Frances Sheftall- Wife of Highest Ranking Jewish Soldier in the American Revolution

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In the library of Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology is a 1998 master’s thesis entitled “The Wedding Costume of Frances Hart Sheftall.” Its author, Lisa Frisina, devotes page after page to the beautiful, intricate, tzniyus 18th-century wedding gown. Behind that dress, however, is an even more interesting story about the woman who wore it.
Frances Hart Sheftall — or Fanny, as she was called — was married to the highest ranking Jewish soldier in the American Revolution. Although she spent most of her life in Savannah, Georgia, she was born in the Hague, Netherlands in July 1740 to Ashkenazic Jews, Moshe and Esther Hart (the anglicized version of Hertz). Her father was a merchant and she was raised in a middle class family.
Although there’s little documented information about her parents, Fanny seems to have been related to the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of England, Rabbi Aaron Hart, whose brother Moshe Hart was the founder of the Great Synagogue of London. The latter Moshe also had a daughter Frances (Simcha) and it’s possible that the two Frances were second cousins. Another Hart, Ella, was the wife of the famous Haym Solomon who played a tremendous role in financing the American revolution.
It’s not clear when, but at some point, both Fanny and her brother Joshua immigrated to America, settling in Charleston, South Carolina. There, Joshua became a prominent merchant and businessman. Through his business dealings, he developed a friendship with a young man named Mordechai Sheftall, who was from Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t long before Joshua made the shidduch between Mordechai, then 26, and his sister, who was 21. The wedding ceremony — to which Fanny wore the gown that so captured Frisina’s interest — was held in Joshua’s home in 1761.
The Colonial Shidduch Crisis
The Sheftall-Hart wedding was cause for a great celebration because, at the time, the shidduch crisis was worse than it is today; there was almost no one to marry. There were about a thousand Jews dispersed throughout the colonies, most of whom were Sephardim and a very small percentage who were Shomrei Torah and Mitzvos.
Indeed, from 1741 to the late 1750s, only two Ashkenazi Jewish families lived in Savannah, the Sheftalls and the family of Abraham and Abigail Minis. The five daughters of the Minis family never married and their only son Philip, who was a businessman and Revolution commissary officer, married at the late age of 40. In The American Jewish Woman, 1654-1980, Jewish historian Jacob R. Marcus writes that Philip’s “late marriage would seem to indicate that, like his sisters, he was under Mama’s thumb.” It’s not certain, however, that this was the true reason. There were very few Torah-observant single Jews at the time who were Ashkenazi. And, for a period of time, no Sephardim would marry Ashkenazim.
During the colonial era, “a great social chasm separated the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim,” explains Professor Eli Faber in the first book of a six-volume series titled Jewish People in America. “Jews who originated on the Iberian peninsula looked with contempt upon those who came from central and eastern Europe. …The Sephardim claimed descent from the nobility of ancient Jerusalem and asserted that all non-Iberian Jews were descended from the commoners of ancient Israel. Some Sephardim traced their ancestry to the royal house of David.
“The Ashkenazim, in turn, accused the Sephardim of an excessively easy going attitude toward religious observance… Indeed the Ashkenazim did adhere to stricter religious standards in such areas as fasting, Sabbath and festival observances, family purity and dietary regulations…”
The Sephardic taboo against marriage with Ashkenazim was finally broken with the marriage of Sephardic Isaac Mendes Seixas to Rachel Levy, the daughter of Ashkenazi Moses Levy and the sister-in law of Jacob Franks, the most prominent Jewish businessman of the colonial era. (The union produced Gershom Mendes Seixas, who became a leader of New York Jewry and America’s first native chazzan.)
“The Seixas-Levy marriage, controversial though it was in 1740, may in fact have been a turning point, for in the years that followed the Sephardim and Ashkenazim increasingly intermarried,” writes Professor Faber.
The Jews of Savannah
Fanny married into a family that had strong roots in America. Her husband’s father — Benjamin Sheftall — was considered one of the original white settlers of America’s Georgian colony. (Georgia, which was named for King George, was inhabited then by Native Indians.)
