Joseph B. Nones married Eveline De Leon in New York in 1823. Miriam, born the following year, was the second of their six children. In 1849, at age twenty-five, she married Joseph I.Andrews with whom she had nine children together. And though little else is known that directly pertains to the life of Miriam Nones Andrews, significant documentation exists concerning the Nones family. Like the Andrews family into which she married, the Nones enjoyed a place of prominence in the Jewish community of Philadelphia. Miriam’s paternal grandfather, Benjamin Nones, a Sephardi merchant trader from Bordeaux, had settled there sometime prior to 1775.
During the war, he served in General Pulaski’s regiment, under Captain Verdier, who said of Nones that, “his behavior under fire in all the bloody actions we fought, have been marked by the bravery and courage which a military man is expected to show for the liberties of his country.” It has often been repeated, erroneously so, that Benjamin Nones achieved the rank of major and served with Washington. Still, under Pulaski he “fought in almost every action which took place in Carolina, and in the disastrous affair of Savannah shared the hardships of that sanguinary day.”
After the war, Nones partnered with Myer M. Cohen in finance; together they performed “every Kind of Business as Brokers, such as buying and selling Bills of Exchange on France, Spain, Holland and other Parts.” Nones also traded in a variety of goods, both wholesale and retail—furniture, books and nearly anything else. However,financial success eluded him. In 1781, in the midst of his economic struggles, Nones became embroiled in a very public dispute with Abraham Levy over a sum of money. Their quarrel escalated to accusations of financial impropriety in the pages of the Independent Gazetteer and reached its apogee in a furious letter from Nones threatening, “Were it not for this consideration [Levy’s age], I should certainly shave that beard, which induces many people falsely to imagine him a distinguished member of our congregation, in which his ignorance disqualifies him from holding the humblest office.”
Even as he struggled to make it in business, Nones became increasingly engaged in the heated political climate that gripped the United States during the early years of the Republic. He was a vocal republican who opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and found himself the object of nasty Federalist taunts. Philadelphia’s leading Federalist paper reported on a July 30, 1800 meeting of the Democratic Society of Philadelphia attended by the “very refuse and filth of society,” and Nones was singled out as “Citizen N— the Jew.” Mocked for his accent and disparaged as a Jew, a Republican, and for being poor. Nones published an eloquent rebuttal in the Aurora, the city’s leading anti-Federalist paper, one of the earliest attempts to link the fate of the Jews with America’s destiny. It is worth quoting here at length:
I am accused of being a Jew of being a Republican, and of being Poor. I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian, or Mahomedan, allow to be of divine origin — of that persuasion on which Christianity itself was originally founded, and must ultimately rest — which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled, for near three thousand years, whose votaries have never murdered each other in religious wars, or cherished the theological hatred so general, so inextinguishable among those who revile them…
I am a Republican! Thank God, I have not been so heedless and so ignorant of what has passed, and is now passing in the political world. I have not been so proud or so prejudiced as to renounce the cause for which I have fought, as an American throughout the whole of the revolutionary war…
I am a Jew, and if for no other reason, for that reason am I a Republican. Among the pious priesthood of church establishments, weare compassionately ranked with Turks, Infidels, and Heretics. In the monarchies of Europe we are hunted from society, stigmatized as unworthy of common civility… In republics we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs… How then can a Jew but be a Republican? in America particularly. Unfeeling and ungrateful would he be if he were callous to the glorious and benevolent cause of the difference between his situation in this land of freedom and among the proud and privileged law-givers of Europe.
But I am poor, I am so, my family also is large, but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian because his religion is not so old as theirs…”
Nones married Miriam Marks in 1782 and had thirteen children. In 1801, he was appointed notary public by the governor of Pennsylvania, and became an official translator of state documents in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. He died in Philadelphia on February 9, 1826. From Nones, his children inherited a passion for politics, and three sons followed careers in the foreign service: Solomon was appointed by Jefferson consul-general in Portugal; Aaron served as consul at Aux Cayes, Haiti, from 1820-1822; and Abraham was consul-general to Zulia, Venezuela.
However, it was younger brother Joseph—Miriam’s father—who set off on a series of adventures exciting and strange enough to constitute a life rivaling their father’s for spectacular detail. Filled with wanderlust, the seventeen-year-old Joseph joined the Navy as midshipman in 1814 and soon saw action in the Second Barbary War.
He told the fantastical story that he was descended from one Raphael de Nones of Genoa, a seventeenth century physician, knighted for his “discovery of simulating parts of the body in life-like wax,” although no evidence exists to suggest that such a person ever lived.
Joseph Nones kept extensive journals of his travels and adventures. One night he dined with the American consul at Malaga, William Kirkpatrick. During the long meal, young Nones found himself particularly impressed by the beauty of one of Kirkpatrick’s granddaughters, whom he described as “some pumpkin.” The “pumpkin” would, in turn, marry Napoleon III and become the Empress Eugenie. Nones resigned from the Navy in 1821 but continued his world tour. In Russia he witnessed a ceremony with Czar Alexander I. He continued on to Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Calcutta, Carthage, Cadiz, and the Orkney Islands. When he finally returned to the United States, he began to experiment with food concentration and preservation. He marketed to the Navy a product called, “Nones’ Life Preservation and Antiseptic-Nutritive Compound,” a concentrated food ration which would also help prevent scurvy, making him—in addition to everything else—a pioneer in food preservation.
