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Fork - Hallmarked with Toronto Maker Mark for JOSEPH, JUDAH GEORGE (Gershom). He was established in Canada in 1838.  The name changed to & Company when he passed in 1857. This hallmark is circa late 1840’s. He was a successful silversmith, businessman and prominent member of Upper Canada’s early Jewish society. He played a founding role in establishing the Jewish Congregation of Toronto in 1856. Biographical information on Judah is available online and at Canada’s national archive. Judah George Joseph, one of the most prominent members of this early community, was born of a family described as “highly respectably connected.” Much of his early life had been spent in the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. He immigrated to the United States in 1829 and eventually established himself as a jeweller and optician in Cincinnati. He prospered but “his generous nature led him to become a victim of false friends” and he was swindled in business, losing most of his property. About 1840 Joseph reportedly moved with his family to Hamilton, Upper Canada. Possibly attracted by the mercantile prospects offered by Toronto, he settled there between 1842 and 1844 and opened a business on King Street near the St Lawrence Market, then the city’s leading commercial district. In addition to his trade as a jeweller and optician, he produced silverware, timepieces, mathematical and drafting instruments, and scientific equipment. Joseph observed traditional Jewish practice and closed his shop on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. He built a successful business, acquired property, and enjoyed considerable popularity as a result of his “cheerful, open-hearted and familiar” manner. Joseph was instrumental in the formation of the Hebrew Congregation of Toronto, a small group which evidently performed no synagogal functions. In September 1849, however, Judah Joseph and Abraham Nordheimer* laid the foundation for Jewish community organization in Toronto by purchasing land for a cemetery from John Beverley Robinson*. This half-acre property, located in York Township east of Toronto (on present-day Pape Avenue), was to be held in trust for the Hebrew Congregation, which probably had the cemetery as its sole concern. In 1850 Joseph’s young son, Simeon Alfred, was one of the first to be buried there and it is possible that the lad’s illness may have motivated this purchase by Joseph who was “domestic and intensely attached to his family.”

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