Benjamin, a Prussian, was born in 1692 in Frankurt an der Oder (Frankfurt on the River Oder, not to be confused with Germany’s larger city, Frankfurt am Main). In the early 1730s, he moved to London, where he met and married his Prussian-born wife, Perla. In 1733, the couple boarded the America-bound schooner William and Sarah from London with 40 other Jews, 34 of whom were Sephardic. (The latter had fled to England from Portugal before sailing to the new world.)
The group of 41 Jews (one young boy died on the voyage) arrived in Savannah on July 11 of that year, shortly after founder James Edward Oglethorpe arrived with Georgia’s first settlers. Oglethorpe was surprised by the arrival of these new Jewish settlers. Nevertheless, he was pleased when he found among the Jews a physician, Dr. Samuel Nunez, who saved the lives of many colonists who had contracted yellow fever. There was also Abraham de Lyon, whose experience in viticulture helped the colonists produce wines. In gratitude, Oglethorpe assigned land to 14 Jews in Savannah.
These first Jewish settlers brought with them a Torah scroll, with two Torah covers, and a circumcision box given to them by wealthy Jewish philanthropists in London. They also had a Chanukah menorah and seforim. Upon arriving, they immediately began organizing Savannah’s first Jewish congregation. In July of 1735, the Jewish residents formally established the congregation Kahal Kadosh Mickve Israel (later to be shortened to Mickve Israel). At the time, it was only the third Jewish congregation in America, following those in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. (Mickve Israel still stands today, though it has sadly become a Reform Jewish congregation.)
Benjamin and Perla had a baby named Sheftall that died in infancy; the following year, Perla gave birth to Mordechai. Unfortunately when Mordechai was 11 months old, Perla passed away from weakness — life in colonial America was hard. In 1738, Benjamin married Hanna Solomons, who had come from Amsterdam to Philadelphia. That same year, a mikveh was established in Savannah. Benjamin and Hanna had three children together, only one of whom survived to adulthood, Levi. Benjamin was one of the founders of the Union Society, the oldest charitable society in Georgia.
Savannah had a thriving Jewish community until 1740, when Oglethorpe led a failed expedition against the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida. After this military debacle, the Sephardic Jews in Savannah escaped to Charleston or to other safer settlements since they were afraid that they would be punished severely for having participated in a battle against their native country.
By the year 1750, a full 17 years after the Jewish community’s founding, only 16 Jews lived in Savannah: the family of Abraham and Abigail Minis, the Sephardic brothers Daniel and Moses Nunez, and the family of Benjamin and Hannah Sheftall. There was no more minyan.
Isolated though the Sheftalls were, they remained Torah observant. For Mordechai’s bar-mitzvah, Benjamin ordered a pair of Tefillin and seforim from England. In a fascinating letter found in the Sheftall Papers Collection, Benjamin describes his distress over the fact that he still had not received the ordered items. He writes that the ship that was bringing them could have been taken by the enemy (the British) or lost at sea. According to Louis Schmier, a professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia, this letter regarding Mordechai’s Tefillin is “the first recorded observance of this rite in America.”
Young Mordechai grew into a successful merchant, selling deerskins that he bought and tanned. Then, in 1752, Georgia became an official crown colony of Great Britain and a rule was set forth: citizens naturalized under British rule could petition the crown for at least 50 acres of land. Mordechai wholeheartedly applied for his first lot in 1753.
This petition began a lifelong passion for acquiring land by Mordechai and his half-brother Levi, both of whom ultimately bought or petitioned the colony for thousands of acres. By age 21, Mordechai acquired land for cattle raising and, by age 25, he purchased a warehouse and wharf on the Savannah River.
In 1762, a year after his marriage to Fanny, the couple owned 1,000 acres of land and nine slaves. Their businesses included ranching, sawmilling, and timbering — as well as shipping and retailing manufactured goods to England, the Caribbean, and the American cities of Charleston and Philadelphia. Their home and store were located on Broughton Street in Savannah.
Since the family was strict with kashrus, whenever Mordechai had to travel, he would bring along a very sharp knife to shecht animals on his own. He also kashered the meat himself. Fanny observed the laws of tzniyus and was careful to cover all of her hair.
In 1773, Mordechai established a Jewish cemetery in Savannah, donating one and a half acres of land for it. It was the same year that his step-mother Hannah passed away. The couple had six children — all but one, Elias, lived to adulthood. Their sons were Sheftall (named after Mordechai’s deceased brother), Benjamin, and Moshe; their daughters were Perla and Esther.
