ABSTRACT

Sarah Brandon Moses began her life a poor, Christian slave in late eighteenth-century Barbados. By the time of her death, she had reached the pinnacle of New York's wealthy, Jewish elite. Portraits such as this one tell us a lot about the clothing worn by early American Jews. Sarah wears a neoclassical, 'Regency style', white vertical gown, probably made of muslin or silk, fabrics which were favored in the era because they suggested a resemblance to the marble of classical sculpture. Samson Myers' letter to Aaron Lopez comprises one of the most sustained descriptions of the conflict between Great Britain and the nascent United States written by any of its Jewish participants or eyewitnesses. As a merchant and privateer with a great fortune at stake and fairly decided pro-American sympathies, Aaron Lopez fled Newport upon its occupation by the British in 1776.