Histories of American Jewry, including Jacob Rader Marcus’ classic and comprehensive survey, tend to emphasize the Ashkenazim (Eastern and Central European Jews). For the colonial period, scholars focus on prominent individuals and primarily East Coast congregations. The story of American Jews is “New York-centric.” Little work has been done to tell the story of the Sephardic diaspora in an American context, though everyone acknowledges the dominant role Sephardim played in Jewish American life until about 1840. Jews in the South, the Ohio valley and along the Mississippi receive short shrift, while estimates of the total number of Jews in early America are far too conservative. They seem to go back to Marcus’ statement in the 1930s that at the time of the American Revolution there were no more than 2,000 Jews concentrated in about 10 coastal cities. Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the only inland community included. It is hard to reconcile this low number with the more than 50,000 Jewish soldiers who are known to have fought in the War Between the States 75 years later. We know about them because they refused to eat pork in their rations, requested the Sabbath off for religious purposes and were buried in Hebrew graves. (For further reading, see The Jewish Confederates by Robert N. Rosen, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000). Marcus was also responsible both for the trend of disregarding Jewish sounding names in records and refusing to consider Jewish converts as Jews. Crypto-Jews did not even enter the picture with Marcus. But by the standards of most historians today, half a century after Marcus, if a family bears the name Cohen, Cone, Jacob and the like it was at least at one time Jewish, while Jewish converts to Christianity are usually counted as “lapsed” Jews, but Jews nonetheless. 

Certain states like North Carolina and Maryland are grossly ignored in standard Jewish histories. If anyone doubts that early American Jewish demographics may be in need of revision, consider the case of Sampson Co., N.C. and surrounding counties. The 1790 Federal census had a 4th column between the number of females and slaves in the household that enumerated "Other Free Persons." It was up to the census taker how to interpret this. In Sampson Co., just upland from Wilmington, he seems to have used this category for Jews and Indians. C.D. Brewington, "a distinguished native of Sampson Co.," wrote The Five Civilized Indian Tribes of Eastern North Carolina with "historical facts about these Indians whose descendants are still here" and "evidence of their intermarriage and life with the Whites from Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony." Many identified as Coharie Indians and later as Lumbee. Apparently his ancestors are listed as "Other" in the household of Ann Brewington where there are 3 "other" and nobody else--a whole "other" household. We can also suspect names that are only first names like Hannah without a surname stood for Indians ("Old Natt"). Here are some more "other" households from Sampson County 

Minor (many spellings) becomes a common "Melungeon" name, as does Williams, Green, Perry, Davis, Bell, Chavis, Cumbo and West. John Flowers may have begun life as Johann Blum, or John Bloom. Waldon is probably the same as Wallen, oneNairne's Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River

next