ashkenazi, in 1740 marked a symbolically significant union of traditions, and a step in the long process toward the erasure of certain distinctions in favor of an American Judaism. Seixas was born into a converso family who had fled Portugal for London in 1725, after his father was accused of crypto-Jewish practices. Five years later Seixas left for New York and eleven years after his arrival married Rachel Levy, daughter of wealthy New York merchant Moses Raphael Levy. Among their six surviving children were Gershom, who was to become one of the leading figures in early American Jewish life, and their youngest, Grace, whose life would be marked by a passionate engagement with Judaism and literature. When the Revolution erupted, she and her family, like many supporters of the patriot cause, left New York for Philadelphia. There she met and married Simon Nathan. They returned to New York after the war, and she gave birth to her only child, Seixas. ?Profoundly interested in literature, Grace left us a large corpus of letters and an unpublished collection of poetry. Engaged with contemporary developments in arts and letters, she wrote to her niece, "I have read the whole of Lord Byron's work very lately indeed and I recommend them to you." She imbued her family with this love of literature, an influence that can perhaps be traced through the generations to her descendent Emma Lazarus whose poem the "New Colossus" sits inscribed in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Grace also cultivated a relationship with Judaism. In a letter she wrote to her son at the end of her life she said, "I die in the full faith of my Religion. Need I exhort you to the full cultivation of your endearing children and give them a just idea of their religious and moral principles, these being the corner stones of all good." | Seixas, Grace Mendes (I910)
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| 335 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Aaron Lopez Gomez was the oldest child born to Moses Mordecai Gomez and Esther Lopez Gomes. His mother was part of a set of twins born to Aaron Lopez, "the merchant prince of Newport." His father belonged to the Gomez family, among the wealthiest and most prominent families in eighteenth-century New York. Several years later the connection between these two illustrious Sephardic American families would be further solidified by a marriage between Esther's sister Abigail and Moses' cousin Isaac. When it came time for him to marry, Aaron Lopez Gomez chose Hetty Hendricks, oldest daughter of early American industrialist Harmon Hendricks, and sister of Uriah and Henry Hendricks. The union marked another bond between two powerful and prominent American Jewish families of the era. However it was not the first link between these two clans, Harmon's mother, Rebecca Lopez, was also a daughter of Aaron Lopez. Aaron and Hetty had nine children. | Gomez, Aaron Lopez Esq. (I3966)
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| 336 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Abraham Alexander was born in London, the son of Joseph Raphael Alexander. At twenty-three he left for Charleston, sent by the Sephardi Bevis Marks Synagogue to serve as the second hazzan at Beth Elohim. It was a post that he would retain for nineteen years without compensation, until in 1784 he married his second wife, Ann Sarah Huguenin, the Huguenot widow of a friend. Alexander was one of the initiators of freemasonry in Charleston. He was also known as an accomplished Hebrew scholar and calligraphist. He composed a mahzor, or High Holiday prayer book, in 1805. City registers also have him as a clerk and an auditor at the customs house and later as a collector of the port of Charleston. Family lore tells that upon Alexander's death, all of the flags flying from ships docked in the harbor and that above the Charleston customs house were lowered to half-mast. | Alexander, Abraham Sr. (I3589)
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| 337 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Although little is known that directly pertains to Miriam Nones Andrews, there is significant documentation relevant to the Nones family. Like the Andrews family that she would marry into, the Nones family was connected to Philadelphia. Miriam's grandfather, Benjamin Nones, a Sephardi from Bordeaux had settled there sometime before the Revolutionary War. During the war, he served in General Pulaski's regiment, under Captain Verdier, who said of Nones that, "his behavior under fire in all the bloody actions we fought, have been marked by the bravery and courage which a military man is expected to show for the liberties of his country." It has often been repeated, erroneously so, that Benjamin Nones achieved the rank of major and served with Washington. Still, under Pulaski he "fought in almost every action which took place in Carolina, and in the disastrous affair of Savannah