Judith de Lyon Cohen was born in 1762 to Isaac de Lyon, son of two of the original Jewish emigrants to Georgia in 1733, and Rinah Tobias of Charleston. Judith, her brother Abraham and sisters Hannah and Esther were raised in Charleston, where their father was a prosperous shopkeeper. In 1779, at age 25, Judith married Moses Cohen, an emigrant from Germany who was her senior by 7 years. Judith and Moses had two daughters before his untimely death in 1790. Judith was married the following year at Savannah, Georgia, to Joseph Abrahams. With Abrahams, the widower of her aunt Rebecca de Lyon, she had another daughter, named Rachel, in 1794.