Rachel (Rycha) Asher Levy

Richea Rycha Levy's children: she only had 5 kids before her death in 1716

Bilhah Abigail Franks (born Levy) Asher Levy Nathan Levy Isaac Levy Michael Levy

"Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:63TP-DPW2 : 18 December 2020), Rycha Asher Michaels, ; Burial, , ; citing record ID 218926027, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.

Levy was born in Germany in 1665 and arrived in NY from England in 1695. He was a successful merchant with a fleet of ships that sailed between the colonies, the Caribbean, England and North Africa. He owned 70 acres of land in NY and was a successful real estate investor. In 1718, Moses Raphael Levy, widowed in 1716, married Grace Mears, with whom he had seven children. When he died in 1728, he was considered one of NY's wealthiest citizens. He was buried at Chatham Square in NY, the oldest Jewish cemetery in America. Abigail Levy Franks, eldest of five children Moses had with first wife Richea Asher Levy, despised her stepmother and spared no insult in her prose. But when Grace Levy, left a widow with many young children in 1728, made a bad remarriage to David Hays in 1735, Abigail’s assessments of her shifted. Through Abigail’s letters a rare portrait of a widowed colonial Jewish woman emerges—of Grace Mears Levy Hays as female shopkeeper who single-handedly supported and raised her young family, survived a deeply unhappy second marriage, and died brokenhearted, too young, and finally admired by her oldest stepdaughter. Both Moses Rafael Levy and Grace Mears Levy were active in establishing the Jewish community in NY and were contributors to the first synagogue on Mill St., in the area commonly referred to today as Wall Street.

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Jan 23 2021, 5:49:22 UTC
• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Feb 1 2021, 9:04:43 UTC

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• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Feb 1 2021, 9:04:43 UTC

"Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:63TP-DPW2 : 18 December 2020), Rycha Asher Michaels, ; Burial, , ; citing record ID 218926027, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.

she was married to Moses Raphael Levy. This is her correct name.