shared the hardships of that sanguinary day." After the war he partnered with Myer M. Cohen, going into finance: "every Kind of Business as Brokers, such as buying and selling Bills of Exchange on France, Spain, Holland and other Parts." He also traded in a variety goods, whole and retail— furniture, books and nearly anything else. However, for years financial success eluded him. In 1781 in the midst of his economic struggles, Nones became embroiled in a very public dispute with one Abraham Levy over a sum of money and accusations of financial impropriety. Their quarrel escalated in the pages of the Independent Gazetteer until reaching its apogee in a furious letter from Nones threatening, "Were it not for this consideration [Levy's age], I should certainly shave that beard, which induces many people falsely to imagine him a distinguished member of our congregation, in which his ignorance disqualifies him from holding the humblest office." Even as he struggled to make it in business, Nones grew increasingly engaged in the heated political climate that gripped the United States at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. He was a vocal republican, opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and found himself the object of nasty Federalist taunts. The Gazette of the United States, Philadelphia's leading Federalist paper, reported on a July 30, 1800 meeting of the Democratic Society of Philadelphia, saying it was attended by the "very refuse and filth of society." Nones was singled out in the article as "Citizen N--- the Jew," his accent was mocked and he was disparaged not only as a Jew and republican, but for being poor as well. When the Gazette refused to print his rebuttal, Nones went to Aurora, the city's leading anti-Federalist paper. His response, a moving self-defense and one of the earliest attempts to link the fate of the Jews with America's destiny, is worth quoting at length: I am accused of being a Jew of being a Republican, and of being Poor. I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian, or Mahomedan, allow to be of divine origin -- of that persuasion on which Christianity itself was originally founded, and must ultimately rest -- which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled, for near three thousand years, whose votaries have never murdered each other in religious wars, or cherished the theological hatred so general, so inextinguishable among those who revile them.... I am a Republican! Thank God, I have not been so heedless and so ignorant of what has passed, and is now passing in the political world. I have not been so proud or so prejudiced as to renounce the cause for which I have fought, as an American throughout the whole of the revolutionary war.... I am a Jew, and if for no other reason, for that reason am I a republican. Among the pious priesthood of church establishments, we are compassionately ranked with Turks, Infidels and Heretics. In the monarchies of Europe we are hunted from society, stigmatized as unworthy of common civility... In republics we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs.... How then can a Jew but be a Republican? in America particularly. Unfeeling and ungrateful would he be if he were callous to the glorious and benevolent cause of the difference between his situation in this land of freedom and among the proud and privileged law-givers of Europe. But I am poor, I am so, my family also is large, but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian because his religion is not so old as theirs...." In 1801 Nones was appointed a notary public by the governor of Pennsylvania, and became a state-authorized translator of Spanish, French and Portuguese. Nones had married Miriam Marks in 1782 and together they had thirteen children. He died in Philadelphia on Febuary 9, 1826. Among his children, a passion for politics proved their common heritage, and several of his sons followed careers in the foreign service: Solomon B. Nones was appointed by Jefferson consul-general in Portugal. Aaron B. Nones served as consul at Aux Cayes, Haiti, from 1820-2822. Abraham B. Nones was consul-general to Zulia, Venezuela. However, it was a younger brother and the father of Miriam Nones Andrews, Joseph B. Nones, who set off on a series adventures exciting and strange enough to constutue a life perhaps even rivaled Benjamin's for spectacular detail. Filled with wanderlust, a seventeen-year-old Joseph joined the Navy as a midshipman in 1814, and soon thereafter saw action in the Second Barbary War. He told everyone that he was descended from one Raphael de Nones of Genoa, a seventeenth century physician, knighted for his "discovery of simulating parts of the body in life-like wax." No evidence exists tot suggest that such a person ever lived. Nones kept extensive journals of his travels and adventures. One night he dined with the American consul at Malaga, William Kirkpatrick. During the long meal, young