Robert Purvis - Early Life

Early Life

Purvis was born in 1810 in Charleston, South Carolina. His mother Harriet Judah was a free woman of color, the daughter of former slave Dido Badaraka. His father was the English immigrant William Purvis. Purvis told a reporter that his grandmother Badaraka had been kidnapped at age 12 from Morocco, transported to the colonies on a slave ship, and sold as a slave in Charleston. He described her as a full-blooded Moor: dark-skinned with tightly curled hair. She was freed at age 19 by her master's will. Harriet's father was Baron Judah, of European Jewish descent. He was the third of ten children of Hillel Judah, a German Jewish immigrant, and his Sephardic Jewish wife, Abigail Seixas, a native of Charleston.

Purvis said his grandparents Badaraka and Judah had married, his biographer thought that unlikely, given the social prominence of the Judah family in Charleston. She also discovered that the Judah family had owned slaves. Badaraka and Judah did have a relationship of several years, and they had Harriet and a son together. (In 1790 Judah broke off his relationship with Badaraka when he moved with his family from Charleston to Savannah, Georgia. In 1791 he moved to Richmond, Virginia. There he married a Jewish woman and had four children with her.)

William Purvis was from Northumberland, and he had come to the United States as a young man. He became a wealthy cotton broker in Charleston and a naturalized US citizen. William and some of his brothers had come to South Carolina to make their fortunes. After their father died when they were children, their mother moved the family to Edinburgh, Scotland for her sons' education.

William Purvis and Harriet Judah lived together as man and wife. Purvis was substantially older than Harriet Judah, and the couple had three sons: William born in 1806, Robert born in 1810, and Joseph born in 1812. In 1819 the Purvis family moved north to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the boys attended the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society's Clarkson School. Purvis planned to consolidate his business affairs and return with his family to England, where he thought his sons would have better opportunities. He died before they could move.

As their father wanted his sons to be educated as gentlemen, Robert and Joseph Purvis both studied at Amherst College in Massachusetts. They returned to Philadelphia, where their family was among the black elite. After their father died in 1826, Purvis and his brothers were to share an estate worth $250,000. In 1828 Purvis' older brother William died of tuberculosis, which resulted in Robert and Joseph's having increased shares of the estate. The wealth helped them pay for their political activities and public service.