Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris were key players in the American Revolutionary war and in the creation of USA. Stephen Girard was the richest man in America in the yearly 1800’s. How much did these three men have contacts with Jews? Here is one source:
COMMERCE AND CONNECTION: JEWISH MERCHANTS, PHILADELPHIA, AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1736-1822
by Toni Pitock
Moses Franks’ partners James and George Colebrooke were merchant bankers involved in the East India Company. George Colebrooke would become its chairman in the late 1760s. They were also members of parliament with intimate connections to Thomas Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, who rewarded their family with a baronetcy when they supported his government.192 Arnold Nesbitt was also from a mercantile banking family with a parliamentary seat and links to both Robert Walpole and the Pelhams. Both the Colebrooke and Nesbitt families had long conducted trade in Europe but they only expanded their interests to include America at the onset of the Seven Years’ War. p. 99
Why would the Colebrookes and Nesbitt have formed an alliance with Moses Franks, a Jew? Franks brought plenty to the table. As a major investor in the East India Company and one of the principal diamond importers in the country, Aaron Franks, Moses’ uncle and associate, had a good deal of influence, and the family was wealthy. As with the Colebrookes and Nesbitt’s other consortia, the purpose was to “raise enough capital to meet the demands of the contract as well as to spread the financial risks involved.”196 Of equal importance were Franks’ connections in America: Jacob Franks and his colleagues Oliver DeLancey and John Watts in New York, and David Franks in Philadelphia all had the means to obtain provisions and networks of associates to facilitate distribution. p. 101
American Revolution
A significant number of Jews fought in the War of Independence and contributed to the patriots’ cause. They believed that the republican ideology of the Revolution ensured Jews could achieve full integration, and that the new federal and state constitutions guaranteed Jews’ right to practice their religion freely and enjoy the privileges of citizenship. With these promises of citizenship in mind, the Gratzes and their middle-class peers were emotionally, intellectually, and socially invested in full acceptance in the young republic. And they invested in it financially too. p. 436
The Assemblies were designed to emulate the balls in England’s fashionable towns of Bath, Hampstead, and Epsom, where the gentry “took the waters, gambled, and socialized,” and they were intended for Philadelphia’s first families, who organized and controlled them – the families of merchants, bankers, and city leaders. Mechanics, artisans, and shopkeepers were barred. At these assemblies, Franks and Levy and their families mingled with other leading families of the city, such as the Penns, Hamiltons, Bonds, Shippens, McCalls, Plumsteds, Allens, Willings, Mifflins, and Chews.291
David Franks was also a member of the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1757 and he and Benjamin Levy were members of the Mount Regale Fishing Company in 1762, whose membership included Benjamin Franklin, John and Philemon Dickinson, Richard Bache, Tench Francis, Samuel Rhodes, and the Cadwalader men.292 Membership is these organization was costly and, more importantly, exclusive. Jews’ participation therefore signifies their social acceptance. p. 146
Robert Morris
Michael [Gratz] began making frequent trips to Virginia from early 1776 and he invested in several vessels with Virginia associates that had been seized from the British and were auctioned off to Americans. With Henry Mitchell he purchased two sloops, for example, and he invested with signer Robert Morris in a brigantine.558 p. 277
Benjamin Levy, David Franks’ uncle and one-time resident of Philadelphia, wrote to his friend Robert Morris saying that he had heard that Congress “are oblig’d to leave Philadelphia,” and that they were headed to Baltimore, and extended an offer for Morris to stay in his house, assuring Morris that he would be able to find accommodation for all Morris’s children and three or four servants. “[S]incerely pray that you may not be under the necessity of leaving your home, and that we shall soon hear of the enemy retiring.”714 p. 351
Several Jews took the oath of allegiance to the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware in 1777 and 1778, including Michael Gratz, his cousin Levy Marks, Samson Levy and his son Moses Levy, Joseph Hart, Eleazar Levy, Hyman Levy, Abraham Seixas and David Franks’ cousin Isaac Franks.715 Mathias Bush’s son Solomon served in the Pennsylvania Militia.716 David Salisbury Franks, David Franks’ nephew who served as aide-de-camp to General Benedict Arnold from May 1778 until September 1780, was found to be innocent of treason himself. p. 352
Gouverneur Morris
“I have never felt that prejudice against the Jews which you mention and which has originated entirely in the malignity of the primitive [C]hristians who were not sufficiently enlightened,” Gertrude Meredith wrote to her friend Rebecca Gratz in 1807. “I would quarrel with my best and dearest friend that should utter a slander against the Jews as a people,” she continued. …
Meredith, the niece of Gouverneur Morris, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and United States Senator, and the wife of William Meredith, lawyer and president of the Schuylkill Bank, whose home was a center for Philadelphia’s literary culture, revealed that her position on Jews had more to do with their presentation than their ethno-religious identity.914 The Gratzes and their second-generation Jewish peers understood that their acceptance depended on their being the same in outward appearances and manners as their contemporaries, and they strove to demonstrate their mutual interests and values. p. 437
Stephen Girard
A sojourn in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War gave some who lived further afield access to Philadelphia’s most prominent merchants, most notably Stephen Girard, who employed Jews with links to Philadelphia as agents in New York, Virginia, and London. p. 33.
