 1824 - 1899 (75 years)
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| Name |
Miriam Nones [2, 3] |
| Born |
1 Jun 1824 |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  [2] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Reference Number |
3828 |
| Died |
23 Aug 1899 |
New York [2] |
| Person ID |
I3828 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
11 Nov 2011 |
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| Notes |
- (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011
Although little is known that directly pertains to Miriam Nones Andrews, there is significant documentation relevant to the Nones family. Like the Andrews family that she would marry into, the Nones family was connected to Philadelphia. Miriam's grandfather, Benjamin Nones, a Sephardi from Bordeaux had settled there sometime before the Revolutionary War.
During the war, he served in General Pulaski's regiment, under Captain Verdier, who said of Nones that, "his behavior under fire in all the bloody actions we fought, have been marked by the bravery and courage which a military man is expected to show for the liberties of his country." It has often been repeated, erroneously so, that Benjamin Nones achieved the rank of major and served with Washington. Still, under Pulaski he "fought in almost every action which took place in Carolina, and in the disastrous affair of Savannah shared the hardships of that sanguinary day."
After the war he partnered with Myer M. Cohen, going into finance: "every Kind of Business as Brokers, such as buying and selling Bills of Exchange on France, Spain, Holland and other Parts." He also traded in a variety goods, whole and retail— furniture, books and nearly anything else. However, for years financial success eluded him. In 1781 in the midst of his economic struggles, Nones became embroiled in a very public dispute with one Abraham Levy over a sum of money and accusations of financial impropriety. Their quarrel escalated in the pages of the Independent Gazetteer until reaching its apogee in a furious letter from Nones threatening, "Were it not for this consideration [Levy's age], I should certainly shave that beard, which induces many people falsely to imagine him a distinguished member of our congregation, in which his ignorance disqualifies him from holding the humblest office."
Even as he struggled to make it in business, Nones grew increasingly engaged in the heated political climate that gripped the United States at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. He was a vocal republican, opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and found himself the object of nasty Federalist taunts. The Gazette of the United States, Philadelphia's leading Federalist paper, reported on a July 30, 1800 meeting of the Democratic Society of Philadelphia, saying it was attended by the "very refuse and filth of society." Nones was singled out in the article as "Citizen N--- the Jew," his accent was mocked and he was disparaged not only as a Jew and republican, but for being poor as well. When the Gazette refused to print his rebuttal, Nones went to Aurora, the city's leading anti-Federalist paper. His response, a moving self-defense and one of the earliest attempts to link the fate of the Jews with America's destiny, is worth quoting at length:
I am accused of being a Jew of being a Republican, and of being Poor. I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian, or Mahomedan, allow to be of divine origin -- of that persuasion on which Christianity itself was originally founded, and must ultimately rest -- which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled, for near three thousand years, whose votaries have never murdered each other in religious wars, or cherished the theological hatred so general, so inextinguishable among those who revile them....
I am a Republican! Thank God, I have not been so heedless and so ignorant of what has passed, and is now passing in the political world. I have not been so proud or so prejudiced as to renounce the cause for which I have fought, as an American throughout the whole of the revolutionary war....
I am a Jew, and if for no other reason, for that reason am I a republican. Among the pious priesthood of church establishments, we are compassionately ranked with Turks, Infidels and Heretics. In the monarchies of Europe we are hunted from society, stigmatized as unworthy of common civility... In republics we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs.... How then can a Jew but be a Republican? in America particularly. Unfeeling and ungrateful would he be if he were callous to the glorious and benevolent cause of the difference between his situation in this land of freedom and among the proud and privileged law-givers of Europe.
But I am poor, I am so, my family also is large, but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian because his religion is not so old as theirs...."
In 1801 Nones was appointed a notary public by the governor of Pennsylvania, and became a state-authorized translator of Spanish, French and Portuguese.
Nones had married Miriam Marks in 1782 and together they had thirteen children. He died in Philadelphia on Febuary 9, 1826. Among his children, a passion for politics proved their common heritage, and several of his sons followed careers in the foreign service: Solomon B. Nones was appointed by Jefferson consul-general in Portugal. Aaron B. Nones served as consul at Aux Cayes, Haiti, from 1820-2822. Abraham B. Nones was consul-general to Zulia, Venezuela. However, it was a younger brother and the father of Miriam Nones Andrews, Joseph B. Nones, who set off on a series adventures exciting and strange enough to constutue a life perhaps even rivaled Benjamin's for spectacular detail.
Filled with wanderlust, a seventeen-year-old Joseph joined the Navy as a midshipman in 1814, and soon thereafter saw action in the Second Barbary War.
He told everyone that he was descended from one Raphael de Nones of Genoa, a seventeenth century physician, knighted for his "discovery of simulating parts of the body in life-like wax." No evidence exists tot suggest that such a person ever lived.
Nones kept extensive journals of his travels and adventures. One night he dined with the American consul at Malaga, William Kirkpatrick. During the long meal, young Nones found himself particularly impressed by the beauty of one of Kirkpatrick's granddaughters, whom he described as "some pumpkin." This pumpkin would, in turn, marry Napoleon III, becoming the empress Eugenie.
Nones resigned from the Navy in 1821, but continued to tour the world. In Russia he witnessed a ceremony with Czar Alexander I. He continued on to Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Calcutta, Carthage, Cadiz, and the Orkney Islands.
When he finally returned to the United States and settled down, he began to experiment in food concentration and preservation. He marketed to the Navy a product called, "Nones' Life Preservation and Antiseptic-Nutritive Compound," a concentrated food ration which would also help prevent scurvy, making Nones a pioneer in food preservation.
In 1823 Nones married Eveline De Leon in New York. The second of their six children, Miriam was born in 1824. When she was twenty-five she was married to Joseph I. Andrews, and together they had nine children. [4]
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| Sources |
- [S285] .
- [S4] PG. 233 NONES (Reliability: 3).
- [S4] PG. 12 ANDREWS I (Reliability: 3).
- [S294] ANDREWS, MIRIAM NONES (Reliability: 3).
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