Nones found himself particularly impressed by the beauty of one of Kirkpatrick's granddaughters, whom he described as "some pumpkin." This pumpkin would, in turn, marry Napoleon III, becoming the empress Eugenie. Nones resigned from the Navy in 1821, but continued to tour the world. In Russia he witnessed a ceremony with Czar Alexander I. He continued on to Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Calcutta, Carthage, Cadiz, and the Orkney Islands. When he finally returned to the United States and settled down, he began to experiment in food concentration and preservation. He marketed to the Navy a product called, "Nones' Life Preservation and Antiseptic-Nutritive Compound," a concentrated food ration which would also help prevent scurvy, making Nones a pioneer in food preservation. In 1823 Nones married Eveline De Leon in New York. The second of their six children, Miriam was born in 1824. When she was twenty-five she was married to Joseph I. Andrews, and together they had nine children. | Nones, Miriam (I3828)
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| 338 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born in the British colony of Grenada, Joshua Isaacs was named for his father who died just two months preceding his birth. His mother, Hannah Levy Isaacs, was a daughter of New York merchant Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife, Grace Mears Levy. Having made his way to America, Isaacs supported the American cause during the Revolution, joining a militia in Lancaster County in 1780. He soon met and married Justina Brandly Lazarus, who had come with her father to the bustling outpost of Lancaster in search of a Jewish husband. After their first two children, Joseph and Frances, were born, the young couple moved to New York. They would have three more surviving children, including Solomon. Isaacs became a prominent member of the Jewish community. He served as parnas of Shearith Israel, and was a consistent contributor to the synagogue. In his will he endowed fifty pounds to Shearith Israel for the purpose of providing poor children with an education in Hebrew. He also asked that his resting place be "in our Jews' burying ground in New York among my relatives and friends." | Isaacs, Joshua Jr. (I1974)
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| 339 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Born in the British colony of Grenada, Joshua Isaacs was named for his father who died just two months preceding his birth. His mother, Hannah Levy Isaacs, was a daughter of New York merchant Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife, Grace Mears Levy. Having made his way to America, Isaacs supported the American cause during the Revolution, joining a militia in Lancaster County in 1780. He soon met and married Justina Brandly Lazarus, who had come with her father to the bustling outpost of Lancaster in search of a Jewish husband. After their first two children, Joseph and Frances, were born, the young couple moved to New York. They would have three more surviving children, including Solomon. Isaacs became a prominent member of the Jewish community. He served as parnas of Shearith Israel, and was a consistent contributor to the synagogue. In his will he endowed fifty pounds to Shearith Israel for the purpose of providing poor children with an education in Hebrew. He also asked that his resting place be "in our Jews' burying ground in New York among my relatives and friends." | Isaacs, Joshua Jr. (I1974)
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| 340 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 In contrast to his cousins documented in the Levy-Franks portraits, Isaac Franks supported the American cause. Only seventeen when war broke out, Franks enlisted with Colonel Lesher's regiment. He fought at the Battle of Long Island and later served three months in jail. Upon his escape, he served as a quartermaster and then as a forage-master at West Point. Congress appointed him ensign in the Seventh Massachusetts Regiment. In 1782 he married Mary Davidson, a Christian. Indeed, Franks, though born Jewish, had been a practicing Christian for several years before his marriage. The couple had two children. After the war he became a notary public of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. During Philadelphia's yellow fever outbreak of 1793, George Washington relocated the seat of government to the relative seclusion and safety of Germantown, Pennsylvania where Franks maintained a home. And it was this very house that Washington rendered the Germantown White House during his retreat. Franks not only had the president sleeping under his roof, but holding meetings with his cabinet that included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Randolph. Washington came back to stay with Franks the following year once again, this time under the more benign circumstances of vacation with Martha Washington. In 1794 Franks was appointed lieutenant colonel of the Second Regiment, Philadelphia County, and the following year began his service as justice of the peace for Germantown and Roxborough. In 1819 he came to serve as prothonotary of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, a post he held until his death three years later. | Franks, Colonel Isaac (I2250)
