The brother-in-law connection of Simon Barrow and Isaac Levi - how did this link come about? 

Simon Barrow of Barbados had a brother-in-law Isaac Levi who appears in Barrow wills of the period (as does Isaac's son Abraham - see notes 3-5 below). We have considered many possible sources of the Levi name (see note 1-2 below) and have generated only one option. This arose after we considered how Bailah Montefiore fits into the genealogy of the Montefiores (see here).

The obvious position for her is a child of the 1708 marriage, and thus a daughter of Esther and Isaac Montefiore. Bailah was born in 1720 so preceding her - being born in 1710 - would have been Joseph (named after the paternal grandfather) and probably - being married in 1749 - Judah (named after the maternal grandfather). This places Bailah in a branch of the Montefiores which had marriages with the Levy Sonsinos. Indeed her inferred brother Judah had a Levy Sonsino wife Esther evidently a sister of Zipora - both having Naphtali as a father (see note 6 below) though their marriages were 15 years apart. Isaac Levy Sonsino married his 1st cousin Zipora in Livorno in 1734, and is the only relevant Isaac among the Levy Sonsino family of Livorno and Tunis (see note 7 below).

We thus show above Simon Barrow as a brother-in-law of Judah Montefiore, whose wife Esther was a sister-in-law of Isaac Levy Sonsino. This chain makes Simon and Isaac brothers-in-law and confirms our placement of Bailah.

Notes:

1. The Levi Lousadas are a possible source of the Levi name but only one Levi Lousada appears in the Amsterdam records - David Levy Louzada who died (or was buried) 30 Aug 1744. The Levi Gomes family was present in the late 1600s but we see no trace of them later. Another possible clue to the Levi ancestry of Judith Joseph Levi lies in the fact that Antonio de Luis Montezinos - the person who in 1639 'discovered' a lost tribe of Israel in the region of present day Colombia - was Aaron Levi of Villaflor (ref 8 pp195-211). This town was also the origin of the family of the Baruch Lousada descendant Tomas Rodrigues Pereira aka Abraham Israel Pereira - our Madrid page records something of the lives of Pereira and Fernando Montezinos who were Portuguese New Christians in Madrid in the 1620s. Accordingly, drawing upon the Montezinos presence in Livorno revealed in ref 107, we deduce that the 1st wife of David Baruch Louzada #44 was a Montezinos. That is, the Montezinos link may be relevant to the exit of the Baruch Lousadas from Iberia, but perhaps unconnected with the exit of the Barrows and Montefiores from Livorno (we unsuccessfully tried to find a Barrow connection - see note 2 below).

2. Sarah Barrow according to her will summary in key documents had a cousin Isaac Levi of Amsterdam who is of the same generation as Abraham and the two husbands (Jacob and Joseph Levi) of Eve Barrow. However inspection of her actual will shows that this cousin was Abraham Isaac Levi ie the name Abraham had been omitted in the will summary. Before this transcription error - a red herring - was discovered we searched for Isaac son of Isaac. We found 118 such male name-pairs (see note 8 below) in the Amsterdam Portuguese marriage records. In these 118 cases there are only 4 Levi cases of which there is only one case of Isaac son of Isaac - with the Levi Montezinos surnames (see below right). This amazing coincidence sadly allows no further conclusion.

3. Joseph Barrow's will refers to a son Abraham of his uncle Isaac Levi. Joseph's father Simon Barrow of Barbados in his will makes a bequest to his brother-in-law Isaac Levi of Amsterdam. We note the Barrow in-law Isaac Levi could have been even longer- lived than Simon Barrow 1709-1801. The Barrow family tree suggests that Jacob Levi the first husband of Eve Barrow was a son of an Isaac Levi

4. Rebecca Barrow's will lists Mrs Levi widow of Abraham Isaac Levi of Amsterdam, which means that Abraham son of Isaac her uncle thus died probably in Amsterdam and certainly before 1829. She also nominates Isaac Levi as an executor but this was no doubt the Isaac Levi who married Esther Barrow Montefiore.

