The amazing Baruch Lousada transformation - from shoemakers in provincial Portugal to prominence in Barbados, London, Surinam, Curacao and Jamaica - via Madrid, Livorno and Amsterdam

Thanks to our ready access to the historical literature, international collaborators and the expanding online data resource via the Internet, we have created a picture of the Baruch Lousada dispersal from Iberia through Livorno (see note 1 below) and, probably, France into the Atlantic. In so doing, we have been able to look across many relevant locations and see links which take us a lot further back than those family trees we inherited. Nevertheless despite our advantages, the task of piecing the family story together was not easy. For example, there were 10 people named Moses to consider (7 of them are indicated above) and 5 named Jacob, but a satisfactory resolution has been achieved (see note 8 below). In addition we have been able to correct many errors in those family trees (see note 11 below).

Our current picture of how some of the Vinhais Lousadas transferred from Portugal appears in the first 2 lines of the chart above, and this involves a period in Madrid (see note 14). Then especially through ref 5 and Amsterdam data a picture emerges of a Baruch Lousada transition into a Barbados business run from Amsterdam in the 1659-99 period. Livorno might seem a strange place from which to have launched such a business, but the Baruch Lousadas were probably never only there for Moses #46 appeared regularly in Amsterdam from 1649, not long behind his wealthy cousin Abraham Israel Pereira who arrived in 1645. It was probably the loss of Dutch Brazil to Portugal in 1654 which triggered the business idea, which of course was not unique to the Baruch Lousadas. The influx of Jewish sugar people from Brazil made it necessary for the Dutch provinces and the Jewish community to look elsewhere for sugar and the English colony of Barbados was a good prospect. Because of the English Navigation Acts, it was essential to have an English presence to show English ownership of the cargos. 

The family in Barbados was blended for the mainstay there Aaron #376 (see note 9 below) had a father named David, and was probably a stepson of Isaac #42. The latter had 2 marriages, the 1st perhaps to David's widow, and was the father of David #44, Abraham #45 and Moses #1585 (see note 10 below). But David #44 seems to have become the leader of the family upon the death of his father Isaac #42 (see note 13 below). We have separately charted the Baruch Lousadas in each of their destinations. There we have also depicted those Baruch Lousadas remaining in Livorno after 1660 (see note 1 below) and the Den Haag Louzadas (see also note 4 below). The chart shows linkage with the Livorno Levi Lousadas (see note 5 below) and some of the USA Lousadas (see note 4 below).

Notes:

1. The brothers Isaac #42 and Abraham #2149 were linked in 1643 in Livorno by a cousin-cousin marriage of respective offspring. It is shown here. We also thereby suggest the origin of the Baruch Lousadas of Tunis who are not shown in the chart. Jacob #1388 who died first of the sons/nephews of Isaac #42 may well be from the 1st marriage of Isaac #42. There is a further possible sibling Daniel Baruch Lousada of Boston (see note 7 below). Samuel (and his daughter Rachel) who appears in Amsterdam records may also be one of the remnant Livorno Baruch Lousadas but we have no evidence of this.

2. Abraham Israel Pereira financed Menasseh ben Israel, and thus may have had something to do with the high community position that Antonio Louzada found himself in upon reaching London for Abraham Israel Pereira was a cousin germain of Moses' cousin Abraham #45 (ref 141)! The Israel Pereira family flourished in Amsterdam and a descendant of Moses Israel Pereira a son of Abraham Pereira has been in touch and is related as shown here.

3. The above chart displays our methodological step - which is that we initially excluded all Lousadas other than those who normally used the 'Baruch Lousada' name. The chart thus shows those excluded outside the lines. One is Abraham Dias de Lousada who married in London in 1700. We also exclude the Baruchs/Barrows who do not have the Lousada second surname. Thus, to the right of the chart is Isaque Moses Barak (21) of Jamaica who was perhaps the son of the Moses Baruch who is known to have wanted to leave Surinam on the Dutch takeover, and Moses Barrow #984 might have been a grandson. In their case we have also resisted the temptation to identify Moses Barrow #984 with the Barrows - for Simon Barrow of Barbados seems to have come to Barbados from Livorno and his father Baruch from somewhere (Vienna?) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Italy.

