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Benjamin D'Israeli (1730–1816) was an Italian-born English merchant and financier, the grandfather of the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield.
D'Israeli was born in Cento, near Ferrara, then in the Papal States, now part of the Italian Republic, on 22 September 1730; and died at Stoke Newington, Middlesex, on 28 November 1816. He moved to England in 1748 and settled there as a merchant, although he did not take out papers of denization till 1801.
Although a conforming Jew, and though contributing liberally towards the support of a synagogue, D'Israeli appears never to have cordially or intimately mixed with the community; only on one occasion did he serve in a minor office—that of inspector of charity schools in the year 1782.[1]
D'Israeli married twice. Firstly, on 2 April 1756, he married Rebecca Mendez Furtado, a woman of Portuguese origin. They had a daughter called Rachel. Within a few months of Rebecca's death on 1 February 1765 he married secondly Sarah Siprut de Gabay Villareal, on 28 May 1765. Their only child Isaac D'Israeli was born the next year, on 11 May 1766.[2]
- ^ Joseph Jacobs and Goodman Lipkind (1901–1906), Benjamin D'Israeli, Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls)
- ^ . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.