Judah P. Benjamin - Family and Early Life

Family and Early Life

Judah Philip Benjamin was born a British subject in 1811 in Saint Croix, to Phillip Benjamin, an English Sephardi Jew, and his wife, Rebecca de Mendes, a Sephardi Jew from Spain. This was during the period of British occupation of the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands). His father was a first cousin and business partner of Moses Elias Levy, father of future Florida senator David Levy Yulee.

He emigrated with his parents to the U.S. in 1813, where the family first lived in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1822, they moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where his father was among the founders, with Isaac Harby, of the first Reform congregation in the United States, the "Reformed Society of Israelites for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit". The formation of the congregation was of such interest that it was covered by the North American Review, a national journal of the time.

As a youth, Benjamin attended Fayetteville Academy in North Carolina. At the age of fourteen, he entered Yale College. He left without completing the degree and read the law. According to one account, Benjamin was expelled from Yale, although the reason was not officially disclosed. In 1828, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he started clerking with a law firm as an alternative route to certification as an attorney. He studied law and learned French to qualify to practice in Louisiana. He was admitted to the bar in 1833 at the age of 21, and entered private practice as a commercial lawyer.