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N0KFQ > TODAY 11.01.13 17:34l 50 Lines 2265 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 34287_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jan 11
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<IK6ZDE<VE3UIL<XE1FH<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 130111/1519Z 34287@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.53
...
Jan 11, 1775:
Jewish Patriot joins Provincial Congress of South Carolina
Francis Salvador, the first Jew to hold an elected office in the
Americas, takes his seat on the South Carolina Provincial Congress on
this day in 1775.
Born in 1747, Salvador was descended from a line of prominent
Sephardic Jews who made their home in London. His great grandfather,
Joseph, was the East India Company's first Jewish director. His
grandfather was influential in bravely moving a group of 42 Jewish
colonists to Savannah, Georgia, in 1733 despite the colony's
prohibition on Jewish settlers. The Salvadors then purchased land in
South Carolina.
After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 destroyed their Portuguese
property and the East India Company collapsed, draining the family's
resources, the American property was all the Salvadors had left. In
1773, Francis Salvador left his wife and children in London to
establish himself in South Carolina with the hope of rebuilding his
family's fortune. Within a year of his arrival, Salvador won a seat in
the South Carolina General Assembly. In 1774, South Carolinians
elected Salvador to the revolutionary Provincial Congress, which began
to meet in January 1775, and in which Salvador spoke forcefully for
the cause of independence.
On July 1, Salvador earned the nickname "Southern Paul Revere" when he
rode 30 miles to warn of a Cherokee attack on backcountry settlements.
Exactly one month later, while leading a militia group under the
general command of Major General James Wilkinson, Salvador and his men
were ambushed by a group of Cherokees and Loyalists near present-day
Seneca, South Carolina. Salvador was shot and scalped by the
Cherokees. Although he survived long enough to know that the militia
had won the engagement, he never learned that the South Carolina
delegation to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had taken his
advice and voted for independence from Britain.
Salvador was the first recorded Jewish soldier killed in the American
War for Independence. He died at the age of 29, never having managed
to bring his wife and children from London to the new country for
which he fought so bravely.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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