When Columbia became the capital of South Carolina in 1786, seven Jewish men from Charleston were among the first to buy town lots. Joseph Myers, merchant and member of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, conducted the property auction.

Most of Columbia’s Jewish pioneers, including ten of the eleven founders of Columbia’s Hebrew Benevolent Society, were involved in business and trade. Individual fortunes rose and fell in the speculative atmosphere of a frontier market town aspiring to be a capital city.