Today's tantalizing tidbit: Jewish boarding houses in the 1850s. One was run by Jamaican Jewish merchant Solomon Lazarus and his wife Rebecca. The other was run by an unmarried woman named Rebecca Phillips. Many members of the Sephardic synagogue lived with Rebecca.
Today on this 19th day of Caribbean American Heritage Month and Juneteenth. Sarah Rodrigues Brandon and Isaac Lopez Brandon began their lives poor, Christian and enslaved on the island of Barbados but ended their lives as some of the wealthiest Jews in New York.
Neither lived to see Juneteenth
“Fig. 2. A dress and petticoat ... bound all round with white ribbon, a full trimming of white lace sewed to the edge of the ribbon; the bosom trimmed with broad lace, drawn to form a tucker; the sleeves very short, trimmed with lace.”
"Fashions of London and Paris," December 1803.
Joséphine de Beauharnais by Andrea Appiani
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
Yowza! Sharing this wonderful and beautiful website put together by Valerie van der Meulen-Sheppard on her family:
It includes many key Jewish families from the Caribbean including Barbados, Suriname, and Trinidad. So many lovely photos and artifacts!
#CaribbeanAmericanHeritageMonth
#CaribbeanJews
Quote from "Joyce Myers Retails the Gossip to her Daughter Becky, 1900-1805," in The American Jewish Woman: A Documentary History By Jacob Rader Marcus, p. 60. )
White Kid Shoes (1775-1800), V&A collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O353748...
On this 17the Day of Caribbean American Heritage Month: Jewish gravestones of the Caribbean! the early communities follow the Portuguese jewish tradition from Amsterdam and Hamburg which allowed for human figures, angels, and the hand of God cutting down the tree of life. What figures do you see?
Today's tantalizing tidbit: this wonderful description of a Jewish wedding in NYC in June of 1800 by Joyce Mears Myers (widow of famed silversmith Myer Myers) to her daughter Rebecca Myers Mordecai. She is describing the wedding of her niece Hetty Isaacs to Isaac Moses (of South Carolina).
Learn more about 19th century Jewish boarding houses in this wonderful post by Shari Rabin on "You Are Where You Live: Jews, Religion, and the New York Boardinghouse."
www.gothamcenter.org/blog/you-are...
Learn about kosher boarding houses in 18th Century New York in a piece I wrote for the Jewish Women's Archive: jwa.org/encyclopedia...
Jewish women in colonial America led varied lives, with some occupying traditional roles as mothers and wives and others remaining single. Some ran their own businesses and others worked as servants f...
