On December 29, 1778, as British troops overran Savannah, Georgia, a 43-year-old Jewish officer and his teenage son tried desperately to escape across Musgrove Creek.
British soldiers were firing at them, and the creek was swollen by the incoming tide. The officer could have swum to safety, but his 16-year-old son could not swim. Rather than abandon him, he surrendered alongside the boy.
The officer was Colonel Mordecai Sheftall, the highest-ranking Jew to serve on the American side during the Revolutionary War.
Born in Savannah on December 2, 1735, Sheftall was the son of Benjamin and Perla Sheftall, German Jews who had arrived in Georgia from London just two years earlier. They were among 41 Jewish settlers who reached the fledgling colony in July 1733, only months after James Oglethorpe founded Savannah. The newcomers helped establish Congregation Mickve Israel, one of America's oldest Jewish congregations.
Maintaining Jewish observance in colonial Georgia was not easy, particularly with so few Jews in the colony. Around the time of young Mordecai's bar mitzvah, his father struggled to obtain prayer books and tefillin (phylacteries) from England. In a letter to friends overseas, Benjamin lamented that the shipment had failed to arrive, writing that his "heart is full of grief."
Mordecai's formal education ended at 11, but by 17 he was trading in deerskins. At 18, he had accumulated enough money to purchase 50 acres of land near Savannah. He subsequently expanded into cattle, timber, leather and real estate, becoming one of Savannah's most prosperous merchants and landowners. In 1761, he married Frances Hart of Charleston, South Carolina, with whom he had six children.
Sheftall also took an active role in Savannah's Jewish community. Although Congregation Mickve Israel had been established decades earlier, it had no permanent synagogue building. Sheftall set aside a room in his home for religious services, and in 1772 he donated land for a Jewish cemetery that still bears his name.
In 1775, as relations between Britain and the American colonies deteriorated, Sheftall became chairman of Savannah's Parochial Committee, a local body that supported the Patriot cause and helped enforce restrictions on British commerce. In October of that year, Sheftall and other Patriot activists entered Savannah's customs house, forced open desks and seized the papers of a vessel named Charlotte that British officials had detained.
Two years later, he was appointed Commissary General of purchases for the Georgia state militia, a position that carried the rank of colonel. In 1778, General Robert Howe appointed him Deputy Commissary General for Continental troops in Georgia and South Carolina. His son, Sheftall Sheftall, also served as an assistant Deputy Commissary under his command.
With public funds in short supply, Sheftall repeatedly advanced his own money to purchase provisions for American troops.
His efforts were interrupted in December 1778, when British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell attacked Savannah, routing the American defenders commanded by General Robert Howe. After their capture, and within days of the city's fall, Sheftall and his son were transferred to the British prison ship Nancy.
The Rev. Moses Allen, a Protestant minister imprisoned aboard the same vessel, recorded in his diary that when the prisoners were served pork, Sheftall and his son refused to eat it because of the Jewish dietary laws. Their British captors responded with cruelty, ordering that their knives and forks be greased with pork.
In his diary, Allen praised Sheftall's fortitude, holding him up as an example to his fellow prisoners.
Allen later drowned while attempting to escape the ship. Sheftall offered nearly all the money he possessed to purchase wood for a coffin, but the British captain refused, declaring that rebels had no business with coffins.
Sheftall was paroled in March 1779 and sent to Sunbury, Georgia. His son remained aboard the prison ship until June, when he too was paroled and allowed to join his father. Later that year, the two attempted to sail to Charleston after Loyalist forces threatened American officers in Sunbury. Their vessel was intercepted by the British frigate Guadeloupe, which carried them to the Caribbean island of Antigua.
After several months there, they made their way to Philadelphia, arriving in June 1780. Their formal exchange as prisoners of war was not completed until later that year.
By then, Sheftall's financial position had deteriorated badly. British forces had seized much of his property, and the money he had advanced to the American cause remained largely unpaid.
His wife, Frances, and their four younger children, who had fled to Charleston, were struggling to survive. Frances supported the family through needlework and laundry while trying to provide kosher food for their children.
In August 1780, Sheftall petitioned the Continental Congress for financial assistance, asking that the government repay what it owed him so he could support his family. His appeals brought little relief.
In April 1781, Samuel Elbert, a Continental Army colonel and Georgia militia general who had been imprisoned alongside him, praised Sheftall as an officer of exceptional integrity and described him as "a true Whig, firmly attached to the Interest of America."
While living in Philadelphia, Sheftall attempted to rebuild his finances through commerce and privateering, investing in an armed schooner named Hetty to prey on British shipping. The venture failed to restore his former prosperity.
When Sheftall returned to Savannah in late 1782, he resumed his involvement in Jewish communal life. He helped secure an official state charter for Congregation Mickve Israel in 1790 and served as its president from 1791 to 1796.
As late as February 1796, just a year before his death, Sheftall was still petitioning Georgia's legislature to reimburse him for more than 6,200 pounds in Georgia's wartime currency that he had advanced to the militia.
He acknowledged that every good citizen should bear his share of the nation's burdens but added that he was "sorry so great a proportion has [fallen] to his lot."
Sheftall died on July 6, 1797, at the age of 61, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery he had helped establish decades earlier.
Despite the financial sacrifices he had made, Sheftall had greeted the news of American independence with enthusiasm. In a letter to his eldest son dated April 13, 1783, he thanked the Almighty for the end of hostilities and declared: "An entire new scene will open itself and we have the world to begin again."