The first child from the union of New York Jewish patriarch MosesRaphael Levy and his second wife GraceMears Levy, Rachel was born in London a year after herparents’ wedding. The three of them soon crossed the Atlantic, andupon arrival in New York, mother and daughter met for the first timetheir new stepchildren and half siblings, including AbigailLevy Franks. Though it proved difficult, sometimes futile, forGrace to win over these new relatives, Rachel was well lovedthroughout the family.

In1740 she married a Portuguese-born merchant who had, after some timespent in Bordeaux and then England, recently made the journey to NewYork—Isaac Mendes Seixas. The marriage evidently caused somethingof an uproar among the Sephardi old guard of New York’s Jewishcommunity, who objected to Seixas’ taking an Ashkenazi wife.Abigail Franks, tireless observer of her world, not to mention arelentless gossip, recorded that Seixas’ uncle Rodrigo Pacheco was“displeased” by his nephew’s marriage to a German Jew, andfurthermore, “the Portugueze here where in A Violent Uproar abouthit for he Did not invite any of them to ye Wedding.”

Itwas not just the “mixed-marriage”—that transgression ofcontemporary ethnic and class barriers—that troubled some about theunion. Abigail declared that Isaac had an “Untractable Dispossion.”However, after visiting with the young couple for a week at their newhome in New Jersey, where Isaac opened a “Small Country Store,”Abigail characterized Isaac as “A person of his Temper Soe muchMended,” and that “they Seem to be very happy in each other.”

Theywould have eight children, including GershomMendes Seixas.