MORDECAI AN EARLY AMERICAN FAMILY nn •» 4fn tstw Vy V* 1 . v i • BIUGHAM EMILY U.S.A.$26.00 Canada$42.95 Emily Bingham's evocative telling of one American Jewish family's history is at the forefront of a new way of exploring our past, one that follows the course of national events through the relationships that speakmost imme- diately to us: those between parent and child, sibling and sibling, husband and wife. In Bing- ham's sure hands, the remarkable Mordecais talk directly to us, and an unforgettable picture of one family's struggle to succeed in earlyAmerica emerges. Few American families were caught so thor- oughlyinthe roilofAmerica's earlyhistoryasthe Mordecais. Over three generations, they wit- nessed the Continental Congress convening in Philadelphia, struggled to understand their faith during the evangelical fervor ofthe Great Awak- ening, joined patrols in the aftermath of Nat Turner's revolt, participated in the free-love ex- periments ofthe 1850s, and watched firsthand as the Union Army razed Richmond. And through — it all they wrote letters, diaries, newspaper arti- — cles, books having made personal and familial enlightenment through self-improvement their anchor throughout the tumultuous decades. Drawn from these rich archives, Mordecai is a remarkable re-creation of one family's first century in the United States. It gives this nation's early history a uniquely personal face. BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY \ !! .^~7". Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Public Library http://www.archive.org/details/mordecaiearlyameOObing MORDECAI MORDECAI AN EARLY AMERICAN FAMILY EMILY BINGHAM H LL AN D WANG I A division ofFarrar, Straus and Giroux New York HillandWang AdivisionofFarrar, StrausandGiroux 19 UnionSquareWest,NewYork10003 Copyright©2003byEmilyBingham Allrightsreserved DistributedinCanadabyDouglas&MclntyreLtd. Printedinthe UnitedStatesofAmerica Firstedition, 2003 FamilytreebyJeffreyL. Ward MapbyKimKolarik LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Bingham,Emily. Mordecai,anearlyAmericanfamilyIbyEmilyBingham.—1sted. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferences. ISBN0-8090-2756-9 (he:alk.—paper) — — 1.Mordecaifamily. 2. Jews Genealogy. 3. Jews UnitedStates Genealogy. I. Title. CS71.M83452003 — 929'.2'0973 dc2i 2-60 3 2002027488 DesignedbyAbbyKagan www.fsgbooks.com 13579 8642 10