Carte-de-visite photograph of Daniel Solis, Shochet of Congregation Mikveh Israel.

Daniel da Silva Solis (1785-1869) was born in London to a Sephardic family originally from Amsterdam. After migration to the United States, he resided in Delaware where he tried his hand at making and selling quills, and other attempts at business. Afterwards Solis settled in Philadelphia where he became a member of Congregation Mikveh Israel. Solis became the ritual slaughterer, or Shochet, for the community and evidently was well-trained. A record of his 1829 examination before a committee of three, states that having examined Solis’s “knife & in the dinim relative to the Scheta & Bedeka, [we] find him perfect therein.” A letter survives from 1848, where Solis reapplies and states that he has in addition received a “re-examination by the Rev. A. Rice of Baltimore & received a Certificate of my capacity from him.” This credential is significant, as Rev. A. Rice refers to Rabbi Abraham Rice, who is regarded as the first well ordained rabbi to settle and practice in the United States. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph reports Solis’s death on July 31, 1869 at the age of 85. Levy & Cohen were prominent Jewish Civil War photographers who relocated to Philadelphia from Richmond. They took many of the most renowned Civil War photographs.