Hello Leonard,
I have been watching as the facts unfold. Quite a family.
I have been focusing on Catherine, her siblings and her parents.
She also had two brothers, Abraham and Joseph. Both were named in the wills of Solomon Phillips (1816) and that of his son Mordecai (1847).
The 1816 will, as you may know, was translated from "the Hebrew written in the German Jewish Character". That statement may actually have meant that the will was in German, but written in Hebrew characters. I have examples of such texts from my own family.
Solomon Phillips was the
hazan or cantor of London's Hambro Synagogue. In English language records, he is referred to as Solomon Phillips. However, his full Hebrew name was:
Mosheh Reuven also known as
Zelig son of
Shmuel, the Levite
Zelig was authorised by Rabbinical courts as an alias (
kinui) for
Reuven.
The Hambro burial register records his burial on 15th April 1816 (
https://synagoguescribes.com/blog/person-details/?value=31300)
You'll see that his father is named as "Samuel HHR". I suspect that there is slight transcription error, and the text should be read from right to left. H
RR is a common Hebrew acronym for
ha-rav ravi, which denotes that the man was a recognised rabbi.
Corrected the acronyms aboveI have not found any record of his wife's name, but she was not named in the will, so she must have died before him.
Your Reuben Zaleg Felipe was clearly named after his grandfather, so I would be very surprised if he was born before the latter's death in 1816.
Amongst British Jews, the surname Phillips was often taken from the Hebrew given name
Feis, which is itself a
kinui for the names
Uri and
Uri-Shraga.
I haven't been able to make any headway with Jacob Cohen. And as I'm sure you know, researching Cohens (and Levys - my own surname) is never easy - the Smiths of the Jewish world.
Take care, Justin
