NAPHTALI, Michael
b. Whitechapel, London, 1785 (?)–1847
Glory, 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1818.
Single; Glasscutter; Height: 173 cm; 11 children.
Dark ruddy complexion, pock-pitted, dark brown hair, dark eyes, ‘blind of left eye’. Naphtali was a member of a gang that stole four baskets of glass lamps valued at £30. He was caught trying to sell the lamps. When arrested he was found playing shuttles with a crowd of ‘fellow thieves’.
Naphtali arrived in New South Wales on 14 September 1818 and on 22 September was sent to be given work on assignment in the Windsor area. He may well have been assigned to James Dunn, who had been a convict on the Third Fleet and owned a farm at Sackville. On 31 October 1821 Michael Naphtali asked for permission to marry at Windsor and on 17 December 1821, at Windsor, he married Frances (Fanny) Dunn (who had been born in the colony). One year later, in the 1822 Muster, Michael was listed as the owner of a flourishing 30-acre farm, which he had purchased from his father-in-law. By September 1826 Naphtali was in a position to own a general store in York Street from which Sudds and Thompson stole a quantity of cloth in order to obtain a discharge from the army and remain in Australia. He also managed a stall at the market and in December 1826 was reported to have sold it to Joseph Raphael (q.v.) in exchange for Raphael's coat, worth fifteen shillings.
Naphtali was listed in the 1828 Census as ‘Free by Servitude’, living as a shopkeeper in Pitt Street together with his wife Frances, aged twenty-two, and children Catherine, aged seven, Joseph, aged four, and James, aged two. Catherine was baptised in 1822 and Joseph on 14 November 1824. Michael Naphtali appeared on the published list of licensed publicans on 6 March 1829. His hotel was the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle. In 1830 he held the licence for the Bunch of Grapes in Pitt Street. In 1833 he moved from the Captain Piper in George Street to the Ropemaker's Arms, Market Street. In March 1833 Michael Naphtali was declared to be insolvent and in April he was thrown in prison. He owed the crown £90 and was unable to pay following the loss of a bond from a man called Spicer, who had absconded from the colony. The sheriff freely admitted that Naphtali had been ‘left in the lurch’. Naphtali testified that he had ‘a large family’ and was of ‘industrious character’. Naphtali wrote from Market Street on 5 January 1835 that he had a hard struggle to pay his debt. He had suffered ‘recent losses in trade’, and had ‘six young children and a wife who has been ill’. However, by 3 April 1835, he had paid the court £10 ‘more’. In 1839 he held the licence for the Bald Faced Stag and was granted permission to allow the public house to stay open after hours. He held the licence until 1845. Both he and his wife were seat holders of the York Street Synagogue when it was dedicated. On 17 March 1847 he was, once again, reported to be bankrupt. Naphtali died on 21 July 1847 and was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery in Sydney.
On 5 October 1849, Frances Naphtali, a widow and pauper, filed for bankruptcy: ‘I beg to state that the greater part of my debts were contracted 18 month or 2 years ago when I kept a public house in George Street Sydney which did not answer the rent being too high’.
Their children were Catherine (1822), born at Windsor, Joseph (1824) at Windsor, James (1826), at York Street, Mary Ann (1829–1879), at Pitt Street, Eliza (1831), Benjamin (1833), Henry (1835), Ellen (1838), Maurice (1841), and Alfred (1843), Albert Augustus (1846).
Frances Naphtali married William Everingham in 1850. Her third marriage was to Roger Caine in 1862. She died 2 September 1872 and was buried at Haslem's Creek (Rookwood).
OBSP, 1817–18, case 512, p. 174; Ship Indent 4/4006, p. 77; 4/3504a, p. 47; HO 11/3; Petitions and Memorials, 1827–1832, 14 July 1829, ML, A 2167; Sydney Gazette, 16 December 1826, 3 October 1833; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 1842, 16 September 1843, 7 April 1845; Sydney Chronicle, 17 March 1847; CS 4/2298, in 35/2370; family research by Jan and Neil Reid, Greystanes, NSW.
NATANSON, Berthold
Black Swan, 1840; Free.
Berthold Natanson arrived in Launceston on 17 July 1840. He was convicted in the Launceston Quarter Sessions, on 16 August 1854, for stealing two watches and two chains, the property of Mr H. Patching. He was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Launceston Gaol for two years. The remainder of his sentence was remitted by the Lieutenant Governor on 7 March 1855.
Black Swan Indent, CON 37/8, no. 57150, p. 2519.
NATHAN, Abraham (Solomon)
b. Houndsditch, 1785
Chapman (1), 1824; Convict; Sentenced to life, Newgate, 1824.
Labourer and dealer; Height: 162 cm.
Fresh complexion, brown whiskers, long narrow visage, light grey eyes, long nose, large mouth, small chin. A Jew. Scar on right cheek. Abraham Nathan was sentenced for stealing handkerchiefs from a shop. The gaol report noted ‘bad connexions’.
Nathan had a long, sad and depressing record. He was initially assigned to J. Jacobs but on 28 November 1825 was returned to the Public Works Department as his master had no means to support himself. On 9 June 1826 he absconded from his work at the punt across the River Derwent and was sentenced to fifty lashes and twelve months in irons. The lashes were held over but on 2 September he received twenty lashes for neglect of duty and for gambling. Three days later he was convicted of insolence to Constable Henderson and sent to Maria Island for three months. On 29 September 1826, while a member of the chain gang on the island, he received fifty lashes for threatening to strike the overseer of the penitentiary and ‘abusing’ his fellow prisoners. On 17 March 1827 he abused Constable Henry Perry and received a further fifty lashes. On 27 October he was given fifty lashes for ‘barking trees’ and on 30 May 1828 a further fifty lashes for being drunk, absent from his work party and insolent to a police officer.
In April 1835 Nathan spent two hours in the stocks for being ‘out after hours’. In November 1835, while working with the Public Works, he refused to assist Commissioner Allwort, using indecent language to do so, and was sentenced to twelve months with the Second Road Party at Westbury. On 11 January 1837 his insolence, while an assigned servant to Mr Kent, earned him a sentence of two months hard labour in chains at Reibey's Ford. On 11 March 1837 he was found in Launceston without a pass and his sentence was extended by three months. Part of this punishment was due to his ‘disorderly and violent conduct before the Police Magistrate’. On 24 October 1837 he was found drunk and sent to join the Oatlands Chain Gang. On 26 October, while a watchman with the Public Works Department, he was charged with stealing a valise. The case was unproven but he was dismissed and returned to the road party.
Nathan received his ticket of leave on 9 September 1840 and a conditional pardon on 27 September 1843, ‘having shown definite proof of reformation’ according to the official list of Conditional Pardons in 1844. Sadly, on 30 January 1844 he was charged in Launceston with larceny and acquitted on a technicality. A third-class pardon was granted on 19 January 1847. Abraham Nathan's name appeared on the Launceston Synagogue petition of 20 May 1843.
CON 31/29; CON 32/1; Hobart Town Courier, 11 September 1840, 6 October 1843; Launceston Police Book, CON 78/2; CON 18/3, no. 338; CP 730; HO 10/58, p. 296.
NATHAN, Asher Isaac (Arthur Isaac)
b. London, 1814–1863
1842; Free.
Single; 7 children.
The son of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan, Asher Isaac was the twin brother of Rachel Nathan (q.v.), who married Samuel Cohen (q.v.), and brother of Louis Nathan (q.v.), David Nathan (q.v.), and Mrs Rosetta Joseph (Rosetta Nathan, q.v.).
Arthur Isaac Nathan signed the petition for the establishment of a Launceston Synagogue on 20 May 1843. In September he also signed a petition asking for the release from gaol of Isaac Jacobs (q.v.). On 29 June 1844 he donated £50 to the Launceston Synagogue building appeal. In 1845 he officiated at the wedding of John Aaron and in 1853 at the last Jewish wedding in Launceston. Though he was based in Launceston he was one of the members of the Hobart-based Tasmanian Hebrew Benevolent Society at its founding in 1847. On 23 August 1843, at the synagogue in Sydney, Arthur Isaac Nathan married Caroline Cohen (q.v.) of Melbourne, the daughter of Henry Simeon Cohen (q.v.) of Port Macquarie.
Arthur and Caroline Nathan were the parents of Lewis Arthur (30 May 1844–1909), born in Launceston, who would marry his cousin Stella, the daughter of Moses Joseph and his wife Rosetta of Sydney.
