 1731 - 1782 (51 years)
-
| Name |
Aaron Lopez [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] |
| Born |
1731 |
Portugal  [2, 4] |
| Gender |
Male |
| alt death |
Scott's Pond, Massachusetts [4] |
| Thrown from carriage into quicksand |
| Reference Number |
2021 |
| Residence |
1752 [4] |
| Newport |
| Died |
28 May 1782 |
drowned [2, 4, 9] |
| Buried |
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground, Newport, RI [4, 10] |
| Person ID |
I2021 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
14 Nov 2011 |
-
| Notes |
- http://www.projo.com/extra/2006/slavery/text/day2.htm
Plantations in the North: The Narragansett Planters
Monday, Mar. 13, 2006 BY PAUL DAVIS Journal staff writer While Newport merchants profited by trafficking in slaves, colonists across Narragansett Bay found another way to grow rich. They used slaves to grow crops and raise livestock on small plantations throughout South County. For 50 years, Newport's merchants loaded the surplus farm products onto ships bound for slave plantations in the West Indies where they were traded mostly for sugar and molasses. By 1730, the southern part of Rhode Island was one-third black, nearly all of them slaves. The Narragansett Planters thrived from the early 1700s to just before the American Revolution, which brought trade to a standstill. * * * From his counting house above Newport harbor, Aaron Lopez fretted about the future. The Portuguese immigrant had sold soap in New York, candles in Philadelphia and whale oil in Boston. But a plan to trade goods with England failed because the market was glutted. Now, heavily in debt to an English creditor, Lopez sought a new market. He chose Capt. Benjamin Wright, a savvy New England trader, as his agent in Jamaica. From the tropics, Wright acted as a middleman between Lopez and his new buyers -- slave owners too busy making sugar to grow their own food. Don't worry, Wright told Lopez in 1768. "Yankey Dodle will do verry well here." Yankee Doodle did. His chief suppliers were just across the Bay. There, amid the rolling hills and fertile fields, hundreds of enslaved Africans worked for a group of wealthy farmers in South Kingstown, North Kingstown, Narragansett, Westerly, Exeter and Charlestown. Relying on slave labor, the so-called Narragansett Planters raised livestock and produced surplus crops and cheese for Newport's growing sea trade. Newport Historical Society As the Newport slave merchants prospered in the early 1700s, the Narragansett Planters had success selling their crops and horses to slave plantations in the West Indies. The painting above, made around 1740, depicts the Potter family, of Matunuck, being served tea by a black slave. Below, a painting attributed to Gilbert Stuart shows Sarah Rivera Lopez and Joshua, the wife and son of Newport merchant Aaron Lopez, who profited on both ends of the slave trade. The slaves, brought by Newport merchants from the West Indies and later Africa, cut wheat, picked peas, milked cows, husked corn, cleaned homes and built the waist-high walls that bisected the fields and hemmed them in. So many blacks worked along the coast that, by the mid-1700s, southern Rhode Island boasted the densest slave population in New England after Boston and Newport. While most New England communities were organized in compact villages with small farms, southern Rhode Island evolved into a plantation society. "South County was unique in New England," says author Christian M. McBurney. Cheap land made it possible, he says. The Narragansett Indians had once ruled the region, but Colonial wars and disease had greatly reduced their number, leaving huge tracts of vacant land up for grabs. A territory dispute between Connecticut and Rhode Island scared off some timid settlers. Investors, many of them from Newport and Portsmouth, "scrambled to the top," says McBurney. They bought land on credit, sold the unwanted lots to generate cash and started farms. By 1730, the most successful planters -- including the Robinson, Hazard, Gardiner, Potter, Niles, Watson, Perry, Brown and Babcock families -- owned thousands of acres. In Westerly, Col. Joseph Stanton owned a 5,760-acre estate that stretched more than four miles long. A typical farm had 300 sheep, 100 bulls and cows and 20 horses. "The most considerable farms are in the Narragansett Country," concluded William Douglas who, in 1753, surveyed the English settlements in North America for the Mother Country. The