Fanny Yates was the youngest daughter born to Samuel and Martha Yates of Liverpool, England. The Yates family was very prominent in trade and Jewish life in Liverpool, and her uncle, Benjamin, served as the head of the Jewish community there.

Fanny was known as an extraordinary beauty, and in 1817 when two young American men from Charleston—Jacob Clavius Levy and Joshua Lazarus—came through Liverpool, each fell in love with Fanny. In the end she married Levy, and Lazarus would, though not for twenty years, marry her older sister Phebe.

Meanwhile Fanny sailed back to Charleston with her new husband after the wedding. Family lore states that, “at her first appearance in the dress circle of the Charleston Theatre in Broad Street, the whole house rose in tribute to her matchless beauty.”

The couple had six children. Her husband was thoroughly committed to Jewish life and to the Southern cause, and each of these things—family, Judaism and the South—came to play a huge role in Fanny’s life in America.