Born in Strasbourg, France in 1753, Joseph Andrews’s exact date of arrival in America remains unknown. By the early 1790s, he had settled in New York where, in 1794, he married Sallie Saloman, the eldest daughter of Haym Salomon, the famed “financier of the Revolution. Though twenty-nine years separated this couple, theirs would prove a fruitful marriage, marked by thirty years together and twelve children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Andrews was active in New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel. Synagogue records have him criticizing the community’s shohet for laxity of standards in 1808, and a year later signing a petition to bring under control the loud public financial pledges made during services in exchange for ritual honors. Other signatories of this petition included Israel Baer Kursheedt, Aaron Levy and Harmon Hendricks. However, by 1813, Andrews had moved his growing family to Philadelphia, where he found work as a trader and sometime Hebrew teacher. He joined Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1816 and became deeply involved in synagogue affairs.

Andrews’ children took a variety of directions. Two sons, Joseph and Samuel, moved west and became founders of the nascent Jewish community at Memphis. One daughter, named Deborah, married Jonas Horwitz, a physician and, like her father, a Hebraist, who aimed to publish the first Hebrew Bible in America, although he ultimately gave up on this plan. Daughter Esther married Simeon Dreyfous. Three other sons, Zalegman, Salomon and Eleazar Lewis, moved south—Zalegman and Salomon to New Orleans and Eleazar Lewis to Mobile. In a macabre turn, about which little is known, Salomon and Eleazer Lewis carried out a suicide pact on April 22, 1848. The latter left behind his wife of four years, the former Jessy (Simha) Judah of New York.