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N0KFQ > TODAY 11.01.16 16:44l 51 Lines 2261 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 81457_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Jan 11
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Sent: 160111/1540Z 81457@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
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 @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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