The website sfarad.es shared an interesting biographical note of a woman whose family was member of both Searith Israel and Mikve Israel in 1800s. I thought it was interesting to share here:---------------------Rebecca Mendez Machado On November 21, 1746, in Reading, Pennsylvania, the cantor David Mendez Machado (born in Portugal, though the Machado surname originates from the Canary Islands) and his wife, Maria Cayetana Ribeiro, also known as Cayetana da Veiga, and Hebrew name Tsipora (Sefora), welcomed a daughter named Rebeca.Rebeca's maternal grandfather, Diego Ribeiro, had brought the entire family to America in the late 17th century. His son, Samuel (Diego Nunes Ribeiro), from Charleston, South Carolina, was Cayetana's father. Samuel, a physician who had practiced for forty years in Lisbon before fleeing persecution by the Inquisition, moved from London to Savannah, Georgia. It was in Philadelphia that he remarried Rebeca Cayetana da Veiga, the maternal granddaughter of Dr. Andre Soares de Sequeira and the wife of the shojet of N.Y. However, Rebeca became an orphan at the age of one when her father passed away, and her mother remarried Israel Jacobs, with whom she had a daughter.In 1763, at the age of 16, Rebeca married Jonas Phillips in Hickory Town, Pennsylvania. Jonas, initially a struggling merchant turned ritual slaughterer (shojet) in New York, left the position due to dissatisfaction with the income. The couple returned to Philadelphia, where they prospered in life and became the second wealthiest Jewish couple in the city. Jonas served as the parnas of the Mikve Israel synagogue, where Rebeca was an active member. It was there that she co-founded the Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, providing assistance to both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals.In 1819, her dedication to aiding the less fortunate led her to become the first president of the Hebrew Society of Benevolence in Philadelphia, an organization still active today. Last year alone, it assisted 189 women with over $200,000 in capital, entirely managed through volunteering and donations.One of her sons, Manuel Phillips, continued the family tradition in medicine, serving as a physician in the American Navy and traveling through India and China. Living a nomadic life, he never married and died under unclear circumstances in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1824.Rebeca, in 1773, gave birth to another son, Naftali, at the age of 16, coinciding with the birth of the United States. Naftali accompanied George Washington in the ride between Philadelphia and New York for the ceremony naming him the first president. He later presided over the Philadelphia community from 1816, owned the National Advocate newspaper, and married Rachel, the niece of the prominent New York rabbi Gershom Mendez Seixas. After her death, he remarried Esther, the daughter of Benjamin Mendes Seixas, one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange.Rebeca passed away at the age of 85 on June 25, 1831, in Philadelphia, and was laid to rest in the Mikve Israel cemetery.Original source (in Spanish) https://www.sfarad.es/rebeca-mendez-machado/