Born in Mount Pleasant, New York, Sarah Miriam da Silva Solis was the daughter of Jacob Da Silva Solis and Charity Hays. Her father, born in London, had immigrated to the United States in 1803.
Her mother was a member of Westchester County’s oldest and most distinguished Jewish family. Her grandfather had helped to settle the town of Rye in 1721, upon his arrival from Amsterdam. Jacob and Charity married in 1811, and soon moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where Jacob attempted to establish an auction house. Indeed, three of their children were born there. In 1827, Jacob went south to New Orleans to purchase land and establish trading ties, but the family did not move there. The family’s strongest connection, however, was to Shearith Israel and the Jewish community of New York City. By the time Sarah was born, her parents had settled back in Mount Pleasant, where they would remain the rest of their lives.
In 1845, the beautiful Sarah caught the eye of a young artist. This was not just any eye. Solomon Nunes Carvalho was already a portraitist and photographer of note. As her father was by then deceased, Carvalho addressed his letter seeking her hand in marriage to Sarah’s brother, Solomon, confessing that:
For your esteemed sister, Sarah, I have conceived other than mere commonplace feelings. Her amiability, sweetness of temper, together with a congeniality of disposition and I dare hope a reciprocity of sentiment, have awakened in my bosom feelings of a deep and ardent affection and as her guardian and Elder Brother, I deem it a duty I owe you, to acquaint you with my pretensions, and to obtain your sanction, that I may make her Honorable proposals of Marriage, the consummation of which would render me most happy.
To my family connections, you can make no reasonable objections. My personal character, altho not entirely free from all the little peccadillos of youth still I hope displays some remains of those honorable feelings which have won for myself an honorable standing in Society. Should I be so fortunate as to receive your sanction to my suit, I need hardly say I will cherish for your Sister those feelings which I should wish a Husband to have for my own sisters.
Sarah and Solomon were married in October of that year in Philadelphia in a ceremony performed by the esteemed American rabbi Isaac Leeser. They took a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean and then returned to Philadelphia. There, Sarah became involved in Jewish education, studying and employing the pedagogy established by Rebecca Gratz. Over the next several years. Solomon and Sarah would move to Baltimore and then New York.
In 1853, Solomon was approached to serve as an expedition photographer for John C. Fremont, as he embarked on his fourth and final transcontinental journey. Sarah was left with the sole care of their three small children, all under the age of six as Solomon departed for what would become more than a year’s absence. Upon his return, they settled down to a comfortable family life in Baltimore, where Sarah gave birth to a fourth child, a son named Solomon, in 1856. Eventually, they moved back to New York, where Sarah died on May 2,1894.
