In our previous research into the earliest records of Jewish presence at Princeton University, we uncovered something unexpected. Our Undergraduate Alumni Records 1748-1920 file on Mordecai Myers, Class of 1812, contains correspondence between Mordecai’s father, Levi Myers, and a man named Cleland Kinlock. Though they do not mention Princeton or Mordecai Myers, and thus would not ordinarily be found in an alumni file, these letters offer a fascinating look into antebellum American Jewish reflection on religious identity.

Levi Myers, the son of another Mordecai Myers and Esther Cohen Myers, was born October 26, 1767 in Jacksonboro, South Carolina. His parents had moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1750, where Esther Cohen’s father served as the rabbi of Beth Elohim Synagogue. Mordecai and Esther sent their son to study medicine in Charleston at the age of 15. After apprenticeships with Drs. Haynes and Ramsay, Myers went on to medical school at Edinburgh University in 1785. He returned to South Carolina in 1789, where he set up a successful medical practice of his own. In 1794, he married Frances Minis. Together they had 8 children, including the Mordecai Myers who later went to study at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1809.

In September 1822, a hurricane hit the South Carolina coast, destroying the house where the Myers family lived. There was only one survivor, a household servant. Levi, Frances, four of their children, and nine members of their household staff (very likely including several enslaved people) all died when the house collapsed.

Though a few letters sent to Dr. Myers are found in his son’s Undergraduate Alumni Records file, we’ve chosen to highlight the one most focused on Jewish identity. We’ve done our best at offering a transcription, but some of the text still eludes us, and we welcome any suggestions to fill in the blanks. We believe the “Bishop Warburton” referenced here is William Warburton, an Anglican bishop of Gloucester who was known for controversial writings. Click each image to enlarge.

Acton June 15, 1818

 

Dear Sir,

 

It was one of the peculiarities of the Hebrew People that they never sought to make proselytes, in which I am, I assure you, as good a Jew as any one of the descendants of Abraham. The fact is that I have no sort of confidence in my own opinions, nor indeed in the opinions of others, for such is my idea of the weakness & finitude & fallibility of human nature, the imperfections of human language & the indistinctness of our ideas that I doubt whether any man that ever breathed ever knew the truth of anything, or if he had known it whether he would be able to communicate it to others. My mind is oppressed & crushed by a sense of my own ignorance, & by the discouraging tendency of my own notions, & I should consider myself as a bad man if I placed these notions within the view of those who might be injured by them. You, I believe are not liable to be injured by these notions of mine & therefore, at your request, I trust these to you, begging that you will be as careful of them as I am myself, & that you will return them to my overseer [Exum?] at your leisure.

 

I should be much obliged to you if you could procure me by loan or by purchase any of the works which contain exposition of your learned of their arguments against Christianity, 8 or 9 texts which had been quoted against Bishop Warburton are said by him to be riddles & riddles he says that they shall remain for him. Now what those texts were which learning & insolence could not twist & turn to his own purposes I cannot imagine & I should like much to know.

 

Your Dear Sir Most Sincerely,

Cleland Kinlock

Sources:

Collins, Kenneth. “Levi Myers (1767-1822): An Eighteenth Century Glasgow Medical Graduate from South Carolina.” Journal of Medical Biography (2014).

Undergraduate Alumni Records 1748-1920 (AC104).

Update November 10, 2017: Thanks to Judith R. Gibber for help with the transcription of this letter.

Update April 20, 2021: Thanks to Michael Londry for help with the transcription of this letter. Londry also suggests Kinlock may be referring to a passage from The Works of the Right Reverend William Warburton (London: 1811), Vol. 5, p. 414: “…The Texts here examined are urged in common both by Jews and Christians. But, besides these, the Jews have a set of Texts peculiar to themselves; which the Christians have never yet ventured to put upon Duty. As they are most of them of the nature of Riddles, Riddles, for me, they shall remain …”