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Early American Jewry the JEWS Early American Jewry THE JEWS. OF PENNSYLVANIA AND THE SO UTH. Jac'ob Rader Marcus: Director, American, Jewish Arcni'lJts; Adolph 8. Ods Prqfmar of Jewish History, Hdrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati VOLUME TWO PHILADELPHIA The Jewish Phblication Society of America I955-57 I 5 Chapter I Pennsylvania - 1734 URING the Revolution, Philadelphia was the second largest city in the English-speaking . world. It sheltered the most important Jewish D community in the United States, though by no means the oldeSt. New York, Newport, and probably even Savannah had synagogue organizations that antedated the one in the City of Brotherly Love. Most of the Jews in this Pennsylvania capital-where they were first reported as being numerous enough to note by a traveler in '734-were of Central European origin. Probably some of them were attracted to the city because of the large number of German Christians who had settled in eastern Penn.sylvania; Individual Israelites had traveled to Pennsylvania much earlier, coming down from New Amstez;dam no later than ,655 to trade with Indians on the Delaware. William. Penn had theorized that the Indians were descendants of the Ten [Lost] Tribes-they looked just like. the Jews in the London ghetto! We must look, however, for less aboriginal specimens, if we wish a per­ suasive authentiCity for the first Jew who settled perma- 3 Early American Jewry nently in Perinsylvania. He may have been a certain Jonas Aaron, who was already settled in the colony in '703. But his J ewishness is indicated only by his biblical name, at best an uncertain identification. It is more likely that the first Pennsylvania Jew, of whom we can be sure and whom we know by name, was Isaac Miranda. He was probably a Tuscanian; at least this is known, that his brother Joseph was steward to the Duke of Tuscany. Though we have identified Isaac as a Jew, he may al­ ready have been a convert to Christianity when he ap­ peared on the Pennsylvania frontier. On occasion the pioneer Jew in a new area becomes a convert. Alone, cut off from any close Jewish community, eager to establish himself, he marries out of the faith and ul­ timately leaves it. The change of faith makes him somehow a little more acceptable to his neighbors; nevertheless, they continue to think, and frequently speak, of him as "the Jew." Their criteria of J ewishness are "racial" and ethnic. After the first Jew, the convert, has settled in a village or hamlet, succeeding Jews, unconverted, who wander in are more readily accepted. The ice has been broken, and the community has been prepared to receive these others. Miranda had settled on Conoy Creek, in what was later Lancaster County, by about the year '7 I 5. Although he was primarily an Indian trader, he also dabbled in politics. Sometime in 1727 he was appointed a deputy vice-admiralty judge, and later the same year he was dismissed when he refused to do the bidding orhis superior, the vice-admiralty judge Joseph Browne, in a case smelling of corruption. 4 Pennsylvama-1734 This "apostate Jew or fashionable Christian proseiyte," as he was called by an unsympathetic Christian contem­ porary, died in I73 2. Apparently a man of some wealth, he left his heirs two houses in Philadelphia, silver plate, furniture, books, a farm in Lancaster County, and several thousand acres of land. One of his two sons, George, car­ ried on the family business of trading with the Indians, and in the I730's was well-known in the Allegheny area as a trader among the Shawnees. The elder Miranda was very'eager for his daughter Mary to wed the aristocratic James Hamilton, the son of Andrew Hamilton, the famous lawyer who had defended John Peter Zenger in the well-known snit involving freedom of the press. In order to stimulate his interest, Miranda made liberal provision in his will for the young scion if he es­ poused the daughter, but the future lieutenant-governor of the colony did not marry Miss Miranda. Fate, however, had evidently ordained that there should be a "Jewess" in the Hamilton family. In the next generation, Andrew Hamilton III did marry Abigail Franks. Jews, that is, unconverted Jews, did immigrate in increas­ ing numbers to Pennsylvania in the first half of the eight­ eenth century. By I730 the London De Pazes were build­ ing boats in Philadelphia shipyards, and by the I750'S there were isolated families, or groups, or even communities in Philadelphia, Easton, Reading, Heidelberg, and in other villages and townships as far west as the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lancaster, in the middle of the eighteenth century, had a little community and a cemetery. It was the