Asser Levy and the Inventories of Early New York Jews

Inventories listing property of decedents add considerably to a neglected area of Jewish American historical investigation. Eleven such documents from the colonial period are here presented. The oldest extant, that of Asser Levy (1682), is the most detailed and possibly the most intriguing, but no less so are those of Joseph Bueno de Mesquita (1708), Abigail Brown (1708), the only woman, Isaac Pinheiro (1710), or any of the others. The last inventory is that of Samuel Levy (1763). It seems odd that these very important sources have never been published before and with the possible exception of the inventory of Asser Levy, rarely, if ever cited, much less used.