Lazarus David and his remarkable progeny were one of the founding families of Montreal’s Jewish community. They were intimately tied to the fur trade, Montreal’s first synagogue and burial ground, and the growing achievements of the Jewish community as they became a part of the Canadian national experience.1 Lazarus began the process of transformation from supplying military provisions to meeting the needs of the fur trade and settlers, while his sons, especially David, would preside over the modernization of Montreal’s economy into banking, canals, and industrialization.2 Second son Samuel joined David as his Montreal partner, while third son Moses — the subject of this chapter — carried the family’s fortunes to Detroit and the new frontier of Upper Canada.
The David Family
Lazarus David was born in Swansea in 1734 and started a fur trading business in Montreal soon after his arrival from Wales in the early 1760s.3 Like other English-speaking merchants, he became involved in the city’s bustling economic life as a contractor and supplier to the British occupational army. In 1761,4 he married Phoebe Samuel in New York, where their first child, Abigail — “Branny” — was born on May 13, 1762.5 Returning to Montreal, three sons followed in regular fashion, David (1764), Samuel (1766), and Moses (1768) before a fifth child, a second daughter, Frances, completed the family in 1770.6 The daughters, first and last of the David children, played the role assigned to them by the customs of the day and entered into appropriate marriages that contributed to the family’s success and reinforced the small Jewish community and the economic connections with the fur trade.
Abigail married Andrew Hayes, a New York City merchant and silversmith of Dutch origin who had moved to Montreal around 1763. He rapidly established himself as a successful merchant and a prominent member of the nascent Jewish community centred around the Shearith Israel synagogue.7 The marriage took place in 1778 and the first of their seven children was born the following year. Their most prominent son, Moses Judah Hayes, and other Hayes grandchildren would carry on the family tradition in Montreal’s Jewish community and take a leading part in the revival of the synagogue and restoration of Shearith Israel in the 1830s and 1840s.8 In 1777, as a token of esteem for her father, Lazarus David, Andrew and Abigail Hayes had some copper coins minted bearing his name. Deposited in the cornerstone of the first synagogue, these mementos were then moved to the Chenneville Street building when it opened in 1828, and from there, in 1890, to the Stanley Street Synagogue. They still are housed in the present Lemieux Street building that was completed in 1947.9
The youngest daughter, Frances (Franny) David, was born in 1770.10 She married Myer Michaels who was trading furs at Michilimackinac as early as 1778.11 The marriage in 1793 united the families in two ways as Michaels was joined in formal partnership with David David’s company from 1793 to 1795 and informally thereafter. Perhaps Moses David’s growing stature in Detroit and the Great Lakes trade made the partnership redundant, or Michael’s closer ties with the emerging North West Company drew his attention beyond the Great Lakes to the far west. Michaels, according to Samuel’s diary, had teamed up with Mackenzie, the McGillevrays, and other fur traders from the North West Company when, in 1787, that alliance produced the larger organization, which eventually took over control of the entire St. Lawrence fur-trading territory. Michaels was already a member of the prestigious Beaver Club in 1793, while David David and brother Samuel remained more independent and diversified in their interests and did not become members until 1808 and 1811 respectively — at a time when contacts and financial investment, rather than actual participation in the northwest trade was most important for Club membership. While the North West Company consortium increasingly controlled the fur trade, the Davids became most closely associated with the process of diversification and modernization of the economy. The Davids’ fur-trading business was ultimately sold to the North West Company, but upon David David’s death, the company still owed him a substantial sum.12 Frances shared her family’s dedication to Montreal’s Jewish community and her large contribution of £575 to the Spanish and Portuguese congregation’s building fund served an impetus for others during its 1838 reorganization. Their donations made possible the acquisition of a new piece of land on Chenneville Street, near Lagauchetiere Street, on which the new synagogue, Shearith Israel, could finally be built.13
“The David Family had joined the Harts and the Josephs as the acknowledged leaders of Montreal Jewry during these years. In contrast to many of Lower Canada’s early Jewish families, the children of Lazarus and Phoebe David all married Jews, save for the eldest, David David, who remained ‘single.’ ”14 And as soon as some economic stability had been achieved, Lazarus David began to dream of a synagogue for the nascent community. Settlement had not been easy for the Jews of Montreal. Faced with a hostile environment, they had used their innate survival skills to overcome the rigors and hardships of this awakening frontier. By utilizing their collective strength, they eventually succeeded as merchants, fur traders, and peddlers, and in service-oriented pursuits that not only helped them gain some degree of acceptance within Montreal’s greater community, but also gave them the courage to build Canada’s first synagogue — only the sixth on the North American continent.15
Shearith Israel held its first public worship in rented quarters on St. James Street.16 Even though many of its members were Ashkenazi Jews, it had adopted the Sephardic rites, mainly because its founders, who had come from the American colonies and from Great Britain, still had close ties with the Spanish-Portuguese synagogues of New York and London.17 In 1775, Lazarus David purchased a lot on St. Janvier Street, near Dominion Square in Montreal, in order “to serve in perpetuity as a cemetery for individuals of the Jewish faith.”18 Lazarus David died on October 22, 1776, one year before the first synagogue was erected at the corner of Notre Dame and Little St. James streets on land he had bequeathed to his son David, who had in turn donated it to the congregation. Even though Lazarus David had not lived long enough to see the building completed, he had the unique distinction of being the first Jew in Canada to be interred in the cemetery.19
Fortunately, the widow Phoebe David was made of stern stuff. While raising five children, she took over the family assets, managed the mercantile business, and carried out her late husband’s wishes. As she reported to Governor General Frederick Haldimand in 1780, it was a struggle to maintain five children “out of the profits of a small shop, her only support.” Shortly before her death, a visiting British merchant took tea with her and was charmed by “a very sensible clever old woman” who was “very entertaining in her conversation.” Shown the synagogue by one of her sons, the visitor reported that it was “a very neat one for so small a congregation.”20 Phoebe David died on October 10, 1786.21 David became the head of the family business with brother Samuel as a partner. Moses was in charge of buying furs from the Indians. That he proved his skills many times over was borne out by the fact that he had established a reputation for his ability to procure and select the finest pelts at the best possible prices for the entire Montreal market.
Moses David: Pioneer Loyalist, Merchant, and Equal Rights Advocate
Moses was acting as the family’s representative in the Detroit area as early as 1790.22 In 1793, an early Detroit trader, Thomas Dugan, complained to Colonel Alex McKee, the British Indian Agent,23 that Moses David, “another cheap shop adventurer, the same that was here three years ago [1790], is arrived with a Cargo, it appears that he and his competitor Mr. Pattison, are fully resolved to undersell all the other traders of this place.”24 The charge against Moses as a “cheap shop adventurer” suggests that he was not a permanent resident who was part of the community with established premises, and strengthens the notion that Moses was not yet committed to Detroit as a permanent location for his entrepreneurial activities. It is interesting to note that nothing further is heard of the complainant,