Born in London, the son of Menachem Hart, Bernard Hart came to New York at age thirteen. It was 1777, and the country was in the midst of war. New York would be Hart’s home for the rest of his long life, and he would become one of the city’s great magnates.

From 1780 until 1786, Hart worked as an agent for a merchant cousin in Canada, sending goods north from New York. He then set up his own commercial house on Water Street and, in 1792, which was a great success, before later going into business with Leonard Lispenard under the firm Lispenard & Hart. Hart was one the twenty-four signatories to the Buttonwood Agreement, the founding document of the New York Stock Exchange, where he would serve as secretary for decades.

In 1799, he married Catherine Brett, with whom he had one child, Henry Hart. Their marriage lasted less than a year, and in 1806 he married Rebecca Birley Seixas, daughter of Benjamin Mendes and Zipporah Levy Seixas. They had twelve children.

Amazingly, he continued in his post at the New York Stock Exchange right up until a few months before his death at age ninety-one. More than Hart’s success in business, however, it was his other contributions to the city that were celebrated and memorialized in New York’s newspapers upon his passing. It was recalled that he served as major general in General Morton’s Division of the New York State Militia and was appointed quartermaster at the outbreak of the War of 1812. During the yellow fever outbreak in 1795, Hart and several friends remained in the city, attending to the needs of the sick.