USA > Connecticut > Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial; representative citizens, v. 1 > Part 9
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which he investigated and was most thorough and painstaking in studying his cases. It has been said that no practi- tioner of his day in Connecticut better understood the law in all its intricacies and none could more effectually impress the minds of a jury with his own views and feelings on any case than he.
The critical and practical, the profound and witty, were so happily blended in his arguments, that while they attracted the admiration of the listener, they were almost certain of securing the wished for verdict. His wonderful success at the bar, however (wrote Kilbourne), must not be attributed solely to his talents and ingenuity. His strict regard for justice and right, would not permit him to plead a case which he knew to be grossly unrighteous. Before enlisting his serv- ice in any cause, he was wont to examine min- utely the main facts and circumstances con- nected with it, and if convinced of its justice, he entered upon the discharge of his duties to his client with his whole soul, and rarely failed of coming off victorious. It was his own manifest confidence in the goodness of the cause he advo- cated, united to a knowledge of his uniform integrity of purpose, which so surely won from every jury a favorable verdict. Mr. Smith was not a politician, and had the utmost contempt for the office-seeking propensity of many of his legal brethren. And even if his own ambition had been turned into that channel, it is by no means certain he would have been successful. The political party with which he acted was for a long series of years in the minority in the region in which he lived. In 1825 he was can- didate for governor of Connecticut, and was defeated by Oliver Wolcott. He was for many years State's attorney for the county of New Haven, and subsequently United States attorney for the district of Connecticut. In May, 1832, he was elected United States Senator from Con- necticut, to succeed Hon. Samuel A. Foote, whose term of office expired on March 3, fol- lowing. He was reelected and died in office, December 6, 1835. He was one of the most prominent Whig leaders of his day. In 1808 he received the honorary degree of master of arts from Yale College. He built the large brick colonial house on Elm street, New Haven, the home of the family for many years, and it stood until it was demolished in 1910 to make way for
a new building. He was a communicant and vestryman of Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church, and an incorporator of Trinity College at Hartford. Mr. Smith entertained General Lafayette upon the occasion of his visit to the city of New Haven, March 23, 1825. That was one of the great events of years and in some ways of the generation.
TREADWELL, John,
Congressman, Governor.
John Treadwell was born at Farming- ton, Hartford county, Connecticut, No- vember 23, 1745, only son of Ephraim and Mary Treadwell, and descendant of Ed- ward Treadwell, who in 1637 settled at Ipswich, Massachusetts, whence he re- moved to Connecticut. His parents, who were highly respected for their piety, brought him up according to Puritan prin- ciples.
He was graduated from Yale College in 1767, and then studied law, but ap- pears to have had a decided aversion to the profession, and never offered himself for examination. In 1776 he was sent to the General Assembly, and, with the ex- ception of one session, kept his seat until 1785, when he became an assistant or member of the Governor's Council, serv- ing until 1798, when he was elected Lieu- tenant-Governor. In 1785-86 he was a member of the Continental Congress; and in 1788 was a delegate to the State Con- vention which ratified the constitution of the United States. In the autumn of 1809 Governor Trumbull died, and Treadwell became his successor, and by a renewal of the appointment of the next session (May, 1810) continued in office for a year. At this time he had been judge of probate for twenty years, judge of the county court for three years, and judge of the Supreme Court of Errors for twenty years. He was a member of the famous Hartford Convention, and was a delegate
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to the convention that framed the new constitution of Connecticut in 1817. He aided in negotiating the sale in 1795 of the Western Reserve tract in Ohio, by which the school fund in Connecticut was created ; drew the bill for the application of the fund, and, with justice, has been termed "the father of the system of com- mon school education." He was one of the board of managers of this fund from 1800 until 1810. In 1790-1809 he was a member of the corporation of Yale, and for a long time was one of the prudential committee of the corporation, receiving in 1800 the degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of his services. For more than twenty years he was a deacon of the historic Congregational church at Farm- ington, with which he united at the age of twenty-six, and he was one of the founders of the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions, being chosen its first president and remaining in office until his death. His interest in re- ligion was profound ; he gave liberally of the large fortune he inherited to societies for its promotion, and in his later years wrote a series of theological essays, which were never printed. President Porter, of Yale, wrote of him as follows: "He was not, in the common import of the term, a popular man ; yet he had moral and in- tellectual greatness which carried him superior to all obstacles in the path to eminence. * * * No magistrate in New England, probably since the times of Haynes and Winthrop, enjoyed a greater measure of confidence in the church, was more useful in it or more venerated by its ministers."
