The Hendrick's family originated in Spain.  The family name at this time was Enriques.  During the Spanish inquesition some members of the family fled and settled in the Dutch/Flemish region of Europe.  The family name was modified to adapt to the new country and became Hendrick from Enriques.  The roots of the family are in the Sephardic Jewish tradition dating back to the Sephardic Jewish settlement in Spain.  My maternal history goes back to England and prior to that the Jewish life of Poland.

Having established roots in Holland/Belgium the Hendrick family prospered as merchants and traders.  My great, great grandfather was a sea merchant who became shipwrecked off the West Coast of Australia on one of his trading vessels.  He was washed ashore and found by a local Aboriginal tribe who took him in and nursed him back to recovery.  He spent six months living with this tribe until he left and ventured to the east coast of Australia where he settled and lived out the rest of his life.  The family continued as merchants and traders establishing businesses in retail, manufacturing and shipping. 

Another member of the Hendrick's family found his way to the United States of America.  He became one of the wealthiest Jews of his time and was a major contributing founder and funder of the famous Jewish Portugese Spanish/Serphadic Synagogue on the Upper West Side of New York.  He also was known as the "Copper King" of America.  The following is a paper written on his life.

The Kings of Copper

The Hendricks family of New York helped lay the foundation for the Industrial Revolution in America. Their pioneering production of copper was vital to the growth of the American economy and the nation’s military might. When the company closed in 1938, Hendricks Brothers was the oldest continuous privately held Jewish family business in the United States.

Uriah Hendricks, the patriarch of the family, was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1737 and emigrated from London to New York City in 1755. In New York, he opened a dry goods store and became an active member, and eventually parnas, or president, of Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. The congregation served as the unifying institution of the New York Jewish community, which numbered about 200 people. In 1764, Hendricks established a metals business, importing copper and brass from England, which discouraged manufacture of these commodities in the American colonies. On his death, Uriah’s only son Harmon took over the metals importing company, as well as the family role in leading Shearith Israel, where he too served as parnas from 1824 to 1827.

Recognizing that the United States could never attain true independence so long as it was dependent on overseas production of essential products such as copper, Harmon Hendricks helped transform the United States from an importer to a manufacturer of copper. In 1812, during the American war with England, Hendricks and his brother-in-law Solomon Isaacs built one of the nation’s first successful copper rolling mills in Soho, New Jersey. Historian Maxwell Whiteman observed that Hendricks became "his own metallurgist at a time when the secrets of the science of refining metals were jealously guarded by the English." Because of his skill, Hendricks made possible the use of copper rather than iron in the manufacture of steam boilers, a development that allowed boilers to be heated to higher temperatures without cracking.

One of Hendricks’s most important copper customers was Paul Revere, the famous patriot and metalsmith who lived in Boston and who became a friend. The American Jewish Historical Society’s archives contain letters between the two men. Another good customer was the fledgling United States Navy. The Hendricks firm produced the copper used to sheath three Navy vessels in New York harbor at the same time that Revere was cladding a fourth, the Constitution, now ironically known as Old Ironsides, with copper probably supplied by Hendricks. These copper-clad ships helped the United States fight the British to a standstill in the War of 1812. Hendricks made another contribution to the war effort by subscribing the then-considerable sum of $40,000 to government issued war bonds.

Robert Fulton, who is credited with inventing the steamship, was another frequent customer of Harmon Hendricks’s copper. In the spring of 1807, Hendricks supplied the copper used to build the boiler for the Clermont, the first inland steam driven packet boat in the world. The shipping of goods and passengers by Fulton’s steamships and their successors dominated interstate travel and commerce until the invention of the railroad.

When Harmon Hendricks died in 1838, he had helped transform American industry. His advocacy of the use of copper in shipbuilding made America a naval power. His technical knowledge, engineering skill and willingness to invest in advanced techniques of copper manufacture set a standard for American industrial innovation. His three sons and four grandsons succeeded him in the business. The last member of the family to operate the business was Harmon Washington Hendricks, who died in 1928. Hendricks Brothers closed its last copper mill in 1938.

Just as Harmon Hendricks was able to build a business that his descendants maintained, he was able to continue a tradition of religious commitment that his father, Uriah, had bequeathed to him. Each of Harmon’s children found a spouse among the families at Shearith Israel. Son Henry joined his father-in-law, Tobias I. Tobias, as an officer of one of the earliest Jewish charities, the Society for the Education of Poor Children and Relief of Indigent Persons of the Jewish Persuasion, which was founded in 1827. In `833, Henry joined his brother-in-law, Benjamin Nathan, as a founder of the Hebrew Benevolent Society, which was modeled after a similar organization established in Philadelphia by Rebecca Gratz. In 1852, Henry Hendricks and eight others founded Jews’ Hospital, now Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, the oldest Jewish medical institution in the United States.

Isaac Leeser, editor of The Occident, the leading American Jewish newspaper of the pre-Civil War era, was often critical of what he considered the aloof and uncharitable attitudes of the Sephardic "grandees." To quote Maxwell Whiteman, however, Leeser "singled out the liberality of the Hendricks family as an exception … Modesty and reserve continued to govern the family attitude in matters of philanthropy, and the practice of keeping such activity from the public eye, begun by Harmon Hendricks, was maintained by his descendants."

In the same low-key and generous manner, the Hendricks family descendants continue to be active in Shearith Israel and in Jewish communal life today.