From the following 4 pieces of data:

  1. The will of Joseph Barrow was inspected and does confirm that Judith Montefiore was Judith Joseph Levi as per the will extract in key documents
  2. The Barrow family tree does show that Eve Barrow married Jacob Levi as confirmed in ref 132 which shows Judith Montefiore was a daughter of Jacob Levi
  3. The first 5 children of Judith Montefiore were Moses b1798, Esther Hannah b 1799, Jacob b1801, Joseph b1803 and Evelina b1805 as shown in the descendants of Simon Barrow of Barbados
  4. The first Simon Barrow in his will refers to his daughter Eve Joseph

we see a puzzle in that Judith Joseph Levi by her name was daughter of Joseph Levi, yet #2 gives Jacob Levi as her father. However we also see a solution to this puzzle. Her children's names conform to an expected pattern - Moses (named after Moses Vita Montefiore, father of her husband Eliezer), Esther Hannah (named after Eliezer’s mother Esther Hannah Montefiore nee Racah), Jacob (being 2nd son he would have been named after Judith’s father who therefore was Jacob Levi), Joseph, and then Evelina (named after Judith’s mother Eve Barrow).

This is the basis for our new interpretation that Eve Barrow first married Jacob Levi, from which marriage emerged Judith and her sister Simha, and then she married Joseph Levi – presumably Jacob’s brother. In this interpretation, there is only one Judith - a fact supported by only one Judith appearing in the wills - whose natural father was Jacob. Judith almost certainly had no recollection of her natural father, and we can imagine that she changed her name to Judith Joseph Levi (from Judith Jacob Levi) out of affection and duty to her stepfather after whom she named her 3rd son. That boy became the Australian pioneer Joseph Barrow Montefiore. This interpretation explains #4 above.

So the puzzle seems to be resolved, but there is another twist. The marriage of Eve Barrow and Joseph Levi probably took place no later than 1777 as it does not appear in ref 132 the first entry of which is 1778. The earliest possible date for the marriage can be gauged from Eve's few surviving children - probably only 2 ie Judith marrying in 1797 was probably the last and Simha marrying Lewis aka Judah Cohen in 1791 probably the first. If Judith was aged 15-21 at her marriage then she was born in 1776-82, whilst if Simha was aged 15-21 at her marriage she was born in 1770-76. Thus in the 1775-7 period Eve first lost her first husband Jacob and then married her second husband Joseph. Jacob Joseph Levi 1770-1821 (dates from ref 61 Appendix 1) was too young to have fathered Judith and Simha (note that ref 110 p206 makes the error of ignoring his 1770 birthdate when incorrectly asserting he was Judith's father!), and he was born well before the Eve/Joseph marriage and was thus not a product of it. Jacob Joseph Levi appears in the will of Joseph Barrow and his siblings Jacob and Sarah as a nephew so must have been the son of Joseph Levi, Eve's second husband. Joseph must have fathered him before he married Eve, and hence Joseph had an earlier marriage. So not only does it seem that Joseph was Eve's second husband, but Eve was Joseph’s second wife – widow thus married widower!  Jacob Joseph Levi does not appear in the will (probate date 1829) of Rebecca Barrow which is not surprising as he died in 1821, though being in Barbados he does appear in the will of Lewis Cohen then of London (probate 1823) as a brother-in-law. Judith Joseph Levi was a sister-in-law of Lewis Cohen's, but our interpretation means that Jacob Joseph Levi was not a brother of Judith Joseph Levi but a step-brother, though of course also a cousin!

A further puzzle remains. The first Simon Barrow in his will refers to his brother-in-law Isaac Levi of Amsterdam, and this Isaac is referred to in the will of Joseph Barrow with a son Abraham (these and other Barrow will extracts can be found in key documents). We have elsewhere concluded that Isaac Levi married a sister of Simon Barrow. The Barrow family tree makes the suggestion that Jacob Levi the first husband of Eve Barrow was a son of an Isaac Levi of Barbados and the latter is probably the Isaac Levi of the Barrow wills who must have moved to Amsterdam later in life. That is, the 2 husbands of Eve Barrow were probably her cousins - Jacob then Joseph. Jacob's daughters Simha and Judith both married in Barbados but in ref 132 there are 4 more children of a Jacob Levi who marry – Esther in 1806, Sarah in 1811, Walter in 1820 and Isaac in 1817.

Ref 157 indicates that Sarah, Walter and Isaac were siblings and that their father was a Jacob Levi of Portsmouth. But Isaac Levi in 1817 married Esther Hannah Montefiore, Judith’s first daughter (and this gave rise to the Levi Montefiores also prominent in Australian history - the names of Jacob Levi Montefiore b1819 and Eliezer Levi Montefiore b1820 correctly mirror the names of their paternal and maternal grandfathers Jacob Levi and Eliezer Montefiore). The presence of Walter and another sibling Solomon Jacob Levi in the will of Rebecca Barrow suggests they were Barrow relatives which of course they were after the 1817 marriage above but we are still left with the mystery of why Solomon Jacob Levi appears in the will of Sarah Barrow a few years before this date - perhaps the 1817 marriage was planned well in advance! In any event, this family of Levis from Portsmouth are distinct from the Barrow's other Levi relatives.

Jacob Joseph Levi could have been the father of Esther who married Isaac Perez in 1806, though she would have been very young but not impossibly so when she married just 36 years after her father's birth!