Solomon Bush, a native of Philadelphia, the son of Matthias Bush, was an officer in the Pennsylvania militia for ten years. In 1777 he was appointed by the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania Deputy Adjutant-General of the State militia. In September of that year he was dangerously wounded during a skirmish and had to be taken to Philadelphia. When the British captured the city in December, 1777, he was taken prisoner, but released on parole. In 1779 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and was pensioned in 1785.
A Colonel Isaacs of the North Carolina militia is mentioned as “wounded and taken prisoner at Camden, August 16, 1780; exchanged July, 1781.” (Wolf, l. c., p. 49.)
Lewis Bush became First Lieutenant of the Sixth Pennsylvania Battalion on January 9, 1776, and Captain on June 24 of the same year. He was transferred to Colonel Thomas Hartley’s additional Continental Regiment in January, 1777, and was commissioned Major March 12, 1777. He participated in a number of battles, and at the battle of Brandywine, on September 11, 1777, he received wounds from which he died four days later.
Benjamin Nones (d. 1826), a native of Bordeaux, France, emigrated to Philadelphia in 1777, and at once took up arms on behalf of the colonies. He served as a volunteer in Captain Verdier’s regiment under Count Pulaski during the siege of Savannah, and on September 15, 1779, received a certificate for gallant conduct on the field of battle. He attained the rank of Major, and it is stated that he was with General De Kalb at the battle of Camden, S. C., on August 16, 1780.
Jacob de Leon and Jacob de la Motta were captains under de Kalb; Captain Noah Abraham was called out with the battalion of Cumberland County militia of Pennsylvania, July 28, 1777. Aaron Benjamin (d. 1829), who started as an ensign in the Eighth Connecticut Regiment January 1, 1777, rose three years later to the rank of Regimental Adjutant. Manuel Mordecai Noah (1747–1825) served under General Marion; Isaac Israel rose to the rank of Captain in the Eighth Virginia Regiment in 1777, and Nathaniel Levy, of Baltimore, is mentioned as having served under Lafayette. There is a record of a certificate issued by the New York Committee of Safety, in January, 1776, which read as follows: “Hart Jacobs, of the Jewish religion, having signified to this committee that it is inconsistent with his religious profession to perform military duty on Friday nights, being part of the Jewish Sabbath, it is ordered that he be exempted from military duty on that night of the week....” (See “Publications,” XI, p. 163.)
Three, and probably four, brothers of the old Pinto family who resided in Connecticut, took an active part in the Revolution. Abraham Pinto was a member of Company X, Seventh Regiment, of that State, in 1775; William Pinto (of whom it is not certain that he was a brother) appears as a volunteer in 1779 and 1781. Jacob Pinto, who was in New Haven as early as 1759, appears to have been a member of a political committee in that city in 1775, and his name is found among those of other influential citizens of the place in a petition to the Council of Safety for the removal of certain Tories in 1776. Solomon Pinto served as an officer of the Connecticut line throughout the war, and was wounded in the British attack on New Haven July 5 and 6, 1779. He was one of the original members, in his State, of the Society of the Cincinnati, which at the beginning included only meritorious officers of the Revolutionary army.
Mordecai Sheftal (b. at Savannah, Ga., 1735; d. there 1797), who was one of the first white children born in Savannah, being the son of Benjamin Sheftal, who came there in 1733, was the chairman of the Revolutionary Parochial Committee of his native city. In 1777 he was appointed Commissary-General to the troops of Georgia, and in October of the following year he became Deputy Commissary of Issues in South Carolina and Georgia. His imprisonment after Savannah was taken by the British attracted much attention and the description of it forms an interesting part of the local history of that period. In 1782 Sheftal appeared in Philadelphia, which was then the haven for patriot refugees, as one of the founders of the Mickweh Israel congregation. In the following year, in common with other officers, he received a grant of land in what was called “The Georgia Continental Establishment” as a reward for services during the war. He subsequently figures as one of the incorporators of the Union Society (1786), which is still one of Savannah’s representative organizations; and his name is also closely associated with the early history of Freemasonry in the United States.
Sheftal and the above-named Manuel Mordecai Noah, besides their active service in the army, also contributed large sums to the cause of the Revolution. Other Jews advanced considerable sums, some of them almost beyond their means. The list of those who rendered valuable and timely assistance includes Benjamin Levy, Hyman Levy, Samuel Lyons, Isaac Moses and Benjamin Jacobs.
There was one, however, who gave more than all of them together, who gave away practically all he possessed, and neither he nor his rightful heirs ever recovered the large debts which the new nation owed to him. This man was Haym Salomon (b. in Lissa, Poland, now a part of Prussia, in 1740; d. in Philadelphia, Jan. 6, 1785). He probably traveled extensively before coming to America, because he could speak German, French and Italian, besides Polish and Russian, an accomplishment which could hardly have been acquired by a Jew in Poland in that period. He settled in New York, and there married Rachel, a daughter of Moses B. Franks (a brother of Jacob Franks). He was arrested by the British as an American spy soon after they occupied New York in September, 1776, and was kept in confinement for a considerable period. When his linguistic proficiency became known he was turned over to the Hessian General, Heister, who gave him an appointment in the commissariat department. He used the greater liberty which was now accorded him to be of service to the French and American prisoners, and to assist a number of them to effect their escape. On August 11, 1778, he escaped from New York and settled in Philadelphia. He soon became a prominent exchange broker, and did considerable business with Robert Morris (1734–1806), the financier of the American Revolution,[16] who was Superintendent of Finance for the colonies in 1781–84. He also became broker to the French consul and the treasurer of the French army which came to assist Washington, and fiscal agent to the French minister to the United States, Chevalier de la Luzerne. In these capacities large sums passed through his hands and he became the principal individual depositor of the Bank of North America, which was founded by Morris. The latter, who kept a diary, mentions in it nearly seventy-five separate transactions in which Salomon’s name figures in the negotiations of bills of exchange, by which means the credit of the government was maintained in this period; Salomon practically being the sole agent employed by Morris for this purpose. Most of the money advanced by Louis XVI. to the cause of the Revolution and the proceeds of the loans negotiated in Holland passed through his hands.
He advanced aid to numerous prominent men of this period. James Madison, in a letter (Aug. 27, 1782) urging the forwarding of remittances from his State which he represented in Philadelphia, wrote: “I have for some time been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon, a Jew broker.” On September 30 of the same year he writes: “The kindness of our little friend in Front Street, near the coffee house, is a fund which will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great mortification, as he obstinately rejects all recompense. The price of money is so usurious that he thinks it ought to be extorted from none but those who aim at profitable speculation. To a necessitous delegate he gratuitously spares a supply out of his private stock.” James Wilson (1742–98), another famous delegate to the Continental Congress, who sometimes acted as Salomon’s attorney, relates that without his client’s aid, “administered with equal generosity and delicacy” he would have been forced to retire from the public service.