Lyons Grocery

In the early nineteenth century, Isaac Lyons (1774-1843) immigrated from Germany to the United States, settling in Philadelphia where he married Rachel Cohen (1775-1838). Isaac and Rachel had six children together. Sadly, the three youngest died of tuberculosis within an 18-month span in 1837-1838. According to Lyons family lore, the Lyons family descended from Portuguese Sephardic conversos. Conversos are Jews who outwardly converted to Christianity during the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions (fifteenth to nineteenth centuries) but secretly practiced Judaism.  Around 1811, the Lyons moved from Philadelphia to Charleston, where Isaac purchased three enslaved people. The family moved to Columbia in the early 1820s and in 1827, Isaac along with his eldest sons Henry (1805-1858) and Jacob C. Lyons (1807-1887) opened a grocery store and oyster saloon at 1201 Richardson Street (later called Main Street). The oyster saloon was wildly successful and became popular among students at South Carolina College (now known as the University of South Carolina). The saloon appears to have closed after Isaac Lyons’ death in 1843, but the grocery store remained open and was operated by Jacob until the Burning of Columbia in 1865, when the building was destroyed. After the Civil War Jacob appears to have reopened the grocery for a brief period before moving to New Orleans with his wife, Louisa Elizabeth Hart (1814-1890).