Happy 350th Birthday Touro Synagogue

Much has been written on this blog about the important Jewish history of the Caribbean, both in it's influence throughout the world and in the incredible people who called it home. Another great example of this can be found in Newport, Rhode Island at the Touro Synagogue.
In the 1650's, fifteen families from Barbados became the first Jewish families in Newport. Like so many other Caribbean families they were descended from families who came from Amsterdam and London and had found new homes in places such as Suriname, Jamaica, Barbados and Curacao. They quickly formed  "Yeshuat Israel" the second oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. The congregation prospered and grew, until such time that they built what is today "America's Oldest Synagogue", the Touro Synagogue which was dedicated in 1763. On December 1st of this year, the synagogue will be re-dedicated as part of its 350th birthday celebration.

The incredible history of this treasure can be found at tourosynagogue.org. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOURO SYNAGOGUE

Barbados Jewish Records at FamilySearch.org

For those who are looking for more records of their Jewish ancestors in the Caribbean, more records are now available at www.familysearch.org. Actually the records have been there for about 5 months, but they are well hidden. The record collection is Barbados, Church Records, 1637-1887.
The collection does indeed include the records of the Jews in Barbados. The years covered are births 1830-1884 and deaths 1685-1886. As of today there are images, however they have not been named indexed.

The records for the Jews are very easy to use. They are in order by date of the event and the handwriting is very readable. The two records below show an example of each type.

This database should be very valuable for those with early Jewish families in the Caribbean and especially for those with ancestry from Barbados.

The Gomez Family, Sephardic influence from the Caribbean in New York

In 1792, under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street, in New York City, 24 brokers gathered and signed the Buttonwood Agreement, that would eventually lead to the creation of the New York Stock Exchange. That event would have such an incredible impact on the world as the New York Stock Exchange is now the center of the financial world. It is one of those men whose own history is also a great example of the effect the Sephardic Jews of the Caribbean have had on early America. Those who study the history of the exchange will note that Isaac M. Gomez (1768-1831) was a broker who resided at 32 Maiden Lane in New York, but that is far from the whole story. Who was this man and where did he come from?
Isaac Moses Gomez was born on 28 July 1768 in New York City into a sephardic Jewish family. His father, Moses Gomez (1728-1789) lived his whole live in New York. His mother, Esther Gomez, daughter of Isaac and Deborah De Leon Gomez was born in Barbados in 1739. Isaac married into a Jewish family from Newport, Rhode Island, when on 26 May 1790 he married Abigail Lopez (1771-1851), daughter of Aaron and Sarah Rodriguez Riveira Lopez. He and Abigail became the parents of 10 children.
In looking into the family tree of Isaac, the influences from the Islands of the Caribbean become very apparent. In the family record that has been preserved in the papers of Malcolm Stern (FHL Film #1013428) Isaac gives details on some of his own ancestry. Included within those are;

• Mordecai Gomez married a Miss Esther Compas of Jamaica by whom he had three sons, Moses, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses married in Jamaica, and Isaac married Esther Jesurum in Curacao.
• Daniel Gomez (his grandfather) married Rebecca De Torres, daughter of Joseph and Simha De Torres, of Jamaica. They had 2 sons before she died. He then married Esther Levy of Curacao.
• Isaac Gomez married Deborah De Leon of Barbados.
• Benjamin Gomez married Esther Nunes of Barbados.

The influence of these Caribbean Jews, like so many other families was then taken to places such as New York, Philadelphia and Newport, all places the family settled in. The Gomez descendants then married into prominent families. These families had familiar surnames such as Seixas, Levy and Hendricks.
This proves once again how research into early United States families must begin with a search of the records of the Caribbean Islands.
The records of the Gomez family have been added to the Knowles Collection- Jews of South America and the Caribbean and will be available after the next update.

Jewish Community of Bridgetown, Barbados

The first Jews began to arrive in Bridgetown in the 1650's. Most of the early settlers were Sephardic merchants from Brazil. Most had Dutch heritage as did so many of the early Jews throughout the Caribbean.

The first synagogue was consecrated in 1754. However, it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1831 and rebuilt in 1833.By the 1920's the Sephardic community was for the most part gone, however Ashkenazic Jews from Russia began to arrive after WW 2. Records from the cemetery at Bridgetown still survive, some dating as early as the 1660's. Those records have now been added to The Knowles Collection: Jews of the Caribbean, and will be available after the next update (mid October 2010)