Governor Treadwell was married to a daughter of Joseph Pomeroy, of North- ampton, Massachusetts, who bore him one or more children. Governor Tread- well died at Farmington, Connecticut, August 19, 1823.
REEVE, Tapping, Lawyer, Jurist, Author.
Tapping Reeve was born in Brook- haven, Long Island, New York, in Octo- ber, 1744, son of the Rev. Abner Reeve, a minister of Long Island, and afterward of Vermont, who lived to be one hundred and four years old, preaching his last sermon when one hundred and two years of age.
Tapping Reeve was graduated from the College of New Jersey, Bachelor of Arts 1763, Master of Arts 1766. After his graduation he taught school at Elizabeth, New Jersey, being joint headmaster of a flourishing institution, 1763-67, and at the same time was a tutor to Aaron and Sarah, children of the Rev. Aaron Burr. He was a tutor at the College of New Jer- sey, 1767-70; meantime studied law with Judge Root, and in 1772 established him- self in practice in Litchfield, Connecticut. Owing to his wife's invalidism he could not enter upon active service in the Revo- lutionary War, although an ardent patriot. In December, 1776, however, he was ap- pointed by the Connecticut Assembly a member of the committee (as was Oliver Ellsworth, his classmate at college) to travel through the State and rouse the people to aid the desperate Continental army by much needed enlistments. He himself accepted a commission as an offi- cer, and had reached New York with the new volunteers, when the news of the battles of Trenton and Princeton and Washington's improved military fortunes reached him; so, deeming the emergency passed, he immediately returned to his invalid wife. In 1784 he founded a law school in Litchfield, in which he was the only instructor until 1798, when James Gould became associated with him, the school of Reeve & Gould becoming the most prominent of its kind in the country. He was a judge of the Superior Court of
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Connecticut, 1798-1814; chief justice of the Supreme Court, 1814, and a Federalist representative in the State Legislature for several years. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1808, and by the College of New Jersey in 1813. He was the author of: "The Law of Baron and Femme" (1816; second edi- tion, 1846; third edition, 1862); "Law of Parent and Child" (1816) ; "Law of Guar- dian and Ward" (1816) ; "Law of Master and Servant" (1816; second edition, 1862) ; "Treatise on the Law of Descents in the United States of America" (1825) ; and "Essays on the Legal Import of the Terms -Heirs, Heirs of the Body Issue, Etc." The best biographical sketch of him is found in the funeral sermon preached over him by his pastor, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, and published in the "Christian Spectator" for 1887, pages 62-71. Judge Reeve married, in 1771, his former pupil, Sarah Burr, daughter of the Rev. Aaron Burr, when she was seventeen years of age. She died March 30, 1797, leaving one son, Aaron Burr Reeve, born October 3, 1780, graduated at Yale, 1802, married Annabella Sheldon, of New York, No- vember 21, 1808; he settled as a lawyer at Troy, New York, and died there Septem- ber 1, 1809, leaving a son, Tapping Burr Reeve, who died at Litchfield, August 28, 1829, aged twenty years, while a student at Yale. Annabella Reeve, after the death of her first husband, married David T. Burr, of New Haven, and removed to Richmond, Virginia. Judge Tapping Reeve was married a second time in 1799, and this wife, who survived him, had no children. He died in Litchfield, Connec- ticut, December 13, 1823.
GROSVENOR, Thomas, Revolutionary Soldier, Jurist.
The surname Grosvenor is of ancient Norman origin and means "great hunter."
The ancestry of the English family is traced to Gilbert Le Grosvenor, who was related to William the Conqueror, and came with him to England. Grosvenor in time became the family name. The family has held a leading place since the days of the Conquest and many of the branches have produced men of wealth, title and distinction. The Grosvenors of Chester have been particularly conspicu- ous. The coat-of-arms, the same that is inscribed on the tombstone of the Ameri- can immigrant, is: Azure, a garb or.
John Grosvenor, immigrant ancestor of the American family, first of the Ameri- can lineage and fifteenth of the English, was son of Sir Richard (3) Grosvenor and the Grosvenor arms, quartered with others, were inscribed on his tombstone. He was born in England in 1641, and came from Cheshire to New England when a young man. The family Bible of General Lemuel Grosvenor, owned by his granddaughter, Mrs. Clarissa Thompson, of Pomfret, Connecticut, states that John Grosvenor and Esther, his wife, came from Cheshire, England, in 1680, and set- tled in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The records, however, prove that he was there as early as 1673, when he was one of the proprietors of the town of Roxbury. He was one of the original purchasers of the Mashamoquet grant in 1686, which in- cluded fifteen thousand acres embracing the present towns of Pomfret, Brooklyn and Putnam, and the parish of Abington, Connecticut. In the division of this pur- chase, to the twelve Roxbury proprietors who bought it, there was allotted to the widow and sons of John Grosvenor all the land where the village of Pomfret is now located and the hills which surround it, including Prospect hill, which faces the east, and the commanding eminences called Sharp's hill and Spaulding's hill on the west. Here he settled. He married, in England, Esther Clarke, born in 1642,
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died June 16, 1728 (gravestone). He died at Roxbury, September 27, 1691, in his forty-seventh year, and his gravestone may still be seen in the old Roxbury bury- ing ground.
