Subject: Currency facsimiles

Broadside in Form of Currency - 1860's-70's Benjamin Shuman Advertising Facsimile Currency Patriotic Boy Flag & a Side wheeler with sails...21 South Main St., Providence, Rhode Island...Manufactuer/Wholesaler and Retailer of Clothing....successor to Louis Lewinson. Benjamin Shuman was Jewish, and his commercial and religious presence in mid-19th-century Providence is well-preserved in regional historical records. During the 1850s and 1860s, the bustling commercial district on South Main Street in Providence hosted several pioneering Jewish merchants. Benjamin Shuman operated a prominent retail clothing establishment here known as the "Clothing Bazaar". Historical documentation from Small State Big History reveals that Shuman purchased this store directly from Louis Lewisson, another foundational Jewish entrepreneur in Rhode Island. Under Lewisson, the shop became famous for issuing "advertising currency"-scrip designed to look like real bank notes to draw in customers. When Shuman bought the business, he modified the shop's original advertising woodcuts to explicitly feature Benjamin Shuman's name on the promotional handbills. He ran the shop successfully until selling it to Elisha W. Frank in the early 1860s. ] Benjamin Shuman belongs to the earliest wave of organized Jewish life in Providence. Rather than keeping his faith private, he was a vocal leader trying to build permanent communal infrastructure. His most notable documented actions include the 1857 Touro Fund Petition. On April 12, 1857, Benjamin Shuman and fellow merchant Abraham Wormser co-authored and sent a historic letter to Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia. Leeser was the premier traditional Jewish leader in the United States and editor of the prominent Jewish monthly The Occident. In the letter, Shuman and Wormser formally inquired if the late philanthropist Judah Touro had left any bequeathed funds to assist small, emerging congregations in building a permanent house of Jewish worship. Furthermore, regarding his involvement in the founding community circle, Shuman is explicitly named in the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes on the exclusive ledger of the original "ten heads of families". These individuals were the primary Jewish residents who established the secular and religious footprint for the Providence Jewish community before the massive late-19th-century migrations