This article turns out to be hogwash. Here's the ancestry of the supposed Jewish ancestor and his descendants.
The bit in the original article about "Portuguese Jewish ancestors immigrated to Sussex, England, just before 1500" seems to be dubious at best, as England had very Jews in the 1400s... not until the mid-1600s.
Thanks as always, Michael from Hartford!
Suggestion by Larry from Indianapolis.
I was about to rebuke you since the article was in the Forward and was based on a discussion with one of Alcott's modern descendents, but ironically they had a link to this article which has to be equally bogus from them (there were no open Jews in Portugal in 1600):
ReplyDeletehttp://forward.com/articles/168939/medieval-painting-hints-at-ties-between-blacks-and/
They were conversos who lived at that time in Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, England and the like. They were outwardly Christian with Jewish ancestry and sometimes vestigial practices. Some returned to their Judaism. This is not news.
ReplyDelete