TOBIAS, JOSEPH

TOBIAS, JOSEPH (1684–1761), colonial settler of Charleston, South Carolina. Tobias, whose parentage and birthplace are unknown, was of Spanish lineage. He served as Spanish interpreter in the British navy prior to coming to Charleston in the early 1730s. During the long-standing hostilities between the English and the Spanish in the South, Tobias served the South Carolina government as a Spanish interpreter. In 1741 he became a naturalized British subject, being one of the first Jews in the colonies to apply under an act passed by Parliament in 1740. Tobias was one of the founders and first parnas of Charleston's congregation Beth Elohim, organized in 1749. His wife, Leah, was the daughter of Jacob De Oliviera, one of the original Savannah Jewish settlers in 1733. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: T.J. Tobias, in: AJHSP, 49 (1959), 33–38; B.A. Elzas, The Jews of South Carolina (1905), 24, and passim; C. Reznikoff and U.Z. Engelman, The Jews of Charleston (1950), passim; T.J. Tobias, in: A.J. Karp (ed.), The Jewish Experience in America, 1 (1969), 114–9. (Thomas J. Tobias)