The youngest child of Sampson and Joy Franks Mears, Grace was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1694. Her family was part of the Atlantic community of Jewish merchants, moving freely through the Caribbean, North America, and London.

In 1718, Grace married widower Moses Raphael Levy in London. Levy, who had made his home in New York, already had four children from his first marriage. Grace moved with her husband to New York, and her relationship with her new stepchildren, especially daughter Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks, only two years her junior and who herself had just married a few years prior, was not without tensions.

Together Grace and Moses had an additional seven children, and the family found itself at the center of the burgeoning Jewish community in New York. In 1728, Grace’s husband was seized with an illness. Several months later, two days after their youngest son, Joseph, was born, Moses died. During that same emotionally trying year, Grace’s brother, Judah, moved to New York.

Though in his will Moses Levy had split his estate between Grace and his ten youngest children—the oldest two being already quite comfortable—she found it necessary to go into business to help support herself. Seven years later, at the age of thirty-nine, Grace remarried to widower David Hays. Her stepdaughter, Bilhah, the consummate gossip, with whom Grace had never had an easy relationship, had this to say on the subject: “I believe you think we have abounded in wonderful Marriages but Especially David Hays and Mrs. Grace Levy Must be Something Surprising for my part I shall hereafter think nothing Impossible.”

Ambassador Loeb who sponsored this website is a relative of Grace Mears Levy.