By 1774, there were finally enough people in Savannah for a minyan once more — in fact, the first one met on erev Yom Kippur. The Sefer Torah used in the newly revived Mickve Israel was one that Benjamin Sheftall had brought over from London. Every Shabbos, Mordechai arranged tefillos to take place in his own house. Although there was no rabbi in Savannah, one could imagine that, with the Sheftall home being the center of the Jewish community, Fanny likely served as a sort of rebbetzin.
Joining the Revolution
The Sheftalls lived in relative comfort. Their businesses were thriving, they were land owners, and they were respected in the community. All of this changed when the political strife between the British crown and its American colonies escalated.
Of the American merchants, whether Jew or Gentile, many were unhappy with Britain’s restrictive fiscal and mercantile policies so they joined the boycott of British goods and services. They were divided, however, about the rebellion — some Jews remained Loyalists, others sided with the colonists. Mordechai was a devout Patriot; he joined the Sons of Liberty and Savannah’s Parochial Committee and quickly became known as a rabble-rouser by the British.
In 1776, Mordechai was elected chairman of the revolutionary committee that assumed control of the local government in Savannah. He organized and led a group that forced its way onto a vessel in the harbor and removed its gunpowder, which was then shipped to Boston for Washington’s army. The following year, after being appointed Commissary General of Purchases and Issues to the Georgia militia, he was responsible for supplying the colony’s soldiers with food, clothing, and material.
Mordechai often reached into his own pockets to purchase supplies for the volunteers, especially after he discovered that neither Georgia nor the Continental Congress had the necessary resources. He also used his own personal funds to care for the men he led and made sizable loans to authorities to pay for munitions, food, uniforms, and horses.
By 1778, General Robert Howe was so impressed with Mordechai’s selflessness and leadership that he appointed him to the post of Deputy Commissary General to the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. Before Congress could confirm Mordechai’s role, however, he was captured.
On December 29, 1778, a force of 3,500 soldiers, consisting of two battalions of Hessians and British Redcoats, landed in the early morning at Brewton Hill, two miles below Savannah. By three o’clock, they had captured the city. The patriots, who were outnumbered, tried to escape across Musgrove Creek, which was at high tide. The creek was flooded and Sheftall, Mordechai’s 15-year-old son, could not swim. Mordechai refused to abandon him. As a result, Mordechai, his son Sheftall, as well as 185 other Patriots, were captured and imprisoned. The British were thrilled that they had captured “the Great Rebel,” as Mordechai was called.
The British interrogated both father and son, depriving them of food for two days. They were almost bayoneted by a drunken British soldier. The Sheftalls refused to provide information about the American’s sources of supplies, nor to renounce the patriot cause. As a punishment, the two were transferred to the infamous dank prison ship Nancy, where the British deliberately offered them pork to eat, which they refused.
After several months, Mordechai was paroled to the town of Sunbury, Georgia, where he was kept under close British surveillance; his son remained on the Nancy. They were then transported to Antigua, where they remained prisoners until the Spring of 1780.
The War Years
At Mordecai’s urging, Fanny took her four other children to the relative safety of Charleston. There, she petitioned Continental officers including Benjamin Lincoln to intercede on behalf of her captive husband and son. She rented a house, supporting herself and her children by becoming a seamstress and laundry woman.
Despite the hardships, she wrote cheerful letters to her husband and son, trying to help them maintain their spirits during their imprisonment. In one especially candid letter to her husband, she wrote about trying to scrape together money for rent: “Whear is to come from G-d only knows… I am obliged to take in needle worke to make a living for my family, so I will leave you to judge what a living that must be.”
She also noted that “[Cannon] balls flew like haile.” Indeed, when the British besieged and bombarded Charleston, one of the Jewish families lost a child and a nurse during the cannonade. During those ravaging years, Fanny and her children also weathered the epidemics of both small pox and yellow fever.
In another letter, Fanny writes her husband to tell him that she had “received the two thousand pounds” owed by a Mr. Cape “with which I make out exceedingly well by doing a little business.”
Some of the letters are written by Perla, the Sheftall’s daughter. In one letter, the young woman explains that Shabbos is beginning soon and because the hour is late, she can’t write much. For this reason, she asks for her father’s forgiveness. In a letter written by Fanny’s son, he describes his mother as having taken in washing and ironing to support the family.
