54TH JEWISH-AMERICAN HALL OF FAME MEDAL ISSUED

 

The 54th medal in the Jewish-American Hall of Fame series honors Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who was born in 1815 in Charleston, South Carolina into a Sephardic family. His ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492. Carvalho was an early photographer, a talented artist, an inventor, author and explorer.

The Solomon Carvalho medals are trapezoidal shaped, 2 inches diameter, weighing 2 oz., and individually serial numbered on the edge. No more than 100 bronze, 75 silver-plated and 35 gold-plated medals will be made and offered for contributions of $35, $100 and $145 respectively, plus $10 for shipping. To order, call (818) 225-1348. Mention this publication when you order and you can take a 20% discount. Money raised will help fight antisemitism.

Carvalho was a board member of the Philadelphia Hebrew Education Society from 1849–1850, and the following year, he became a member of New York's historic Congregation Shearith Israel.

In 1853, Colonel John C. Frémont, invited Carvalho to accompany him as official photographer, as he attempted to prove that a central route near the thirty-eighth parallel would be the best path for a planned transcontinental railroad. During the trip, despite the frigid weather which made chemical combinations difficult, Carvalho painted and made near daily daguerreotype portraits of expedition members, the Native Americans they met, and the landscapes. Tragically, all but one of the nearly 300 daguerreotypes taken by Carvalho during the Frémont expedition were lost in a fire.

Solomon Carvalho would nearly die on that trip of scurvy, starvation and frostbite, but kindly Mormons in Utah helped to nurse him back to health. Carvalho eventually reached Los Angeles, where he helped its small Jewish community to organize the Hebrew Benevolent Society.

After the American Civil War, Carvalho moved his family to New York City, but cataracts impaired his continuing portrait work, and would ultimately blind him. He became an inventor, and received two patents for steam superheating in 1877 and 1878.

When he was twenty-five years old, Carvalho painted Child with Rabbits, an image of a chubby, angelic boy surrounded by a mother rabbit and her bunnies; this was reproduced on paper money issued by numerous banks in the United States and Canada.

   

 

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