4. The Den Haag Louzadas who are now thought to be related but perhaps left Iberia other than via Livorno; that is they were a 2nd Lousada departure from Iberia. The originator of the Den Haag Louzadas, Abraham #1875, appears to have been a full brother of Aaron #376 and a stepson of Isaac #42, but he may have remained in Madrid with his extended family (rather than gone to Livorno with Isaac #42) and thence to Amsterdam. And some of the USA Lousadas appears to have descended from a grandson Henrique of Amador de Lousada and in any case came to London in the 1690s presumably to escape the Portuguese Inquisition. If so this could have been a 3rd Lousada departure from Iberia.

5. In Livorno at least in the 1641-2 period Isaac #42 stayed in the house of his uncle Abraham Levi Lousada (ref 149). The chart above makes a suggestion as to how the Baruch Lousadas and the Levi Lousadas were related. 

6. Of the children of Isaac #42, Abraham #45 is known to have outlasted Jacob, Aaron, Moses, David and Gracia. We distinguish Abraham #45 from his nephew Abraham #1352 here (note 12).

7. Daniel Baruch Lousada in 1674 appears in Boston with Roeland Gideon, according to a notary record (ref 175 #4) of a dispute over a commercial bill where the relevant cargo (presumably on a Barbados to Amsterdam trip) was exchanged in Boston; in Amsterdam David #44 and Jacob #1388 were involved. See here for our analysis of his place in the family and also in the evolution of the USA Lousadas. Roeland Gideon aka Rehuel Abudiente aka Rohuel Obediente was probably born in Hamburg, travelled to Barbados and then via Antigua and Nevis to England (ref 21 p197). He was in Boston in 1674/5 and he died in London in 1722 (ref 5 p37). On 7 Sep 2016 Ton Tielen remarked that the given names Rehuel and Gideon are fascinating - generally the name Rehuel in the Western Sephardic world is linked to Rehuel Jessurun, the writer of Diologos dos Montas published in Amsterdam in the first half of the 17th century. The name Gideon is almost invariably bound to the Abudiente family. The names Rehuel and Gideon in the Abudiente family started when Moses de Gideon Abudiente married Sara Jessurun, daughter of Rehuel Jessurun.

8. There were 11 people named Moses - 5 in London and 6 in the Caribbean (2 in Curacao, 2 in Surinam, 1 in Jamaica and an infant in Barbados) and no text was found which adequately distinguished them. Of these, 2 were found to be probably not Baruch Lousadas using the criteria in note 3 and they fall outside the lines in the chart. The 9 remaining Moses Baruch Lousadas have been placed in our genealogies, but the number was reduced to 8 because the Surinam Moses Baruch Lousada probably was identical to the older Moses Baruch Lousada of Curacao (see note 10). Only 5 of these 8 are shown in the chart above - we did not include the infant who died in Barbados (perhaps a son of Abraham #45), nor the younger Moses of Curacao (he does appear in our chart of the Baruch Lousadas of Surinam and Curacao), nor the possible son of Mordecai #66 ie another grandson Moses of Moses #46 endenized 4 Nov 1699 (ref 42 #180). Our chart of the London Baruch Lousadas distinguishes between Moses #46, #67 and #1419. It was almost as confusing dealing with the 5 Jacobs (a 6th Jacob appeared in Tunis - see note 1 above), for each of 4 of them spent only part of his life in London while the 5th was born in Barbados and died in Jamaica. In 1660 a Jacob Baruh Lousada was in London (ref 6) with Moses Baruh Lousada #46, and it seems to have been he who arrived in Amsterdam in 1662 and died there in 1681. His name - with Solomon's - appear in Amsterdam records (ref 99 and 105). He is likely to have been a half-brother of David #44 and Abraham #45. It was easy to place Jacob/James #711 as a stepson of David #44. The 4th Jacob #36 became the head of the surviving English Baruh Lousadas. The 5th Jacob #740 became the NY chocolate merchant and we know something of his descendants.

