Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish causes. She is best known for penning “The New Colossus,” the sonnet that appears on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal and beseeches bystanders to “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City, July 22, 1849[1], into a large Sephardic Jewish family. She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy Jewish merchant and sugar refiner, and Esther Nathan. One of her great-grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany; the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were originally from Portugal and resident in New York long before the American Revolution, being among the original twenty-three Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam fleeing the Inquisition from their settlement of Recife, Brazil.
She died on November 19, 1887 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States.
Lazarus, Emma (1888). The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. "Emma Lazarus."
The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I: Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic (Dover Thrift Editions Book 1) Oct 27, 2014.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2 Jewish poems: Translations May 12, 2012.
ADMETUS AND OTHER POEMS, May 6, 2018, by EMMA LAZARUS.
This week's featured connections are Acadians: Emma is 15 degrees from Joseph Broussard, 19 degrees from Louis Hebert, 19 degrees from Antonine Maillet, 20 degrees from Roméo LeBlanc, 20 degrees from Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, 18 degrees from Louis Robichaud, 19 degrees from Cleoma Falcon, 21 degrees from Rhéal Cormier, 23 degrees from Jack Kerouac, 21 degrees from Maurice Richard, 21 degrees from Ron Guidry and 20 degrees from Beyoncé Knowles-Carter on our single family tree. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.