Mordechai Sheftall, 1735-1797, the highest-ranking Jew to serve in the American Revolution, was a devout Jew who stood strong in his beliefs and a fiercely patriotic American who suffered for his country.

His parents, Benjamin and Perla Sheftall, originally from Germany, were among the first group of Jewish settlers to Savannah, Georgia, and for many years Benjamin kept a diary recounting the goings on of the fledgling community. In December 1735 they were blessed with a son, Mordechai. Tragically, Perla passed away when Mordechai was still an infant, and his father married Chana Solomons three years later.

Many members of the community were former conversos who had escaped Portugal and returned to Judaism. Their sense of safety was shattered when Britain and Spain went to war in 1739 in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, which brought the fighting dangerously close to home.

Spain had long claimed Georgia as its own territory and disputed the British right to settle there, and the Spanish governor of Florida led an invasion into Georgia. Thankfully, Georgia remained in British hands, but fear that a successful conquest would bring the Inquisition to their new home led almost the entire Jewish community of Savannah to disperse.

The Sheftalls, however, stayed on, possibly the only Jewish family in the colony of Georgia for many years. Nevertheless, Benjamin remained a committed Jew and raised his family accordingly. Written records even show his frustration when the tefillin he ordered from London for Mordechai’s bar mitzvah did not arrive in time!

Branching Out

As an adult, Mordechai turned to business to secure his future. To start, he bought deerskins, which he tanned and sold. Eventually, he did well enough to buy land. He also received land grants from the colony in order to develop them.

His business dealings brought him in contact with Joshua Hart in Charleston, South Carolina, who thought Mordechai would be a wonderful match for his sister Fanny. The couple married in October 1761.

They had six children together: Sheftall, born 1762 (yes, his name was actually Sheftall Sheftall!); Perla (named for Mordechai’s mother), born 1763; Elias, born 1765, who died shortly after birth; Benjamin (named for Mordechai’s father who had passed away two years earlier); Moses, born in 1769; and Esther, born 1773.

Mordechai continued his father’s trajectory, raising his family to be committed, observant Jews. To his good fortune, throughout the years of raising his children, Jews began to return once again to Savannah, and by 1774 there were enough Jews to form a minyan for the High Holidays, which was held at the Sheftall home.

The Sheftall home now became a functioning synagogue, with services held every Shabbat and holiday. Until, that is, the outbreak of the American Revolution.

Fierce Patriot

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Mordechai was a wealthy and distinguished citizen of Savannah. He quickly became a fierce Patriot, head of the “parochial committee,” which enforced the Continental Congress’s ban on British commercial goods entering the colony. Mordechai turned away any British commercial vessel seeking to dock at Savannah.

He did such a good job that in 1778 he was appointed Commissary General to the Continental troops in Georgia, becoming the highest-ranking Jew to serve in the American Revolution.

But before Congress could officially certify his position, Mordechai became a POW.

Captured by the British

Incredibly, we have a letter written by Mordechai himself where he details the story of his capture:

“This day [December 29, 1778] the British troops, consisting of about 3,500 men, including two battalions of Hessians under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of the Seventy-first Regiment of Highlanders, landed early in the morning at Brewton Hill, two miles below the town of Savannah, where they met with very little opposition before they gained the height.

At about three o'clock p.m. they entered and took possession of the town of Savannah, when I endeavored, with my son Sheftall, to make our escape across Musgrove Creek, having first premised that an intrenchment had been thrown up there in order to cover a retreat, and upon seeing Colonel Samuel Elbert and Major John Habersham endeavor to make their escape that way.

But on our arrival at the creek, after having sustained a very heavy fire of musketry from the light infantry under the command of Sir James Baird, during the time we were crossing the Common, without any injury to either of us, we found it in high water. And my son not knowing how to swim, and we with about 186 officers and privates being caught, as it were, in a pen, and the Highlanders keeping up a constant fire on us, it was thought advisable to surrender ourselves prisoners, which we accordingly did.

And which was no sooner done than the Highlanders plundered every one amongst us, except Major Low, myself, and son, who, being foremost, had an opportunity to surrender ourselves to the British officer, namely, Lieutenant Peter Campbell, who disarmed us as we came into the yard formerly occupied by Mr.Moses Nunes.”

Later in his narrative, Mordechai describes the abuses he suffered as a Patriot prisoner of war:

On our way to the white guardhouse we met with Colonel Campbell, who inquired of the Major who he had got there. On his naming me to him, he desired that I might be well-guarded, as I was a very great rebel. The major obeyed his orders, for, on lodging me in the guardhouse, he ordered the sentry to guard me with a drawn bayonet and not to suffer me to go without the reach of it, which orders were strictly complied with until a Mr. Gild Busler, their commissary general, called for me and ordered me to go with him to my stores, that he might get some provisions for our people, who, he said, were starving, not having eat[en] anything for three days, which I contradicted, as I had victualled them that morning for the day.


