Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/209

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
RAPAELJE
RAPP
183

coalition of Democrats and Free-soilers to the National house of representatives, and served from 1 Dec., 1851, till his death. In 1852 he was refused a seat in the National Democratic convention on the ground that he and his constituents were disfranchised by their attitude toward slavery. He was an advocate of various reforms, and delivered lectures and speeches on the subject of educational advancement, several of which were published, and while a member of the Massachusetts legislature prepared a report in favor of the abolition of the death-penalty that was long quoted by the opponents of capital punishment. He took a prominent part in the agitation against the fugitive-slave law. As counsel in 1851 for Thomas Simms, the first escaped slave delivered up by Massachusetts, he took the ground that slavery was a state institution, and that the general government had no power to return fugitives from justice, or runaway apprentices or slaves, but that such extradition was a matter for arrangement between the states. He lent his voice and pen to the movement against the use of stimulants, but protested against prohibitory legislation as an invasion of private rights. After leaving the legislature, where the variety of his learning, the power of his eloquence, and his ardent convictions against the protection of native industry and other enlargements of the sphere of government, and in favor of educational and moral reforms had attracted attention, he became a favorite lecturer and political speaker throughout New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. He edited a “Workingmen's Library,” that was issued by the lyceums and two series of a “Common School Library” that was published under the sanction of the Massachusetts board of education. See his “Memoirs, Speeches, and Writings,” edited by Luther Hamilton (Boston, 1854). — The second Robert's son, Robert Samuel, antiquarian, b. in Beverly, Mass., 2 June, 1830, was graduated at Harvard in 1853 and at the Harvard law-school in 1856. On being admitted to the bar, he settled in Beverly, which he represented in the legislature in 1858, and afterward removed to Salem, Mass. He was collector of Salem in 1865-'9, and representative from that town in 1884-'5. Besides an oration on the “Centennial of American Independence,” delivered in Stuttgart, Germany, 4 July, 1876, and one delivered in Salem on the “Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of John Winthrop,” in 1880, he has published many historical and genealogical papers in the “Collections” of the Essex institute, of which he has been vice-president.

RAPAELJE, Sarah de, b. in Fort Orange, N. Y., 9 June, 1625; d. on Long Island in 1685. She was the daughter of Jan Joris Rapaelje, and was the first white girl born in New Netherlands. There have been various statements regarding the residence of Jan Rapaelje at the time of her birth, for, after settling at Fort Orange, he removed to Manhattan, and thence to Waleboght on Long Island. The depositions of his wife, Catalina Trico, made in New York before Gov. Thomas Dongan in 1688, the year before her death, establish the time of her arrival and her first residence. She came to this country in the first ship that was sent to the New Netherlands by the West India company. Some travellers in 1679 mentioned Catalina Trico as “worldly-minded” and as living “by herself, a little apart from the others, having her little garden and other conveniences, with which she helped herself,” and evidently regarded her as an historical personage. Sarah was the ancestor of several well-known families in Kings county, N. Y. She married Hans Hansen Bergen, and, after his death in 1654, married Theunis Gysbert Bogaert.

RAPALLO, Charles Anthony, jurist, b. in New York city, 15 Sept., 1823; d. there, 28 Dec., 1887. His mother was a daughter of Benjamin Gould. He was educated exclusively by his father, Anthony, who was eminent for his accomplishments both as a lawyer and as a linguist, and from whom the son learned to speak English, French, Spanish, and Italian, and received seven years' instruction in law, obtaining admission to the bar on completing his twenty-first year. He became a successful practitioner, and was elected a judge of the New York court of appeals, taking his seat on the bench on 1 Jan., 1870, and in 1884 he was elected for a second term of fourteen years by the united vote of both political parties. He was made LL. D. by Columbia at its centennial celebration in 1887.

RAPHALL, Morris Jacob, clergyman, b. in Stockholm, Sweden, in September, 1798; d. in New York city, 23 June, 1868. He was educated for the Jewish ministry in the college of his faith in Copenhagen, in England, where he went in 1812, and afterward in the University of Giessen, where he studied in 1821-'4. He returned to England in 1825, married there, and made that country his home. In 1832 he began to lecture on biblical Hebrew poetry, attaining a high reputation, and in 1834 he established the “Hebrew Review,” the first Jewish periodical in England. He went to Syria in 1840 to aid in investigating persecutions of the Jews there, and became rabbi of the Birmingham synagogue in 1841. He was an active advocate of the removal of the civil disabilities of the Jews, aided in the foundation of the Hebrew national school, and was an earnest defender of his religion with voice and pen. In 1849 he accepted a call from the first Anglo-German Jewish synagogue in New York city, in Greene street, and several years later he became pastor of the congregation B'nai Jeshurun, with which he remained till his death. On leaving Birmingham for this country he was presented with a purse of 100 sovereigns by the mayor and citizens, and an address thanking him for his labors in the cause of education. Dr. Raphall was a voluminous writer, and also translated many works into English from Hebrew, German, and French. The University of Giessen gave him the degree of Ph. D. after the publication of his translation of the “Mishna,” which he issued jointly with Rev. D. A. de Sola, of London (1840). His principal work was a “Post-Biblical History of the Jews,” a collection of his lectures on that subject (2 vols., New York, 1855; new ed., 1866). His other books include “Festivals of the Lord,” essays (London, 1839); “Devotional Exercises for the Daughters of Israel” (New York, 1852); “The Path to Immortality” (1859); and “Bible View of Slavery,” a discourse (1861). He also undertook, with other scholars, an annotated translation of the Scriptures, of which the volume on “Genesis” was issued in 1844.

RAPP, George, founder of the sect of Harmonists, or Harmonites, b. in Würtemberg, Germany, in 1770; d. in Economy, Pa., 7 Aug., 1847. He early conceived the idea of reforming modern society by the literal realization of the precepts in the New Testament, and collected a band of believers who were anxious to revive the practices of the primitive church; but the civil authorities interfered. Rapp and his followers therefore emigrated in 1803 to Pennsylvania, and on Connequenessing creek, in Butler county, organized a religious society in which all things were held in common, and members of both sexes adopted the