Aaron Hart (businessman)
| Aaron Hart | |
|---|---|
Painting of Aaron Hart by Dominic Boudet
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| Born |
August 16, 1724 London, England |
| Died | December 28, 1800 (aged 76) Trois-Rivières, Quebec |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothea Judah |
Aaron Philip Hart (Hebrew: משה אורי בן יחזקאל; August 16, 1724 – December 28, 1800) was a businessman in Lower Canada and one of the first Jews to settle in the colony. He is considered the father of Canadian Jewry. He was one of the founding members of Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal (Shearith Israel), a wealthy man with numerous landed estates, and the married father of four sons, including the future politician Ezekiel Hart, and four daughters.
Aaron was born August 16, 1724, at London, England, to Yehezkel (Ezekiel) and Judah Hirsh, immigrants from Fürth, now in Bavaria (they later changed their name to Hart, the English version of their name). He became a member of the St. Paul's Lodge of Freemasons on June 10, 1760, making him one of the first Jews in North America to become a Mason.
Some accounts say mistakenly that Hart crossed the Atlantic with Sir Frederick Haldimand during the Seven Years' War between England and France. Hart was appointed commissary officer in Jeffrey Amherst's army, and he travelled north and entered Montreal with Amherst's army in 1760. He settled at Trois-Rivières in 1761. Hart supplied the British troops stationed there. He was appointed postmaster of Trois-Rivières in August 1763.
One of the first Jews in Canada, in 1768 Hart was a founding member of Shearith Israel, the Sephardic synagogue at Montreal. He was an Ashkenazi Jew who spoke and wrote fluent Jiddisch-Deutsch (Jewish-German, related to Yiddish), but at that time, most of the British Jews were of Sephardic descent and ritual.
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