On our way to the office where I used to issue the provisions, he ordered me to give him information of what stores I had in town and what I had sent out of town, and where. This I declined doing, which made him angry. He asked me if I knew that Charlestown
[South Carolina] was taken. I told him: “No.” He then called us poor, deluded wretches, and said, “Good G‑d! How are you deluded by your leaders!” When I inquired of him who had taken it, and when, he said, General [James] Grant, with 10,000 men, and that it had been taken eight or ten days ago, I smiled and told him it was not so, as I had a letter in my pocket that was wrote in Charlestown but three days ago by my brother.


He replied we had been misinformed. I then retorted that I found they could be misinformed by their leaders, as well as we could be deluded by ours. This made him so angry that when he returned me to the guardhouse, he ordered me to be confined
amongst the drunken soldiers and negroes, where I suffered a great deal of abuse and was threatened to be run through the body or, as they termed it, “skivered” by one of the York Volunteers, which threat he attempted to put into execution three times during
the night, but was prevented by one Sergeant Campbell …

After spending a few days in the guard house, Mordechai and his son Sheftall were transferred to an even worse confinement, imprisonment on the Nancy, one of the infamous British prison ships, where one of the first things Mordechai saw “was one of our poor Continental soldiers laying on the ship’s main deck in the agonies of death, and who expired in a few hours.”

But even during the harsh conditions of prison life, Mordechai remained committed to his faith. A friend of his, Reverend Moses Allen, who tragically drowned while trying to escape from the ship, wrote in his diary, which was subsequently recovered from his body: “Pork for dinner. The Jews, Sheftall and son, refused to eat their pieces, and their knifes and forks were ordered to be greased with it. It is happiness that Mr. Sheftall is a fellow sufferer. He bears it with such fortitude as is an example to me.”

Through thick and thin, Mordechai stuck to his religion and his country.

Release and Recapture

Mordechai was eventually released on parole to Sunbury, around 30 miles south of Savannah, where he was kept under watchful eye by the British authorities. His son Sheftall continued to languish on the Nancy, until he too was paroled in June 1779, when he rejoined his father.

Throughout their period of internment and parole, Mordechai wrote frequently to his wife, Fanny, who had taken the children to the safety of Charleston shortly before Mordechai and his son were captured. Their letters indicate that they had a very loving relationship.

In one postscript from 1780, Fanny adds: “Perla begs that you will excuse this scrool, as she has wrote it in great haste, and our Sabbeth is coming on so fast.” Clearly, there is nothing modern to the pre Shabbat rush!

In October 1779, following threats to their lives by a local Tory militia, the Sheftall’s decided to escape from Sunbury as per the advice of the Continental Army who recommended that “they remove themselves to a place of safety, but to consider themselves still on parole.”

Mordechai, Sheftall, and several other American officers boarded a small ship with the aim of sailing to Charleston. No doubt Mordechai was eagerly looking forward to reuniting with his wife and children whom he had not seen for close to a year. Unfortunately, it was not to be, because he was captured again!

The HMS Guadalupe intercepted their ship, and Mordechai and Sheftall were once again prisoners. This time, the Guadalupe took them to the Caribbean isle of Antigua, where they remained as prisoners for several months before being released for a second time on parole. June 1780 found Mordechai and son safe and sound back behind American lines in Philadelphia.

Fanny and the kids, however, were stuck in what was now British-occupied Charleston, which had fallen to the British following a siege. (Fanny mentions in a letter to her husband that the cannonballs “flew like hail during the cannonading.”) The Sheftall family would have to wait till the end of hostilities before reuniting.

Mordechai, of course, did not sit idly by for the rest of the war. He invested in a privateering ship (which failed miserably; the ship ran aground on its first mission), and Sheftall commanded a relief ship bringing supplies to American prisoners in Charleston.

Rebuilding in Savannah

The reunited Sheftall family returned to Savannah in 1782, where Mordechai resumed his prewar business and community activities. He was actively involved in building Jewish Savannah, becoming a founding member and president of Congregation Mikve Israel, and establishing a Jewish cemetery, where his grave can be visited today.

Mordechai passed away on July 6, 1797, at 61 years old, a beloved father, husband, outstanding citizen, and pillar of the Savannah Jewish community.

Sources:

American Jewish Archives, published by the American Jewish archives 1975.

The Sheftall diaries: Vital records of Savanah Jewry 1733-1808, Malcolm H. Stern, American Jewish historical Quarter vol 54 no 3 (March 1965)

A Drowned Body, newly discovered Documents, and a Jew’s persecution during the American revolution: