Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654-1865 (City of Promises)
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1479803510
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
referred to difficulties with insurance and debt collection, problems with notes owed him ranging from £30 to £100, the state of the tea trade 32 ■ h av e n o f l i b e r t y This engraving of the south prospect of New York Harbor from 1760, during the French and Indian War, includes captured French ships. The city has a prosperous, mercantile look, as the war brought increased British expenditures that arrived through prominent merchants, including Jacob Franks. (Courtesy Collections of the
remained an Orthodox Jew his entire life. And, like Abigaill Franks, some of his children and all of his grandchildren converted to or were born into Christianity. All of David Franks’s children were raised as Christians, as were Phila’s. Abigaill’s son Naphtali remained Jewish, but his children converted, as did the children of her other London son, Moses. David Franks’s family in Philadelphia became members of the “Christian establishment,” and Oliver and Phila Delancey moved to England as
of the Erie Canal, New York began its journey to a world-class metropolis. It became the entry point for immigrants and the choice entrepôt for all imports and for exports from the West. In 1821, only 38 percent of the nation’s imports arrived in New York; by 1838, that figure rose to 62 percent. No city could match its merchants, artisans, or manufacturers. Growth brought increased economic stratification: by 1800, 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the city’s wealth, while the
lived in peace in New York, never reached its destination.6 Most Jewish merchants worked on a smaller level. Many bought goods at auction and sold them in retail stores, sometimes advertising their goods. Jacques Ruden, a small-scale merchant, supplied lumber toward the building of the new city hall until his death in 1806. He learned to work with wood in Dutch Suriname, a colony he left in 1800. For every Harmon Hendricks, there were many small retailers and grocers earning a meager livelihood.7
later became a captain in the state militia, reveals the opportunity for Jewish grass-roots political enterprise. In the election of 1800, when he was twenty-four, Myers described Aaron Burr telling fellow DemocraticRepublicans, “we must, at the next election, put a period to the [Federalist] ‘reign of terror.’ ” Burr constructed a winning ticket by sponsoring “inspiring speeches” by some of the “most active and patriotic Democrats, young and old” in each ward. Burr chose Myers as one these ward