Francisco Lindo was arrested for
Judaism and
Heresy in
Évora, on 12 August 1644.
Francisco's son Joao Rodrigues Lindo married Contance Nunes of
Guarda and lived in
Campo Maior. Their son, Isaac (Lourenco), was born in
Badajoz in 1638. He became a merchant in
Tenerife, where he and his wife arrested by the
Inquisition in 1656. After being held without trial for two years, Isaac and his wife were
penanced and released. The family lived in France before settling in London in around 1670.[12][13]
His brother, Antonio Rodriguez Lindo, a Lisbon merchant, was arrested on 9 October 1660 for Judaism and was condemned to public
Abjuration at the
Auto-da-fé of
Lisbon on 17 September 1662.
United Kingdom
Elias Lindo Family Tree
One of the oldest and most esteemed of London Sephardic families, it traces its descent to
Isaac Lindo.[14]
Isaac visited
London in the early 1650s and was married there around 1653.
Antonio Fernandez Carvajal and Abraham Chilon, who commissioned one of the first brokers medals in 1655, were his maternal uncles.[15]
He settled in London around 1670 where he became an elder of
Bevis Marks Synagogue, one of the first Jewish brokers of the
Royal Exchange, London in 1681 and a signatory of the *Ascamot of 1694.[16][17] His children included:
Alexander Lindo (1666-1727) became a sworn broker in 1683, married Rachel Lopes Pereira, who was a sister or cousin of
Diego Pereira d'Aguilar, in 1708 and had six children.
Elias Lindo (1690-1727), sworn broker, commissioned the
Lindo lamp in 1708 to celebrate his marriage to Rachel Lopes Ferreira with whom he had six children.
The first medal issued under the 1697 Act. This medal belonged to Elias Lindo, one of the brokers originally sworn in 1697, and is currently in the collection of the
Museum of London.
For nine successive generations members of the family were sworn brokers of the
City of London, until the registration of sworn brokers was abolished in 1886:[18][19][20]
Isaac Lindo (1638-1712): became a sworn broker in 1681, married Leah Lopes and had issue including:
Elias Lindo (1690-1727): sworn broker, married to Rachel Lopes Ferreira and had issue including:
Isaac Lindo (1709-1766): sworn broker, married Bathseba Abarbanel and had issue including:
Elias Lindo: sworn broker, married Grace Lumbroso de Mattos and had issue including:
Moses Lindo (1760-1837): sworn broker, married Sarah DaCosta and had issue including:
Moses DaCosta Lindo (1784-1866): sworn broker, married Leah Norsa and had issue:
Sarah DaCosta Lindo (born 1814) who married her cousin Nathaneel Lindo (1810-1889), sworn broker and solicitor, and had issue including:
Joseph Norsa Lindo (born 1837), sworn broker, who the last member of the family to pay for a "Jew Broker medal" in 1858, married Esther Benoliel and had issue including:
Moses Albert Norsa Lindo (1862-1933): sworn broker[21]
David's son Nathaneel Lindo (1810-1889) was a City solicitor who operated the firm Lindo & Co., which had long acted as solicitors for the
Spanish Portuguese Synagogue and the
Italian consulate in London, a tradition which his sons: Gabriel (1838-1908) and Arthur Lindo (1839-1905) continued.
Among the Jewish residents who made their mark on Kingston’s development, the Lindo family were outstanding.
When Alexandre Lindo arrived in Kingston in 1765, he rented a house on Port Royal Street, and by 1769 he had relocated to a rented house on Peter’s Lane. Alexandre had many children, seven with his first wife, Hannah, and after her death, sixteen with his second wife, Esther Salome. From early, Alexandre set up business on Princess Street, where over time, he acquired several properties. In 1788, he bought a row of houses on Port Royal Street leading to the harbour and established Lindo’s Wharf there. Per Stanley Mirvis' The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Testamentary History of a Diaspora in Transition, Lindo "was perhaps the most notorious Jamaican Jewish slave trader, absentee planter, and moneylender at the end of the eighteenth century..."[24]
He owned multiple transatlantic vessels and traded in all types of merchandise. For example, one of his vessels, the Esther Lindo, described by
Lloyd's Register as a constant trader on the London-Jamaica run, cleared Jamaica for London on May 28, 1790 laden with sugar, cotton, pimento, Nicaragua wood, coffee, ginger, rum, wine, silver, sweetmeats, tamarinds, balsam, copper, castor oil, and tortoise shell.[25] He owned numerous properties including Greenwich Park (the first steam powered plantation in Jamaica) and Pleasant Hill, a large coffee plantation. Lindo was a successful businessman who bought and traded goods captured by the British Royal Navy.
His eldest son,
Abraham Alexander Lindo, was put in charge of the family business in Jamaica and Alexandre moved to London, where he was involved in trading, banking and insurance. He leased part of Roehampton estate called Putney Spot from
Benjamin Goldsmid while constructing a mansion in
Finsbury Square.
He was elected Parnas of
Bevis Marks Synagogue in 1805.[29][30] That year his sons subdivided Kingston Pen into small lots which then formed a mixed-race working-class township known as Lindo's Town. Lindo’s Town included areas now known as
Trenchtown,
Denham Town and
Tivoli Gardens.