Asser Levy

Two archived documents from Amsterdam reveal that on April 26, 1660, he was there seeking payment of a debt owed to him, and on May 24, 1660, he announced he was going to Germany.

It is known that he eventually went to New Netherland, possibly arriving in New Amsterdam aboard the St. Catherine or St. Charles in early September 1654.

Levy and his comrades at once refused to pay, and on November 5, 1655, petitioned for leave to stand guard like other burghers (townsmen) or to be relieved from the tax.

The application was denied, but Levy at once brought the matter before Stuyvesant and the council, which ordered that Jews should be admitted as burghers on April 21, 1657.

Property in litigation was put into his custody; he is named as executor in the wills of Christian merchants, and figures as both administrator and trustee in colonial records.

His influence was not confined to New York; in the colonial records of Connecticut he appears as intervening to obtain the remission of a fine imposed upon a Jew there.