Phebe Yates was one of eight children born to Samuel and Martha Yates of Liverpool, England. The Yates family enjoyed the benefits of wealth and was very prominent in trade and Jewish life in Liverpool. Phebe’s uncle, Benjamin Yates, served as the head of the Jewish community there while she was growing up.

In 1817, the Yates family entertained two young American students from Charleston, South Carolina, Joshua Lazarus and Jacob Clavius Levy. Both men soon fell in love with Phebe’s youngest sister, Fanny. It was Levy who won both Fanny’s heart and her hand, and the young couple travelled to Charleston, just after they married, to set up their new household. It would be eighteen years before Phebe herself contracted a marriage—to Joshua.

Forty-one at the time of her marriage, Phebe’s arrangements with her new husband reflect a shrewd business sense on her part. A post-nuptial agreement, executed in Charleston in April 1836, specified that her new husband would pay $10,000 into a trust on behalf of Phebe or her children, and that Phebe herself could name the trustees or act on her own behalf. Nevertheless, the marriage appears to have been one of mutual affection. Although Phebe and Joshua would have only one child, a son named Edgar Marks, they were very active in the affairs of the Charleston Jewish community and maintained close ties to Joshua’s unmarried sister, Emma.