Portrait of Abigaill Franks (1696–1756).
Gerardus Duyckinck I
1735
Image
Born in London, as a young girl Abigaill Levy immigrated with her parents to New York City. In 1712, she married Jacob Franks, with whom she would have nine children. Despite his Ashkenazic family background, they were welcomed as honored members at New York’s Sephardic synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel. The thirty-five letters that survive from her correspondence with her son Naphtali in England, written between 1733 and 1748, are the earliest surviving letters of a Jewish woman from the New World, and one of the few autobiographical pieces written by a woman from this period.
Credits
© Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2005.8. Photography by Dwight Primiano.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.
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