Simon Nathan | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1746 Frome, Somerset, England |
| Died | 1822 New York City, U.S. |
| Occupations | Merchant, auctioneer |
| Known for | Wartime advances to Virginia; president of Congregation Mikveh Israel and Congregation Shearith Israel |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan |
| Relatives | Gershom Mendes Seixas (brother-in-law) |
Simon Nathan (c. 1746 – 1822) was an English-born Jewish merchant in New York City and Philadelphia. During the American Revolutionary War he advanced large sums to the state of Virginia, and he spent more than a decade pursuing a claim for repayment that involved Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton. He was president of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel when it built its first synagogue and later served four times as president of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel.
Nathan was born in Frome, England, the son of Judah Nathan, and was the first of his family to come to America. He arrived in 1773 and established himself as a merchant in New York.
Nathan sided with the Revolution and was among the Jews who left New York during the British occupation. During the war he traded from Havana, and in 1779 and 1780, at Havana and in New Orleans, he bought for silver a number of bills of exchange that George Rogers Clark and John Todd had drawn on Virginia to pay for military supplies in the Northwest; some came from the merchant Oliver Pollock. In 1780 he also lent Virginia 300,000 Continental dollars, without interest, to clothe the soldiers at Fort Pitt, in response to an appeal from Governor Jefferson.
When Nathan presented the Clark and Todd bills to Jefferson in early 1780, the Virginia government at first accepted them. It then learned from Clark and Todd that the bills had been drawn in Virginia's badly depreciated paper currency, and Jefferson's council offered to pay only their hard-money value at the time they were drawn, a small fraction of their face value. Nathan insisted he had paid for them dollar for dollar in silver.
The dispute dragged on for more than a decade. In October 1782 Nathan petitioned Virginia's delegates in Congress, including Madison, for payment of bills worth about £15,000 in Pennsylvania currency. He sued the state twice, and in one suit attached Virginia property in Pennsylvania. In 1784 the Virginia House of Delegates resolved to settle the matter by arbitration; Attorney General Edmund Randolph named John Marshall and Cyrus Griffin as Virginia's arbitrators, and in 1786 they reported in Nathan's favor, but the claim was still unsettled in 1791. Nathan also petitioned the U.S. House of Representatives in 1790; in 1792 Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, reported that the claim concerned Virginia alone and not the United States. According to the Loeb database, Nathan never entirely recovered financially from his wartime advances.
In Philadelphia Nathan took an active part in Congregation Mikveh Israel. He served on the committee that raised funds for its first synagogue, was a trustee when it was dedicated in 1782, and was its president in 1783. As president he joined Gershom Mendes Seixas, Haym Salomon, Barnard Gratz and Asher Myers in addressing the Pennsylvania Council of Censors to protest the requirement that members of the state assembly declare their belief in the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, a test that excluded Jews.
In 1780 he married Grace Mendes Seixas, sister of Gershom Mendes Seixas, whose family had also left New York for Philadelphia.
After the war the Nathans returned to New York, where Simon ran an auction house and owned considerable real estate; his name appears in the city's first directory, published in 1786. He served four times as president of Congregation Shearith Israel. Their only child, Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan, known as Seixas Nathan, was born in 1785. Simon Nathan died in 1822. He was the founder of the New York Nathan family, whose later members are profiled in the Jewish Encyclopedia.