region's rich grazing and farm lands benefited from warm winters and "a sea vapour which fertilizeth the soil," he wrote. The owners sometimes relied on family members and indentured Indians for help, but slaves did most of the work. The largest planters -- families like the Robinsons, Updikes and Hazards -- owned between 5 and 20 slaves. Although their plantations were much smaller than those in the southern Colonies, an early historian described the area as "a bit of Virginia set down in New England." Made rich from their exports, the planters built big homes, sent their children to private schools and carved the hillsides into apple orchards and gardens. North Kingstown planter Daniel Updike kept peacocks on his 3,000-acre farm. Framed by deep blue feathers, the exotic peafowl screeched and strutted in their New World home. * * * Rowland Robinson, a third-generation planter and slave holder, was one of the region's most successful planters. In 1700, his grandfather purchased 700 acres on Boston Neck, "east by the salt water." By the time he died, the elder Robinson owned 629 sheep, 131 cows and bulls, 64 horses and eight slaves. His son, William, the colony's lieutenant governor, increased the family fortune by acquiring more land. William, who owned 19 slaves, died in 1751, and Rowland, one of six sons, settled on the family estate. Tall and handsome, with "an imperious carriage," the younger Robinson rode a black horse and owned more than 1,000 acres and a private wharf. His farm, a mile from the Bay, gave him easy access to the Newport market. During a two-year period in the 1760s, he delivered more than 6,000 pounds of cheese, 100 sheep, 72 bundles of hay, 51 bushels of oats, 30 horses and 10 barrels of skim milk to Aaron Lopez who then shipped them to the West Indies and other markets. Most planters relied on public ferries. They hauled their cheese, beef, sheep and grains along muddy Post Road to South Ferry, the public port that was a vital link between Newport and the Narragansett country, also called King's County. In 1748, Boston Neck planter John Gardiner urged legislators to expand the busy port at South Ferry. The current boats, he complained, are "crowded with men, women, children" along with "horses, hogs, sheep and cattle to the intolerable inconvenience, annoyance and delay of men and business." * * * According to one account, Rowland Robinson owned 28 slaves. Tradition says he abandoned the slave trade after a boatload of dejected Africans arrived at his dock. But the region's planters bought slaves until the American Revolution. Even small farmers, like the Rev. James MacSparran, owned field hands and domestic servants. "My two Negroes are threshing rye," wrote MacSparran, who owned 100 acres, on July 29, 1751. Their work had a profound effect on the economy, says historian Joanne Pope Melish. Freed from domestic chores, white masters were able to pursue other opportunities, jobs or training. Some learned new trades, became lawyers or judges, or sought public office. In the end, slave labor helped Rhode Island move from a household-based economy to a market-based economy, says Melish. "Slaves contributed to the expansion and diversification of the New England economy," she says. Plantation owners, merchants, importers and retailiers prospered on both sides of the Bay. From his home on Thames Street, Aaron Lopez could walk to his private pier and a warehouse next to the town wharf. In a loft above his office, sail makers stitched sheets of canvas. His Thames Street shop supplied Newport's residents with everything from Bibles and bottled beer to looking glasses and violins. Lopez, one of the founders of Touro Synagogue, and his father-in-law, Jacob Rivera, owned more than a dozen slaves between them, and sometimes rented them to other merchants. Lopez became Newport's top taxpayer. He owned or had interest in 30 ships, which sailed to a dozen ports. He wasn't alone. By 1772, nearly half of Newport's richest residents had an interest in the slave trade. "The stratification of wealth was astonishing," says James Garman, a professor at Salve Regina University. "And it had everything to do with the African trade." Although the Narragansett Planters weren't as well off as their monied counterparts across the Bay, they took their cues from Newport's merchants and the English gentry. Their large houses -- Hopewell Lodge in Kingston, Fodderring Place at Pt. Judith -- often