Ebenezer Grosvenor, son of John Gros- venor, was born October 9, 1684. He shared in the division of his father's estate at Pomfret. His first house was on the road from Worcester to Norwich on the western declivity of Prospect hill, not far from the mansion house of Colonel Thomas Grosvenor, where an ancient well is still to be seen evidently dug for the accommodation of the Widow Esther and her children. Ebenezer lived at Pomfret and died there September 3, 1730. He married Ann Marcy, born 1687, died July 30, 1743.
Captain John Grosvenor, son of Eben- ezer Grosvenor, was born at Pomfret, May 22, 1711, died there in 1808. He was captain of a Pomfret company in the Crown Point expedition under Lieutenant Dyer, Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Ty- ler's regiment, of which Israel Putnam was then second lieutenant. He married Hannah Dresser, of Thompson, Connecti- cut, for his second wife.
Colonel Thomas Grosvenor, son of Cap- tain John Grosvenor, was born at Pom- fret, September 20, 1744, died in 1825. He graduated at Yale in 1765. Judge Theo- dore Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, was a classmate. Grosvenor established him- self in the practice of law at Pomfret.
When Connecticut raised and officered the first seven regiments for the relief of Massachusetts in the Revolution, Gros- venor was commissioned second lieuten- ant of the Third Regiment, under Colonel Israel Putnam and Lieutenant-Colonel Experience Storrs, of Mansfield. The minute-men followed Putnam to Cam- bridge and the old red house where the company assembled on the morning of
their departure, April 23, 1775, is still standing. On the evening of June 16, 1775, Lieutenant Grosvenor was detailed with thirty-one men drafted from his company to march to Charlestown under Captain Thomas Knowlton, of Ashford, and with about a hundred others of the same regiment were stationed before noon next day at the rail fence on the left of the breastworks on Breed's Hill (com- monly known as Bunker Hill) and ex- tending thence to Mystic river. The whole force was under the command of Knowlton. When the British attack was made, a column under General Pigott was directed against the redoubt and another under General Howe advanced against the rail fence. Captain Dana relates that he, Sergeant Fuller and Lieutenant Gros- venor were the first to fire. When at the third attack the British burst through the American line at the left of the redoubt, Captain Knowlton, Chester and Clark, clung persistently to the position near the Mystic, though separated from, the main body of provincials, and eventually pro- tected the retreat of the men who were in the redoubt, fighting, according to the report of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, with the utmost bravery, and keeping the British from advancing fur- ther than the breach until the main body had left the hill. Colonel Grosvenor re- lated in a letter to Daniel Putnam, April 30, 1818, respecting General Dearborn's charges against the behavior of General Putnam at Bunker Hill, that his com- mand of thirty men and one subaltern lost eleven killed or wounded. "Among the latter was myself, though not so severely as to prevent my retiring." At Winter Hill, where intrenchments had been thrown up by the Connecticut troops, the Provincials made their last stand. Colo- nel Grosvenor carried a musket and used to relate that he fired his nine cartridges
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with the same precision of aim as if fox- hunting and saw a man fall after each shot. His wound was caused by a musket ball through the hand. Before striking his hand it had passed through the rail and it passed through the butt of his musket after piercing his hand and finally bruised his breast. He bound up his hand with a white cravat and remained on duty until after the battle. This incident is immortalized in Trumbull's painting of the battle of Bunker Hill. The command- ing figure in the foreground was intended to represent Lieutenant Grosvenor ac- companied by his colored servant.
