He married Rebeccah Jackson of New York, and their offspring numbered five sons and a daughter. He died in the 66th year of his age, and was the last Jew that was buried within the limits of old New York City.
PART IV.
THE SECOND OR GERMAN PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FIRST COMMUNITIES IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
Impetus given to immigration to America by the reaction after the fall of Napoleon—The second period of Jewish immigration—First legislation about immigration (1819)—The first Jew in Cincinnati—Its first congregation, Bene Israel—Appeals to outside communities for funds to build a synagogue—The first Talmud Torah—Rabbis Gutheim, Wise and Lilienthal—Cleveland—St. Louis—Louisville—Mobile—Montgomery and its alleged Jewish founder, Abraham Mordecai—Savannah and Augusta—New Orleans—Judah Touro.
The reaction in Western Europe after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 gave an impetus to emigration to America. This was especially true of Germany and more particularly of the German Jews. Those who had already tasted the sweets of freedom could not so easily endure the returning hardships of the galling exceptional laws and discriminations, as did their fathers and grandfathers who knew not the experience of better conditions. While the struggle for political and religious liberty was carried on with increased intensity in the various German states and principalities, many ventured to come out to the New World in quest of more favorable conditions and better opportunities. This new immigration, which continued for about half a century, until the Jews in all the German states were emancipated, much exceeded the immigration of the preceding two centuries, while it now appears almost insignificant in comparison with the large influx from the Slavic countries in the last thirty years. These Jewish immigrants of the second period, which is usually called the German period (though a considerable number came from Austria-Hungary, Russian-Poland and even Russia proper), were in one essential point more like the Slavic Jews who came after them than like the Sephardim of former times; they came poor, and grew up with the country. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews as a class were wealthy; some of them brought more capital with them than was found in the localities in which they settled. Their wealth and their business connections made them welcome or secured them sufferance at a time and at places—in the Old World as well as in the New—where a poor Jew, coming to earn his living as a peddler or craftsman, would probably never have been admitted. But better times had come; an immensely large country, which had now increased its territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and doubly secured its independence by the successful issue of the second war with its former masters, now needed men even more than money, and the immigrant who came to cast his lot with the new nation was welcome. A substantial part of the Jewish immigrants of this new era remained in the older communities, which were thereby largely increased. But many penetrated far into the South and the West; new settlements were founded in scores of places, and almost in each case a congregation was formed as soon as there were a sufficient number of Jews to warrant such an undertaking. As there was no longer any struggle between the Jews, as such, and the surrounding non-Jewish world, the history of the Jews of a locality is mainly the history of its communal institutions and of its individual members, who reflect credit on it by their distinction in various fields of activity. We shall now follow the formation of these new communities in various parts of the country, with an effort to understand the spirit which moved the early settlers in their Jewish activities, which helped them to rise to an eminent position in their new home and to be useful to their fellow citizens, as well as to their co-religionists who arrived at a later period.
There are no statistical figures for the number of immigrants who arrived in the second decade of the nineteenth century; but what may be considered as an official declaration (in the voluminous report of the Immigration Commission, issued in 1910) states that after the year 1816 “an unprecedented emigration from Europe to the United States occurred. It is estimated that no less than 20,000 persons arrived in 1817.” The sudden demand for passage caused overcrowding, disease and death in the steerage of the sailing vessels, which resulted in the first “legislative interference” by a law which “became effective March 2, 1819, containing provisions intending to regulate the number of passengers on each vessel and proper victualing of each vessel.” A provision of this law also marked the beginning of statistics relative to immigration into the United States. And as there was now a certain percentage of Jews among the arrivals of each year, it may be presumed that the Jews of that time were as much interested in these earliest provisions relating to immigration, as we are to-day in that perennial question.
Some of the pioneers of this new Jewish immigration came from England, but as in the earlier period of the Spanish Jews, the Germans and the Polish soon followed, or came simultaneously. A typical instance was that of Cincinnati, where the first Jewish congregation in the Ohio Valley was formed. The first Jew to settle there was Joseph Jonas (b. in Exeter, England, 1792; d. in Cincinnati, May 5, 1869), who came to America in 1816 and lived for a short time in New York and in Philadelphia. He left the latter city on the second day of January, 1817, and arrived in Cincinnati on the eighth of March. He was a watchmaker by trade, and had little difficulty in establishing himself. He was a curiosity at first, as many in that part of the country had never seen a Jew before. Numbers of people came from the country round about to see him, and he related in his old age of an old Quakeress who said to him: “Art thou a Jew? Thou art one of God’s chosen people. Wilt thou let me examine thee?” She turned him round and round and at last exclaimed: “Well, thou art no different to other people.”[27]