power of attorney

A power of attorney appointing the New York based merchants Nicholas Low, Thomas Lawrence and Jacob Morris to perform any such 'Actes Deeds Matters Businness and things whatsoever as may be needful requisite and necessary in the premises as they the said Constituents [i.e. Hananel and Jacob Mendes da Costa] might or could themselves do if personally present in the said State of New York', signed 1st June 1785. Later witnessed before Richard Morris, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Judicature for the state of New York, and countersigned by him on 16th November 1785 confirming the legal validity of the document.

The Mendes da Costa family settled in England at the end of the seventeenth century. A well-known Sephardi family from Rouen, they helped to establish the burgeoning Jewish community in London and were involved in the growing Anglo-Indian diamond and commodities trade. This power of attorney signed just two years after the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War was an important means of extending the family's business interests to America at a time when mail ships took an average of four weeks to reach the new world.

Manuscript, single leaf; folio (33.5 x 21 cm); blind stamp to header, signed with seals to verso, easily legible hand; marginal tears with two areas of text-loss partially repaired in tape, small hole (approx. 0.5 x 2 cm) affecting text.