Aaron Lopez

Merchant
Aaron Lopez was born in Portugal, to a well-to-do Converso family, as Duarte (Edward) Lopez. He, his wife Anna, and their daughter Catherine, decided to leave Portugal for a new, openly Jewish life in British North America. The family joined Aaron’s older brother Moses in Newport, Rhode Island, where they Catherine reverted to Judaism and changed their names to Aaron, Abigail and Sarah, respectively.

In Newport, Aaron partnered with Jacob Rodriguez de Rivera in the manufacture and sale of spermaceti (whale oil) candles. By 1760 Aaron’s business activities had grown to include whaling and a few ventures in the slave trade, as well his main traffic in the export of Newport manufactures such as furniture, axes, plank and board, flour, barrel staves and salt fish.

To be able to freely trade with England, Aaron sought naturalization in Rhode Island, but was refused by the colony’s courts and legislature primarily because he was Jewish. To circumvent the ruling, he set up residence in Swansey, Massachusetts, and was naturalized at Taunton, Massachusetts in October 1762, where naturalization of Jews was allowed. The Rhode Island authorities accepted the naturalization from the sister colony.

Because of the American Revolutionary War, Lopez evacuated his family to Leicester, Massachusetts, in 1778 where he set up a retail shop and a modest commodities trade via overland routes through Salem, Boston and Providence. Soon he was a key supplier to the American forces, providing such necessities as flour and leather breeches.

Aaron Lopez died in 1782, while on the way to Newport with his family, when he accidentally drowned when thrown by his horse into Scott's pond in Smithfield, Rhode Island.