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 1742 - 1815 (73 years)
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| Name |
Aaron Levy [2] |
| Born |
1742 |
Amsterdam  [2] |
| Gender |
Male |
| Reference Number |
3373 |
| Died |
28 Feb 1815 [2] |
| Person ID |
I3373 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
11 Nov 2011 |
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| Notes |
- (Research):AJLLJ Portrait Database 5 Aug 2011
Born in Amsterdam in 1742, Aaron Levy reached America around the time he was eighteen. Upon his arrival, Levy headed west for the frontier opportunities and land grab in central Pennsylvania. The earliest document in which appears has him buying a lot in Sunbury, Northumberland County. In business with Joseph Simon and Michael and Barnard Gratz, Levy not only speculated on land, but was involved in the Indian trade.
A story is told that he met his wife, Rachel Phillips, when, walking through the streets of Philadelphia, he came upon a young women crying at the steps of a house. When asked what was wrong, she told Levy that she was a Jewish indentured servant, and that her master was making her work on the Sabbath. Levy, the story goes, immediately paid her indenture. During the Revolution he and Rachel moved to Lancaster.
Levy's most ambitious business plan, and that for which he is best remembered, was his quixotic dream of Aaronsburg. Levy purchased 334 acres to the west of Northumberland, in the center of Pennsylvania. His idea was to create a city on this land that would become the state capital. In 1786 he advertised that he had laid out the town "in that beautiful, healthy and fertile settlement, called Penn's Valley," and that lots were to be sold by lottery. Of course, things didn't work out for Aaronsburg; it never grew beyond a small town.
Childless, and without any Jewish community around in Aaronsburg, Levy and his wife moved to Philadelphia in 1790. Around this time he befriended Simon Gratz, son Michael and Miriam Simon Gratz, brother of Frances Gratz Etting, Rebecca Gratz and Benjamin Gratz. Simon became something of a surrogate son for Levy, and Levy left nearly all of his land to Gratz. In 1805 Simon Gratz created out of this land the Borough of Gratz in Dauphin County. This was the second American town named for a Jew; the first, more than twenty years earlier, had of course been Aaronsburg. [3]
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