Minis, an Ashkenazi Jew of German origin, was born in 1694.[2]
He married Abigail, with whom he had two daughters, Leah (born 1726) and Esther (1731), prior to their emigration to colonial America aboard the William and Sarah.[3] Neither Leah nor Esther had any descendants.[4] A third child, Philip, was born in Savannah, the year following their 1733 arrival,[5] becoming the first white male child born in the colony.[6] They went on to have six more children (one of whom died in infancy):[1] daughters Judith, Hannah and Sarah, and sons Minis, Joseph and Samuel. The girls all survived their mother, whereas the sons all died before her.[3]
The Minises arrived in Savannah on July 11, 1733, shortly after General James Oglethorpe. In addition to the Minises and their two children, Abraham's brother, Simeon, also made the voyage.[6] He had no descendants.[4]
Oglethorpe granted the family land,[7] although it was in a swamp and was "so frequently under water" that he was unable to drain and farm it.[8]
Abraham's name appears in the general conveyance of town lots and farms that was implemented in December 1733, which makes it one of the earliest deeds in the colony.[6]
By 1736, Minis had become a merchant shipper, one of the first settlers in Georgia to have commercial interest.[1] He was in partnership with a local man, with the business known as Minis & Salomons. In research published in 1917, they were deemed to be the first merchants doing business in Georgia, for the previously accepted claimants of Harris & Habersham were established in 1749.[7]
While many colonists left Georgia around 1740, after disagreements over the Trustees' policies, the Minis family remained.[7]
Minis' great-grandson (son of Philip's son Isaac), also named Abraham, built several properties in Savannah in the 19th century. He was "one of Savannah's leading merchants and a citizen of the highest integrity and social influence."[7]
Later Minises were founding members of the Congregation Mickve Israel, the Hibernian Society and the Oglethorpe Club.[1]
Minis died in 1757[9] in Savannah. He was 62 or 63 years old, and left widow Abigail with eight children to raise.[10] He is interred in the former Bull Street Cemetery, a Jewish burial ground allotted in 1733 by James Oglethorpe at the northwestern corner of today's Bull Street and West Oglethorpe Avenue. A memorial, in the median of Oglethorpe Avenue, lists the twenty people known to be interred there. Abigail, who survived her husband by 37 years, is buried in the Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Savannah.