Sheftall family record book
Item
-
Country
-
US
-
Language of name of institution
-
eng
-
Contact information: postal address
-
3101 Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220
-
Contact information: phone number
-
001 513 487 3000
-
Reference number
-
SC-11308
-
Type of reference number
-
Archival reference number
-
Title (official language of the state)
-
Sheftall family record book
-
Language of title
-
eng
-
Creator / accumulator
-
Sheftall family
-
Date(s)
-
1733-1818
-
Language(s)
-
eng
-
Extent
-
1 volume (38 pages)
-
Type of material
-
Textual Material
-
Scope and content
-
This small collection of the American Jewish Archives is composed of one volume containing a photostat copy of the Sheftall family record book. This volume includes records on the early Jewish settlement in Savannah, Georgia, dating back to 1733.
-
Archival history
-
This volume was received from D. A. Byck, Savannah, Ga., on October 4, 1957.
-
Administrative / Biographical history
-
Benjamin Sheftall was one of the early settlers in Savannah, Georgia. He was born in Frankfurt-on-Oder in 1692 and moved from Prussia to London sometime before marrying Perla Sheftall in 1730 or 1731. Benjamin and Perla landed in Savannah in July 1733 and were among 41 Jews eventually granted permission to settle in Georgia by the British resident trustee, James Oglethorpe. The Sheftalls, along with the family of Abraham Minis and Jacob Yowel, were the only Ashkenazic Jews among the Sephardic families in the Portuguese and German group hailing from the Port of London.
James Oglethorpe established the Georgia trusteeship in 1732 to assist the worthy poor of England to "better their condition by giving them land in the New World, and assisting them in its cultivation by bounties or otherwise." The "worthy poor," those released from debtor prisons in England, never quite made it to the philanthropic-minded colony. Georgia slowly became a haven for Scots with crafts and construction ability, poor English tradesmen and artisans, and Protestant religious refugees from Switzerland, France and Germany. Jews were not necessarily included as part of the "worthy poor" or religious refugees, but Oglethorpe did not, despite hesitancy from England, turn the Jewish group away when they arrived.
Georgia served as a buffer zone for the English against the Spanish in Spanish East Florida; the frontier settlement of Savannah was little more than an outpost along the southernmost edge of the British Empire in North America. From 1640, the Spanish and British clashed over territory, with the British establishing South Carolina above Georgia and the Spanish maintaining outposts below it.
All the Sephardic Jews who landed with Sheftall or arrived later fled Georgia when the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1743) broke out between the Spanish and British in their North American colonies. The British eventually won the larger war, but James Oglethorpe, who led the Georgian battles against Spain, lost control of the territory and sailed back to England in 1743. From 1741 to the late 1750s, only two Jewish families remained in Savannah, the Sheftalls and the family of Abraham Minis.
-
(source: Elder, Tanya. 2011. "Guide to the Papers of Mordecai Sheftall (1735-1797)" in the Center for Jewish History online database).
-
Author of the description
-
Carla Vieira, 2022
