Americans Of Jewish Descent
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Samuel Hart

Samuel Hart[1]

Male 1749 - 1810  (60 years)

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  • Name Samuel Hart  [2, 3
    Born 15 Oct 1749  Newport, Newport, Rhode Island Find all individuals with events at this location  [4, 5
    Gender Male 
    Residence 1779  Long Island, New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [6
    The family left Newport in 1777 
    Residence Abt 1780  New York Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Residence 1783  England Find all individuals with events at this location  [6
    Conversion 20 Mar 1793  Halifax, Nova Scotia Find all individuals with events at this location  [7
    • He converted to the Anglican Church in order to take his elected seat in the Nova Scotia Assembly as a repesentative of the town of Liverpool, NS.
    Reference Number 1971 
    _UID A3936F2C177E4616A9321CEF225D5F068C77 
    Died 3 Oct 1810  Preston, Nova Scotia, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location  [3, 8
    Person ID I1971  aojd-demo
    Last Modified 1 Sep 2012 

    Father Jacob Hart, of Stamford, Conn.,   d. 3 Nov 1784, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Mother Esther Levy,   b. 28 Feb 1721, New York, New York (Manhattan), New York Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 26 Jun 1785, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 64 years) 
    Married Y  [9
    Family ID F156  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Rebecca Byrne,   d. Yes, date unknown 
    Married Abt 1782  New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [6
    Children 
     1. Esther Hart,   b. Abt 1783, New York Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. Yes, date unknown
    Last Modified 11 Nov 2011 
    Family ID F1378  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • Search out the Land. Sheldon J. and Judith C. Godfrey. The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740 -- 1867. Page 148

      "Samuel Hart and his immediate family first took refuge in New York. They were destitute, and he and his father and brother were granted small subsistence allowances by Sarah Guy Carleton, who was in New York. As commander-in-chief in North America for some six months in 1782-3. It was here that Hart's, sister Miriam met and married Lieutenant Montague Blackwell of London. It was here, amongst many other Loyalist refugees, that he himself met and married Rebecca Byrne, the daughter of William and Sarah Byrne of Philadelphia."
      ==========================

      HART, SAMUEL, merchant and politician; b. c. 1747, probably in England; m. c. 1780 Rebecca Byrne of Philadelphia, Pa, and they had four children; d. 3 Oct. 1810 in Preston, N.S.
      Samuel Hart's origins are obscure. Apparently born in England of Jewish stock, he moved to Philadelphia some time prior to the outbreak of the American revolution. During the war he evidently became identified with the tory cause since he arrived at Halifax from New York City about 1785 as part of the general loyalist exodus to Nova Scotia. Operating from premises at the corner of Hollis and George streets purchased for £900, Hart conducted a general import-export business. His newspaper advertisements emphasized the sale of dry goods brought in from London, but entries in the diary of Simeon Perkins, a Liverpool merchant, indicate that Hart engaged in the West Indies trade and handled a virtually unlimited range of commodities. Certain contemporaries, including Perkins and William Forsyth, disapproved of Hart's allegedly "sharp practices," but he nevertheless prospered, particularly after war broke out between Britain and revolutionary France in 1793. The bankruptcy of his brother Moses Hart, a London merchant, caused Samuel some distress in the late 1790s because he had guaranteed Moses's debts. By 1801, however, Samuel had recovered to the extent of being able to pay off all mortgages on his Nova Scotia property. At this point Hart owned urban and rural real estate valued at more than £4,000.
      Not content with material success, Samuel Hart aspired to social recognition, even if that required suppression of his Jewish identity. In March 1793 he had himself baptized an Anglican and by 1801 he owned a pew in St George's Anglican Church in Halifax. He also invested £655 in the purchase of a large country estate, complete with mansion, at Preston, to the northeast of Halifax. There he "spent his summers . . . and entertained elaborately." By playing host to officers of the British army and navy, Hart and his wife acquired a reputation for being "gay and fashionable people." To cultivate further his image as a respectable man of property, Hart had his portrait painted during a visit to London in 1795. Moreover, through the use of "ledger influence" directed against his outport debtors, Hart gained entry to the provincial assembly. As the member for Liverpool Township between 1793 and 1799 he predictably allied himself with other Halifax merchants against those rural and allegedly democratic interests led by William Cottnam Tonge*. On one occasion Hart broke with the merchants to support an increase in import duties. It is probable that he did so only because the tax increase was being urged by Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth. All of these efforts secured Hart no more than a precarious degree of acceptance from Halifax's social élite, however. Significantly, he failed to be named a magistrate or be elected to the executive of the Halifax Commercial Society.
      In 1797 Samuel Hart declared in a codicil to his will that "the Blessing of God" appeared to be with him in business. That optimism vanished between 1803 and 1805. A severe slump in Halifax trade deprived Hart of income just at the time when his social ambitions made material abundance essential. He mortgaged his property and desperately began coercing his debtors for immediate payment. Hart should have been able to survive this crisis since Halifax trade had begun to revive by 1807. Unfortunately, however, the pressure of events proved too much for Hart's mind. In 1809 he was declared legally insane. A year later he died, a pathetic figure who spent the last days of his life chained to the floor of a room in his Preston mansion. His wife, Rebecca, and their three children, two girls and a boy, inherited virtually nothing. Debts overwhelmed the estate's assets, and ultimately Hart's creditors were obliged to accept payment of 4s. 10d. on the pound. Samuel Hart's tragic fate underscored the difficulties facing Jews who aspired to social acceptance in early British North America.

      D. A. Sutherland
      Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of Nova Scotia Arch. (Halifax), St George's Anglican Church, Halifax, pew rentals, 17 July 1801 (mfm. at PANS). Halifax County Court of Probate (Halifax), H45 (estate papers of Samuel Hart) (mfm. at PANS). Halifax County Registry of Deeds (Halifax), Deeds, 24: ff.10– 14; 32: ff.443– 45, 484; 34: ff.405– 7; 38: ff.185– 86; 39: ff.270– 73 (mfm. at PANS). PANS, MG 3, 150, William Forsyth & Co. to George Andrew, and to David Colter, 12 Nov. 1796. PRO, AO 13, bundles 80; 96, pt.ii. Royal Bank of Canada (Liverpool, N.S.), Simeon Perkins, diary, 1804; corr, Perkins to Messrs. Cochran, 9 Feb. 1793 (transcripts at PANS). St Paul's Anglican Church (Halifax), Reg. of baptisms, 17 March 1793 (mfm. at PANS). N.S., House of Assembly, Journal and proc., 1793– 99. Perkins, Diary, 1790– 96 (Fergusson). Halifax Journal, 3 Oct. 1810. Nova Scotia Royal Gazette, 21 Feb. 1786; 6 Nov. 1787; 16 June 1789; 21 June 1796; 7 Oct. 1802; 24– 31 Jan., 7 March, 26 Sept. 1805; 20 Feb. 1810. Directory of N.S. MLAs. M. J. [Lawson] Katzmann, History of the townships of Dartmouth, Preston and Lawrencetown, Halifax County, N.S., ed. Harry Piers (Halifax, 1893; repr. Belleville, Ont., 1972). J. P. Martin, The story of Dartmouth (Dartmouth, N.S., 1957). N.S., Provincial Museum and Science Library, Report (Halifax), 1932– 33,1934– 35. [8, 10]

  • Sources 
    1. [S285] AOJD & Heritage Muse, Inc., David M. Kleiman, (AOJD-online.net. Heritage Muse, Inc. 165 West End Ave. New York, NY 10023 sources@heritagemuse.com).

    2. [S3] AMLAJA, Judith E. Endelman, (unpublished manuscript), CHAPTER 5 PG 10 (Reliability: 3).

    3. [S670] Dartmouth, Preston and Lawrencetown, Mrs. William Lawson/M. J. [Lawson] Katzmann ed. Harry Piers, (Halifax, N.S.: Morton, 1893.), HART, SAMUEL: PGS 170-180 (Reliability: 3).

    4. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 100 HART XII (CONN. & NEWPORT) (Reliability: 3).

    5. [S93] Search Out the Land, Sheldon J. Godfrey, Judith C. Godfrey, (Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995, ISBN 0773512012), PG. 147 (Reliability: 3).

    6. [S93] Search Out the Land, Sheldon J. Godfrey, Judith C. Godfrey, (Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995, ISBN 0773512012), PG. 145-149 (Reliability: 3).

    7. [S93] Search Out the Land, Sheldon J. Godfrey, Judith C. Godfrey, (Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995, ISBN 0773512012) (Reliability: 3).

    8. [S669] Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, (www.biographi.ca), HART, SAMUEL: HTTP://WWW.BIOGRAPHI.CA/009004-119.01-E.PHP?&ID_NBR=2452 (Reliability: 3).

    9. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 154 LEVY I (1) (Reliability: 3).

    10. [S93] Search Out the Land, Sheldon J. Godfrey, Judith C. Godfrey, (Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995, ISBN 0773512012), PG. 149 (Reliability: 3).