The exact date when the Jews took advantage of that liberal decree is not known, but it is presumed that the religious services, which had been heretofore conducted semi-privately, were soon performed in a house devoted to that purpose. It is certain that there was a Jewish Synagogue in New York in 1695, probably as early as 1691, while the restrictions as to trade were removed a few years before. The Synagogue, the first on the North American continent, was situated on the south side of the present Beaver street, between Broadway and Broad street. When it became too small for the community which was increasing in wealth and in numbers, a new edifice was erected in 1728 on Mill street (about the present site of South William street), where the congregation, which now assumed the name of “Shearith Israel” (Remnant of Israel), continued to worship for more than a century. A profitable commerce was carried on between New York and the West Indies at the beginning of the eighteenth century in which numerous Jewish merchants participated. There was also carried on, though for a short period, a considerable business of exporting wheat to Portugal, on account of the scarcity in Europe about the close of the French war. Abraham d’Lucena and Louis Moses Gomez, who engaged in that traffic to Portugal, not only became two of the most affluent of the Jewish residents of New York, but they also incidentally caused an increase of the number of their co-religionists in the community. It is presumed that the vessels which carried grain to the Iberian peninsula brought Jewish or Marrano passengers on the return voyage. Most of the new Jewish names which began to appear here about that time are of undoubted Spanish and Portuguese origin. But there were also in the city Jews from other countries. When the Rev. John Sharpe proposed the erection of a school-library and chapel in New York, in 1712–13, he points out among the advantages which the city afforded for that purpose that: “It is possible also to learn Hebrew here as well as in Europe, there being a Synagogue of Jews, and many ingenious men of that nation from Poland, Hungary, Germany, etc.” The above-mentioned Louis Moses Gomez (b. Madrid, 1654; d. New York, 1740) who arrived in America about 1700, was until the time of his death one of the principal merchants of New York. He had five sons, and his descendants have intermarried with most of the old-time American-Jewish families.