Lewis was active in the firm of L. D. Nathan & Co., founded by his uncle David. Walter Isaac Nathan was born in Launceston, went to Wellington, New Zealand, where he joined his cousin Jacob Joseph's business. Their other children were Arthur Hyam Nathan (born 2 May 1847), David (15 May 1849), Edward (25 January 1851), Sarah (29 May 1853), and Sidney Jacob Nathan, the sixth son, who was born in Sydney in 1860 and married Frances Baume.
Arthur Isaac Nathan, ‘late of Launceston Tasmania’, died in England aged forty-nine on 7 August 1863. He had lived at 28 Tavistock Square, and was buried at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery in London. Caroline died in England in March 1881.
NATHAN, Benjamin (WILLARD)
b. London
Isabella I (1), 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1817.
Married; Artist and dentist; Height: 147 cm.
Sickly pale complexion, brown hair, brown eyes. Benjamin Willard alias Nathan was convicted for stealing three beds and their bolsters, three quarts of ale and one cask from a public house at Tower Hill. Willard and his wife lived next door and he was said to own a ‘medicine shop’. He was sentenced at Middlesex on 3 December 1817.
Benjamin Nathan arrived in New South Wales on 14 September 1818. The Colonial Secretary's office accepted Nathan's alias of ‘Willard’ as his surname. On 22 September 1818 he was among the list of prisoners sent to be assigned in Parramatta. On 1 February 1819 it was decided to send him to the penal settlement at Newcastle and, in March 1820, he was punished at Newcastle. On 4 January 1821 he petitioned for a mitigation of his sentence. He was ‘of Windsor’ and wrote: ‘The undersigned humbly begs leave to remind your Excellency of the promises you were pleased to make to me of granting my Liberty through the medium of Mr Cox J. P. I have applied to that gentleman and he refuses to comply’. On 6 February 1822 he was transported to Newcastle again (on the Elizabeth Henrietta). On 15 February 1823 Willard was removed from Newcastle and sent to Port Macquarie on the Sally. A certificate of freedom was issued on 3 December 1824.
OBSP, 1817, case 153; CS 4/1718, p. 100; 4/1863, p. 110; CS Copies of Letters Sent Within the Colony, 1821, 4/3504, p. 403; Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Registers of Certificates of Freedom, 1823–25, 003/2952, in 4/4423; CS Copies of Letters Sent Within the Colony, 1818–19, 4/3499, pp. 57, 295; CS Copies of Letters to Port Macquarie, June–October 1825, 4/3864, p. 503.
NATHAN, Bertram (Burnett)
b. London, 1815–1871
Caroline, 1832; Free.
Single; Dealer; 10 children.
Bertram Nathan arrived in Hobart Town on 12 December 1832. He was the son of Nathaniel Nathan, merchant of London, and Elizabeth (née Levy). His full legal name was ‘Isaacar Bertram Nathan’.
Bertram Nathan was seventeen years old when he arrived in New South Wales as a migrant on 2 January 1832. He was listed as giving £5 to the building fund of the Sydney Synagogue in 1839. Nathan, ‘who came free to this colony’, was sentenced at the Sydney Quarter Sessions of 4 January 1840 for receiving stolen goods. He was convicted of having purchased 100 stolen waistcoats knowing them to have been stolen. He was ordered to spend six months of the seven-year sentence working on the roads. Nathan was transported by the Abercrombie to Hobart Town on 12 February 1840.
On 22 June 1840 Nathan became a member of the field police. On 21 July 1840 he was admonished for neglect of duty. On 2 June 1841 he was fined for having made use of indecent language. On 3 December he was sentenced to seven days in solitary confinement for ‘misconduct’. On 9 May 1842 he was sent back to work on the roads for six months for having associated with the prisoners and gambled on a Sunday while he held the post of constable. His sentence concluded in October 1842 and he received a ticket of leave on 16 February 1844. On 20 March 1845 he was ‘admonished’ for being absent from the Sunday morning muster. A conditional pardon, valid in the Australian colonies, was approved on 16 December 1845 for ‘having behaved with propriety’.
Nathan left Van Diemen's Land as quickly as he could and by 3 December 1845 he had set up shop in Currie Street in Adelaide. He became a shipping agent for goods bound for Launceston and imported haberdashery from Tasmania. On 20 June 1846 the South Australian Register advertised an auction by Emanuel Solomon (q.v.) at B. Nathan's Currie Street premises in consequence of the dissolution of the partnership between Messrs B. Nathan and L. Joseph (Louis Joseph, q.v.). The whole of the stock was to be sold. Nathan finally bought up the other part of the business and announced that ‘his wholesale and agency business will be closed on Saturday and on all Jewish holidays’. On 6 August 1846 (in the South Australian Register) ‘Burnett’ Nathan proudly advertised ‘stock ex Medway’ as ‘the largest and latest assorted stock of fancy goods ever imported into this colony’.
On 17 June 1846 ‘Isaacher’ B. Nathan (aged twenty-nine) married Phoebe Solomons (q.v.), the 16-year-old daughter of Aaron Solomons (q.v.), in Launceston. Phoebe died seven months later, on 6 January 1847, and, on 20 October 1847, Nathan married Ellen Levy (a minor) at the home of her brother, Philip Levy (q.v.) (‘Gentleman Levy’), in Bathurst Street in Hobart Town. Ellen Levy had been born in London on 31 July 1831 and had arrived on the Calcutta in 1844. Nathan was described as a widower whose profession was ‘draper’. They were to have ten children: Elizabeth (27 September 1849 to 29 May 1850), Esther (born 14 October 1850), Priscilla Elizabeth (25 December 1851), Sarah (16 March 1853), Rosetta (1856), Nathaniel (1857), Elizabeth (1858), Alfred (1861), Maurice (1862), and Phillip (1866). The first six children were born in Launceston and the ‘first’ infant Elizabeth was buried in the Launceston Jewish burial ground. On 31 December 1855 vandals destroyed Elizabeth's gravestone (together with memorials to the children of George Robinson (q.v) and Joshua Lyons). The bereaved parents offered a reward of £25 for information that ‘may lead to the conviction of the parties who committed so vile an act’. There was no response from the general public. The family moved to Melbourne in 1858, where Bertram Nathan conducted a business at 59 Latrobe Street. Bertram Nathan died on 10 January 1871, aged fifty-six, and was buried at the Melbourne General Cemetery. Ellen died on 8 October 1890 and was buried beside her husband.
CON 31/32, no. 503; Prisoners Sent from New South Wales to Van Diemen's Land, 4/4523; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 3 December 1845, 7 January 1846, 6 August 1846; The Launceston Exaniner, 1, 3, 8 January, 1856. Death Certificate 175859; HO 10/59.
NATHAN, Betsy
b. 1801
Undaunted, 1835; Free.
Single.
Betsy Nathan was a bounty migrant who arrived from England travelling steerage on 3 February 1835. Her full name was Elizabeth Nathan (q.v.).
Ship Indent 4/5208.
NATHAN, Burnett (Baruch)
b. London, 1817–1865
1833; Free.
Merchant; 7 children.
Burnett Baruch Nathan was the last of the sons of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan of 13 New Quebec Street, London, to reach Australia.
On 10 June 1833 the Launceston Independent carried the announcement that the 16-year-old ‘Burnett Nathan begs to intimate to the Public generally that he has just arrived in Launceston where he intends to carry on the business of French Polisher’. With the establishment of the township of Adelaide, Nathan moved to South Australia, leaving his original occupation behind him. He briefly returned to London to marry MaryAnne Collins (Nathan, q.v.) (daughter of Hyman Collins, né Kalisch) at her parents' home at 29 Orchard Street, Marylebone, on 12 March 1845.
On 14 March 1846 the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register announced that Mr Burnett Nathan was a ships' agent for goods to and from Western Australia and Manila. The Launceston Examiner published the advertisement that ‘Burnett Nathan, General Importer and Commission Agent, Adelaide begs to intimate to merchants and others in Van Diemen's Land that he is prepared to receive consignments’.
Burnett Nathan was a staunch supporter of the local Jewish congregation and became its first president. He gave the new Adelaide Hebrew congregation an Ark. The Register did not fully understand its purpose and wrote that Nathan had presented to the congregants a most splendid repository for the voluntary offerings of his fellow worshippers whose contributions will, it is hoped, now enable the children of Israel to erect a Temple to their God in Adelaide. The cabinet is somewhat of a sarcophagus form made from the finest variegated Australian cedar. It is a superb example of colonial workmanship. Its inscription reads ‘Kall [sic] Nidchi Israel (All the dispersed of Israel) Presented by Mr Burnett Nathan to the congregation of Adelaide on Wednesday 27 May 1846’.
One day after the presentation, Elizabeth Joshua (q.v.) of Hindley Street was married to Mr Charles Jacobs (q.v.) of Sydney by Burnett Nathan, who acted ‘under authority from Sydney’. On 16 September, under the headline ‘Local Improvements’, it was reported that ‘Mr Burnett Nathan (one of our many fortunate newcomers) is occupying some of the site of the late Southern Cross Hotel by nine cottage residences’. On 14 April 1848 Nathan advertised that he was ‘the agent for the ship Harriet Nathan sailing for Hobart Town’.
Burnett Nathan was again elected president of the congregation in 1849, and in 1859. He later returned to live in England. On his death he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at West Ham. The tombstone inscription reads ‘Late of Adelaide, South Australia. Died 30 June 1865, age 48’. His wife MaryAnne died in London on 13 August 1868, aged forty-three.
Their children, born in Adelaide, were: Caroline (11 November 1848, who died seven months later), Sarah (28 December 1845, who died three and a half years later), Charlotte (11 March 1847), Nathaniel (7 October 1851), Mary (4 January 1854), Julia (27 September 1855), and Hyam (27 September 1855).
Independent (Launceston), 1 June 1833; Launceston Examiner, 7 October 1846; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 14 March 1846, 24 May 1846, 30 May 1846, 16 September 1846, 15 April 1848; Pritchard Index.
A son of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan of London, David Nathan arrived in Sydney travelling steerage on the barque Orient on 8 December 1839. Nathan had intended to settle in Adelaide but because of the colonial depression he sailed by the Achilles for New Zealand and the trading settlement of Kororareka, arriving there on 21 February 1840, just two weeks after New Zealand had been proclaimed a British colony. Nathan set up his store on the beach front, stocked with goods he had bought in London from the capital of £100 given to him by his uncle, Henry Moses. Moses Joseph (q.v.) came to Auckland and bought land at the first land sale on 19 April 1841 which he then leased to David Nathan and to his brother Israel Joseph (q.v.).
David Nathan established the ‘Commercial House’ in Auckland in 1841. The business was closed on the Sabbath and Holydays and the first Jewish religious services were held in his home. In October 1841 David Nathan and Israel Joseph travelled northwards to Kororareka at the Bay of Islands to welcome Rosetta Aarons, a young widow from Hobart Town. Her first husband, Michael Aarons, had been a sea captain who had been lost at sea while travelling to Australia. Rosetta arrived with her Hebrew marriage certificate, which was copied for her second ketuvah.
The first Jewish marriage in New Zealand, between David and Rosetta, therefore took place at Kororareka on 31 October 1841. Israel Joseph performed the ceremony and the marriage was witnessed by George Russell (q.v.), a ‘hotel keeper’.
The Shipping Gazette of New South Wales reported that David Nathan had exported 10 bales of ‘slops’ (ready-made clothes) to Auckland on 22 and 29 November 1845. Nathan founded the oldest surviving, and very successful, mercantile business in New Zealand. Moses Joseph had bought land in Auckland in order to establish his brother Israel and his first cousin and brother-in-law David and his blind brother Jacob Joseph in Wellington. The two-acre allotment was on the corner of Shortland Crescent and High Street and the first ‘Nathan and Joseph’ store opened for business on 14 August 1841. On 10 January 1843 David and Rosetta's eldest daughter, Sarah, was born. In 1846 their son Laurence David was born in Auckland; the child was circumcised in Sydney in the following year. The circumcision was performed by Samuel Moses (q.v.) of Hobart Town. In 1848 David and Rosetta celebrated the arrival of a daughter, Elizabeth. A son, Nathan, was born in 1850.
Nathan was president of the newly formed Auckland Hebrew Congregation in 1854, in 1860, and from 1878 to 1883. (He was elected to the first Auckland Borough Council but did not serve.) He was one of the commissioners set up to operate the Port of Auckland Board. He was president of the Chamber of Commerce and was appointed trustee of the Auckland Savings Bank in 1864, and served until 1885.
L. M. Goldman, The History of the Jews of New Zealand; Howard T. Nathan, ‘Rosetta Joseph: The Bell, Her Husband and the Money’, AJJHS, vol. 17 (2003), no. 1, p. 11; Lawrence D. Nathan, As Old as Auckland.
NATHAN, Edward
b. London, 1779–1861
Margaret, 1835; Free.
Married; Shoemaker.
Edward Nathan arrived steerage at Hobart Town with his wife Hannah, son Michael (q.v.) aged twenty-eight and his daughter Fanny (Frances) (q.v.), and granddaughters Maria, aged eighteen, and Rosetta (q.v.), aged twenty. He became the licensee of a public house, the Talbot Inn, on Melville Street. On 2 September 1842 a new licence for his public house was refused. He was a member of the Hobart Synagogue in 1842 and in April 1843 gave £1 to the building fund. The Nathan family left Hobart Town in 1845 and went to Melbourne, where Edward opened a clothing shop in Elizabeth Street.
In January 1845 Edward Nathan gave his first donation to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation. On 18 July 1845 he was among the group who petitioned the board ‘to consider the propriety of making guerists’. He was also one of five general dealers who were fined five shillings for exposing their goods for sale on the footpath in front of their shops. ‘Edmund’ Nathan's name was on the list of the Jews in Port Phillip who signed an address congratulating new Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler on his appointment. Edward Nathan died, ‘at the bar of his hotel’-the Royal Hotel- in Orange in 1861 and his death is reported in some detail in the Western Examiner mentioning his nephew Asher Nelson and nephew Harris Levy Nelson MLA.
Margaret Indent 4/5208; Hobart Town Courier, 2 September 1842; Port Phillip Gazette, 5 April 1845.
NATHAN, Elias
b. 1768
Barwell, 1798; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1797.
Dealer.
Elias Nathan (who lived in Piccadilly) owed a woman £80. He had, in his possession, a stolen Bill of Exchange valued at £19 13s 6d. Nathan owned a sale shop in Swallow Street and asked the woman to cash the stolen cheque on his behalf, ‘as it was his Sabbath’. He was sentenced on 11 January 1797.
The Barwell arrived in New South Wales on 18 May 1798. In the Settlers' Muster Book of 1800 (List 4) he was listed as a person ‘off stores’. In Sydney, on Saturday 1 January 1802, Elias Nathan was charged with having sold a quantity of black calico to Elizabeth Bennet that had been stolen from Simeon Lord's warehouse. Nathan claimed to have bought it from a sailor who had ‘gone southward’ on a whaling expedition. He was to be bound over on bail until the sailor returned.
OBSP, 1796–97, case 98, p. 139; 4/4003, p. 345; Minutes of Bench of Magistrates, 1 January 1802, 12/35, ML, 1/299.
NATHAN, Elizabeth
Undaunted, 1835; Free.
Single; Servant.
On 1 April 1835 Elizabeth Nathan of Pitt Street in Sydney sent a ‘humble petition’ to the Colonial Secretary's office in Sydney concerning ‘the theft of her meagre possessions’, which a Mr Bryant, a fellow passenger in steerage, had persuaded her to place in his trust. When the migrant ship arrived in Australia in February 1835 Mr Bryant ‘forgot’ to return her property and used it to pay for his passage. The ship's agent then impounded Elizabeth's bedding and clothes. She had been to the police, who failed to take her complaint seriously, leaving her ‘destitute without a second change of clothes’. The official response was that it was too early to take action.
CS Letters Received, 1825, Miscellaneous, 35/2378, in 4/2284.2.
NATHAN, Esther
b. London
Orient, 1839; Free.
Single.
Esther Nathan, the daughter of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan (q.v.), arrived from London on the Orient on 10 December 1839. Esther's sister was Rosetta (Nathan, q.v.), the wife of Moses Joseph (q.v.) of Sydney. Esther married Moses Moss (Moses Moses, q.v.) on 16 November 1842 in Sydney in Jewish marriage no. 55. They lived first in Launceston and then in Sydney.
NATHAN, Frances
1808–1844
Margaret, 1835; Free.
Married; 4 children.
Frances, her husband, Michael Nathan (q.v.), and their daughter, Rosetta, arrived in Sydney in 1835. Frances had three children in New South Wales: Woolf, who was born in 1840, at Illawarra, and two other sons, both of whom seem to have died in infancy. Fanny (Frances) Nathan died on 12 August 1844, aged thirty-six. Her funeral was the first to be arranged by the Hobart Town congregation, and her infant child was buried with her.
