There was at least one Jew in Massachusetts before the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam, and he is mentioned only as being assisted――or forced――to quit the colony. The reference to him is dated May 3, 1649, when it is stated that the court allows Solomon Franco, the Jew, six shillings per week out of the treasury for ten weeks for subsistence till he can get his passage into Holland (see Kohut, _The Jews of New England_ in “Publications,” XI, p. 78). Several other Jews are mentioned as having lived there in the latter part of the seventeenth and in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth centuries. But owing to the intolerance and religious zeal of the Puritans, they either moved to other parts or embraced Christianity. When a Jew named Joseph Frazon (or Frazier) died in Boston, in 1704, his body was sent to Newport for burial. The most distinguished among the early converts was Judah Monis (born in Algiers about 1680; died in Northborough, Mass. in 1764). He was baptized in the College Hall at Cambridge, Mass., on March 22, 1722, and was afterward active in the cause of his new faith, although he observed throughout his life the Jewish Sabbath. He was an instructor in Hebrew at Harvard University, from 1722 till 1759, when on the death of his wife he resigned and removed to Northborough. Besides some insignificant missionary pamphlets, he was the author of the first Hebrew grammar printed in America (Boston, 1735). It was in the smallest of the original colonies, which is now likewise the smallest State in the Union, Rhode Island, founded by the pioneer of religious liberty in the New World, that the Jews established their oldest congregation on the North American continent. Providence was founded in 1636, Portsmouth and Newport about two years later, and the last named place, which soon became one of the most important cities in the colonies, excelling even New York as a commercial center and port of entry until after the Revolution, began to attract Jews soon after their arrival in these parts of the country. The earliest authentic mention of Jews in Newport is in 1658, when fifteen Jewish families are said to have arrived from Holland, bringing with them the first degrees of Masonry which they proceeded to confer on Abraham Moses in the house of Mordecai Campanall.[9] But there is reason to believe that Jews from New Amsterdam and Curaçao settled there a year or two before. A congregation seems to have been organized in 1658 under the name “Jeshuat Israel.” The cemetery, immortalized by Longfellow and Emma Lazarus, was acquired by Campanall and Moses Packeckoe, in 1677, but it is possible that there existed an earlier Jewish cemetery.