The Early American SIG Digest had an inquiry regarding the names of the 23 Jews

from Recife, Brazil, who first came to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam which

became the City of New York in 1654. Since May has been designated Jewish
American Heritage Month, I thought it might be appropriate to start off the
month by mentioning this historic group of early Jews.


An interesting link about their family names is found at:
http://nychistory.blogspot.com/2010/08/return-to-establishment-of-shearith.html.
The link also refers to a number of other resources which might be of interest too.

According to the information on the link which was extracted >from Stephen
Birmingham's book "The Grandees", the Sephardic family names were:

Asser Levy
Abraham Israel De Piza (or Dias)
David Israel Faro
Mose Lumbosco
Judith (or Judica) Mercado (or De Mercado or de Mereda)
Ricke (or Rachel) Nunes

There are numerous other references to this topic which can be found online and
this is just one of them.

As I find time during the month of May, I will mention other Jews who settled in
America.

Ann Rabinowitz
annrab@bellsouth.net