NATHAN, Frances
d. 1898
Free.
Single; 5 children.
Frances, the daughter of Edward and Hannah Nathan, married Benjamin Nelson (q.v.) in Hobart Town on 9 November 1842. Their son, Henry, died at the age of seven months in 1844 and was buried at the Harrington Street cemetery.
NATHAN, Gaucher Burton
b. 1817
Free.
Single.
Gaucher Burton Nathan, aged twenty-nine, married Phoebe Solomon (q.v.), aged nineteen, in Launceston on 17 June 1846.
NATHAN, Harriette (née MOSES)
b. London 1834; Free.
Married; 4 children.
Harriette was the wife of Louis Nathan (q.v.).
NATHAN, Henry
1842; Free.
Single.
Henry Nathan was a friend of Edward Isaacs (q.v.) and was part of the group of young congregational activists who helped establish a synagogue in Hobart Town. He was a member of the Hobart Synagogue in 1842–45. He sang in the choir at the consecration service and was chosen to read a psalm in Hebrew at the service. He was allocated seat no. 73 in the synagogue. On 17 September 1843 the congregational committee voted to give Henry Nathan a new suit of clothes in recognition of his poor financial situation and his enthusiastic support for the congregation. In 1844 he successfully tendered for the task of baking the congregational Passover matzah.
Nathan was in Sydney in the 1870s and followed the gold rush to Dunedin, New Zealand.
NATHAN, Hyam Edward
b. London, 1828–1885
1833; Free.
Hyam Edward Nathan, son of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan (q.v.), and brother of Rosetta Nathan (q.v.), arrived from London and briefly settled in Sydney (1833) and later moved to Dunedin. His family business was to grow into the multinational business of Glaxo and Woolworths (New Zealand).
NATHAN, Isaac
b. Canterbury, 1790–1864
York, 1841; Free.
Married; Musician; 12 children.
The son of the Cantor Menahem Mona, a Polish language master, Isaac Nathan told the preposterous story that he was an illegitimate son of King Stanilaus II. In 1814, at his suggestion, Lord Byron wrote a series of poems on Jewish themes and Nathan set them to music, making use of melodies from his father's synagogue. Nathan's life in England was ‘colourful’. He gambled heavily, eloped twice with his pupils, was prosecuted for assaulting an Irish peer and fought a duel for the honour of Lady Caroline Lamb. Isaac Nathan's musical career in England came to an abrupt end in 1838 when Lord Melbourne refused to pay him £2000 for a mysterious (and imaginative) mission to Europe. By that time he had six children to support, and a second wife. To avoid further confrontation, he set sail for Australia. (His second wife would also bear him six children.)
The Port Philip Patriot of 8 February 1841 reported that Isaac Nathan had arrived in Australia by the York. He was described as ‘an eminent scholar and musician and the bosom friend of Lord Byron’. The Australasian Chronicle of 8 April reported: ‘Mr Nathan and family has arrived in Sydney. We hope that he is destined to enjoy a long and brilliant career in his adopted land, with profit to himself, and with much gratification to the community’. One week later the same newspaper announced (13 April 1841): ‘We are happy to announce that this talented musician and his family have been engaged to conduct the choir at St Mary's Cathedral’. Nathan also established his Sydney Academy for the Formation, Cultivation and Management of the Human Voice and on 30 June 1841 presented a Grand Oratorio of the Sacred Music at St Mary's Cathedral, performing music by Handel and Nathan, for which ‘Mr Nathan has engaged every professional musician in the colony’. In early July 1841 it was reported that ‘the whole society of Sydney attended the concert including the American Vice Consul, the Vicar General and about twenty of the clergy. Beethoven's Mass in C was sung for the first time’. On 25 December 1841 the Australasian Chronicle boasted ‘The Choir of St Mary's under the laborious and judicious induction of Mr Nathan will soon be one of the best in the British Empire. Mozart's Mass will be presented at Christmas’.
Isaac Nathan was Australia's first serious composer. Australia's first opera, Merry Freaks and Troubl'lous Times, was privately presented in 1843. The libretto was written by Jacob Levi Montefiore (q.v.). 1844 was a hectic year. On 1 March Isaac Nathan, ‘composer of music’, was listed on the Insolvency Index. He composed an ode for the inauguration of Sydney's first municipal council titled ‘Australia Wide and Free’. He wrote two choral pieces, ‘Long Live Victoria’ and ‘Hail Star of the South’. He was in charge of the music at the dedication of the York Street Synagogue in 1844. He conducted the choir and wrote a number of compositions for the great day. In 1846 he wrote an elegy mourning the death of the explorer Leichhardt but then Leichhardt's return to civilisation forced Nathan to hurriedly write ‘The Greeting Home Again’.
In May 1847 Nathan produced Don John of Austria, Australia's second opera, which has a strong Jewish historical theme. The Atlas reviewed the opera on 8 May 1847: ‘Public expectations had been raised very high by reports of its great literary and musical merits—yet the music I found very heavy dull and uninteresting, the language not very select—soul-less music. It will never, in its present heavy form, at least, be a favourite with an Australian audience’. In 1849 Nathan published The Southern Euphrosyne and Australian Miscellany, which included the first attempt to transcribe and present Aboriginal music. The Australasian Chronicle wrote of ‘Koorinda Braia—A Genuine Aboriginal Native Song’ that ‘it is destined to be preserved as a memorial of ancient Australian melody after the race of ill-fated aborigines have ceased forever to sing and hold their corroborees’.
Nathan built a large house in Randwick, which he nostalgically called Byron Lodge. He died alighting from a horsedrawn tram in Sydney on 15 January 1864 and was survived by a family of twelve children.
One of his sons, Alfred Nathan, sang as a basso in Nathan's concert in Sydney on 16 October 1847. Another son, Charles, became a prominent physician and had fifteen children of his own. Eight of Isaac Nathan's children founded families. Although he had remained a Jew, and was remembered within the family reciting his morning prayers draped in a prayer shawl, despite this recollection Isaac Nathan was buried in the Anglican cemetery at Camperdown in New South Wales.
Graham Pont, ‘The Rediscovery of Isaac Nathan: Or Merry Freaks in Troub'lous Times’, AJJHS, vol. 12, no. 1 (1993) and Isaac Nathan's Songs; in Glenarvon and Ada Reis: Leaves from a Secret History, AJJHS, vol. 19, part 4 (2010); Atlas, 27 June 1846, 8 May 1847; Australasian Chronicle, 8 April 1841, 13 April 1841, 6 May 1841, 19 June 1841, 3 July 1841, 6 July 1841, 25 December 1841; Catherine Mackerras, ‘Isaac Nathan’, in ADB, vol. 2, p. 279f.; AG, p. 132f. The Opera ‘Don John of Austria’ arranged by Sir Charles Mackerras is recorded by the Sydney Symphony, great, great, great grandson of Isaac Nathan (2011). ABC Classics 4764114.
Isaac and his wife Maria of Sydney had a son, Henry, in 1836 and registered him as a ‘Hebrew’.
NATHAN, John
b. London, 1802–1838
Charles Kerr, 1837; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1837.
Widower; Old clothes man; Height: 166 cm.
Very dark sallow complexion, dark brown hair, hazel eyes. Jew. Could read. Lost two front upper teeth, marks of cupping on back of neck. John Nathan was an ‘old clothes man’ who stole a coat from a tailor's shop off Oxford Street. Three months later the tailor recognised him in Whitechapel and seized him. Nathan had been previously convicted for theft. He was sentenced to transportation on 2 January 1837.
John Nathan arrived in New South Wales on 9 October 1837 and was assigned to Mr G. Rouse at Penrith. At Copper Valley, William Thompson recalled: ‘We have to work 14 to 18 hours sometimes up to our knees in cold water’. Following a convict uprising, he recounted: ‘on Saturday July 2, 1838 we were all paraded in front of the scaffold. The nine unfortunate men were all paraded in front of the scaffold. The nine unfortunate men came on with a firm step. Among them were John Nathan, George Cox, Edward Hull from the Old Bailey. The nine men seemed to cry out with one voice “We die happy!”’
Hugh Anderson, Farewell to Judges and Juries, Red Rooster Press, Melbourne, 2000, p. 488; there appears to be a mistake regarding the year of the execution; Charles Kerr Printed Indent, p. 159, no. 37-2202, X640; General Returns of Convicts in New South Wales 1837.
NATHAN, Joseph
b. London, 1813–1866
Coromandel (3), 1838; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 1832.
Married; Height: 174 cm; 3 children.
Dark complexion, round large head, black hair, black whiskers, dark brown eyes, large thick nose, broad chin, slightly pock-pitted. Joseph Nathan was sentenced on 29 January 1832 for larceny. On 29 January 1838 he was convicted for stealing two sheets and two shirts from a private house. His hulk report was ‘Bad’. He had a wife, Esther (Hester), in London with two children.
Joseph Nathan arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 25 October 1838. A ticket of leave was granted on 3 November 1842. Joseph Nathan signed the Launceston Synagogue petition on 20 May 1843 and gave £3 to the Launceston Synagogue building appeal in 1844. On 9 February 1844 Joseph Nathan was bound over to keep the peace on a bond of £25 following a complaint from Aaron Solomons (q.v.). A conditional pardon was approved on January 1845 and he was free by servitude on 29 June 1845. The Launceston Examiner reported on 7 July 1849 that eight yards of flannel had been stolen from Joseph Nathan's shop. The prosecution against a suspected thief fell through as ‘Mr Nathan appeared particularly anxious to let the Attorney General know that he was unable to swear to the flannel’. On 17 August 1851 Joseph Nathan of Launceston wrote to the Hobart synagogue and asked that his son be circumcised. He stated that his ‘wife’ was ‘a Christian woman’. (The response is not known as the synagogue's committee ceased to meet following its August meeting.) Joseph Nathan married Eliza McDermott, aged twenty-one, in Launceston on 23 July 1852. On 28 November 1864 Nathan was sentenced at Launceston to four years gaol for ‘removing goods with intent to defraud his creditors’. Nathan died at the Port Arthur prison on 15 February 1866.
OBSP 29 January 1838, case 620. CON 37/10; CON 31/32, no. 468; CON 18/5; Launceston Examiner, 29 June 1844, 7 July 1849; CF 154/1845; Hobart Town Courier, 1 December 1843; Launceston Examiner, 9 February 1844, 7 July 1849.
NATHAN, Julia
b. London 1839; Free.
Single; 8 children.
Julia was the youngest child of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah, and sister of Rosetta Joseph (Nathan, q.v.), Louis (q.v.), Asher Isaac Nathan (q.v.), Rachel (q.v.), David (q.v.), Esther (q.v.), Miriam (q.v.) and Burnett (q.v.). She married David Cohen (q.v.), a brother of Samuel Cohen (q.v.).
NATHAN, Louis
b. London, 1811–1886
1834; Free.
Married; Merchant; 4 children.
A son of Sarah and Nathaniel Lyon Nathan (q.v.), Louis Nathan was the first of Rosetta Joseph's (Nathan, q.v.) brothers to arrive in Australia. On 22 February 1834 he married Harriette, who was the granddaughter of his uncle Hyam (Henry) and Esther Nathan.
Louis and Harriette Nathan arrived in Sydney in 1834. They briefly stayed with Rosetta and Moses Joseph (q.v.), before setting sail for Hobart Town. They arrived in Van Diemen's Land with their son and three daughters. Louis opened a general warehouse in 1839 in Elizabeth Street in partnership with Samuel Jacob Moses (q.v.), his wife's cousin and brother-in-law. His firm traded extensively in China and the South Seas. By 1843 Nathan, Moses & Co. operated from Commercial House at the corner of Murray and Liverpool streets.
Nathan was elected president of the Hobart Congregation at its first meeting on 16 January 1842 and rented seat no. 5. In 1843 Nathan donated £100 to the initial Hobart Synagogue building appeal. Mrs Nathan founded the Tasmanian Hebrew Benevolent Institution (Nediv Yad) in 1847. Louis Nathan was president of the synagogue for eleven years and left for England in 1848. He was the only Jewish member of the Hobart Town Jockey Club—a high social distinction! Nathan returned to the colony and lived in Launceston. The Launceston Examiner reported, on 29 February 1849, that Nathan, Moses & Co. were owners of the whaling brigs Grecian, Marianne, Nimrod, Prince Regent and the Pryde. They owned five of the thirty-eight whaling boats (in partnership with the sea captains) that were listed in Hobart Town. Louis Nathan and his wife Harriette returned to England to live in Tavistock Square. Louis Nathan died as a result of an accident on 28 May 1886. His estate was estimated at £72, 285.
Louis Nathan's generous financial support enabled his brothers and sisters to create an astonishing mercantile network in colonial Australia: it included Rosetta, the wife of Moses Joseph, of Sydney, Asher (Arthur) Isaac Nathan (q.v.), David Nathan (q.v.) of New Zealand, Burnett Nathan (q.v.) of South Australia, Miriam Benjamin (Nathan, q.v.) of Melbourne, Esther (Mrs Moses Moss) (Nathan, q.v.) of New South Wales, Rachel (Mrs Samuel Cohen) (Nathan, q.v.) of Sydney, and Julia (Mrs David Cohen of Maitland) (Nathan, q.v.).
Herbert A Wolff, ‘A Century of Hobart Jewry’, AJJHS, vol. 2, no. 1 (1944), p. 3f; Jewish World, London, 7 May 1886; Hobart Town Courier, March 1844; Launceston Examiner, 29 February 1849; P. Elias and A. Elias (eds), A Few from Afar.
NATHAN, Mark
b. London, 1814–1898
Free
Mark Nathan was born in England on 8 March 1814. On 24 May 1852, in New York, he married the seventeen year old Flora Horowitz whose brother Henry Horowitz (q.v.) arrived in Hobart Town in 1842 and remained there until 1861. In 1853 Mark and Flora followed Mark from New York to Melbourne and then to Hobart. For the next eighteen years they lived in Tasmania. Mark was the owner of a drapers' shop at 161 Liverpool Street and then became a pawnbroker at 154 Liverpool Street. He was active in the congregation until his departure for Melbourne in 1863. Flora and Mark Nathan eventually moved to Sydney where they both died within months of each other in 1898. They had seven children.
Peter and Ann Elias, ‘The View from Afar’, 2005, p. 90
NATHAN, MaryAnne (née COLLINS, KALISH)
b. London, 1825–1868
1847; Free.
Married; 7 children.
MaryAnne was the wife of Burnett Baruch Nathan (q.v.), who returned to England to marry her on 12 March 1845. Their first child was born in Adelaide in 1848 when MaryAnne was twenty-three years old. (Burnett Nathan had first arrived in Van Diemen's Land when he was sixteen years old, in 1833.)
NATHAN, Maurice (Morris)
b. London, 1834–1893
1849; Free.
Maurice Nathan was a free migrant who arrived in Van Diemen's Land in the late 1840s. He set up a store at Port Sorrell, 15 kilometres east of the Mersey River on the northern coast of Tasmania. He opened the Great Western Store in 1855 and a second store at Green's Creek in the early 1860s. He moved to Latrobe in 1863 and built a small wharf for the export of timber palings to the growing city of Melbourne across Bass Strait. In 1877, in partnership with Mr Henry Murray, he formed a shipping business, Nathan, Murray and Co. Nathan was also one of the founders of the North East Coast Navigation Company, which owned and operated a small steamer called the Amy. In 1878 Nathan and Murray became grain and general produce merchants on the northern coast of the island. Nathan died at Latrobe on 15 September 1893. His sister Esther Brody (née Nathan) had married Joshua Lyons (q.v.) of Torquay in 1862 and Maurice was a witness at the wedding. ‘M. Nathan’ lived at Latrobe in northern Tasmania in the 1860s, according to an undated Launceston Synagogue's membership list. The Hobart Congregation's records show that an account was sent by the synagogue to Michael Nathan in 1870.
Maurice Nathan was buried in the Jews' Burial Ground in Launceston on 16 September 1893.
Terry Lyons, The Launceston Lyons, privately printed, Townsville, Qld, 2004.
NATHAN, Michael (Abraham)
b. London
Margaret, 1835; Free.
Married; Dealer, shoemaker; 4 children.
Michael Nathan and his wife Frances (Fanny) (q.v.) arrived in Sydney on the Margaret on 10 January 1835. On 7 July 1836 the family appeared at Sydney's Central Criminal Court on a charge of assault. Michael Nathan was fined £10. Michael's wife Frances Nathan was deemed to be not guilty and discharged.
In 1840, at Illawarra, Michael and Fanny had a son and named him Woolf. Two more male children were born in 1842 and 1843 but not named on the official register and probably died in infancy.