9. Details of the life of Aaron and his wife Rachel Gomes Henriques can be found in ref 5 and from this and other sources we have extracted details of their wills. Some of the financial repercussions of the death of in 1695 were not resolved until after the death of Moses in London 1699, and just before the death of David in Amsterdam in late 1699, with Mordecai son of Moses acting for his estate. From these sources, the first son of Aaron #376 of Barbados was a David not an Isaac (in fact Aaron's third son who died young was an Isaac). That is Aaron's natural father was David and Isaac #42 was his step-father. It was customary for a brother to offer himself as a new husband to a new widow, and this is what seems to have happened here. The first husband David was probably older than Isaac, we identify him with Diogo and Isaac with Francisco in our discussion of the Vinhais Lousadas where we also suggest Antonio became the 'venerable' Abraham of Livorno and Pedro became Moses #1419.

10. Moses #1585, the 1st Baruch Lousada of Surinam who died in Curacao in 1724, proved to be a mystery for a long time. We placed him as as a son of Isaac #42 and Luna, though this scenario entails that neither Isaac nor Luna was a parent of Moses #46. Moses #46 regularly visited Amsterdam after 1649 (ref 105 as updated in 2016). Ultimately, however, we found unmistakable evidence that Moses #1585 was indeed a full brother of David #44.

11. The first (and eminent) London Moses Baruh Lousada #46 who is shown in the chart above with his merchant name Antonio Louzada, was shown at the head of both the English Baruh Lousada and Barrow family trees. These claims were each highly dubious because of their complete disregard of the Jamaican origin of the later Baruh Lousadas on the one hand, and the Barbados origin of the Barrows on the other hand. Ref 287 contains a genealogy of the Surinam Baruch Louzadas going back to 1674 but this required modification before 1740, and it originated with a Moses Baruch Louzada whose birthplace was unknown as was his place of death. We linked it with the Curacao Baruch Lousadas, thereby suggesting where the first Surinam Moses came from (Amsterdam though born in Livorno) and where he died (Curacao).

12. Gracia was known (ref 5) in Barbados as the wife of the sugar expert David Raphael Mercado from a family forced to leave Dutch Brazil in 1654 and which by the end of 1655 had settled in Barbados. What we know of the arrival in Barbados of Gracia and her brothers Abraham, Aaron and David is discussed here and here. We have noted that the Mercado family also had marriages with the Den Haag Louzadas, which reflects the probability that the Den Haag Louzadas were Baruch Lousadas but left Iberia separately. Gracia spent the last phase of her life in Curacao and it was her bequest there to 'David son of Moses' which enabled us to infer the move to Curacao of the first Surinam Baruch Lousadas. Her Curacao (de Caceres) second husband was of a family linked to Baruch Spinosa and the resettlement of Jews in England. This link with the Curacao de Caceres family may have come about as a result of Simon and Benjamin de Caceres being in Barbados in the 1646-53 period (ref 123 pp 396-7).

13. David #44 became the main income generator in Amsterdam after the death of his father and brother Jacob. He travelled back-and-forth to Barbados from Amsterdam - after living there in the early 1660s he returned at least twice. He had links right across the family - as discussed here his 1st son Isaac #1297 was the ancestor of the enduring Baruch Lousadas of Surinam. Illustrating the way marriage of first cousins bound Jewish families together, Isaac and Solomon - sons of David #44 - respectively married a daughter of Jacob #1388 and a daughter of Moses #46.

14. The family probably spent a period in Madrid before some of them (including Isaac #42 his older brother Abraham #2149) made the trip to Livorno around 1640. However, we have little direct knowledge of the family's presence in Madrid, for only Isabel has left a record of her presence there by way of her son's will (in ref 145). However through the marriage of her brother Isaac #42 in Madrid around 1638 the family became connected by marriage to the influential Tomas Rodrigues Pereira.

15. Thus while a senior relative was stationed in Amsterdam (Isaac the father, and his probable son Jacob #1388; and then David from 1673, Moses Baruh Lousada (briefly accompanied by Jacob #1388) was allocated the London role from 1660, while going to Barbados - were Aaron #376 (see note 9 for what we know of his life) initially from 1659, plus David #44 from 1664 to be replaced by Abraham #45 from Livorno in 1672 (but he left around 1695 and spent the last phase of his life in London after a period in Amsterdam - see note 6 below) and Gracia #43 (see note 12 for a summary of her interesting and probably very influential life).