stood more than a mile apart. John Potter's "Greate House" in Matunuck included elegant woodwork and a carved open arch. Rowland Robinson's house featured gouged flower designs, classical pilasters and built-in cupboards adorned with the heads of cherubs. The Reverend MacSparran described a typical day of socializing: "I visited George Hazard's wife, crossed ye Narrow River, went to see Sister Robinson, called at Esq. Mumford's, got home by moon light and found Billy Gibbs here." So much company, he confessed, "fatigues me." Their wealth "brought social pretensions and political influence . . . all without parallel in rural Rhode Island and New England," says McBurney. The elegant lifestyle did not last. During the Revolutionary War, the British burned Newport's waterfront. Many merchants fled, and trade stalled. Lopez moved to Leicester, Mass. In 1782, he drowned when his horse plunged into a pond. The Narragansett Planters did not recover from the loss of the Newport market. The sons of the big planters chopped the plantations into small farms. Some freed their slaves. But before the Revolution, they lived a carefree life. In the spring, they traveled to Hartford to "luxuriate on bloated salmon." In the summer, they raced horses on the beach and roasted shellfish, says Wilkins Updike in a history of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett. During corn-husking festivals, men and women gathered for "expensive entertainments" in the large halls of "spacious mansions," says Updike. The men wore silk stockings, shoes with shiny buckles and "scarlet coats and swords, with laced ruffles over their hands." Their hair was "turned back from the forehead and curled and frizzled" and "highly powdered." The women, dressed in brocade and high-heeled shoes, "performed the formal minuet with its thirty-six different positions and changes. These festivities would sometimes continue for days . . . These seasons of hilarity and festivity were as gratifying to the slaves as to their masters," Updike says. In the 18th century, Yankee Doodle did all right. On the farms and on the wharfs he made money -- sometimes as a slave owner, sometimes as a slave trader, sometimes as both.
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Found! Aaron Lopez alias
Monday, March 1st, 2010
In 1740, Aaron Lopez and his family fled Portugal, where they could not practice their Jewish faith. They initially lived in New York. Lopez moved to Newport in 1752 and quickly established himself as a merchant. Almost immediately, he began to trade with his native country, using the Lisbon firm of Mayne, Burn & Mayne as his agents. The Aaron Lopez papers at the Newport Historical Society show that in his correspondence with this firm, which began in 1754, Lopez used an alias. Letters to him from Mayne & Co. were addressed to "Mr. Johannes Rhodrick and sometimes to "Mr. Roderick Johannes" before they settled on "Johannes Roderick." The firm handled sales for Lopez but also provided information about family and friends still in Portugal.
Lopez apparently apandoned the alias after he was granted citizenship in Massachusetts in October, 1762. The letter reproduced here, written in August, 1764, is the last one that uses the alias — and the only one addressed to "Aaron Lopez alias Johannes Rhoderick."
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Aaron came to U.S. after his half-brother Moses. He came with Gabriel/David. [11, 12]
- (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011
When Duarte Lopez fled Portugal with his wife Anna and daughter Catherine, he was, of course, fleeing the persecution of the Inquisition. However, he was also moving towards economic possibilities offered by the city of Newport, where his brother Moses arrived several years earlier and his cousins, the Riveras, were well established in shipping. As soon as the family arrived in America, they abandoned the Christian mores they had known in Spain, and even changed their names— Duarte was now Aaron, Anna Abigail, and Catherine Sarah.
The family connections proved indeed helpful, and Lopez quickly emerged as one of the leading businessman in his new home, closely associated with his relative Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. Established in the slave and sugar trade, Lopez soon counted among his holdings numerous ships sailing back and forth to the Caribbean and commanded, as well, whaling fleets dispatched to the Arctic.
In addition to his prominence in business, Lopez also found himself among the leaders of Newport's Jewish community. He served several times as the parnas of the congregation then called Nefutse Yisrael— the Scattered of Israel— though it would later be renamed Jeshuat Yisrael— the Salvation of Israel. Lopez even had the honor of laying the cornerstone of the building when construction began on the synagogue.
After living nine years in Newport, Lopez applied for naturalization. His request, along with that of another Jew, Isaac Elizer, was denied by the Rhode Island Superior Court. They appealed to the legislature, which agreed to approve their applications if the men would return to court and take an oath of allegiance, adding the following qualification concerning Lopez's appeal:
Inasmuch as the said Aaron Lopez hath declared himself by religion a Jew, this Assembly doth not admit himself nor any other of that religion to the full freedom of this Colony. So that the said Aaron Lopez nor any other of said religion is not liable to be chosen into any office in this colony nor allowed to give vote as a free man in choosing others.
However, when their appeal was heard in the upper house of the Rhode Island Legislature, it was deemed within the jurisdiction of the courts, not the legislature. The Superior Court agreed to re-hear the case. Ezra Stiles, a friend of Lopez, was present that day and recorded his observations. After several felons— thieves and arsonists— were sentenced to hang, Lopez's appeal was heard. "The Jews" Stiles recorded, "were called to hear their almost equally mortifying sentence and Judgment: which dismissed their Petition for Naturalization." The court when on say:
Further by the charter granted to this colony, it appears that the free and quiet enjoyment of the Christian religion and a desire of propagating the same were the principal views with which this colony was settled, and by a law made and passed in the year 1663, no person who does not profess the Christian religion can be admitted free [that is, as a voter or office holder] to this colony
Stiles mused on the verdict: "I remark that Providence seems to make every Thing to work for Mortification to the Jews, & to prevent their incorporating into any Nation; that thus they may continue a distinct people." Lopez, however, found himself less contemplative about the matter. Having exhausted the possibilities in Rhode Island, he successfully applied for naturalization in Massachusetts in 1762.
That same year tragedy struck, and his wife, Abigail, only thirty-six, died. The following year he remarried to Sarah Rivera, daughter of his friend and associate Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. They had nine children together, the same number he had from his first marriage.
When the British occupied Newport during the Revolution, Lopez and his family fled to Leicester, Massachusetts. They waited out the war there, and on his return to Newport, Lopez died in a tragic carriage accident. Stiles wrote of Lopez, upon hearing of his death, that he was an "amiable, benevolent, most hospitable & very respectable gentleman … without a single Enemy & and the most universally beloved by an extensive Acquaintance of any man I ever knew." [13]
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| Sources |
- [S285] .
- [S4] PG. 175 LOPEZ I (1) (RIVIERA, NEWPORT RI) (Reliability: 3).
- [S76] FAMILY GROUP SHEET #7 (Reliability: 3).
- [S76] FAMILY GROUP SHEET #20 (Reliability: 3).
- [S328] CHAPTER: "THE NEWPORT HEBREWS" PGS. 53-69 (Reliability: 3).
- [S402] .
- [S81] .
- [S32] HENDRICKS, URIAH: PGS 272-274, BIO 44 (Reliability: 3).
- [S336] PG. 1 (Reliability: 3).
- [S335] (Reliability: 3).
- [S403] HTTP://WWW.NEWPORTHISTORICAL.ORG/INDEX.PHP/FOUND-AARON-LOPEZ-ALIAS/ (Reliability: 3).
- [S74] "THE GENEALOGY OF THE LOPEZ FAMILY," PRESENTED [CA. 1825] BY SARAH LOPEZ OF [OF NEW YORK] TO HER FRIEND, MRS. PRISCILLA LOPEZ, OF CHARLESTON, BY HER REQUEST. [APPNDIX I]. PG 197-201 (Reliability: 3).
- [S294] LOPEZ, AARON (Reliability: 3).
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