The family moved from Sydney to Hobart Town and Frances, wife of Michael Nathan, died on 18 August 1844, aged thirty-six and it was listed as the first Jewish funeral organised by the Hobart Hebrew Congregation.
Michael Nathan remained a member of the Hobart Town Synagogue in 1842 and on 11 March 1843 gave £1 to the building fund. Nathan also gave the first donation to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation's building appeal. His signature appears when five members wrote (on 18 July 1845) calling a meeting of ‘all the Jews in Melbourne to consider the propriety of making converts’. On 20 May 1851 Michael Nathan, a widower of Melbourne, married Anne Nathan. On 4 March 1853 Michael Nathan asked the Melbourne Jewish Philanthropic Soceity for a loan of £15. His request was refused.
Ship Indent 4/5208; Sydney Criminal Court 1836, 4/6448; 18 July 1845, Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Letter Book.
NATHAN, Miriam
b. London, 1825–1882
1840; Free.
Single; 17 children.
The daughter of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan of London, Miriam was a sister of Louis Nathan (q.v.), David Nathan (q.v.), and Mrs Rosetta Joseph (Nathan, q.v.), and therefore a sister-in-law and a cousin of Moses Joseph (q.v.). Miriam arrived in Sydney and stayed with Rosetta and Moses Joseph. Miriam married Solomon Benjamin (q.v.) in Sydney on 11 August 1841 and set up her household in Melbourne. She was the great great grandmother of the author of this book!
NATHAN, Nathan
b. Spitalfields, 1819
Lady Raffles, 1841; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1840.
Single; Hawker; Height: 164 cm.
Stout. Fresh complexioned, dark brown hair and eyes, a round face, broad nose, small mouth and a double chin. Could neither read nor write. Nathan was sentenced to transportation for picking pockets. He had a previous conviction for hawking without a licence. His behaviour on the ship was reported to be ‘indifferent’. He had been sentenced in London on 17 June 1840.
Nathan arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 17 March 1841. His period of probation was fifteen months, which was extended twice by an additional eleven months. He received good reports for his work as a sawyer. However, on 21 July 1841 he was charged with misconduct, in conspiring with other men to make a false statement respecting two prisoners named Smith and Cowderoy. His sentence was extended by three months. Shortly after this he received twenty-five lashes for ‘violently striking a fellow prisoner in the hut’. His time on probation finally ended on 17 May 1843.
Nathan worked as an assigned servant in Richmond and in Launceston. On 11 May 1847 he received his ticket of leave. In January 1848 he was given fourteen days hard labour for being in a public house during Divine Service and later the same year, in Launceston, he was given one month's hard labour for ‘inducing a female prisoner, the wife of another man, to leave her home’. He was then not permitted to live in either Hobart Town or Launceston and was sent to Oatlands. He attempted to return to Launceston and on 7 December 1848, in Oatlands, received a six-month sentence for trying to bribe a constable so that the pass restrictions could be changed so that he could return to live in Hobart Town or Launceston.
On 2 April 1850 he received permission to marry Mary Ann Brennan, at Longford, who had come as a convict on the Elizabeth and Henry in 1845. Finally, on 18 June 1850, Nathan received his certificate of freedom.
CON 33/6, no. 9970; CON 52/3, p. 330.
NATHAN, Nathan (Nathaniel) Lyon (Nathaniel NEWTON)
b. London, 1784–1850
Royal Admiral I (2), 1800; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1799.
Single; Apprentice; 9 children (born in England).
Nathaniel, the 16-year-old son of Judah Nathan of Amsterdam, snatched a parcel away from an old woman in Cornhill. Upon being arrested he told the police that his name was Isaac Newton. He was described as an apprentice. He was sentenced on December 1799.
The Royal Admiral arrived in New South Wales on 20 November 1800 as part of the Third Fleet. Nathan left the colony when his sentence expired. He applied to leave in January 1807 on the King George, and on 14 March 1807 on the Dart. The Sydney Gazette advertised for the following three years that he had mail waiting for him at the Post Office (20 August 1809, 19 November 1809, 17 March 1810).
Nathan's full name was Nathan Lyon Nathan. Almost immediately after his return to London from Australia on 11 November 1807 he married Sarah Nathan at the Great Synagogue in Duke's Place, and with his marriage came prosperity. Their eldest daughter, Rosetta Nathan (q.v.), travelled to Sydney as a free immigrant in order to marry her first cousin and convict, Moses Joseph (q.v.). Rosetta was the niece of Henry Moses of the wholesale clothing warehouse in Monkton and Cannon streets in London.
Rosetta's aunt Esther (the sister of Sarah) had married Henry Moses who owned a wholesale clothing warehouse in Monkton and Cannon streets and who backed each member of his extended family with £100 worth of goods when they emigrated.
The Bequest Board in the Hobart Town Synagogue records that both Nathan Lyon Nathan and his wife left money to the synagogue even though they both lived in London. A son, Louis Nathan (q.v.), of Hobart Town, was the synagogue's first president.
Another son, Asher Isaac Nathan (q.v.), emigrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1842. A daughter, Rachel (q.v.) (1813), married Samuel Cohen (q.v.) in Sydney on 23 August 1837. Other children were David (q.v.), Burnett (q.v.), Esther (Moss) (q.v.), Julia (Cohen) (q.v.), and Miriam (Solomon Benjamin) (q.v.).
Nathan Lyon Nathan died in 1850 and left an estate of £800. His generosity to the young family members during his lifetime had a profound influence on the development of the Jewish community in Australia and New Zealand.
OBSP, 1799–1800, case 46, p. 28; HO 11/1, p. 263; Sydney Gazette, 4 January 1807, 15 March 1807, 20 August 1809, 19 November 1809, 17 March 1810; Howard T. Nathan, ‘The Benefits of a Conviction’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 1 (1995).
NATHAN, Nathaniel
b. London, 1799
Surrey I (6), 1831; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Middlesex, 1830.
Married; Cook, butcher, drover; Height: 168 cm; 4 children.
Dark ruddy complexion, black hair, brown eyes, perpendicular scar right side upper lip. Can read. A Jew. No previous conviction. Nathaniel Nathan was transported for stealing cloth. He married Edal daughter of Menachem Mendel at the New Synagogue in London on 11 June 1829. At the time of his transportation he had one daughter in England.
Nathan arrived in New South Wales on 20 November 1831 and was initially assigned to Mr H. Peppercorn, and then to Samuel Lyons (q.v.). He received a ticket of leave in 1838 for the District of Maitland. The pass was cancelled on 11 April 1839 for ‘highly disorderly and immoral conduct’. His ‘conduct’ consisted of ‘seducing a young female named Harriet Smith. Mr Poole [David Poole, q.v.] appeared for Nathan who has been the assigned servant to Abraham Elias’ (q.v.). The girl had been an adopted member of the household of Elias and had become pregnant (Sydney Gazette, 21 March 1839). Nathan was sentenced to gaol for two months and returned to the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. On 4 May 1839 Nathan was given a further two months hard labour for ‘trafficking’ at the Barracks.
Nathan's ticket of leave was restored on 12 May 1841 on the condition that Nathan was ‘to be employed at a distance from Sydney’. He was sent to Melbourne and became the messenger at the Melbourne Gaol. A certificate of freedom followed on 5 February 1845. He appeared as a founding member of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in 1843 and he prospered. His new wife was Louisa Darcy. The records of the congregation note the birth of his son Samuel on 19 September 1843. The child's mother's name was left unrecorded, indicating that she was not Jewish. On 3 August 1843 Nathan's son was circumcised by Isaac Lazarus Lincoln (q.v.), as it had come to be considered ‘a special case’. Nathan's profession was recorded as clothier. Nathan was one of the Jewish drapers and clothiers fined five shillings for exposing goods for sale on the footpath (Port Phillip Gazette, 5 April 1845). Nathan's name appeared on the Melbourne Jewish community's address to Rabbi Dr Adler on his appointment as Chief Rabbi, written in early 1846.
On 18 July 1845 Nathan was one of five members in the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation who asked to call a meeting ‘to consider the propriety of making converts’. In the Letter Book of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, no. 1, dated 21 May 1850, Nathan asked permission to have another son circumcised. The request was refused despite the fact that his two previous sons had been accepted. A General Meeting of the congregation was then held and decided in favour of the application, but the Rev. Rintel (q.v.) was not swayed by this exercise in democracy. On 16 December 1850 the Nathans of Elizabeth Street had another son, and the synagogue's minister was firmly told by Michael Cashmore that there was ‘no objection to the circumcision of Mr Nathan's child’. The Rev. Rintel again refused to officiate and the president wrote (on 19 December 1850) of ‘my greatest surprise at your inconsistent conduct’.
Nathan took his whole family to England in 1853. On 18 April a sitting of the rabbinic court granted him a divorce from Edal and on the 30 January 1854 Louisa (Leah) and her five children were immersed in the ritual bath and became Jewish. At the time Samuel was aged 10, Esther aged 8, Yehudah aged 5, Chaim aged 3 and Rachel aged fourteen months. Nathan and Louisa married at London's New Synagogue on 7 February 1854 of 2 Bedford Square. He was described as a gentleman and widower (!) and signed the certificate with a mark.
Surrey I (6) Printed Indent, X634-31-1773, p. 101; Indent 4/4103; Register of TL 31/1773, 38/2152, in 4/4125; CS Copies of Letters to the Collector and Controller of Customs and the Surveyor of Distilleries, 1840–45, 41/973, in 4/3698; CF 45/176; Register of House of Correction, 1837–1840, pp. 90, 142; VDL Correspondence, 41/851; Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Letter Book, 1, 21 May 1850, 18 July 1845, 3 August 1845. Jeremy I. Pfeffer, ‘From One End of the Earth to the Other’ p. 317f.
NATHAN, Rachel
John Craig, 1834; Free.
Single.
Rachel Nathan arrived on the immigrant ship John Craig on 12 December 1834, travelling with Martha Moses (q.v.), Solomon Barnett (q.v.) and Maria (Mary) Hart (q.v.). Rachel married Joshua Lewis Barnett (q.v.) in Sydney in 1846. Rachel fell into very bad company and worked as a prostitute under the ‘care’ of Lewis Isaacs of Brougham Place (q.v.), who was her ‘bully’.
Ship Indent 4/5207; W. A. Miles, Registry of Flash Men, p. 41, 2/673.
NATHAN, Rachel
b. London, 1813–1893
Free.
Single; 7 children.
A daughter of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan, and the sister of Rosetta Joseph (Nathan, q.v.), Rachel arrived in Sydney and stayed with her sister Rosetta and brother-in-law Moses Joseph (q.v.). She married Samuel Cohen (q.v.) of Maitland at the Pulteney Hotel on Macquarie Street on 23 August 1837 and she died at 5 Clanricarde Gardens, Kensington (London), on 26 October 1893. She appears to have left Australia shortly after the death of her husband. With her, at the time of her death, was her 35-year-old daughter Charlotte, who had been born in Australia. The value of her estate at her death was £38 816 3s 9d.
Her children were Sarah (1839–1894), George Judah (1842–1937), Charlotte (1844–1929), Louis (1846), Hannah (1848), who died as an infant, Nathan (Norman) Samuel (1850–1917), and Bernard (Beresford) Samuel (1855–1905).
Family history research by Dinah Harvey, Sydney.
NATHAN, Rosetta
b. London, d. 1859
Margaret, 1831; Free.
Single; 11 children.
The eldest daughter of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah, Rosetta Nathan was one of nine children and all of her siblings would eventually live in Australia and New Zealand. Rosetta was the niece of Frances and Michael Nathan (qq.v.).
Rosetta followed her first cousin, and convict, Moses Joseph (q.v.) to Sydney. Moses Joseph described her as ‘a respectable and virtuous woman who lately arrived in this colony per the ship Margaret evincing thereby the continuance of her attachment and determination to share the fate and misfortune of petitioner Moses Joseph’. Their marriage on 30 January 1832 was the first officially sanctioned Jewish marriage in Australia. Their children were: Caroline (born 1833), Hyam Moses (q.v.) (1835), Charlotte (1836), Sarah (Stella) (1839), Lewis (1842), Marianne (1843), Israel (Isaac Arthur) (1845), Alice born 1848) David (1850), Joseph [Jerrold] (1851–1961) and Julia (1853).
Howard T. Nathan, ‘Rosetta Joseph: The Bell, Her Husband and His Money’, AJJHS, vol. 17, no. 1 (2003), p. 5f.
NATHAN, Rosetta
b. London
Mariat, 1835; Free.
Single; 5 children.
Rosetta Nathan was the daughter of Edward Nathan(q.v.). and arrived in Sydney with her parents in 1835. Rosetta married Isaac Haines (q.v.) in a Jewish ceremony at Five Islands on 2 April 1840. Their children were Edward (born 1842), Catherine (1845), Hyam (1848), Eleanor (1850), and Annie (1852).
NATHAN, Samuel (SMITH)
Free.
Samuel Nathan, alias Samuel Smith, was tried in Melbourne on 16 December 1849 for uttering a forged cheque. He was discharged the next day when no evidence could be found against him.
Melbourne Morning Herald, 17 December, 18 December 1849.
In the Hobart Town Colonial Times of 2 May 1837 there was a report of a Sarah Nathan having been admitted on a charge of stealing a lace cap made by (her sister?) Jane Nathan. The case was not proven. In Launceston, on 21 February 1838, Sarah Nathan married Robert Wells.
NATHAN, Solomon
b. Houndsditch London, 1808
Chapman (2), 1824; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1824.
Single. Unemployed.
Transported for stealing a package containing nine handkerchiefs, valued at thirty five shillings, from a Holborn hosiery shop. He had attempted to hide the parcel under his hat. The sixteen-year-old boy ‘pleaded distress’.
The Chapman arrived in Hobart Town on 27 July 1824. On 28 November 1825 his master (possibly John) Jacobs (q.v.) was forced to return Nathan to the government as he had ‘no means to support him’. A long series of infractions followed. On 6 March 1826 he was accused of ‘neglect of duty’ and confined in irons for one month. On 6 May 1826 he stole a quantity of wheat from a warehouse and was sentenced to twenty-five lashes. On 9 June 1826 he received a further fifty lashes for being absent from work. He was sentenced to work in irons for the next twelve months. On 2 September 1826 he was sentenced to twenty lashes for ‘neglect of duty and fifty and gambling’. On 5 September 1826 he was sentenced for being'disorderly and extremely insolent to Constable Henderson' and was sent to join the Maria Island chain gang. On 29 September 1826 as a member of the chain gang on the island he was given fifty lashes for threatening to strike the overseer. Back on the mainland on 17 March 1827 he was sentenced to a further fifty lashes for ‘abusing Constable Henry Perry’. On 27 October 1827 he was part of a work party based at the penitentiary as punishment for deliberately ring-barking trees property of the Crown for which he received fifty lashes. On 30 May 1828 he was found to have been absent from his work party and insolent to his overseer and was punished with a further fifty lashes. On 30 June 1829 he was sentenced to two hours in the stocks for neglect of duty and absence from government labour. Nathan was then assigned to the ‘Marine Department’. On 13 April 1835 he was found to be out after hours and was sentenced to a further two months with the chain gang. On 18 November 1836 he refused to ‘assist in the line of duty and uttering indecent language’ and two years in the work party followed. In 1837 he was assigned to Mr Kent but on 11 January 1837 he was found to have been insolent and sentenced to two months hard labour and discharged from private service.
Nathan finally received a ticket of leave 19 January 1847. During his time as a prisoner he had received 345 lashes, spent time in the public stocks and months shackled in irons working in the chain gang. It was a heavy price to pay for having stolen a packet of nine handkerchiefs from a shop in London.
CON 31/1/29; OBSP, 14 January 1824, pardons no. 738, 27 September 1843.
NATHAN, Solomon
b. London, 1796
Augusta Jessie (1), 1835; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1834.
Married; Dealer, labourer; Height: 162 cm; 4 children.
Fresh complexion, small oval head, brown whiskers, long narrow face, high forehead, light grey eyes, long nose. A Jew. Scar on right cheek. Nathan's wife Jane lived at Commercial Road and they had four children. He was transported for stealing silk, blankets, sixty-one yards of satin and ribbons from a workshop above a coffee shop at 43 Brick Lane, Spitalfields. The materials were valued at £12. He was sentenced to transportation for life on 3 July 1834. He was forty-two years old.
