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Grace Mendes Seixas

Grace Mendes Seixas[1, 2]

Female 1752 - 1831  (78 years)

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  • Name Grace Mendes Seixas  [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
    Alt Birth 11 Nov 1752  Stratford, Fairfield, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location  [9
    Born 24 Nov 1752  New York, New York (Manhattan), New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12
    Gender Female 
    Alt. Birth 28 Nov 1752  [13
    Died 8 Nov 1831  New York, New York (Manhattan), New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11
    Alt. Death 9 Nov 1831  [14
    Reference Number 910 
    _UID C539821EE96C49A89092822EF6C980AA9FE8 
    Person ID I910  aojd-demo
    Last Modified 14 Nov 2011 

    Father Isaac Mendes Seixas,   b. 5 Sep 1708-1709, Lisbon, Portugal Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 3 Nov 1780, Newport, Newport, Rhode Island Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 71 years) 
    Mother Rachel Levy,   b. 27 Feb 1719, London, Middlesex, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 12 May 1797, New York, New York (Manhattan), New York Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 78 years) 
    Married May 1740-1741  New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [6, 11, 15
    Family ID F155  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Simon Nathan,   b. 1746, Frome, Somerset, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 8 Sep 1822, New York, New York (Manhattan), New York Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 76 years) 
    Married 29 Aug 1780  Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location  [6, 9, 10, 16
    Children 
     1. Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan,   b. 24 May 1785, New York Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 30 May 1852, New York Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 67 years)
    Last Modified 14 Nov 2011 
    Family ID F328  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011

      While not unprecedented, the marriage of Isaac Mendes Seixas, a Sephardi, and Rachel Levy, an Ashkenazi, in 1740 marked a symbolically significant union of traditions, and a step in the long process toward the erasure of certain distinctions in favor of an American Judaism. Seixas was born into a converso family who had fled Portugal for London in 1725, after his father was accused of crypto-Jewish practices. Five years later Seixas left for New York and eleven years after his arrival married Rachel Levy, daughter of wealthy New York merchant Moses Raphael Levy. Among their six surviving children were Gershom, who was to become one of the leading figures in early American Jewish life, and their youngest, Grace, whose life would be marked by a passionate engagement with Judaism and literature.
      When the Revolution erupted, she and her family, like many supporters of the patriot cause, left New York for Philadelphia. There she met and married Simon Nathan. They returned to New York after the war, and she gave birth to her only child, Seixas. ?Profoundly interested in literature, Grace left us a large corpus of letters and an unpublished collection of poetry. Engaged with contemporary developments in arts and letters, she wrote to her niece, "I have read the whole of Lord Byron's work very lately indeed and I recommend them to you." She imbued her family with this love of literature, an influence that can perhaps be traced through the generations to her descendent Emma Lazarus whose poem the "New Colossus" sits inscribed in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
      Grace also cultivated a relationship with Judaism. In a letter she wrote to her son at the end of her life she said, "I die in the full faith of my Religion. Need I exhort you to the full cultivation of your endearing children and give them a just idea of their religious and moral principles, these being the corner stones of all good."

      [17]

  • Sources 
    1. [S81] Joseph, Anne - Research Database, Anne [Goulding] Joseph, (Shared with David M. Kleiman in Montreal, Quebec, Canada 18 March 2009).

    2. [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).

    3. [S33] One World Tree (sm), Ancestry.com, (Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., n.d.) (Reliability: 3).
      Online publication - Ancestry.com. OneWorldTree [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc.

    4. [S7] Adeline Moses Loeb & Carl M. Loeb, Kathy L. Plotkin, Margaret Loeb Kempner, etal (Reliability: 3).

    5. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 263 SEIXAS (1) (Reliability: 3).
      QUAY 3

    6. [S3] AMLAJA, Judith E. Endelman, (unpublished manuscript), SECTION III, CH 5 PG 10 (Reliability: 3).

    7. [S59] Green-Aryeh Family Tree, EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).

    8. [S634] Green-Aryeh Family Tree, EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).

    9. [S48] Jewish Women's Archive, (http://jwa.org/archive/jsp/perInfo-print.jsp?personID=209), PERSONAL INFORMATION FOR GRACE SEIXAS NATHAN (Reliability: 3).

    10. [S38] Stern, Malcolm: American Jewish Genealogy Trees.

    11. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 263 SEIXAS (1) (Reliability: 3).

    12. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 313 CORRECTIONS TO PG. 263 SEIXAS (1) (Reliability: 3).

    13. [S81] Joseph, Anne - Research Database, Anne [Goulding] Joseph, (Shared with David M. Kleiman in Montreal, Quebec, Canada 18 March 2009) (Reliability: 3).

    14. [S32] Portraits Etched In Stone, Pool, David De Sola, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.), PG. 441 (Reliability: 3).

    15. [S165] Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.), CARDOZO, DANIEL HENRY, JR.: FILED 9 FEB 1929, ACCEPTED 8 MAR 1929. NAT. # 48504 (Reliability: 3).

    16. [S4] FAJF-Stern, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, (3rd edition updated and revised. n.c.: Genealogical Publishing Company for the American Jewish Archives, 1991.), PG. 266 SEIXAS (4) (Reliability: 3).

    17. [S294] Loeb Jewish Portraits Database, (http://www.loebjewishportraits.com/home.html), NATHAN, GRACE MENDES SEIXAS (Reliability: 3).