most important 5 Early American Jewry frqncier post· for the western fur trade. There were ten families or male adults there in the '740'S, and the leading Jew, Lancaster's most prominent merchant, was Joseph Simon. fuJ for Philadelphia, there was a modest little congrega­ tion of Jews worshiping in a rented room on Sterling Alley as early as the '7 50'S. They had been holding services at least since '747. Their first cemetery-originally.the private burial plot of Nathan Levy-had been purchased in '738; Levy sought a second plot from the Penns several years . later. This Levy, the founding father of the Jewish commu­ nity, was a son of the well-known New York merchant­ shipper, Moses Levy. Through the marriage of his sister Abigail, Nathan became a brother-in-law of Jacob Franks, the enterprising New' York businessman. By '73' young Nathan, then twenty-seven years of age, was an officer of the. New York congregation, and by '747 he was the third largest taxpayer in the synagogue, ranking just below Mor­ decai Gomez and Jacob Franks. The records of the '740'S and of the year '750 disclose the fact that he continued to pay liberally for the upkeep of the New York congregation in spite of the fact that he had been living and doing busi­ ness in Philadelphia since the late 1730'S. No doubt it was filial loyalty and piety that prompted him to remain a mem­ ber of Shearith Israel while doing what he could to estab­ lish a uew Jewish community in Philadelphia.. Being a cemetery owner was not without its problems, and a Jewish cemetery was nearly always subject to dese­ cration. In '7 sr Levy was forced to insert the following 6 Pennsylvania-1734· ,. advertisement in a September issue of Franklin's Pennsyl­ vania Gazette: Whereas many unthinking people have set up marks, and fir'd several shots against the fence of the Jewish buryirtg­ ground, which not only destroyed the said fence, but also a tomb-stone inclosed in it; there being a brick-wall now erected, I must desire those sportsmen to forbear (for the future) firing against the said wall. If they do, whoever will inform, so· that the offender be convicted thereof before a magistrate, shall have twenty shillings reward, paid by Nathan Levy. For at least nine years before his death Levy was a part­ ner of David Franks in the firm of Levy and Franks, merchant-shippers· who owned a number of good-sized schooners, sloops, and ships registered in Philadelphia. The firm had a store on Second Street and dealt in all sorts of merchandise, and from a letter which Nathan wrote in 1742 to James Dinnen (Dunning), the Indian trader and guide, we see that he also handled furs, bartering bundles of skins for goods and cash: Mr. James Dianen, S'r: I received your favoUr with six bundles summer skins for which have credited your account, and have according to your desire sent you all the goods you wrote for, excepting 1 p's match coating [coarse woolen cloth 1 and brass kettles, being I had them not. The rum I bought for cash and so I did the vermillion, and therefore conld not send you so much cash as I wonld. I alsoe paid John Smith, the waggoner, £4.17 for bringing the skins and carrying the goods out. I hope they may please you, and 7 Early American Jewry wish you good success in trade is the needful] at .p[rersent from, s'r, Your most humble servant, Nathan Levy. Philad'a, Octo'r '5, '742. I have sent you £6.10 cash by Walker.' The Levys of Philadelphia were very definitely "soci­ ety." When Dr. Alexander Hamilton," a Maryland physi­ cian, made his "Gentleman's Progress" through the colonies in the summer of 1744, he went to a session of the Music Club in Philadelphia, where he "heard a tollerable concerto performed by a harpsicord and three violios." The leader of this club was the Attorney General Tench Francis, who "play~d a very indifferent finger upon an excellent violio that once belonged to the.!ate Ch. Calvert, Govr. of Mary­ land." Apparently the only good fiddler of the three. was ~'Olle Levy there I who] played a very good violioe." This violinist was almQst certainly our Nathan Levy. Music was cultivated in his family, as we know from a let­ ter written by his sister, Abigail Levy Franks, to her son Naphtali Franks in London in 1735. She recounted 'how her youngest son, Moses, was attracted to the instrument played by a daughter: "Richa does pretty well with her mnsick, Moses would fain learn if he could, he has stole some parts of tunes by seeing her taught." David Franks, still another son, then in Boston, continued Abigail, had studied the "fidle." From the mention of the "fidle" Abi­ gail automatically went on in the very next sentence to say a word about her brother, Nathan Levy.
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