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Lindo family

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Lindo Coat of Arms

The Lindo family was a Sephardic Jewish merchant and banking family, which rose to prominence in medieval Spain.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Portugal

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Manuel Lindo was a cosmographer and Chair of the Astronomy department at the University of Coimbra in the 16th century. He published a nautical guide in manuscript form in 1539.[7][8] He was a dear friend of Amatus Lusitanus, who described him as the eminent astronomer.[9] He worked with Pedro Nunes, Abraham Zacuto, José Vizinho, João Faras to build instruments that made Europe's worldwide expansion possible.[10][11]

Francisco Lindo was arrested for Judaism and Heresy in Évora, on 12 August 1644.

Francisco's son Joao Rodrigues Lindo married Contance Nunes of Guarda and lived in Campo Maior. Their son, Isaac (Lourenco), was born in Badajoz in 1638. He became a merchant in Tenerife, where he and his wife arrested by the Inquisition in 1656. After being held without trial for two years, Isaac and his wife were penanced and released. The family lived in France before settling in London in around 1670.[12][13]

His brother, Antonio Rodriguez Lindo, a Lisbon merchant, was arrested on 9 October 1660 for Judaism and was condemned to public Abjuration at the Auto-da-fé of Lisbon on 17 September 1662.

United Kingdom

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Elias Lindo Family Tree

One of the oldest and most esteemed of London Sephardic families, it traces its descent to Isaac Lindo.[14]

Isaac visited London in the early 1650s and was married there around 1653. Antonio Fernandez Carvajal and Abraham Chilon, who commissioned one of the first brokers medals in 1655, were his maternal uncles.[15]

He settled in London around 1670 where he became an elder of Bevis Marks Synagogue, one of the first Jewish brokers of the Royal Exchange, London in 1681 and a signatory of the *Ascamot of 1694.[16][17] His children included:

  • Alexander Lindo (1666-1727) became a sworn broker in 1683, married Rachel Lopes Pereira, a sister of Diego Pereira d'Aguilar, in 1708 and had six children.
  • Elias Lindo (1690-1727), sworn broker, commissioned the Lindo lamp in 1708 to celebrate his marriage to Rachel Lopes Ferreira with whom he had six children.
The first medal issued under the 1697 Act. This medal belonged to Elias Lindo, one of the brokers originally sworn in 1697, and is currently in the collection of the Museum of London.

For nine successive generations members of the family were sworn brokers of the City of London, until the registration of sworn brokers was abolished in 1886:[18][19][20]

  1. Isaac Lindo (1638-1712): became a sworn broker in 1681, married Leah Lopes and had issue including:
  2. Elias Lindo (1690-1727): sworn broker, married to Rachel Lopes Ferreira and had issue including:
  3. Isaac Lindo (1709-1766): sworn broker, married Bathseba Abarbanel and had issue including:
  4. Elias Lindo: sworn broker, married Grace Lumbroso de Mattos and had issue including:
  5. Moses Lindo (1760-1837): sworn broker, married Sarah DaCosta and had issue including:
  6. Moses DaCosta Lindo (1784-1866): sworn broker, married Leah Norsa and had issue:
  7. Sarah DaCosta Lindo (born 1814) who married her cousin Nathaneel Lindo (1810-1889), sworn broker and solicitor, and had issue including:
  8. Joseph Norsa Lindo (born 1837), sworn broker, who the last member of the family to pay for a "Jew Broker medal" in 1858, married Esther Benoliel and had issue including:
  9. Moses Albert Norsa Lindo (1862-1933): sworn broker[21]

Six of their brokers medals are on display at the Museum of London.[22]

Moses DaCosta Lindo (1784-1866) Broker's Medal

The Lindos were closely related to many other "cousinhood" families of note in Britain, including the Mocatta, Goldsmid and the Montefiores.

Members of the family have been active in the affairs of the Sephardi community.

Moses Lindo (1760-1837) served as President of Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1817 to 1829. Moses' brother, David Abarbanel Lindo, married Sarah Lumbroso de Mattos and had no less than eighteen children, many of whom married into well known Sephardic families.[23]

David's son Nathaneel Lindo (1810-1889) was a City solicitor who operated the firm Lindo & Co., which had long acted as solicitors for the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue and the Italian consulate in London, a tradition which his sons: Gabriel (1838-1908) and Arthur Lindo (1839-1905) continued.

