 1719 - 1797 (78 years)
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| Name |
Rachel Levy [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] |
| Alt. Birth |
17 Feb 1719 |
London, Middlesex, England  [14] |
| Born |
27 Feb 1719 |
London, Middlesex, England [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Alt. Death |
12 May 1797 [5] |
|
|
| Reference Number |
404 |
| Residence |
Newport, Newport, RI [3] |
| Died |
12 May 1797 |
New York, New York (Manhattan), NY [3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15] |
| Person ID |
I404 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
11 Nov 2011 |
-
| Notes |
- PORTRAIT IN SCRAPBOOK ------------------------ The portrait of Rachel (Levy) Seixas is reported by Hannah London in her 1926 book Portraits of Jews is attributed to John Wollaston by Mr. Lawrence Park. At that time, it was owned by N. Taylor Phillips of New York who is said to have been Rachel's grandson (AJ Note: I have not yet established this lineage). She is represented in a life-size painting to the waist, turned to her right and facing the spectator. She wears an exquisite ivory-white satin gown. The tight-fitting bodice is trimmed with wide lace, very delicately rendered. The short sleeves with bands of satin at the elbow are finished with wide white lace. Her dark hair, over which a dainty lace cap is worn, is brushed back from her forehead and worn low at the neck. Her portrait, Mr. Phillips says, has often been greatly admired for its beauty.
Source: Hannah London ------------------------ According to Malcolm Stern, Rachel Levy was born on 27 February 1719. This is the date I believe to be most likely the accurate one. (For some unknown reason, FTM insists of recording 1718/19.) Hannah London gives the year of her birth as 1710, but I doubt that this is true, that would have made her 30 at the time of her marriage to Isaac Mendes Seixas in 1740, and age 46 at the time of her youngest child's birth. ------------------------ Rachel Levy was the oldest of seven children born to Grace Mears Levy, second wife of Moses Raphael Levy. Rachel Levy was well loved throughout the entire Levy-Franks circle, even though the children from Moses's first marriage hated their step-mother. Rachel caused a social uproar in the New York Jewish community when she married London merchant Isaac Mendes Seixas, who was of Sephardic descent, in 1740. Their union crossed contemporary social, status and ethnic lines that divided eighteenth-century Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewry. The young couple moved to New Jersey where Isaac opened a "Small Country Store". The happy pair eventually produced eight children.
Ambassador Loeb who has sponsored this website is a relative of Rachel Llevy Serixas.
Source Loeb Portrait Database - painting and bio.
- (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011
The first child from the union of New York Jewish patriarch Moses Raphael Levy and his second wife Grace Mears Levy, Rachel was born in London a year after her parents' wedding. The three of them soon crossed the Atlantic, and upon arrival in New York, mother and daughter met for the first time their new step children and half siblings, including Abigail Levy Franks. Though it proved difficult, sometimes futile, for Grace to win over these new relatives, Rachel was well loved throughout the family.
In 1740 she married a Portuguese-born merchant who had, after some time spent in Bordeaux and then England, recently made the journey to New York— Isaac Mendes Seixas. The marriage evidently caused something of an uproar among the Sephardi old guard of New York's Jewish community, who objected to Seixas' taking an Ashkenazi wife. Abigail Franks, tireless observer of her world, not to mention a relentless gossip, recorded that Seixas' uncle Rodrigo Pacheco was "displeased" by his nephew's marriage to a German Jew, and furthermore, "the Portugueze here where in A Violent Uproar abouth it for he Did not invite any of them to ye Wedding."
It was not just the "mixed-marriage"— that transgression of contemporary ethnic and class barriers— that troubled some about the union. Abigail declared that Isaac had an "Untractable Dispossion." However, after visiting with the young couple for a week at their new home in New Jersey, where Isaac opened a "Small Country Store," Abigail characterized Isaac as "A person of his Temper Soe much Mended," and that "they Seem to be very happy in each other."
They would have eight children, including Gershom Mendes Seixas. [16]
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| Sources |
- [S81] .
- [S285] .
- [S4] PG. 154 LEVY I (1) (Reliability: 3).
QUAY 3
- [S4] PG. 154 LEVY I (1) (Reliability: 3).
- [S33] (Reliability: 3).
Online publication - Ancestry.com. OneWorldTree [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc.
- [S7] (Reliability: 3).
- [S3] SECTION III, CH 5 PG 10 (Reliability: 3).
- [S3] SECTION I, CHAPTER 2, PAGE 7 (Reliability: 3).
- [S334] PGE 231 (Reliability: 3).
- [S32] MEMBER OF THE SEIXAS FAMILY MENTIONED IN THESE RECORDS, PG. 347 (Reliability: 3).
- [S59] EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).
- [S634] EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).
- [S165] CARDOZO, DANIEL HENRY, JR.: FILED 9 FEB 1929, ACCEPTED 8 MAR 1929. NAT. # 48504 (Reliability: 3).
- [S81] (Reliability: 3).
- [S3] CHAPTER 5 PG 9 (Reliability: 3).
- [S294] SEIXAS, RACHEL LEVY (Reliability: 3).
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