Unlike the average newcomer who arrived in the British colonies during the colonial and early republic periods prepared to work the land, most Jewish immigrants engaged in commercial enterprises. As a consequence, of the eighteen advertisements for merchants and brokers in this issue of a Philadelphia newspaper from 1784, seven—almost forty percent—are for firms owned by Jews. Advertisements for Lyon Moses, Benjamin Nones, Moses Cohen, Lazarus Barnett, and Haym Salomon appear on the page shown here. Haym Salomon (1740-1785), an immigrant from Prussian Poland, is remembered for having used his financial expertise as a broker of foreign bills of exchange to help keep the revolutionary government solvent. He identified himself in this newspaper as the "Authorized Broker to the Office of Finance," the precursor of the Treasury Department. 

Printed by E. Oswald and D. Humphreys; Philadelphia, February 28, 1784 (no. 122).