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| 341 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Jacob Rodriguez Rivera, a member of a converso family from Seville, Spain arrived in Newport in 1748, after some time spent in Curacao where he had married Hannah Pimental Sasportas. Naturalized, like his father, Abraham, in New York, Rivera was able to participate in the Atlantic shipping and bustling trade coming through Newport, unfettered by Rhode Island's restrictions on Jews. Rivera was to become the second wealthiest and most powerful man in Newport's Jewish community, surpassed only by his cousin Aaron Lopez, who became his son-in-law as well after marrying Rivera's daughter Sarah. Rivera was responsible for the introduction of spermaceti candle making in the area and founded the United Company of Spermaceti Candlers, created to control cost and distribution. A leader of Newport's Jewish community, Rivera, acting in trust for congregation Jeshuat Israel, acquired the land for the synagogue. He would also donate, in conjunction with Lopez, ten thousand feet of lumber for construction at Rhode Island College, now Brown University. | Rodrigues de Rivera, Jacob (I2026)
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| 342 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Jacques Judah Lyons was born in the Dutch colony of Suriname where his parents, Judah Eleazer and Mary Asser Lyons, accompanied by many of the Judah's siblings and his parents, had relocated fro Philadelphia at the end of the 18th century. Educational opportunities were limited, but Jacques did manage to master Dutch, English, French and German. In his early twenties, Jacques became hazzan at Suriname's Neve Shalom, Paramaribo's Ashkenazi congregation. In 1836 he departed for the United States and secured for himself the position as hazzan at Richmond's Beth Shalome. In 1839 he was elected to replace Isaac Mendes Seixas at New York's Shearith Israel. In 1842 he married Seixas Nathan's daughter, Grace, and they would have three children. For thirty-eight years he served as the leader of Shearith Israel, running the school and serving as head of the benevolent society in addition to his duties officiating. Perhaps his greatest legacy rests with a collaboration Lyons undertook with Rabbi Abraham de Sola of Montreal in 1854. Together they composed A Jewish Calendar for Fifty Years, which more than just the comprehensive calendar hinted at by the title, also contained an essay on the Jewish calendrical system as well as some of the earliest forays into American Jewish history, a passion that Lyons would purse for the rest of his life, collecting troves of material relevant to the early history of Jews in North America. | Lyons, Reverend Jacques J. (I984)
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| 343 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Moses Raphael and Richea Asher Levy's eldest child, Bilhah Abigail Levy, provides one of the fullest, most dynamic pictures of a colonial Jewish woman. With her son Naphtali away in England, Abigail, as she was known, frequently wrote him, discussing matters political, social, familial, American and Jewish, and the numerous surviving letters from this correspondence of the 1730s and 40s, provide invaluable insights into colonial American Jewish life. Born in New York, a year after her father became a freeman, it was in this city that she would remain for her entire life, although after a painful incident later in life she would write of her desire to leave city behind. Abigail's parents provided her with a classical education, something evidenced by the references to mythology and classical learning we find peppering her letters, and by the strong literary engagement she maintained— an admirer of Fielding, Dryden, Montesquieu and, her favorite, Pope. When Abigail was in her teens, her parents took in a boarder recently arrived from London, Jacob Franks. At sixteen, in 1712, Abigail wed the young merchant. Together they had seven surviving children, who served as the primary focus of her attention. Abigail provided her children, including her daughters, with an education like that she had received. At the same time, it proved hugely important to her that her children maintain their Judaism. She prided herself on her observance of the Sabbath, frequent synagogue attendance and the strict levels of kashrut she maintained at home. She would send kosher meat to her son Naphtali in London, and even advised him against eating in her brother-in-law's house. Two of her children did not end up marrying Jews. And while there exist no letters dealing with her son David's marriage to a Christian, daughter Phila's intermarriage is one of the central dramas played out in her letters to Naphtali. When in 1743 it came to light that Phila had secretly wed Oliver DeLancey several months prior, her mother quit town and, avoiding even the Franks country home in Harlem, left for Flatbush. There she composed a pained letter to Naphtali, though so overcome with grief was she that she complained, "I can hardly hold my Pen whilst I am writing." She cried to her son in England, "My Spirits Was for Some time Soe Depresst that it was a pain to me to Speak or See Any one... I Shall Never have that Serenity nor Peace within I have Soe happily had hitherto. My house has bin my prisson Ever Since I had not heart Enough to Goe near the street door. It's a pain to me to think off goeing again to Town And If you Fathers business would Permit him to Live out of it I never would Goe Near it Again I wish it was in my Power to Leave this part of the world I would come away in the first man of war that went to London." Despite her daughter's, her family's and her friends' pleadings, Abigail never again spoke with Phila. In spite of her disapproval of her daughter's intermarriage and generally high levels of religious observance, Abigail seems to have had little patience with the small Jewish community of New York around congregation Shearith Israel. "And Indeed I don't offten See her," Abigail wrote to Naphtali, gossiping about a member of the community, "Nor any of our Ladys but at Synagogue for they are a Stupid Set of people." Yet she was very much at the center of this community, with both her father and husband having served as the parnas of Shearith Israel. Still, in her letters she continually picks on a certain Jewish provincialism. Writing to Naphtali concerning a book on Judaism she had just read, Abigail wrote, "Its Very Entertaining for me for I confess it to be agreeable to my Sentiments on our Religeon Whoever wrote it I am sure was noe Jew for he thought soo reasonable You will Say Perhaps I pay a Compliment in that Expression to myself but I must Own I can't help Condemning the Many Superstitions we are Clog'd with & heartly wish a Calvin or a Luther would rise amongst Us I Answer for my Self, I would be the first of there followers." Abigail died two decades before the Revolution and so did not live to see her children— Tories— fall into public disrepute and flee the new county for England. The letters of Abigail Franks provide us with a wealth of insights into life in colonial America and the early Jewish community in New York and display her wonderful personal complexities and contradictions. | Levy, Bilhah Abigaill (I395)
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| 344 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Moses Raphael and Richea Asher Levy's eldest child, Bilhah Abigail Levy, provides one of the fullest, most dynamic pictures of a colonial Jewish woman. With her son Naphtali away in England, Abigail, as she was known, frequently wrote him, discussing matters political, social, familial, American and Jewish, and the numerous surviving letters from this correspondence of the 1730s and 40s, provide invaluable insights into colonial American Jewish life. Born in New York, a year after her father became a freeman, it was in this city that she would remain for her entire life, although after a painful incident later in life she would write of her desire to leave city behind. Abigail's parents provided her with a classical education, something evidenced by the references to mythology and classical learning we find peppering her letters, and by the strong literary engagement she maintained— an admirer of Fielding, Dryden, Montesquieu and, her favorite, Pope. When Abigail was in her teens, her parents took in a boarder recently arrived from London, Jacob Franks. At sixteen, in 1712, Abigail wed the young merchant. Together they had seven surviving children, who served as the primary focus of her attention. Abigail provided her children, including her daughters, with an education like that she had received. At the same time, it proved hugely important to her that her children maintain their Judaism. She prided herself on her observance of the Sabbath, frequent synagogue attendance and the strict levels of kashrut she maintained at home. She would send kosher meat to her son Naphtali in London, and even advised him against eating in her brother-in-law's house. Two of her children did not end up marrying Jews. And while there exist no letters dealing with her son David's marriage to a Christian, daughter Phila's intermarriage is one of the central dramas played out in her letters to Naphtali. When in 1743 it came to light that Phila had secretly wed Oliver DeLancey several months prior, her mother quit town and, avoiding even the Franks country home in Harlem, left for Flatbush. There she composed a pained letter to Naphtali, though so overcome with grief was she that she complained, "I can hardly hold my Pen whilst I am writing." She cried to her son in England, "My Spirits Was for Some time Soe Depresst that it was a pain to me to Speak or See Any one... I Shall Never have that Serenity nor Peace within I have Soe happily had hitherto. My house has bin my prisson Ever Since I had not heart Enough to Goe near the street door. It's a pain to me to think off goeing again to Town And If you Fathers business would Permit him to Live out of it I never would Goe Near it Again I wish it was in my Power to Leave this part of the world I would come away in the first man of war that went to London." Despite her daughter's, her family's and her friends' pleadings, Abigail never again spoke with Phila. In spite of her disapproval of her daughter's intermarriage and generally high levels of religious observance, Abigail seems to have had little patience with the small Jewish community of New York around congregation Shearith Israel. "And Indeed I don't offten See her," Abigail wrote to Naphtali, gossiping about a member of the community, "Nor any of our Ladys but at Synagogue for they are a Stupid Set of people." Yet she was very much at the center of this community, with both her father and husband having served as the parnas of Shearith Israel. Still, in her letters she continually picks on a certain Jewish provincialism. Writing to Naphtali concerning a book on Judaism she had just read, Abigail wrote, "Its Very Entertaining for me for I confess it to be agreeable to my Sentiments on our Religeon Whoever wrote it I am sure was noe Jew for he thought soo reasonable You will Say Perhaps I pay a Compliment in that Expression to myself but I must Own I can't help Condemning the Many Superstitions we are Clog'd with & heartly wish a Calvin or a Luther would rise amongst Us I Answer for my Self, I would be the first of there followers." Abigail died two decades before the Revolution and so did not live to see her children— Tories— fall into public disrepute and flee the new county for England. The letters of Abigail Franks provide us with a wealth of insights into life in colonial America and the early Jewish community in New York and display her wonderful personal complexities and contradictions. | Levy, Bilhah Abigaill (I395)
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| 345 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Rebecca Phillips was born somewhere in the Caribbean, possibly aboard her father's cargo ship as it sailed for Saint Eustatius. The Phillips family— merchants and traders— maintained strong ties to New York, Newport, Jamaica, Curacao and Martinique. Her great-grandfather served as an early parnas of Shearith Israel. Her Father, the English-born Jacob Phillips, fought with the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. At fifteen she married Polish emigrant Isaiah Moses. They lived in Charleston where he ran a store on King Street. As Isaiah grew increasingly successful, he was able, in 1813, to purchase a plantation— the Oaks— and to situate himself and Rebecca among the southern planter class. In what must have been an upsetting turn of events, after more than two decades, financial pressures forced Isaiah to sell his property. Rebecca, who had been mistress of the Oaks for so many years, was now listed in the city directory as running a dry goods store. | Phillips, Rebecca (I35)
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| 346 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Sarah Mendes da Costa Brandon was born to a London-based merchant family who had made a fortune in New World plantations and trade. The da Costas had been among England's Sephardic elite for several generations already, wealthy traders and shareholders in the East India Company. Indeed an ancestor of Sarah's, Alvaro da Costa, a refugee from the Inquisition, had become England's first naturalized Jewish subject in 1667. Though Alvaro never renounced Roman Catholicism, his son, Anthony Moses da Costa, developed a strong participation with London's Sephardic community, serving as parnas of the Bevis Marks synagogue. It has been frequently repeated, erroneously so, that Anthony served as head of the Bank of England. He was, however, a stockholder. In 1698 he married his cousin Catherine Mendes da Costa, daughter of Fernando Moses Mendes. The Portuguese-born Mendes had fled with his family to Rouen in the 1650s where he studied medicine before moving to London. He was admitted to the Royal College of physicians and served as Queen Catherine's doctor, while the Queen, tradition has it, served as his daughter Catherine's godmother. Catherine Mendes da Costa became one of the most prominent miniaturists in 18th century England, and a full-length watercolor she painted of her father hangs in the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in Maida Vale. Sarah Mendes da Costa married Jacob da Fonseca Brandon in 1788. They had eight children, four of whom headed off for the Americas, one to New York, one to Curacao, one to Jamaica and later New York, and a fourth disappeared in Surinam. Two grandchildren, a brother and a sister, married into the Hendricks family. | Da Costa, Sarah Mendes (I4054)
