Samuel Hart was the second child born to Jacob and Esther Levy Hart, daughter of Grace Mears and Moses Raphael Levy. Raised in Newport, Samuel enjoyed not only the companionship of his parents and two siblings, Moses and Miriam, but that of the families of his uncles Naphtali, Samuel, Abraham, and Isaac Hart. The Hart family played a prominent role in Newport’s Jewish community: Naphtali served as parnas of B’nai Jeshurun in 1759, while Isaac, that same year, joined Jacob Rodriguez de Rivera and Moses Levy as the three trustees who acquired the plot of land on which to build a synagogue.

Samuel and his brother Moses trained as merchants under their uncle Samuel. The brothers’ business flourished until the Revolution.

The Hart family, all Loyalists, fled Newport after of the evacuation of the British army in 1779. In 1780, Samuel, Moses, and their father were identified, along with a dozen others, as traitors to the American cause in an act of banishment by the Rhode Island legislature. The act recorded that the Harts had willingly given comfort to the British and that they “had left this State and joined the enemies thereof,” settling on Long Island.

The family drifted in different directions. Many went to the British West Indies, some left for England, while Samuel, his parents, and siblings, all went to New York City around 1782. Here, his sister Miriam married Lieutenant Montague Blackwell and Samuel married Rebecca Byrne. The following year, when the British yielded New York, Samuel, his wife, and their infant daughter, Esther, along with his brother and parents fled to England. His parents died there the following year. Moses too would remain in England until his death in 1825.

Samuel, however, returned with his family to North America, settling in Halifax by 1785. He purchased a store, where he sold dry goods from England and products from the West Indies. Business was slow going for some time, and debts landed him in prison more than once. Eventually, however, his business prospered. In 1793, Samuel was elected to the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia, though to assume his position he had to be baptized Anglican. He retained the office until 1799. Lore has it that Samuel, on a trip to England in 1795-96—the very trip when this portrait was painted—left his son Moses Montagu with his brother, Moses, who had remained an observant Jew, so that his child would be raised Jewish.

Samuel’s final years were troubled ones. During the economic slump of 1805-1807, his business failed. In 1809, he was declared a lunatic, and his final days were spent chained to the floor in an upstairs room in his own mansion in Preston, Nova Scotia.