The first Jew to arrive in what is now the United States was Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, a Portuguese-born Spanish conquistador and alleged slave trader,[1] who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas. Although a few Jews participated in European colonization efforts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the majority of Jews arrived later in the 1700s, fleeing various European countries both to avoid persecution and to seek out profitable economic opportunities in the colonies.[2] The first major Jewish community in the South was formed in Savannah, Georgia when 41 Jews were admitted by governor James Oglethorpe in an effort to adhere to the religious tolerance espoused in the Georgia charter.[2] For years, up until the mid-1800s, the largest Jewish community on the North American continent was in Charleston, South Carolina.