5. Our work on the ancestry of Judith Joseph Levi suggests that Joseph was Jacob's brother and as was the custom stepped into his brother's shoes when he died. In Barbados (ref 61) is a burial record for 31 Aug 1804 for an Isaac Levi (aged 14) son of Moses and a Moses Levi appears in the will of Sarah Barrow (discussed in note 2 above) with a list of children whose names do not include Isaac so perhaps this Moses Levi was a sibling of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The Cohen link was provided by ref 157.

6. It should be noted that as shown in Vol 1 ref 319 pp184-93, Isaac Levy Sonsino was a 2nd cousin of Naphtali Levy Sonsino of Livorno and London who in 1747 was on the Mahamad of Bevis Marks. This is a different Naphtali from Isaac's father-in-law Naphtali shown above who died in 1737 a date given by ref 319. However, ref 319 V1:186 gives the London Naphtali as the father of the Esther who married Judah Montefiore in 1749 - an error. For while Livorno marriage records show Zipora's father Naphtali was alive when she married in 1734, his 1737 death is shown on p191. Then at Esther's 1749 marriage, her father Naphtali is shown as deceased - consistent with the 1737 death just noted. But the death date of the London Naphtali is known from his burial date of 12 Nov 1750 as shown by Bevis Marks Records Part 6 (seen via JewishGen). That is the London Naphtali was still alive at Esther's marriage and was thus was not Esther's father (he was however Esther's 2nd cousin).

7. Isaac Levy Sonsino - whilst being in Tunis in 1732 - soon disappeared from there as noted by ref 319 presumably for Livorno as indeed did the entire Levy Sonsino family.

8. The Amsterdam data (below left) shows an unnamed child of Isaac Levi Montezinos died on 16 Feb 1766 and was buried at Oudekerk the burial ground of the Amsterdam Sephardic Jews; and the father Isaac who was the son of Joseph died in 1796. Joseph could be the step-father of Judith Joseph Levi but is perhaps only a namesake. However the will of Simon Barrow 1709-1801 gives a bequest to his brother-in-law Isaac Levi who also receives a bequest from Simon's son Joseph Barrow in 1808. Thus Isaac Levi seems to have been alive after 1796 and therefore is not Isaac Levi Montezinos d1796 and accordingly, a more complex scenario is afoot. An unusual case of a son having the father's name was considered here for the reason set out in note 2 (as noted there however it was a mistranscription of a will made it seem as if the brother-in-law Isaac Levi had a son Isaac). Such a case was in Amsterdam records - see below right - and was found amongst 16 cases of Isaac son of Isaac (1 Levi Montezinos case); and for comparison other names were searched - Abraham 18 (1 Levi Montagnes case), Jacob 23 (0), Joseph 4 (0), David 20 (0), Mordechai 2 (0), Salomon 8 (0), Raphael 2 (0), Haim 6 (0), Micheal 2 (0), Mozes 6 (2 Levi Lobo cases), Judah 1 (0), Samuel 2 (0), Emanuel 3 (0), Aaron 5 (0), and no cases for Jeremiah, Daniel, Simon, Jessurun, Eliezer/Elias/Elihu, Ezekial, Israel, Isaiah, Baruch, Benjamin, Menasseh or Jona. There are 6389 Amsterdam Portuguese marriages and using the above 27 common bridegroom forenames we capture 5899 of these or 92.3%. Of these, 118 involved name-pairs and thus the probability of a groom having his father's forename is 2.0%; of these grooms the probability of him being a Levi is 3.4%, and the probability of him being Isaac is 13.6%. The parallel Traditional Sephardic Marriages database shows no Isaac son of Isaac in 4241 marriages. To give an idea of what the statistics mean, suppose that there were 1000 marriage records somehow missing from these 2 databases, surely a gross overestimate. The probable number of name-pairs included in this 1000 would be 20 but of these 3.4% would be a Levi and of these 7.9% would be an Isaac so that the probable number of relevant missing cases of Isaac Levi with any second surname would be 0.05 cases. This means that it is extremely unlikely that any Isaac Levi is missing from the samples chosen - less than a 1 in 20000 chance of an Isaac Levi non-Montezinos! All this is hypothetical at present since our Isaac-Isaac father-son pair turned out to be erroneous.

http://www.dutchjewry.org/P.I.G./image/01289601.jpg		http://www.dutchjewry.org/phpr/amsterdam/port_isr_gem_marriages/amsterdam_port_isr_gem_marriages_view.php?editid1=3088