In 1780, Mordechai and Sheftall were freed when they were redeemed for two captured British officers. They headed to Philadelphia, where Fanny and the children had fled, yet again, for safety. There, despite his own financial hardships, Mordechai helped establish a new synagogue called Congregation Mikveh Israel.
Mordechai spent the remainder of the war in Philadelphia, seeking to help both the American cause and his own financial condition by financing a privateer to capture and loot British vessels. His investment does not seem to have paid off; on its very first voyage, the ship ran aground. Despite his young age, Sheftall conducted daring missions for the revolutionary cause after his release.
In 1783, when the war ended, Mordechai returned with his wife and children to Savannah, where they resumed their life and continued to play a strong role in the Jewish community. The state of Georgia granted him several hundred acres of land in recognition of his sacrifices on behalf of independence.
When Mordechai died in 1797 at the age of 64, his beloved home city of Savannah buried him with full honors in the Jewish cemetery he created. After his passing, Fanny resumed her public activities on her children’s behalf. She petitioned Congress for the redress of the loss suffered by the family because of her husband’s financial sacrifices for the Patriot cause.
The Sheftall daughters Perla and Esther were not married by the time Mordechai passed away and, sadly, they remained single for the rest of their lives. Little is known about Perla, but Esther established a successful millinery shop out of the home that Fanny and her two daughters shared together.
Sheftall, the eldest of the family, also never married. After the war, he went on to become a lawyer. Benjamin perished at sea on a French privateer ship, the Industry, in 1794. Moses, who married and had many children (see sidebar), became a doctor. He studied medicine under the famous philanthropist and physician Benjamin Rush at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, he was the first documented Jew in the United States to complete a medical degree in 1790. Moses returned to Savannah to practice and became an expert in infectious diseases. He also served in Georgia’s state legislature.
In 1820, the Savannah community mourned the loss of Fanny, who passed away while recuperating from an epidemic of pestilential (Yellow) fever. To this day, you can visit her gravestone in the old Jewish cemetery on Broughton Street, which was declared a historic landmark in 1850. As for the gown that marked Fanny’s entry into marriage, it is tucked away, too fragile to be on display, at the Georgia Historical Society.
Sidebar 1
A DRESS TO REMEMBER
Two-hundred and thirty-seven years after Frances (Fanny) Hart Sheftall wore her wedding gown, the dress became the focus of a lengthy 1998 master’s thesis by Lisa Ann Frisina, who received a Masters of Arts on Museum Studies in Textile Conservation.
Frisina suspects that the dress was brought over from Europe. She also posits that because of the obvious alterations made to the gown, it was probably a hand-me-down from her mother (who likely wore it on her own wedding day), or bought second-hand.
The gown is very tzniusdig. It’s made up of a coat or robe and a matching petticoat constructed from the same polychromatic brocaded floral silk fabric. The bodice and arms were lined with linen. The sleeves cover the elbow and a “modesty piece,” as it was called, was made of trim that was box pleated and served to cover the bosom.
Sidebar 2
THE SHOE THAT MADE HISTORY
In the first volume of The Jews of the United States: A Documentary History, authors Joseph Blau and Salo Baron tell the story of a treasured shoe that belonged to Frances Hart Sheftall’s oldest son, whose name was Sheftall Sheftall. The shoe which is missing laces, was used in 1792 for a chalitzah ceremony.
Chalitzah — literally “taking off” the shoe — is the rite by which a widow whose husband has died childless is released from the bond of Levirate marriage (which would oblige her deceased husband’s brother to marry her).
Usually, chalitzah is performed only when the childless brother has passed away. However, Sheftall performed an unusual conditional chalitzah for his younger brother Moses’ kallah — Elkaleh (Nellie) Bush — prior to the couple’s wedding. Here, Moses was neither dead, nor even married yet.
This ceremony did not have the legal effect of the shtar chalitzah, but it was accompanied by an oral promise that Sheftall would grant chalitzah in the prescribed way should his brother die before Elkaleh bore him children.
The conditional chalitzah was never put to use, as Moses and Elkaleh had many children together. The ceremonial shoe, however, was saved and is currently housed at the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia.