Leah Lazarus Cohen

Leah Lazarus Cohen was the second of seventeen children and the oldest daughter born to Marks and Richa Lazarus, a Sephardic family in South Carolina. With so many children in the household, it is likely that Leah was called upon to help her mother raise her younger siblings, including Benjamin Dores, Emma and Joshua.

Marks Lazarus, who had served in Lushington’s company during the Revolutionary War, was not particularly successful in business, and in 1785 he had his wife declared a feme sole trader, in part to protect the family’s assets from creditors. After that, Richa Lazarus was responsible for running the family shop, which probably lead to the transfer of significant maternal duties to Leah. Nevertheless, at age 17, Leah suddenly entered a world of greater luxury and financial ease when she married Mordecai Cohen, a Polish immigrant peddler who had become a successful merchant. Mordecai and Leah came to own a plantation on the Ashley River, which served as their entrée into the elite of Carolina planter society. Leah bore Mordecai five children, of whom four survived to adulthood. Their daughter Cornelia eventually married Leah’s younger brother, Benjamin Dores Lazarus, in a traditional uncle-niece marriage.

Leah Lazarus Cohen

c. 1820