Salomon, Haym

Related Category: U.S. History: Biographies

(hīm), 1740–85, American Revolutionary financier, b. Lissa (now Leszno), Poland. A Jewish emigrant from Poland, he was imprisoned (1778) by the British in New York City for aiding the Revolutionaries and was condemned to death, but he escaped to Philadelphia. There he started a successful brokerage business. He aided Robert Morris in obtaining loans from France and pledged his own fortune to the new government to maintain its credit. Salomon was never recompensed and he died impoverished.

See biographies by C. E. Russell (1930) and H. M. Fast (1941).