About the time of the Canadian conquest by England (_circa_ 1760) a number of Jewish settlers took up their residence in Montreal, including Lazarus David (b. 1734), Uriel Moresco, Samuel Jacobs, Simon Levy, Fernandez da Fonseca, Abraham Franks, Andrew Hays, Jacob de Maurera, Joseph Bindona, Levy Solomons and Uriah Judah. Lazarus David was a large land owner and was noted as a public spirited citizen. Several of the others held offices in the English army; there were also among them some extensive traders, who did much for the development of the newly acquired colony. After they had been reinforced by other settlers, a congregation, called “Shearit Israel,” was organized in 1768, which for nearly a century remained the only Jewish congregation in Canada. Most of the members were Sephardim, and they stood in close communion with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London, who presented them with two scrolls of the Law for the newly founded congregation. At first the congregation met for worship in a hall on St. James Street; but in 1777 the members built the first synagogue, at the junction of Notre Dame and St. James Streets, close to the present court house, on a lot belonging to the David family, whose founder, the above mentioned Lazarus David, died one year previously, and was the first to be interred in the cemetery which the congregation acquired in 1775. His son, David David (1764–1824), was one of the founders of the Bank of Montreal in 1808. The Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen was the first regular minister of the Montreal congregation of whom there remains any record. He came there in 1778 and remained until 1782, when he went to Philadelphia, where he became rabbi of Congregation ♦Mickweh Israel. The president or parnas of the Montreal congregation in 1775 was Jacob Salesby (or Salisbury) Franks, a member of the family whose other branch played an important part in Philadelphia in the period of the Revolution. Abraham Franks (1721–97) supported the British in repelling the American invasion, while his son-in-law, Levy Solomons, who later became parnas of the Montreal congregation, was commanded by the invading American general, Montgomery, to act as purveyor to the hospitals for the American troops. But after the death of General Montgomery and the retreat of the American forces from Canada, Solomons, who was never paid for the services he rendered to the invaders, was exposed to the resentment of the British, as one suspected of sympathy for the revolting colonists. He and his family were expelled from Montreal by General Burgoyne, but eventually was permitted to return.