Moses Myers was born in New York in 1753 to Haym Myers and Rachel Louzada. He served briefly in New York Second Battalion during the Revolutionary War before turning his attention to smuggling goods past the blockades for sale to the colonists, setting up a network that ranged from Amsterdam to St. Eustasius. After paying off all his debts from the war and the loss of income from the capture of St. Eustasius in 1781, he married Eliza Judah Chapman in 1787. Together they had twelve children, nine of which lived to adulthood. He moved to Norfolk, VA in 1787, the first Jewish settler in the city, and there he built his wealth and prominence. He served on the Norfolk City Council in 1795, was commissioned as a Colonel of a regiment of Virginia volunteers in 1804, and was appointed Vice-Consul for both Denmark and the Nederland. In 1828, President John Quincy Adams appointed him as Collector of Customs for the Port of Norfolk. In 1816, after Congress passed the Embargo Act, Myers was forced into bankruptcy. Though he was told he could avoid debtor’s prison by trafficking enslaved or opium, he refused and, instead, paid off his debts over time so that, by the time of his death in 1835, he was completely cleared of debt.
