Global InformationSamuel Nunez information
Samuel Nunes (1668–1744) was a Portuguese physician and among the earliest Jews to settle in North America.
A few months after their February 1733 arrival from England, an epidemic began claiming the lives of the first 114 colonists of the infant American colony of Georgia. The first to die in April was the colony's only doctor.
Unexpectedly, the William and Sarah, a second ship from London, landed in Savannah on July 11, carrying a middle-aged physician and 40 more Jewish passengers. Dr. Samuel Nunes (1668–1744) was allowed by the colony's founder, General James Edward Oglethorpe, to begin treating the ill. By the time the middle-aged Portuguese physician began his treatments and during the month of his arrival, around two dozen died. However, the death rate dwindled dramatically to only a few with the epidemic ending by the end of that year. Over the protests of the London Trustees who did not want Georgia to become "a Jewish colony," General Oglethorpe allowed the Jewish people to settle in Savannah.
They were the “largest group of Jews to land in North America in Colonial days.” As told by one of his seven children, daughter Zipra, to her great-grandson Mordecai Manuel Noah, Dr. Nunis and his family embarked on a dramatic escape from Lisbon to London in 1726 for religious freedom, fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition.