Of the professing Jewish inhabitants now to be found in these districts, enumerated in the •statistics just considered, very few are de scendants of the original Spanish settlers, the great bulk of them being comparatively recent arrivals from Germany, Russia and Rumania. Through the munificence of Baron de Hirsch (q.v.) millions of dollars were employed about 1891 in the purchase of land and equipment for the use of agricultural colonies of Russian Jews established under his auspices in Argentina, where several thousand Jews settled, though they have met with only moderate success.
West Reference has already been made to early settlements of Jews in Cuba and other West Indian islands. Their settlement in Jamaica was particularly important on account of their numbers and the once great commercial importance of the island. For the latter reason their residence in the Barbados, at Saint Eus tatius, Martinique and in the Danish West Indian colonies also led to important conse quences. Reference will be made hereafter to this circumstance. Except in Cuba, the decline of the above-named places commercially has caused a decided diminution in the number of their Jewish inhabitants, and to-day the chief interest in the settlements is historical.
Early Settlements in the United States before the Revolution.— There are indications of some isolated and carnal arrivals of indi vidual Jews within the present limits of the United States prior to the arrival of the party from Brazil in colonial New York during the Dutch regime, in 1654; these were in Maryland, Virginia, New England and New York. These instances (other than those in the Dutch col ony) are purely casual, however, and unimport ant, because Jews were not allowed at this time to live as avowed Jews in any of the principal countries that then had colonies in America except Holland. Prohibitions against their settlement were in force (though occa sionally ignored) in Spain, Portugal, England, and to some extent in France. Holland alone at- this time welcomed the Jewish refugee, to her great commercial advantage; and this ((common harbor of all opinions and of all heresies" was, logically enough, destined to es tablish a precedent for granting religious lib erty also in the New World. It is true that in New Netherlands Gov. Peter Stuyvesant (q.v.) was decidedly hostile to the Jewish ar rivals, as were also some of the early Dutch ecclesiastical authorities; but thanks to the leveling and humanizing influence of commerce, and to Jewish holdings of stock in the Dutch West India Company, the directors of that company, 26 April 1655, instructed their gov ernor that the "Jews shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherlands, and to live and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the com pany, or to the community, but be supported by their own nation" ; and Stuyvesant was strongly reproved soon after for seeking to thwart these clearly expressed wishes of the company. This grant was commemorated in 1905 by a wide scaled celebration throughout the country of the "250th Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States.* The emancipation of Jews was, however, only gradual; certain restrictions were continued through the whole colonial period, though they decreased from time to time, and in importance. Public wor
ship, as distinguished from private religious services, was forbidden them till near the close of the 17th century, as was also selling at retail, and certain political rights of citizenship were also denied; but these restrictions in the course of time were largely removed in prac tice, so that the adoption of the first constitution of the State of New York, in the Revolutionary period, which established absolute religious lib erty, conferred in effect few, if any, privileges on the Jewish residents of that State which they had not already virtually enjoyed. In the in terior the number of Jewish residents had grown somewhat by emigration from Germany, Hungary, Poland and also from England, which, under Cromwell, readmitted the Jews soon after the time of their settlement in New Netherlands; but the increase in numbers through immigration was not great till after 1800, for there were few Jews in England, and still fewer who desired to emigrate from there, while emigration to New York and New Eng land prior to the above date from any of the other designated countries was very small.
To Newport, R. I., Jews emigrated very soon after they first settled in New Amsterdam, and Roger Williams (q.v.) in terms included them in his program for establishing a colony where religious liberty would be accorded to all sects and creeds. In the course of time they erected a synagogue here also, as well as in New York, and established a community which con tributed most materially to the commercial pros perity of Newport, which city far outrivaled New York for some decades before the Revolu tion, and until, during that struggle, its shipping interests received a blow from which they never wholly recovered. Here, also, there were some retrogressions during the colonial period from Roger Williams' enlightened declaration of principles; but on the whole, Jews were most prosperous residents of Newport during the latter portion of the colonial period. Even though the colony never was numerous, it em braced such merchant princes as Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rodrigues Rivera, and its fortunes were commemorated, after all the old-time resi dents had departed, in Longfellow's famous lines on 'The Jewish Cemetery at Newport.' Already in the colonial period Jewish settlers occasionally found their way into Connecticut, also to Boston, and even, it would seem, to Maine, but they were very few in number, and the present Jewish residents of New England date almost entirely from the period of German settlement after 1848, followed by a much more considerable Polish and Russian-Jewish settle ment toward the end of the 19th century. About 1820 Maj. Mordecai M. Noah, at one time United States consul to Tunis, developed a fantastic plan for founding a Jewish state for the oppressed Jews of other lands under his own *judgeship,* near Niagara Falls, at a place he named °Ararat, City of Refuge,* and attempted to tax all the Jews throughout the world for this purpose, but the scheme merely aroused amused attention. Other less am bitious early colonization schemes also were formed.