Dutch Notarial Records Pertaining to Asser Levy, 1659-1692 (Part Three: New Documents for the Study of American Jewish History‪)‬

Among the voluminous records found in the Gemeente Archief (Municipal Archive) in Amsterdam are notarial archives, many of which relate to the New Amsterdam Jewish experience 350 years ago. Here can be found legal and business papers, as well as ones that contain such vital statistics as marriages, births, and deaths. While these records make the past more understandable and help to answer many questions, paradoxically they also raise new issues in their wake. Letters, diaries, journals, and the like are largely absent for the earliest period of American Jewish history, the mid-seventeenth century. Merchants and entrepreneurs seem to have had little interest in commenting on their lives so that future generations could readily comprehend their motives and desires. The absence of such "windows" makes the Gemeente Archief notarial materials all the more important. They are a major link with what was. Published here are several documents selected from the Archief that pertain to Asser Levy, the first permanent Jewish inhabitant of New Amsterdam. Like Levy, a number of Jews arrived at that frontier settlement in 1654, but he is the only one to have remained, dying in 1682 in English New York. There are no other known prior deaths of Jews in the city. His career as merchant, land speculator, and butcher provided a cornerstone for a future Jewish presence.