Philipp Heilbut - Philip / Feibelmann Heilbut

We have the same notes by Job Jona Schellekens on these two profiles. Are they the same?

Philipp Heilbut

Feibelmann (Philipp) Meir Heilbut

Image of tombstone courtesy of Dan Bondy - epidat, Steinheim-Institut.

His holy name (shem kodesh) was Feibelman Yehoshua Yosef bar Yaakov.

His tombstone calls him a son of Yaakov. Philipp already headed a household in 1638, implying that his father belongs to the first generation of Heilbut in Hamburg. All this suggests that he was a son of Jakob Heilbot, who died in 1648. If this is correct, then he was named after his paternal grandfather.

If he was named after his grandfather Phibes, then he was born in or after 1615 and was 38 years old when he died or less. He is number eight on the oldest list of Jews in Altona. His tombstone calls him a parnas. The tombstone of his wife Hitchele calls her the wife of the parnas Philipp Heilbut (הפרנס והמנהג כמ"ר יהושע פייפלמן היילבוט). In her Memoires, Glikl calls him Feibelman (פייבלמן). She writes that he was a parnas who died during a period of tension in the Jewish Community in the same year as another parnas (Chava Turniansky, Glikl: Memoires 1691-1719 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History: 2006), p. 69).

I failed to identify any of his children in Hamburg or Altona, but believe to have found two sons in Londen: Samuel and Jacob. Cecil Roth, History of the Great Synagogue, London, 1690-1940 (London: Edward Goldston, 1950), wrote: “Mention has already been made of another prominent family hailing from Hamburg--that headed by Samuel Heilbuth, jeweller, of St. James’s, Duke’s Place. He had been endenizened in 1675, and was formerly a Yahid of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, with which he maintained his association even after the Ashkenazi synagogue had been founded: as we have just seen, his daughter Hitchele was Benjamin Levy’s second wife. Of Samuel Heilbuth’s four sons, the eldest was Philip, who later on, as a “broken merchant”, claimed to have first projected the maritime insurance corporation which was the nucleus of Lloyds: while Isaac (whom we find nominated as a Collector for the Poor for the parish of St. Katherine Creechurch in 1715, and engaging in litigation with one Asher Levy in 1724 over a Bill of Exchange endorsed by John Jacobs) was a familiar figure in the City. Samuel Heilbuth’s brother, Jacob, enjoyed a scholarly reputation, and was one of the original members of the Burial Society in 1695/6.”

The evidence is as follows: First, Samuel Heilbuth is already mentioned in 1675, implying that he belongs to the third generation. Second, he had a daughter called Hitchele and a son called Philip. Probably, these were named after Samuel's parents. Third, Samuel had a brother Jacob, who would have been named after his paternal grandfather. For the American descendents of Samuel Heilbuth, see Malcolm H., Stern, First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988 (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1991), p. 114.