The Joseph lineThe Josephs
from Cornwall to the calle Libertad.
The eldest and the youngest Joseph pictured on this page
Arms of the names
- Joseph Arms of the name Joseph (Tournai), as recorded in Rietstap’s Armorial général. Modern AI-assisted rendering from the recorded blazon; CC0.
- Hayes Arms of the name O’Hea (Hayes), as recorded in Burke’s General Armory, 1884. Modern AI-assisted rendering from the recorded blazon; CC0.
- O’Donnell Arms of the name O’Donnell (Tyrconnell), as recorded in Burke’s General Armory, 1884. Modern AI-assisted rendering after MostEpic’s drawing, Wikimedia Commons; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Baccaro Arms of the name Baccari (Velletri), as recorded in Crollalanza’s Dizionario storico-blasonico. Modern AI-assisted rendering from the recorded blazon; CC0.
- Trotta Arms of the name Trotti (Ferrara), as recorded in Rietstap’s Armorial général. Modern AI-assisted rendering from the recorded blazon; CC0.
Heraldry recorded for these surnames in the old armorials. Arms belonged to particular families, not to a surname; none is known to have been granted to or borne by the ancestors on this page.
These shields are modern renderings made from the recorded blazon (AI-assisted), not photographs of historical objects.
From Mannheim to Buenos Aires · a timeline
Each chapter below carries its evidence tier.
A Family from the Rhine
The earliest Joseph in the tree is remembered only as Joseph of Alsace. His son, Yechiel Joseph, was born about 1730 in Mannheim and married Elizabeth Goldsmith. Their sons crossed to England and settled in Cornwall, among the small Jewish communities that grew up around the mining towns and the port of Falmouth.
Two of those sons left clear marks. Henry Joseph of St Austell died in 1803; Lyon Joseph served as parnas, the lay head, of the Falmouth congregation between 1807 and 1815, and was buried on Plymouth Hoe in 1825.
Moses of Redruth
A third son, Moses “Isaac” Joseph, was born about 1765 and made his life in Redruth, where he married Judith Rebecca Jacob, daughter of Moses Jacob of Redruth. Judith died in 1849.
One online tree makes Joseph Joseph, below, a son of Henry of St Austell rather than of Moses. The Anglo-Jewish historian Bernard Susser’s notes on the Cornish Josephs point to Moses, and the tree follows him; the transcriptions behind that conclusion are not all legible, so the question is not quite closed.
Joseph Joseph
Henry, who became Enrique
Their son Henry Isaac Joseph was born in Redruth in April 1839. He went to Argentina as a young man: AMIA’s memorial calendar says he arrived aged twenty-two. In Buenos Aires he became Enrique Joseph, a merchant.
In 1862, with Louis Brie, he gathered the first organised Jewish community in the city. Its prayers were held in private houses for a quarter of a century; the congregation moved through rented rooms in the 1880s and 1890s, bought land on the calle Libertad in 1897, and there built what is now the Templo Libertad of the Congregación Israelita de la República Argentina, CIRA. The present building dates from 1932 and was declared a national historic monument in 2000. Henry also founded the Jevra Kedusha, the burial society from which AMIA descends.
He is remembered as the first rabbi of Argentina, and AMIA records that the Consistoire Central in Paris recognised him in 1882. The honest word is that he acted as rabbi: the community’s own historian notes that he was never formally ordained, because he had married a woman who was not Jewish. He died on 25 May 1913 and was buried in the community cemetery at Liniers.
Sarah and the Children
The 1895 national census finds Enrique, fifty-six and born in England, in Buenos Aires with his wife Sarah and six children. Family trees give her surname as Hayes. The sources do not agree about her: the census lists her as born in the capital and records the household as Israelite, while Henry’s marriage outside the faith is the reason given for his never being ordained. Their marriage record, about 1871, has not been found.
Into the Alvelda Line
Their son Alejandro José Joseph, born in 1875, married Petrona O’Donnell in the San Cristóbal district of Buenos Aires in 1901. She was the Uruguayan-born daughter of Severo O’Donnell, and this is where the Josephs meet the O’Donnell house.
Their son Alejandro Enrique Joseph (1902–1939) married Angela Rogelia Baccaro Trotta. He made his First Communion in Buenos Aires on 13 October 1912, aged ten, which fixes his birth year at 1902. His godparents, whom he called tíos, were Alicia and Carlos Zemborain (the reading of the surname is uncertain). The 1895 census lists an Alicia Joseph, 17, in Henry’s household, probably Alejandro José’s sister, which would make Carlos her husband. The communion was Catholic; the same census records the household as Israelite. The family kept both practices.
Their daughter Elsa Haydée Joseph O’Donnell was born on 16 October 1925 in San José (Guaymallén), Mendoza. She married Felipe Eduardo Alvelda (1927–2015) and died in Alpharetta, Georgia, in 2012. Through her, Henry Joseph of Redruth and Buenos Aires is a direct ancestor of the Alvelda family. The generations after that are living and are not described here.
Elsa and Ángela
Nine photographs from the family’s collection, in the order they came: Elsa; Elsa with Felipe Eduardo Alvelda; Elsa with her mother, Ángela; and Ángela.
Unidentified family photographs
Two more photographs from the family’s collection. Who is in them is not known.
Sources
- La Nación, Revista Lugares (2024): history of the Templo de la calle Libertad
- AMIA, Calendario de la memoria: Henry Joseph
- MyHeritage family trees: Henry Joseph
- Argentina, Segundo Censo Nacional 1895, Buenos Aires, section 13, page 286 (household of Enrique Joseph), via FamilySearch
- Family papers: First Communion card of Alejandro E. Joseph O’Donnell, Buenos Aires, 13 October 1912
- Family papers: Libreta Cívica of Elsa Haydée Joseph (duplicate)
- Archivo General del Ejército: army enrolment card, class of 1902 (Alejandro Enrique Joseph)
- Buenos Aires civil marriage register, San Cristóbal, 1901 (Joseph × O’Donnell)
- B. Susser, notes on the Jews of Cornwall (as cited in the project research log)
- Project research log: JOSEPH-research.md, findings/joseph-*.md
On certainty
DOCUMENTED: from records or published institutional histories. FAMILY RECORDS · OPEN: from this project’s own research, with unresolved questions.