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LEVY ANDREW LEVY
The
first Jew
known to have settled in Hagerstown was Levy Andrew Levy, a conveyancer
who resided in this town with his wife and children from 1785 until
shortly
before 1800.
A native of Oxford, England, Levy Andrew Levy had a colorful past as an
Indian trader
in the 1760's and 1770's. He was a nephew, and the main business
associate,
of Joseph Simon, the founder and leader of the small Jewish community
of colonial Lancaster, Pa. While most Pennsylvania Jewish fur
traders were actually outfitters, Levy was a field man who dealt with
the Indians face to face. It was an adventurous life, and
not for the meek. When the Indian war of 1763 broke out, Levy,
who at that time had established himself at Fort Pitt, was taken
captive by Wyandot Indians near Fort Detroit but was lucky enough to
eventually escape.
In 1765, Levy Andrew Levy purchased 266 acres of land in the area
of present-day Wilkinsburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh, consequentially
named
"Jewstown" in its early days. In 1773 he was among a
group of
twenty-two land speculators from Pennsylvania, calling
themselves the "Illinois Land Company", who bargained with ten chiefs
of the Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Peoria Indians for large tracts of land
south of the Illinois.
Levy Andrew Levy died in Baltimore in 1829, at
the
age of 95.
Of his five sons, Simon Magruder Levy had distinguished himself during
the Ohio Indian Wars at the Maumee Rapids in 1794. In October 1802 he
graduated from West Point Academy - one of only two membes of the
academy's first class. Due to failing health, he was forced to retire
from military service in 1805. He died in 1807 in Georgia, where he had
spent his last years with the Creek Indians.
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The end of Pontiac's
War: Henry Bouquet, commander of Fort Pitt, demanding the release of
all white captives. Levy Andrew Levy had escaped on his own.
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