Luis Moises Gomez

Gomez Mill HouseLuis Moses Gomez (c. 1660–1740 ) was a Spanish-Sephardic Jewish merchant and trader, whose Spanish Jewish ancestors fled to France and England to escape from the Spanish Inquisition for the New World.

Gomez came to New York in 1703. In 1705 he was granted an Act of Denization from Queen Anne of England. This certificate gave him rights to conduct business, own property, and live freely within the Colonies without an oath of allegiance to the Church of England. Gomez established himself as a prominent businessman and leader within the early Jewish community in New York and in 1714 he purchased in Marlboro on the west side of the Hudson River in the then-British colony of New York. There he built a single-story fieldstone block house now called the Gomez Mill House. For some thirty years he and his sons lived there and ran a profitable fur trading post.

In 1727 he led the drive to finance and construct the Mill Street Synagogue in lower Manhattan, the first Synagogue of Shearith Israel, America's oldest Jewish congregation, and in 1728 he served as its first Parnas (president (Hebrew.))