The Augusta Jessie arrived in Hobart Town on 22 January 1835. On 5 March 1835 Solomon Nathan was convicted for disobedience of orders and forwarded to Hobart Town from the Public Works Department ‘on suspicion of being a lunatic’. On 11 March 1837 he was found to be in Launceston without a pass, having absconded from his road party. He was sent to the Reiby's Ford Chain Gang for one month. On 14 March 1837 he was found guilty of violent conduct in the presence of the Police Magistrate and his existing sentence of hard labour was extended by three months. On 25 October 1835 he was sentenced to twenty-five lashes for being drunk and disorderly. On 13 March 1838 he was sentenced to two months hard labour in chains for being concealed in a disorderly house while he was assigned to the Marine Department. He was sent to the Oatlands Road Party. On 4 October 1838 he was charged with the theft of a packet of letters and some clothes. The witness for the prosecution failed to appear but Nathan was dismissed from his position as watchman. He continued to work at Oatlands through 1839, being charged with a number of instances of neglect of duty and disorderly conduct resulting in a month's solitary confinement. A ticket of leave was issued on 3 September 1840.
OBSP, 1834, case 1086, p. 603f.; CON 31/33; CON 18/3, no. 337; CSO 1/781/16664.
NATHAN, Solomon
William Metcalf, 1834; Convict.
Solomon Nathan was described on the appropriation list of his convict transport ship as a labourer, a Jew, and assigned to the Public Works Department. His name did not appear on the ship's indent, or in the list of convicts registered in Van Diemen's Land.
VDL Papers, ML, A1059-7, p. 123.
Solomon Nathan and his wife Miriam had a son, Benjamin Albert Nathan, in Melbourne in 1845. The child was registered as a Jew. Subsequently, Leah Phillips Nathan was born in 1846, Lion in 1847, Moss in 1848, and Carol in 1851. In the elections of 1861, Abraham Nathan, the brother of Solomon Nathan, was arrested for impersonation following an attempt to swamp the number of voters at Mornington by a boatload of impostors who were hired for the occasion. Solomon protested that his other brother, John Nathan, was the real villain.
L. M. Goldman, The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century, p. 149.
NELSON, Benjamin (Levy)
b. Fordon, Prussia, 1813–1894
1839; Free.
Married; Dealer, Hawker; 8 children.
Benjamin Nelson was the brother of Morris Nelson (q.v.), and of Hanna, who married Harris Cohen, brother of P. J. Cohen (q.v.). Benjamin was licensed as a hawker on 26 January 1841 (Hobart Town Courier). Benjamin and his brother Morris shared a house in Elizabeth Street, being partners in a general business. On 9 November 1842 Benjamin Nelson married Frances (Fanny) Nathan in the seventh Jewish wedding in Van Diemen's Land. His profession was given as publican at the time of the wedding. She was the daughter of Edward and Hannah Nathan (qq.v.). Louis Nathan (q.v.) officiated at the wedding, which was held at the home of Isaac Friedman (q.v.).
Henry, their infant son, died aged seven months on 10 October 1844 and was the synagogue's third funeral. ‘B. Nelson’ was listed as giving £5 to the Hobart Synagogue building fund. In 1843, as a resident of Longford, he contributed two shillings and sixpence when there was an appeal for the family of a constable killed by bushrangers on 9 June that year (Hobart Town Courier). Nelson also had a store in Perth. In 1844 he gave two guineas to the Launceston building fund.
By 1846 Nelson had moved to Maitland and was named as one of the three founding trustees of the local Jewish cemetery. In 1847 Benjamin and Frances Nelson were living in West Maitland in 1847 where their daughter Hinda was born. Rebecca was born at Scone in 1850. Rachael was born at Sydney in 1853 and Amelia in 1857.
On 9 September 1854 Benjamin Nelson of Liverpool Plains became a naturalised British subject. Morris and Benjamin established a trading company that operated in Maitland, Sydney and Orange. Benjamin served as a magistrate in Orange for twenty-four years and was twice mayor of the town. He died in Sydney at the age of eighty-one after a marriage that lasted fifty-nine years. Frances died on 13 June 1898. Only four of their eight children survived their parents.
The children were Henry (died 1844), Hannah (married Harris Cohen), Phoebe (married Joseph Leeds), Rosetta (married Adolphe Alexander), Amanda, Reginald (married Sarah Brodziak), Edward (married Bertha Brodziak), Elizabeth Nelson.
Hobart Town Courier, 26 January 1841, 5 March 1841, 9 June 1843; Launceston Examiner, 29 June 1844. Family information Mrs Jane Walters and Vivien Solo,
NELSON, Caroline
1832–1911
Free.
Caroline, daughter of Raphael Benjamin was the wife of Morris Nelson (q.v.). She died in Sydney on 31 August 1911 and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery.
NELSON, John
b. London, 1801
Prince George, 1837; Convict; Sentenced to life, Central Criminal Court, 1836.
Labourer; Height: 164 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, several small moles on cheeks. Lost a front tooth. Could read and write. Jew. John Nelson was sentenced on 13 June 1836 to be transported for life for stealing a watch. No previous convictions were recorded.
John Nelson arrived in New South Wales on 8 May 1837 and was sent from the Hyde Park Barracks to work at the convict station on Goat Island in Sydney Harbour. ‘Edward’ Nelson, who came out as a convict on the Prince George in 1837, received a conditional pardon on 2 March 1846 and a certificate of freedom on 13 September 1851.
Prince George no. 37-782, Printed Indent, p. 67 (Fiche 727); 1837 Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Butts of Certificates of Freedom, 5 May 1851 to 26 February 1854, 4/4415; CF 46/241–51/0106.
NELSON, Morris
1818–1877
Free.
Shepherdess, 1840, Dealer; Married; 12 children.
In March 1841, Morris and his brother Benjamin Nelson (q.v.) were listed as sharing a house in Elizabeth Street in Hobart Town, where they had a general business. In 1844 a ‘Nelson’, a non member, gave ten shillings to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation.
In June 1852 Morris married Caroline Benjamin, daughter of Raphael Benjamin (q.v.) and one year later had a daughter, Hannah, who was registered as a member of the Jewish community in Melbourne. The following month Morris Nelson was able to give a donation of £10 10s to the synagogue building appeal. In 1857 Nelson took a leading role in the establishment of the break-away East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and served as its first honorary treasurer. In December 1859 Nelson laid the foundation stone of the Jewish School established by the East Melbourne Synagogue.
Morris Nelson died on 5 July 1877 at his home at 33 Lower Fort Street, Sydney. He was described as the former treasurer of the East Melbourne Synagogue and ‘of the firm of Nelson Bros, Orange … leaving an affectionate wife and large family to mourn their loss’.
The family consisted of Hannah (married Henry Mitchell), Joseph (married Isabelle Lesser), Rachel (married Solomon Morris). Hannah (married Henry Woolf), Solomon (married Abigail Sanders), Leah, infant daughter, Julia (married Leopold S. Benjamin), Ernest (married Adele Joseph), Elizabeth (married Henry Isaacs), Herbert (married Constance Bourke), Florence (married John Levi) and Ina Nelson.
Hobart Town Courier, 5 March 1841; Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 1877. Family information Mrs Jane Walters, Melbourne.
NEWTON, David
1813–1853
Free.
Single; Dealer; 8 children.
David Newton married Hannah Phillips (q.v.), the sister of Solomon Phillips (q.v.), in Sydney at the Sydney Synagogue on 6 January 1841. A son, Solomon (Charles), was born in Sydney on 18 September 1841. Michael was born on 7 December 1842. An infant, Henry, born in 1843, was buried at the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery on 25 August 1843. A daughter, Eva, was born in Sydney in 1844. Isaac was born in Sydney in 1847. Julie was born in Queanbeyan in 1849. The Melbourne Hebrew Congregation's Birth Register listed Nancy, born on 22 March 1851. Newton was listed as a ‘fruiterer’.
The 1842 Sydney voters' list showed that Newton was working as an auctioneer with a house and shop in George Street. He had given the Sydney Synagogue building fund £10 in 1839 and was a seat holder in the new Sydney Synagogue in 1845, however, David Newton ‘a dealer’ was forced to meet with his creditors on 24 February 1843.
David Newton died on 10 March 1853, having been confined ‘for some time’ in the Lunatic Asylum. He was forty years of age.
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1839, 9 September 1842, 15 September 1842, 24 February 1843, 13 September 1843. Family information John Norris.
Rachel's brother-in-law was Isaac Friedman (q.v.), who was married to Rebecca Friedman (q.v.) (née Nieto). They were descendants of England's first Sephardi rabbinic family. Rachel was a bounty migrant, and had arrived on 25 October 1834. She married William Quick in 1838 and settled in Maitland, where she is said to have had eight children.
Information from Dr Elizabeth Rushen.
NORTON, P. W.
c. 1843; Free.
P. W. Norton asked the Hobart Congregation for financial assistance on 23 June 1845.