Sephardic Jews of Savannah, Georgia

Savannah is usually omitted from lists of colonial American Sephardi communities, and it should not be. Its Congregation Mickve Israel, founded in 1733, is the third-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. It comes after New York and Newport, and before Philadelphia and Charleston.

Its founding is one of the more remarkable episodes in early American Jewish history. Forty-two Jews, most of them Spanish and Portuguese, arrived at the new colony of Georgia in July 1733. That was five months after James Oglethorpe founded it, and they came on a ship organised by the Sephardi community of London.

For the genealogist, Savannah is a distinct and well-recorded early Southern community, linked to London above all.

As with the other colonial congregations, Mickve Israel was mixed from the start. The 1733 arrivals were mostly Sephardi — the Nunes, Ribeiro and de Lyon families among them — but included some Ashkenazim, and the congregation’s later character shifted. It is Sephardi in origin and early rite. Trace its families without assuming Iberian descent throughout.

The 1733 arrival

The founding is unusually well documented.

In 1733 the Spanish and Portuguese community of London at Bevis Marks organised and largely funded a shipload of Jews to the new philanthropic colony of Georgia, partly to relieve London’s Jewish poor. Forty-two arrived in July 1733, most of them Sephardim who had fled the Portuguese Inquisition by way of London.

Oglethorpe admitted them despite instructions to the contrary. This was reportedly in part because one of them, Dr Samuel Nunes Ribeiro, a physician, helped fight an epidemic then killing the colonists. The Sephardi founding families — Nunes, Ribeiro, de Lyon, Henriques and others — are the core of the early community.

The community’s early life was unstable. There was friction between the Sephardim and the smaller Ashkenazi group. There was also fear of Spanish invasion from Florida, a real threat to former New Christians who risked the Inquisition if captured. Many of the original settlers scattered to Charleston and elsewhere in the 1740s.

The congregation contracted and revived, formally reorganising and taking the name Mickve Israel. It received its charter in 1790 and built its first synagogue in 1820.

How they made a living, and where they went

Trade, shopkeeping and the professions, in a small colonial port. Some early members prospered. Others, unsettled by the Spanish threat and the community’s instability, moved on — to Charleston above all, which is why the two Southern communities share families.

As with all the colonial Sephardim, the network reached back to London and out to the Caribbean and the other mainland congregations.

The synagogue and cemeteries

Mickve Israel’s present synagogue, consecrated in 1878, is a neo-Gothic building on Monterey Square, and one of the few Gothic-style synagogues in the country. The congregation holds a Torah scroll believed to have come with the 1733 settlers, one of the oldest in America. Long since Reform, it preserves and displays its colonial documents and remains active.

The burial grounds are primary genealogical sources. They are the colonial Jewish burial ground, the Mordecai Sheftall cemetery lot granted in 1773, and later the Jewish sections of Savannah’s municipal cemeteries. The Sheftall family kept early records, and the Sheftall diaries are an important source for the colonial community.

Records

Savannah is well served. The congregation’s own archives, the Sheftall family papers and diaries, and the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah hold the colonial and nineteenth-century material. The American Jewish Archives and the American Jewish Historical Society hold related collections.

The 1733 arrival and the founding families are documented in the London Bevis Marks records as well, since the community was organised from there. For the wider genealogy, Stern’s First American Jewish Families and Marcus’s documentary histories carry the Savannah families.

Sephardic World lectures

Jews and the American Revolution — Laura Arnold Leibman

What has and hasn’t been researched

The founding is well studied; the connective work less so.

The 1733 voyage and the principal families — Nunes, Sheftall, de Lyon — are thoroughly documented. Less worked is the systematic tracing of the founding families back to London and Portugal. So is the tracking of those who dispersed to Charleston and beyond in the 1740s, which is the point at which Savannah and Charleston genealogy intertwine.

Organisations and repositories

Congregation Mickve Israel, Monterey Square, Savannah, holding the congregation’s colonial archive and museum.

Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, holding the Sheftall papers and colonial records.

American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati; American Jewish Historical Society and Center for Jewish History, New York.

The colonial Jewish burial ground, the Sheftall lot, and the Jewish sections of Savannah’s cemeteries.

For the founding, the records of the London Spanish and Portuguese congregation at Bevis Marks.

Help us find records

We are looking for:

The London Bevis Marks records of the 1733 Georgia voyage and its passengers
Transcriptions of the Savannah colonial Jewish burial ground and the Sheftall lot
Records tracing the founding families — Nunes, Ribeiro, de Lyon, Henriques — back to London and Portugal
Documents on the families who moved from Savannah to Charleston in the 1740s
Congregational registers of Mickve Israel in transcription or image

If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected].

Research services

Savannah research means a well-documented early Southern congregation — Mickve Israel, the Sheftall papers and the colonial cemeteries — with lines running back to London and Portugal and across to Charleston. If you would like help, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.

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