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Country
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US
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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3101 Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220
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Contact information: phone number
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001 513 487 3000
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Reference number
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MS-231
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Type of reference number
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Call number
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Title (official language of the state)
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Aaron Lopez Papers
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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Aaron Lopez
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Date(s)
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1751/1783
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Language(s)
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eng
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Extent
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3 boxes
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Physical condition
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Good
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Scope and content
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This collection comprises photocopies and abstracts of documentation related to Aaron Lopez and his family, preserved privately or in different archival institutions, such as the Newport Historical Society, the American Jewish Historical Society (New York) or the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, Rhode Island). It contains commercial and personal correspondence, business records and account books, and miscellaneous materials.
Here is the description of the collection's items:
Box 1
- folder 1: General Correspondence, 1754-1783.
- folder 2: Index of letters.
- folder 3: Letter book of Aaron Lopez, 1781-1782 (typescript copies).
- folder 4: Death notices, eulogies and estate papers 1772-1783.
- folder 5: It is entitled "Account book with David Lopez Jr. 1765-1780", but its content is broader, including bills of lading, instructions to ship masters and captains and accounts related to voyages of Lopez's vessels.
- folder 6: Articles of agreement, deeds, lawsuits and naturalisation papers.
- folder 7: Bills of lading, 1756-1771.
- folder 8: Business documents and correspondence, containing agreements with whalers, registers of vessels, a contract for a slave ship (Captain Peleg Clarke, 1722), a bound for a voyage of the brigantine Fox (1776), a letter from M. de Alberro y Soroa (Cadiz, 1772), the charter of the sloop Kingfisher (1773).
- folder 9: Correspondence with Christian merchants (1771-1772; 1779-1782) (typescript copies).
Box 2
- folder 1: Lopez vs Brooks and Griffith (schooner Hope) 1778-1780. Photocopies of original documents from the National Archives, Washington (The Revolutionary War Prizes Cases: Records of the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture 1776-1787, cases 25-30).
- folder 2: Naturalisation petition of Aaron Lopez with Isaac Elizer to the Superior Court of Rhode Island on September 9, 1761.
- folder 3: Oaths of allegiance (1761).
- folder 4: Solicitation letter for the congregation (1764): Lopez asks for support from the Newport congregation. It contains a photocopy of the original, transcription and English translation.
- folder 5: Photocopies of 38 business letters from the American Jewish Historical Society collection.
- folders 6-10: Typescript indexes and abstracts of documentation held by the Newport Historical Society, including ledgers, memoranda, letter books, account books, sailor books, day books, and shop and store blotters, among others.
Box 3: contains six folders with typescript abstracts of documentation held by the Newport Historical Society, as mentioned above.
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Archival history
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The Aaron Lopez Papers were received from various donors. The collection includes copies of records from the Newport Historical Society, the American Jewish Historical Society (New York), John Carter Brown Library (Providence, Rhode Island), the National Archives in Washington, the New York State Library, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Library of Congress, the Yale University Library. It also includes copies of documents from the George D. Miller Collection (South Orange, New Jersey).
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Administrative / Biographical history
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Duarte (Aaron) Lopez was born in Portugal in 1731. His father, Diego José Lopes, was a Spanish converso who operated as a tobacco contractor in Portugal. Nothing is known about Aaron Lopez's early life before moving to Newport in 1752 with his wife and daughter. There, he joined his older half-brother Moses. Moses Lopez, whose Christian name was José Lopes, had left Portugal as a young man; he went to London and later crossed the Atlantic to New York City before establishing himself in Newport, Rhode Island, in the early 1740s.
Following his arrival in Newport, Duarte quickly redeemed himself and his family as Jews, assuming the name of Aaron, and, with the help of his brother Moses, set himself up in business. One of his earliest ventures involved participation in the consortium established by several Newport merchants to manufacture spermaceti candles. By 1760, his efforts to engage in the wholesale commodities trade had also proved successful. His business activities grew widely over the next 15 years to include whaling, a few ventures in the slave trade, and, especially, the trade with the West Indies. Lopez traded to a wide range of markets in North America, the Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados, Suriname, Curaçao, St. Eustatius, etc.) and Europe (Bristol, London, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Cadiz, etc.) through a vast network of agents and correspondents, and transacting a great variety of goods: sugar, molasses, rum, spermaceti candles and other whale products, wood, cloth, furniture, hardware, earthenware, live animals, and even kosher beef and cheese.
In 1761 Lopez, along with fellow Jew Isaac Elizer, sought naturalisation in Rhode Island under the Act of 13 George II, ch. 7, which authorised the naturalisation of Jews as well as dissenting Protestant groups as citizens of the Crown within the North American colonies after seven years' residence. However, the two were refused by the colony's courts and the legislature. After seeking the advice of renowned Boston lawyer Samuel Fitch, Lopez set up residence in Swansey, Massachusetts, and was finally naturalised at Taunton in October 1762. Elizer was naturalised in New York a year later.
In Newport, Aaron began to establish ties with gentiles of his station, including Ezra Stiles, the Congregational minister of the town. Stiles, who had a tremendous scholarly interest in Jewish scripture, came to know Jewish community members during his residence in Newport. Following the death of his wife Abigail in 1762, Aaron also established broader ties within Newport's Jewish community by re-marrying Sarah Rivera, the daughter of his business partner, Jacob Rodriguez Rivera.
With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1776, Lopez suffered a dramatic downturn in his business, along with most colonial merchants. Lopez evacuated his family to Leicester, Massachusetts, where he set up a retail shop and a modest commodities trade via overland routes through Salem, Boston and Providence. Over the next four years, he became a key supplier to the American forces, providing such necessities as flour and leather breeches.
In 1782, while on the way to Newport with his family, Aaron Lopez accidentally drowned in Scott's pond in Smithfield, Rhode Island, while watering his horse.
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(source: Snyder, Holly. 2004. Guide to the Papers of Aaron Lopez (1731-1782), 1752-1794, 1846, 1852, 1953)
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Access points: persons, families
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Costa, Isaac da
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Lopez, Aaron (Duarte Lopes)
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Lopez, David, Jr.
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Lopez, Joseph
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Lopez, Moses
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Lopez Parra, Abraham
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Lucena, James
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Pereira Mendes, Abraham
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Pereira Mendes, Isaac
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Rodriguez Rivera, Jacob
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Seixas, Moses
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
