Harby family papers

Isaac Harby (1788-1828) was born to Solomon and Rebecca Moses Harby in Charleston, South Carolina. As a child, Harby studied at the academy of Reverend William Best, and in 1804 he joined the Philomathean Society, a group dedicated to scholarly debate and discussion, becoming president of the group in 1807. As a young man, Harby apprenticed briefly in a law office, published a short-lived literary journal called the Quiver, and established an academy on Edisto Island to support his mother and siblings after his father's death in 1805. Soon after his marriage to Rachael Mordecai in 1810, Harby moved back to Charleston and opened a school called Harby's Academy. He was drawn back to publishing and editing, however, and in 1814 acquired the Charleston Investigator, which he renamed the Southern Patriot. He later served as the editor of the City Gazette and the Mercury. Harby was also a prolific writer who authored political commentary under several pseudonyms, wrote three plays, and was well known for his dramatic criticism.

Though he did not have a religious upbringing, Harby became more involved in Judaism as an adult. Troubled by efforts to convert Jews to Christianity, he and several other men petitioned the trustees of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) to implement liturgical reforms. When KKBE refused to consider the petition, the group broke from the congregation and founded the Reformed Society of Israelites in 1825. By 1827, however, the group faltered, and in 1828, a year after his wife's death, Harby left Charleston for New York. There he enjoyed almost immediate success as an art critic for the Mirror and a dramatic critic for the Evening Post, but less than a year later fell ill with typhoid fever and died on December 14, 1828, just weeks after his 40th birthday.

Isaac Harby had six children with his wife Rachael. Their youngest child, Octavia, married Andrew Jackson Moses, with whom she had seventeen children. Her son Henry J. Harby married Adeline Emanuel, and the couple had three children, Alice, Hal, and Aline. Aline Harby married Robert Leland Moore in 1917.