the Seven Years' War, which meant the opportunity for trade with Europe, attracted Jews to New Orleans who had been involved in the slave trade in the Caribbean (ie - Curaçao, Jamaica and Saint-Domingue) and also the inter-American slave trade between the Caribbean and territories bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed, it was Isaac Monsanto (died 1778) who was the first member of the family to arrive in New Orleans from Dutch Curaçao, with his fellow Sephardi trade partners; Isaac Henriques Fastio and Manuel de Britto. He developed a strong working relationship with Louis Billouart, Chevalier de Kerlérec, the French Governor, which opened him up to trade with Abraham Gradis, a prominent Jewish merchant in Bordeaux. These Sephardi merchants, along with David Mendes France, Samuel Israel, Joseph Palacios and Alexander Solomons becoming pioneers in founding the Louisiana Jewish community in the 1760s. Aside from Isaac Monsanto, his siblings, who lived with him at first in New Orleans included the brothers Manuel, Benjamin and Jacob Monsanto, as well as the sisters Angélica, Eleanora and Gracia Monsanto. They lived together for a while at Chartes Street in the French Quarter. Isaac Monsanto founded the fortunes of the family and in 1767 purchased a slave plantation at Trianon beyond the city limits of New Orleans and had become one of the richest merchants in the city by 1769. He was also a banker and Superior Court translator; despite a Spanish restrictions on certain forms of trade, Isaac Monsanto funded a British expedition up the Mississippi River to the Illinois territory they had won in the French and Indian War. This illegal trade angered the local Catholic Criollo population who erupted in protests and consequently, the Spanish Governor, Alejandro O'Reilly, expelled the Monsantos and other Jews from New Orleans for their illegal trading in 1769 (though they were not completely pushed out of Louisiana). They then moved out to Manchac near Lake Pontchartrain (then part of British North America), where they were trade partners of John Fitzpatrick and Point Coupee, still part of Spanish Louisiana. Isaac Monsanto would dip in and out of New Orleans itself with little suppression from the Spanish authorities, now that the Sephardim's economic influence had been reduced. The governor Luis de Unzaga Amézaga 'le Conciliateur', characterized by his tolerance and also with Sephardic origins, signed the visas to the merchant Isaac Monsanto and his son Jacob Monsanto, who had