The Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island

In a post in January of 2016, I talked about the Jewish history of Rhode Island. In the post I talked about the Sephardic Jews, many from the Caribbean who settled in Newport, and made it a very important place for the Jewish people.  This past week I had the honor of being able to visit the synagogue and take a tour of this beautiful historic building. The synagogue was completed in  1763, making it the oldest existing synagogue in North America. The pictures below, give a small glimpse into the historic treasure.

The Early Jews of Rhode Island

The Jewish history of Rhode Island is perhaps the earliest in all of North America. In Newport, the first members of the Jewish community started to arrive in the mid 1650's, over 100 years before the American Revolution. The first synagogue, known as Touro Synagogue was completed in 1763, and is still in use today, making it the oldest existing synagogue in North America.   The Hebrew Cemetery was open about a dozen years later in the mid 1670's. That makes it the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in America.

These early Jews were Sephardic, whose journey to Newport started in places such as Spain and Portugal, and like many of the early Jews in America, included stops in the Islands of the Caribbean. These earliest families in Newport, who had names such as Lopez, Rivera, Levy, Seixas and Touro, would one day be known as people who were very influential in the forming of early colonial history.
A few of these early leaders, included:

• Rev. Isaac Touro, was the spiritual leader of the community. His family, originally from Spain, came to Newport after stops in Amsterdam and the West Indies, The synagogue was called the Touro synagogue in honor of all he contributed to the community.

• Rev. Touro's brother in law, Moses Michael Hays, was a very successful  merchant. He introduced the order of the Scottish Rite Masonic Order to America. He was the first Grand Master of the Lodge in Massachusetts with Paul Revere and a good friend of Thomas Paine. He is also credited with being a founder of the Bank of Boston.

• In 1763, Jacob Rodriquez Rivera, met with a group of locals and made the first plans to establish a college in Rhode Island. The school would eventually become known as Brown University.

Today, the community has over 350 years of history behind it and continues to be a strong Jewish community. The Jewish population of Rhode Island today is almost 20,000 people. FamilySearch has quite a few databases that include the records of the Jews of Rhode Island.

As with all FamilySearch databases, these records can be viewed free of charge at anytime.

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.