AMBROSIUS, MOSES:
By: Max J. Kohler
One of the earliest Jewish settlers in New York, then called New Amsterdam. He was one of a party of twenty-three Jews who arrived in the New Netherlands in Sept., 1654, apparently having left Bahia, Brazil, upon its reconquest by the Portuguese from the Dutch West India Company. As each member of the party had made himself individually liable for the passage-money of all the party, and as the immigrants were unable to pay this money in full, Ambrosius was one of two who were placed under civil arrest by the municipal authorities; but he appears to have been released in a short time, and, with his associates, to have prospered on American soil under the Dutch flag.