David Lindo Alexander, a grandson of David Abarbanel Lindo, was President of Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1903 to 1917.

In 1937, Frank Charles Lindo (1872-1938), a great grandson of David Abarbanel Lindo, donated funds to build the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital, London.

Jamaica

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Alexandre Lindo (1742-1812)

Among the Jewish residents who made their mark on Kingston’s development, the Lindo family were outstanding.

When Alexandre Lindo arrived in Kingston in 1765, he rented a house on Port Royal Street, and by 1769 he had relocated to a rented house on Peter’s Lane. Alexandre had many children, seven with his first wife, Hannah, and after her death, sixteen with his second wife, Esther Salome. From early, Alexandre set up business on Princess Street, where over time, he acquired several properties. In 1788, he bought a row of houses on Port Royal Street leading to the harbour and established Lindo’s Wharf there.

Lindos earned the bulk of his fortune through the trade in enslaved Africans. Between 1782 and 1805, Lindos served as a factor for the sale of at least forty-two thousand enslaved Africans in Jamaica and surrounding Caribbean colonies. He was, likely, In 1802, he lent French Forces 500,000 British pounds to help finance French efforts to re-enslave Haitians in the former French slave colony of Saint-Domingue. [24]

Per Stanley Mirvis' The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Testamentary History of a Diaspora in Transition, Lindo "was perhaps the most notorious Jamaican Jewish slave trader, absentee planter, and moneylender at the end of the eighteenth century..."[25]

He owned multiple transatlantic vessels and traded in all types of merchandise. For example, one of his vessels, the Esther Lindo, described by Lloyd's Register as a constant trader on the London-Jamaica run, cleared Jamaica for London on May 28, 1790 laden with sugar, cotton, pimento, Nicaragua wood, coffee, ginger, rum, wine, silver, sweetmeats, tamarinds, balsam, copper, castor oil, and tortoise shell.[26] He owned numerous properties including Greenwich Park (the first steam powered plantation in Jamaica) and Pleasant Hill, a large coffee plantation. Lindo was a successful businessman who bought and traded goods captured by the British Royal Navy.

He supplied André Rigaud during the War of Knives and was close to a French jew who was executed while trying to spark a slave revolt in Jamaica in 1799. He made large loans to the French Government during the Peace of Amiens, negotiated by Charles Leclerc, to finance the Saint-Domingue expedition. When Britain declared war on France, on May 18, 1803, ending the Peace of Amiens, Lindo attempted to draw a draft in Paris, but the debt was dishonoured and Lindo was threatened with arrest.[27][28][29]

His eldest son, Abraham Alexander Lindo, was put in charge of the family business in Jamaica and Alexandre moved to London, where he was involved in trading, banking and insurance. He leased part of Roehampton estate called Putney Spot from Benjamin Goldsmid while constructing a mansion in Finsbury Square.

He was elected Parnas of Bevis Marks Synagogue in 1805.[30][31] That year his sons subdivided Kingston Pen into small lots which then formed a mixed-race working-class township known as Lindo's Town. Lindo’s Town included areas now known as Trenchtown, Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens.

He died at Finsbury Square on March 12, 1812.[32][33][34]

Prominent descendants of Isaac Lindo

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Business, politics and law

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Arts and entertainment

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Science, Medicine and Education

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Other

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Notable people with the surname include

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References

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  1. ^ Church, Catholic; America, Renaissance Society of (2001-01-01). Jews in the Canary Islands: Being a Calendar of Jewish Cases Extracted from the Records of the Canariote Inquisition in the Collection of the Marquess of Bute. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8450-7.
  2. ^ "The Lindo Story". The Lampstand Magazine. 2016-05-18. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  3. ^ Maclise, Daniel; Murray, Peter (2008). Daniel Maclise, 1806-1870: Romancing the Past. Crawford Art Gallery. ISBN 978-0-948037-66-5.
  4. ^ Ranston, Jackie (2000). The Lindo Legacy. Toucan Books. ISBN 978-1-903435-00-7.
  5. ^ "Moses Lindo ; a sketch of the most prominent Jew in Charleston in provincial days". Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 - CURIOSity Digital Collections. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  6. ^ Henderson, John P.; Davis, John B. (2012-12-06). The Life and Economics of David Ricardo. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4615-6129-3.
  7. ^ Garcia, José Manuel; Sevilha 1992, Comissariado de Portugal para a Exposição Universal de (1992). Portugal and the Discoveries: The Meeting of Civilizations : [exhibition. Com[m]ission of Portugal for the Seville Universal Exhibition 1992.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ "Lindo, Manuel, professor of astronomy at Lisbon, 16th cent.: Astronomical tracts [Portuguese] - Medieval Manuscripts". medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  9. ^ Letras, Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de (1962). Revista (in Brazilian Portuguese).
  10. ^ Rasteiro, Alfredo (1992). Medicina e descobrimentos (in Brazilian Portuguese). Livraria Almedina. ISBN 978-972-40-0702-1.
  11. ^ Albuquerque, Luís de (1987). Crónicas de história de Portugal (in Brazilian Portuguese). Editorial Presença.
  12. ^ Church, Catholic; America, Renaissance Society of (2001-01-01). Jews in the Canary Islands: Being a Calendar of Jewish Cases Extracted from the Records of the Canariote Inquisition in the Collection of the Marquess of Bute. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8450-7.
  13. ^ England), Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation (London (1951). Treasures of a London Temple: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Ritual Plate, Mantles and Furniture of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Synagogue in Bevis Marks, Published by Authority of the Wardens and Elders of the Congregation on the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of Its Opening. Taylor's Foreign Press.
  14. ^ England, Jewish Historical Society of (1924). Transactions - The Jewish Historical Society of England. Jewish Historical Society of England.
  15. ^ "Moses Lindo Follows Ten Generations, Since Cromwell, to London Burial Plot". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  16. ^ "Hanukkah and the Lindo Lamp". Museum of London. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  17. ^ "BROKERS, JEW - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-01-11.
  18. ^ England), Jewish Museum (London (1992). The Portuguese Jewish Community in London, 1656-1830. Jewish Museum.
  19. ^ Church, Catholic; America, Renaissance Society of (2001-01-01). Jews in the Canary Islands: Being a Calendar of Jewish Cases Extracted from the Records of the Canariote Inquisition in the Collection of the Marquess of Bute. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8450-7.
  20. ^ "The Catalogue". London Brokers' Medals - By John M. Naylor. Retrieved 2023-01-11.
  21. ^ Friedenberg, Daniel M. (1970). Jewish Medals, from the Renaissance to the Fall of Napoleon (1503-1815). Jewish Museum.
  22. ^ England), Jewish Museum (London (1992). The Portuguese Jewish Community in London, 1656-1830. Jewish Museum.
  23. ^ "LINDO, DAVID ABARBANEL - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  24. ^ Nicholas Radburn, Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2023), 208 - 210
  25. ^ Mirvis, Stanley (2020). The Jews of eighteenth-century Jamaica : a testamentary history of a diaspora in transition. New Haven. ISBN 978-0-300-25203-3. OCLC 1153575617.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  26. ^ Faber, Eli (2000-07-01). Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-2879-6.
  27. ^ "LINDO, ALEXANDER - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-01-11.
  28. ^ Mirvis, Stanley (2020-05-01). The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Testamentary History of a Diaspora in Transition. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-25203-3.
  29. ^ "LINDO, ALEXANDER - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
  30. ^ "Places of interest - Richmond and south west london - Trails - Anglo-Jewish History - JTrails.org.uk". www.jtrails.org.uk. Retrieved 2023-01-11.
  31. ^ Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. The Society. 2001.
  32. ^ Rauschenbach, Sina; Schorsch, Jonathan (2019-04-09). The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-99196-2.
  33. ^ "Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  34. ^ Girard, Philippe R. (2011-11-02). The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801-1804. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-1732-4.
  35. ^ a b "Lindo, Moses". South Carolina Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  36. ^ Gurock, Jeffrey S. (2014-02-04). The Colonial and Early National Period 1654-1840: American Jewish History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-67437-2.
  37. ^ Jewish Social Studies. Indiana University Press. 1987.
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