A few months after their February 1733 arrival from England, an epidemic began claiming the lives of the first 114 colonists of the infant American colony of Georgia.
Unexpectedly, the William and Sarah, a second ship from London, landed in Savannah on July 11, carrying a middle-aged physician and 40 more Jewish passengers.
Dr. Samuel Nunes (1668–1744) was allowed by the colony's founder, General James Edward Oglethorpe, to begin treating the ill. By the time the middle-aged Portuguese physician began his treatments and during the month of his arrival, around two dozen died.
They were the “largest group of Jews to land in North America in Colonial days.” As told by one of his seven children, daughter Zipra, to her great-grandson Mordecai Manuel Noah, Dr. Nunis and his family embarked on a dramatic escape from Lisbon to London in 1726 for religious freedom, fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition.
Dr. Nunez, his mother Zipporah, his wife Gracia (later known as Rebecca); their three sons Joseph, Daniel and Moses; their three daughters Rachel, Esther and Zipra; and servant Shem Noah were apprehended by the "Familiars of the Inquisition" during a Passover Service, "while seeking the Lord according to their prohibited faith."
Nunez sold parts of his estates and possessions and used couriers to secretly transfer the money to England, with the assistance of his servants and his relatives, the Mendez family.
They brought with them "a sefer Torah, with two cloaks, and a circumcision box, which were given to them by Mr. Lindo, a merchant in London, for the use of the congregation they intended to establish."
After this ship landed, Captain Thomas Corain, one of General Oglethorpe's aides, wrote, "Georgia will soon become a Jewish colony."
They had no legal basis for this request as Georgia's charter permitted all persons “liberty of conscience in the worship of God” except Catholics.
[2] The formal remedies at his disposal were limited and soon exhausted, but Dr. Nunez's training in botany helped him make use of indigenous plants and with great success.
He used laudanum (opium) to control the "bloody flux" and lemon extract to treat the scurvy which appeared in debilitated patients.
With infusions of cinchona bark (quinine), Dr. Nunez treated the "malignant fevers" considered in the medical texts of the period to originate from the evil night miasmas of the marshes.
He used tartar emetic to produce vomiting in patients with food poisoning, jimson weed smoked in a pipe for asthma and sassafras root tea as a "purifier of blood.
Pastor Bolzius, the leader of the Salzburg Germans, and George Whitefield, another pioneer Methodist, had offered the Jews conversionist literature, which had been vigorously rejected.
John Wesley, who became the founder of Methodism, wrote in his journal on April 4, 1737, "I began learning Spanish in order to converse with my Jewish parishioners, some of whom seem nearer the mind that was in Christ than many of those who call him Lord."
The London Trustees eventually showed their appreciation for Dr. Nunez by sending him "casks of wine and packets of drugs" to be used in treating the colonists.
One of Dr. Nunez's sons-in-law, Abraham De Lyon who was married to his daughter Esther, was experienced in "cultivating vines and making wine."
Also a farmer who grew peas, grain and rice, De Lyon used his training as a viniculturist to raise "beautiful, almost transparent grapes" in Savannah from choice cuttings he brought with him from Portugal.
Through Zipra, Dr. Nunez's second great-grandson, Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, was one of the highest ranking naval officers of the Civil War.
Commodore Levy purchased Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello when it was a disgraceful eyesore, restored it and, through his heirs, transferred it to the U.S. Government.
Considered the best known Jewish man in America during the first half of the nineteenth century, Mordecai Manuel Noah was a jurist, journalist, public servant, playwright and one of the founders of New York University.