Jewish Plantation Owners?

Published by: jane 2009-01-07

I am casting a film where one of the characters is a man whose great-grandparents owned a plantation in the pre-Civil War South. On this plantation many slaves died or lost limbs while dredging a swamp and digging a canal. The actor we have in mind for the role is of Mediteranean Jewish descent and he has a NY accent. Such is Hollywood. So, here is my question: Were there any Jewish plantation owners? If so, how rare or common a thing was this? And I am assuming that these were largely cotton plantations, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry for that typo: "The companion book to the exhibit..."

Regarding the use of a Mediterranean Jewish actor with a New York accent in the role of a plantation owner, stranger things have happened in the movies. Let us not forget that John Wayne once played Genghis Kahn. ;-)

thank you, very good answer -- very much appreciated.

Oops. Typo. John Wayne played Genghis KHAN, not Kahn. I must have been thinking of Genghis's younger sister, Madeline. :-D

peh: Thank you very much for the tip. -juggler

Hello. Yes, there were some Jewish plantation owners. The Jewish population of the antebellum South was very small, though, and research indicates that Jewish plantation owners were very few in number. According to the recent book, "The Jewish Confederates," the entire Jewish population of the South in 1860 was only 25,000. Furthermore, "very few" Jewish Southerners were slaveholders or planters. See the entry at Amazon.com: "The Jewish Confederates" by Robert N. Rosen (University of South Carolina Press, 2000) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570033633/ I used Amazon's "look inside" feature to read some excerpts from Mr Rosen's book. Here is some information that seems directly relevant to your question: "...Jewish Southerners from Virginia to Texas weighed their devotion to the Union and to their states. Some were the sons and daughters - indeed the grandsons and granddaughters - of Southerners born and bred in Dixie. Some were slaveholders. A very few were planters." source: Chapter 1, "The Jewish Confederates," by Robert N. Rosen. Excerpt scanned by Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570033633/ Thus, Mr Rosen's statement that "very few were planters" suggests that Jewish plantation owners did exist, but they were not common. Indeed, in an Associated Press article about his book, Rosen is quoted as follows: "...Because most Jews were merchants, small farmers, peddlers, doctors or lawyers, Rosen says, relatively few actually owned plantations -- or slaves." source: "Book tells of Jews in Civil War" By Bill Hendrick Associated Press Florida Times Union Jacksonville, Sunday, January 14, 2001, posted to a newsgroups, archived by Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=3A76B4F3.3AC99884%40bellsouth.net I'd personally recommend that you seek out Mr Rosen's book for additional details. Additonal source: Part of a recent exhibit at the College of Charleston (South Carolina) explored "the unusual history of Jewish plantation owners." The exhibit was called "A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life." Source: College of Charleston: http://www.cofc.edu/~jhc/portion/walkthru.html The exhibit's companion book to the exhibit undoubtedly contains relevant details. A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life (2002) by Theodore Rosengarten et al. See the entry at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570034451/ --------------- Although cotton was a main cash crop in the antebellum South, the idea that all (or even most) Southern plantations produced cotton is apparently not accurate. From the essay "Debunking Myths About Southern Research": "Most 'plantations' were, in fact, much smaller entities. Any farming enterprise consisting of an owner/operator and group of resident laborers could be classified a plantation. Not all such entities were cotton farms either. Southern crops included tobacco, rice, corn, indigo, wheat, flax, peanuts, sweet potatoes, hardwood timber, pine (for wood, tar and pitch), peaches, apples, berries, and vegetables of all sorts." source: Debunking Myths About Southern Research, hosted by ancestry.com http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/columns/george/4271.asp ---------- search strategy: "jewish plantation", "jewish plantations", "jewish southerners", history I hope this helps.

Shochat Family::
She founded the Jewish Independent Labor Party. understood that the model of plantation settlement where Jewish owners employed
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home.mindspring.com/~johnqu/JEWS.htm::
slaves and then selling them to plantation owners and others on credit. None of these owners of Londons slave fleet in 1726 was Jewish.
http://home.mindspring.com/~johnqu/JEWS.htmHOME

The Jewish West Indies::
For Jewish tourists, there is an extra added attraction in the historic in 1878 had to be put down by armed plantation owners and Danish military forces.
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