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	Early Years Judah Benjamin was born a British subject in Christiansted on the island of St. Croix, British West Indies, Virgin islands on August 6,1811.The child of Sephardic Jewish settlers, he was descended from families that could be traced back to fifteenth-century Spain. His father Phillip Benjamin, was an English Jew, and his mother Rebecca Mendes, a Portuguese Jew. His family moved in 1813 to Wilmington, N.C., and finally settled in 1822 in Charleston, S.C. Benjamin's boyhood was very much steeped in Jewish culture and tradition. His father was one of the twelve dissenters in Charleston who formed the first Reform Congregation of America. Although the records of Beth Elohim congregation were burned and no one knows for certain, he probably was one of the first young boys confirmed at the new reform temple, which was founded when he was thirteen years old. The character of a young Jewish boy reared by a deeply involved Jewish family would be shaped by that experience for the rest of his life. As a precocious youth he attended the Fayetteville Academy in Fayetteville, N.C. Benjamin entered Yale University law school at the age of 14 and upon graduation was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1832 and practiced law in New Orleans where he also taught English and studied French in his spare time. What followed next was a strategic marriage to Natalie S. Martin, whose family belonged to the ruling Creole aristocracy in New Orleans, which propelled him into financial success and subsequently into his political career. He actively participated in the explosive growth of New Orleans between 1820 and 1840 as a commercial lawyer and political advocate for banking, finance, and railroad interests. Benjamin prospered for a time as a sugar planter, helped organize the Illinois Central Railroad, and was elected to the Louisiana legislature in 1842.
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