Archives West Finding Aid

By 1906 Seattle, Washington, was home to a small community of 18 Sephardic Jewish immigrants (descendants of Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492), including 17 bachelors and one young woman. A co-founder of the Sephardic Jewish community in Seattle, Solomon “Sam” Calvo, came to Seattle in June 1902 from the Turkish island of Marmara with his friend Jacob Policar. By late 1903 Calvo and Policar became friends with Jack Levy, another Sephardic recent arrival from Marmara. Because they could understand Greek, but not the Yiddish spoken by the German and Eastern European Jews already settled in Seattle, Calvo and his friends spent much of their spare time in a Greek coffeehouse. There, in 1904, they met Nessim Alhadeff, the first Sephardic Jewish immigrant in Seattle, who came from from the Greek island of Rhodes.

Calvo was one of many Sephardic Jews in Seattle who began working in the fish and produce trade. In his first years in the city, he peddled fish from a cart at the foot of Madison Street in downtown Seattle. He also worked at Western Fish & Oyster Co., which in 1908 became his business, Waterfront Fish & Oyster Co. Calvo was a founding member, along with fellow Marmara Jews, of the Congregation Ahavath Ahim (Brotherly Love) synagogue in 1909. He later became a member of Sephardic Bikur Holim congregation, B'nai B'rith, and the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood. In 1906 Calvo returned to Turkey to bring his bride, Luna, to Seattle. He and his wife had two sons, Jack and Mark, and three daughters, Fortuna (the first Sephardic girl born in Seattle), Violet, and Shaya. Calvo died in Seattle on February 21, 1964.