MACHADO

MACHADO, family name of Portuguese marranos . The best known is perhaps DAVID MENDEZ MACHADO (d. 1753), who left his native Lisbon in 1732 after he had aroused the suspicions of the inquisition that he practiced Judaism in secret. He arrived in Savannah, Georgia – by way of London – during 1733. Within that year he married Zipphorah Nuñez (c. 1714–1799), daughter of the former Portuguese court physician Samuel Nuñez ; Machado was then appointed ḥazzan at New York City's Spanish-Portuguese synagogue, Shearith Israel, serving from 1734 to 1753. His daughter, REBECCA (1746–1831), married jonas phillips (1736–1803), the revolutionary war patriot. Among David Machado's descendants were uriah phillips levy and mordecai manuel noah . The record of freemen in New York City for 1739 lists an AARON MACHADO, probably the brother of the ḥazzan. The Machado family name appears also in the earliest records of the Mexican Inquisition: ANTONIO MACHADO and his daughter ISABEL were inculpated during the trial of Jorge de Almeida in 1600. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Stern, Americans, index; D. de S. Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone; Early Jewish Settlers, 1682–1831 (1952); Rosenbloom, Biogr Dict, 105; J.R. Marcus, Early American Jewry, 2 (1955), 59, 335.