Jacob Rodriguez Rivera

Jacob Rodriguez Rivera (1717 – 18 February 1789) was a Sephardic Jewish merchant, shipowner, and candle manufacturer active in colonial Newport, Rhode Island. Born into a converso family in Seville, Spain, he arrived in Newport by way of Curaçao in 1748 and quickly became one of the colony's most prominent commercial figures. He is credited with introducing spermaceti candle manufacturing to the American colonies, a trade that brought considerable prosperity to Newport in the decades before the American Revolution. He was also a co-founder and civic leader of the Congregation Jeshuat Israel, now known as the Touro Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States.

The Rivera family was of Sephardic origin and had lived in Seville for generations before the Spanish Inquisition compelled them to practice Judaism secretly, becoming conversos.^[1] Some members of the extended Rivera family had previously fled to Mexico in the seventeenth century in a fruitless attempt to escape Inquisitorial persecution there as well.^[1]

Jacob was born in 1717, the son of Abraham Rodriguez Rivera, a converso who eventually made his way to New York City, where he underwent formal reconversion to Judaism and was naturalized as a British subject.^[2] Jacob accompanied his father to New York as a child. As a young man he traveled to Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island with an established Sephardic Jewish community, where he married Hannah Pimental Sasportas.^[3] Their daughter Sarah was born in New York before the family moved to Newport.^[2]

Rivera was naturalized in New York in 1746, which enabled him to participate freely in transatlantic commerce.^[4] He relocated to Newport around 1748, a city whose colonial charter, derived from the founding principles of Roger Williams, offered an unusual degree of religious tolerance that attracted Sephardic Jewish merchants from the Iberian Peninsula and the West Indies.^[5]

Rivera's most historically significant commercial achievement was the introduction of spermaceti candle manufacturing to the American colonies.^[5] Spermaceti, a waxy substance derived from the sperm whale's head cavity, burned brighter and more cleanly than tallow or ordinary whale blubber oil, making it a highly sought commodity for both domestic lighting and export.^[6] Newport soon held a near-monopoly on this trade in British North America, and Rivera stood at its center.^[7]

In 1761, Rivera was a charter member of the United Company of Spermaceti Chandlers, a trade association formed to regulate prices, control the supply of raw sperm head-matter, and limit competition among New England candle manufacturers.^[4] The company's Articles of Agreement, signed on 5 November 1761, set a maximum price to be paid to whale-oil suppliers and a fixed sale price for candles throughout New England. Historians have described this as one of the earliest examples of coordinated, anti-competitive trade regulation in American history.^[1] Rivera led the association's efforts to enforce these agreements and chaired meetings, with his colleagues showing him the notable courtesy of scheduling no Saturday sessions out of respect for his observance of the Jewish Sabbath.^[4] He owned extensive spermaceti processing factories and was also a major importer of finished goods.^[2]

Around 1760 Rivera entered a commercial partnership with Henry Collins, a leading Newport civic figure and a founder of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum.^[4] Rivera himself became a member and patron of the Redwood Library, and his name appears in its records as early as 1758.^[2] A painted portrait of Rivera, attributed to Gilbert Stuart and dated to around 1775, hangs today in the Redwood Library and Athenaeum collection.^[8]

Rivera engaged in a broad range of commercial activities beyond candle manufacturing. He traded in rum, molasses, dry goods, whale oil, and manufactured goods.^[5] Like many of Newport's leading merchants, he was also involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1761 and 1774, Rivera and his son-in-law Aaron Lopez jointly dispatched at least fourteen slave ships to the west coast of Africa, with their vessels carrying an estimated 1,100 captive Africans to the West Indies and the southern colonies.^[9]

Rivera was the second most powerful and wealthy merchant within Newport's Jewish community, surpassed only by Aaron Lopez, his cousin and later his son-in-law.^[3] His daughter Sarah married Lopez in 1763 following the death of Lopez's first wife Abigail.^[10]

Rivera played a central role in the establishment of a permanent synagogue for Newport's Jewish community. In 1759, he was one of three men who, acting in trust for the congregation, purchased the land on which the synagogue was to be built.^[2] The resulting building, designed by architect Peter Harrison and dedicated on 2 December 1763, is today known as the Touro Synagogue and is a U.S. National Historic Site.^[11] The congregation bore the Hebrew name Yeshuat Israel (Salvation of Israel), and Rivera was among its founding leaders and served at various points as its parnas (president).^[12]

Rivera also appeared as an organizer of a Hebrew literary and social club in Newport in 1761.^[2]

Within Newport's Sephardic community, Rivera occupied a position of great social and religious prestige. The Loeb Database of Early American Jewish Portraits, which documents hundreds of colonial-era Jewish Americans, includes a biography of Rivera noting his prominence as both a merchant and a civic leader.^[3] The diary of the Congregationalist minister Ezra Stiles, who was a close friend of Newport's Jewish leaders, provides extensive contemporary descriptions of life in the community in which Rivera moved.^[5]

When the American Revolution disrupted commerce and led to the British occupation of Newport (1776–1779), Rivera's business was severely affected. He accompanied Aaron Lopez and other members of the Newport Jewish community to Leicester, Massachusetts, where he took up farming during the war years.^[4] Following Lopez's accidental death in 1782, Rivera returned to Newport and attempted to reestablish himself in commerce, though he had by this point been obliged to negotiate a compromise with his creditors to obtain release from accumulated debts.^[2]

Rivera died in Newport on 18 February 1789 and was interred in the colonial Jewish cemetery there, today known as the Touro Cemetery.

Rivera's introduction of the spermaceti candle trade to Newport is considered one of the formative commercial contributions to the colonial Rhode Island economy. By the time of the Revolution, Newport's candle industry had achieved a near-monopoly across the northern colonies, a dominance that Rivera's organizational and entrepreneurial efforts had done much to create.^[7][6] The home once owned by his family on the Parade (now Washington Square) was also the site where plans for the college that eventually became Brown University were first discussed in 1763.^[5]

His son Jacob Rivera Jr. owned a noted mansion at 8 Washington Square in Newport.^[5] His daughter Sarah Rivera Lopez and grandson Joshua Lopez were later subjects of portraits that are preserved in American Jewish collections.^[3]

• Aaron Lopez
• Touro Synagogue
• Congregation Jeshuat Israel
• Redwood Library and Athenaeum
• Sephardi Jews in the Americas

• Chyet, Stanley F. Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970.
• Gutstein, Morris A. The Story of the Jews of Newport: Two and a Half Centuries of Judaism, 1658–1908. New York: Bloch Publishing, 1936.
• Marcus, Jacob Rader. Early American Jewry, vol. 2. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953.
• Marcus, Jacob Rader. American Jewry: Documents, Eighteenth Century. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1959.