Likely due to their sojourn in Philadelphia, the Myers and Moses families developed strong commercial ties to numerous non-Jewish merchants in the city, most notably Stephen Girard. Myers began serving Girard soon after he moved to Norfolk. He dealt with Girard’s claim on Mr. Kendall of Northampton County, in which Kendall was unable to pay his debt to Girard.849 Shortly afterwards, Moses Myers and Girard began cooperating in business, and from at least 1789 he began serving as Girard’s agent in the area.850
Dissatisfied with his Petersburg-based agent, Girard asked Myers what his terms were and when he became an agent Girard instructed Myers to reimburse himself by drawing on Girard.851 The two men frequently apprized one another of the local prices and procured and shipped the goods that the other requested, such as wheat, wax and coffee.852 Their correspondence shows that their mutual respect and trust curbed any disagreements that often arose when merchants’ accounts were inconsistent.
When Myers shipped the beeswax that Girard requested and Girard found a discrepancy in the weight of some of the casks he merely asked Myers to rectify the quantity and price in his books unless it was the seller who was at fault. In that case, Girard continued, “I request you will let it Remain, as I do not wish my friends to suffer in doing my business.”853 Girard soon began corresponding with Samuel Myers too, who began supplying him with local produce.854 p. 414
Like Moses Myers, New Yorker Isaac Moses garnered connections with Stephen Girard and with Philadelphia merchant Tench Coxe, who sent him Chinese imports and local goods. In June 1789, Moses congratulated Coxe of the arrival of his ship Canton and advised him that Chinese nankeens were the only article that Coxe had imported that would “yield a rapid sale” there.858
In 1806, Michael Gratz’s youngest daughter married Isaac Moses’ son Solomon. The latter had been involved in the partnership Isaac Moses and Sons since 1795, and he had traveled far and wide on behalf of the business, including to Madras and Calcutta, with his cousin Isaac H. Levy, the son of Hayman Levy, Isaac Moses’ former employer and partner.859 Isaac Moses transacted business with Stephen Girard from at least 1804 and Solomon travelled to Philadelphia frequently from that time, presumably to conduct business. The Moses-Gratz marriage brought these families, long-time business associates and personal friends, closer. Solomon moved to Philadelphia when they married and became an agent for I. Moses & Co.860 Each of these families was connected to the others because of their long associations. p. 416
By 1815, Isaac Moses and his son Hayman L. Moses were serving as Stephen Girard’s agents in New York, forwarding letters to Europe, paying accounts, and handling currency speculation transactions, and Girard acted in a similar capacity in Philadelphia for Moses. When directors of the Bank of the United States were traveling through New York, Girard gave them a letter of introduction to Moses. His son Solomon of Philadelphia, the husband of Rachel Gratz, was either working for Girard or serving as an agent in Philadelphia. He oversaw some of Girard’s property, including a store that he rented to one Mr. Stone on Girard’s behalf. His brother Joshua was in London in 1815 and 1816, probably as the family’s factor, and he served as Girard’s agent in London as well.894 p. 427