Individual Notes

Note for: Hannah (Hindlah) Levy, 22 Sep 1723 - 3 Apr 1751 Index

Individual Note:
Hanah Levy & Jos[hua] Isaacs will be married in a few weeks. It’s my Opinion [that] She will be well settled.---Abigaill Levy Franks......Hannah Levy (1723-1751), A.F.s half-sister, married Joshua Isaacs on December 16, 1741. At her mother’s death, a year earlier, she went to live with her uncle Judah Mears, a merchant and inhabitant of New York City and Raritan, New Jersey, died three years later in 1744.

Individual Notes

Note for: Joshua Isaacs, - Jul 1774 Index

Individual Note:
Lancaster Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1730; one of the six or seven cities in the United States containing pre-Revolutionary Jewish settlements. The earliest record of this interesting Jewish settlement seems to be that of a deed, dated Feb. 3, 1747, from Thomas Cookson to Isaac Nunus Ricus and Joseph Simon(s), conveying a half-acre of land in the township of Lancaster "in trust for the society of Jews settled in and about Lancaster, to have and use the same as a burying-ground." At this time there were about ten Jewish families at Lancaster, including Joseph Simon, Joseph Solomon, and Isaac Cohen, a physician. In 1780 the list of Jews included also Bernard Jacob, Sampson Lazarus, Andrew Levy, Aaron Levy, Meyer Solomon, Levy Marks, and Simon Solomon, all shopkeepers, and Joshua Isaacs, later of New York, father-in-law of Harmon Hendricks.

Individual Notes

Note for: Joshua Isaacs,, 17 Dec 1744 - 16 Feb 1810 Index

Individual Note:
Joshua Isaacs, Jr. was born in Grenada, British West Indies; named for his deceased father, he was born to Hannah Levy Isaacs. In 1780 he took the American oath of loyalty and served in the Third Company, Eighth Battalion, of the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, militia. The following year he married Justina Brandly Lazarus in Lancaster, moved to New York, and eventually became the father of six children. Joshua Isaacs is buried in the old cemetery of Shearith Israel on Chatham Square in New York City.

Individual Notes

Note for: Justina Brandly Lazarus, 16 Oct 1752 - 16 Feb 1825 Index

Individual Note:
Justina was born probably in Fredericktown, Maryland, to Sampson Lazarus and Frumet (Fanny) Cohen. Justina Lazarus married Joshua Isaacs in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on March 28, 1781. They moved to New York and had six children. Justina Brandly Lazarus died on the fifteenth anniversary of her husband's death, and, like him, is buried in the old Jewish burial ground on Chatham Square in New York.

Individual Notes

Note for: Eleazer Lazarus, - Index

Individual Note:
Eleazar S., American-born son of German Ashkenazic immigrants, became the leading authority on Sephardic liturgy in the first half of the nineteenth century. Eleazer also served as parnas (president) of the Shearith Israel Congregation, as did his eldest son, Samuel, who, like his father, would on occasion lead the service in the synagogue.

Individual Notes

Note for: Aharon (Samuel) Lazarus, 1781 - Index

Individual Note:
Emma Lazarus' great-grandfather Samuel Lazarus had joined with Gershom Mendes Seixas in organizing Kalfe Sedakah a society for the relief of those stricken by yellow fever in the epidemic of 1798, and had himself fallen victim to it.

Individual Notes

Note for: Gershom Seixas Nathan, 26 Sep 1821 - 1864 Index

Individual Note:
Gershom, was hazzan (cantor-reader of the service) of Shearith Israel at the time of the American Revolution and for a generation thereafter. Gershom was also the first Jewish trustee of Columbia College and was the last Jew to serve in that position until Benjamin Cardozo.

Individual Notes

Note for: Rebecca Washington Nathan, 4 Jul 1828 - 1879 Index

Individual Note:
Rebecca, Albert Cardozo's wife, was born in the middle of a large brood. Many of her brothers and sisters were prominent in the professional and religious life of the Sephardic community in New York City.