Francisco Lopes Suasso

Francisco Lopes Suasso, second Baron d'Avernas le Gras (c. 1657 – 22 April 1710) was a banker and financier of the Dutch Republic. He was also known within the Sephardic Jewish community as Abraham Israel Suasso.

Background and early life After being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, most of the Sephardic Jews settled in trading cities such as London and Antwerp. By the late sixteenth century during the Dutch Golden Age they were arriving in Amsterdam and The Hague. The Lopes Suassos were a wealthy old Sephardic family of Marranos, or Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity under pressure from the Portuguese Inquisition, but once in Amsterdam they openly returned to their true religion, Judaism. of the merchant/banker Antonio Lopes Suasso (1614–1685), also known as Isaac Israel Suasso, by his marriage in 1654 to Rachel (Violenta) de Pinto, a member of another rich old Sephardic family.

The family retained a sense of belonging to Spain, and on 3 January 1676 Suasso's father received from Charles II of Spain the title of Baron d'Avernas le Gras in recognition of his diplomatic services. The title was drawn from a seigneurie owned by Suasso in the Duchy of Brabant named Avernas le Gras. He also had a good relationship with the Stadtholders, and the banking house of Suasso often supported them financially.

Life Suasso joined his father's banking business.

In 1682, Suasso married firstly Judith Francisco Teixeira, at Hamburg. She was the daughter of the banker Manuel (otherwise Isaac) Teixeira, who after Suasso's father and De Pinto was the third most important Portuguese-Jewish merchant-banker in Northern Europe, by his marriage to Beatrix Nunes Henriques. The coffer in which William repaid the loan to Suasso is today on display in the Willet-Holthuysen Museum in Amsterdam.

Following the death of his first wife in 1689, on 23 February 1694 Suasso married secondly, at The Hague, Leonora (otherwise Rachel) da Costa (1669–1749), and with her had ten children, who became part of a large family network. Their seven sons were Antonio (1695–1775), Alvaro (1696–1751), Manuel (1698–1773), Pedro (1700–1742), Jeronimo (1702–1740), David (1703–1705), and Francisco (1710–1770), while their three daughters were Leonora (1701–1754), Sara (1706–1767) and Hanna (1708–1721).

Suasso died in The Hague on 22 April 1710, in his early fifties. He was buried in the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery called Beth Haim at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. He was succeeded in his business and as Baron d'Avernas le Gras by his eldest son, Antonio Lopes Suasso the Younger, alias Isaac Lopes Suasso (1695–1775).