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| 347 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Son of Isaac and Rebecca Judah Hays, Samuel lived his life in Philadelphia. Before striking out on his own in business, Hays apprenticed for the famed Haym Salomon. He became involved in the East India trade, and, as his mercantile success increased, so to did his connections to the city's elite, both Jewish and non-Jewish. In 1793 he married Richea Gratz, a daughter of Philadelphia's leading Jewish family. Daughter of Michael and Miriam Simon Gratz, she counted among her siblings Rebecca Gratz, Frances Gratz Etting, and Benjamin Gratz. The couple had ten children. In1805 he became the first Jew to serve on the trade claims committee of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, a body that convened once a month to settle disputes. He was also a founding member of Mikveh Israel, and later served as a trustee of the congregation. | Hays, Samuel (I1836)
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| 348 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Jacob Rodriguez Rivera and Hannah Pimental Sasportas Rivera, Sarah grew up among the wealthy Sephardic merchant families of Newport, Rhode Island. And it was from within that world that she would marry. Her cousin Aaron Lopez, the "merchant prince" of Newport, became her husband when she was in her teens, his first wife, Abigail, having died a few years earlier. Her son Joshua who appears with her in this portrait was one of their nine children. Joshua would marry Rebecca Touro, the only daughter born to Isaac Touro— father of Abraham and Judah, and the spiritual leader of Newport's Jewish community. | Rodrigues de Rivera, Sarah (I2022)
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| 349 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The daughter of Sarah Moses and Samuel Levy, and the sister of Chapman Levy, Eliza grew up in Camden, South Carolina. She married Dr. Edward Anderson. | Levy, Eliza (I4211)
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| 350 | (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 The eldest son of Joseph and Sallie Salomon Andrews' twelve children, Joseph I. Andrews was born in New York in 1801. Soon after his birth, the family settled in Philadelphia. Perhaps the earliest record in which he appears— and certainly the most colorful— comes from an 1825 letter of complaint to Zalegman Phillips, parnas of Congregation Mikveh Israel, the Philadelphia synagogue attended by the Andrews family. Abraham Israel, author of the letter and shammash of Mikveh Israel, complains that "the young Ladies of Mr. Andrews" had caused some trouble at the synagogue on Passover, refusing to take their proper seats. When the hapless shammash approached their brother Joseph to enlist his support, Israel was shocked by their brother's response. "He boldly told me," Israel reported, "I order you, never to go up Again to my sisters or I will Drag you down…he said he dare the Parnass or any one to ordre his Sisters out of the front seats he will spent a hundred dollars to See it, with Ohther Abusive Expression." After living for some time in Charleston, Andrews settled in 1840 in Memphis, Tennessee, a city incorporated only fourteen years prior and which, at the time, was called home by just a handful of Jews. Andrews quickly established himself as a civic and business leader. He became a prominent banker and a merchant, dealing in cotton. He built Memphis's first three-story brick house, and for the 1847-48 term served as a city alderman. That same year, his brother Samuel, who had followed him down to the upstart Tennessee town, passed away, compelling Andrews to acquire (for an "eagle," or ten-dollar gold coin) the land for a Jewish cemetery. It was the first in the state of Tennessee as well as the first formal Jewish institution in Memphis. In this, Andrews followed a familiar pattern: the first roots put down, the first sign of Jewish communal life in a new city, almost always took the form of a cemetery. Before synagogues or ritual baths were established, before shohets set up shop, a death would force the Jewish merchants who had traveled to a distant outpost in search of new opportunities to grapple with questions of Jewish practice and their intentions to remain in this place. Two years after his brother's death, in 1849, Andrews married Miriam Nones, granddaughter of Revolutionary War soldier, Benjamin Nones. Together they had nine children. | Andrews, Joseph I. Jr. (I3829)
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