On the arrival of the American army in New York, May, 1776, General Washing- ton organized a battalion of light troops from the volunteer regiments of New England and Thomas Grosvenor com- manded one of the companies under Colo- nel Thomas Knowlton. The Knowlton Rangers, as they were called, took part in the battle of Long Island, in the fight at Harlem, in that near McGowan's Pass, where Knowlton was killed. The silk sash of Colonel Knowlton, which had been presented to him by the town of Boston, is preserved in the family of the youngest daughter of Colonel Grosvenor, Hannah. Captain Brown, who succeeded Knowlton, fell in the defense of Fort Mif- flin in November, 1777. Colonel Gros- venor was in the battle of White Plains, October 28, 1776, and was captain in Dur- kee's regiment in the battles of Trenton, Trenton Bridge and Princeton, and win- tered at Valley Forge. He was captain in Colonel Wyllis's regiment and was with him at the capture of Ticonderoga, May 10, 1776. He was commissioned February 6, 1777, major in that regiment. During the winter at Valley Forge he belonged to Huntington's brigade, which took part in the battles of Germantown, Brandywine and in the movements at
White Marsh and Chestnut Hill, from November 23 to December 22, 1777, and down to the encampment at Valley Forge. He was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, March 13, 1778, in Colonel Durkee's regi- ment, and marched to Monmouth, where June 28, 1778, a battle was fought that decided the fate of Washington. His regiment was in the advance under Lafa- yette and was ranged upon the heights behind the causeway after Lee's retreat. Colonel Grosvenor was also in General Sullivan's expedition against the Seneca Indians in the summer and autumn of 1779. On May 22, 1779, he was appointed, and July II following was commissioned as sub-inspector of the army under Baron Steuben. He was commissioned an in- spector, January 1, 1781. On the death of Colonel Durkee, May 29, 1782, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the First Connecticut Regiment and continued in that command until January 1, 1783, when the Connecticut regiments were consoli- dated under act of Congress of August 7, 1782. He was also assistant adjutant- general of the Connecticut Line, as his orderly books show. After January I, 1783. Colonel Grosvenor returned to Pom- fret and resumed the practice of law.
He married Ann, youngest daughter of Captain Peter and Abigail (Martin) Mumford. Abigail Martin, born January II, 1728, died June 30, 1809, daughter of Captain John Martin, R. A., who came from County Armagh, Ireland, to this country, and was shot during the Revolu- tion by a British captain, Wallace. Cap- tain Martin married Mrs. (Remington) Gardner, a widow. Captain Peter Mum- ford, born March 16, 1728, died May 3, 1798; married, June 2, 1756, Abigail Mar- tin ; was son of Benjamin Mumford, born April 10, 1696, at South Kingston, mar- ried, 1720, Ann, daughter of John and Peace (Perry) Mumford and granddangh-
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ter of Rev. Stephen and Anne Mumford. Rev. Stephen Mumford was born in 1638, died July 1, 1707; married, 1665, came from London to Rhode Island and settled at Newport. Benjamin Mumford was a son of Thomas and Abigail Mumford, of South Kingston, and grandson of Thomas Mumford, born in England, high sheriff, settled in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where he died February 12, 1692. Thomas Mumford married Sarah, daughter of Philip and Sarah (Odding) Sherman, granddaughter of Henry and Susan (Hills) Sherman, and great-granddaugh- ter of Henry and Agnes Sherman, of Ded- ham, England.
For more than twenty years after his marriage Colonel Grosvenor was a mem- ber of the Governor's Council in Connec- ticut, and for a still longer period chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Windham county and judge of probate for his district. The diploma signed by Washington constituting him a member of the Order of Cincinnati, now in the possession of Bertram G. Goodhue, hung until 1891 in the hall of the mansion house which he built at Pomfret and in which he died. The raising of the frame of that house was an occasion of festivity and many were the recipients of his bounty at that time. It is said that a young Mohegan Indian danced upon the ridge pole as part of the celebration. The house was always open to the chance visitor and for many years was a refuge for the remnants of Indian tribes that still lingered in Connecticut, as well as other unfortunates. Among them were the venerable Indians, Joshua Sense- man and his wife, and brother Isaac. Soon after the death of his second son, Colonel Grosvenor joined the Congrega- tional church at Pomfret. No man was more venerated and respected by his townsmen. He refused a pension. He
died July 11, 1825. His wife died June II, 1820, and both are buried in the little burying ground in Pomfret, where monu- ments have been erected to their memory.
Children: Thomas Mumford, married Charlotte Lee ; Ann, married Henry King ; Peter, died young ; Major Peter, was in the war of 1812, married Ann Chase, had four sons, who with five sons of his brother, Thomas Mumford, fought in the Civil War and of the nine five were killed; John H., was consul of the United States at Canton, China, died unmarried in New York City, January 3, 1848; Hannah, mar- ried Edward Eldredge.
EDWARDS, Pierrepont,
Soldier of the Revolution, Jurist.
William Edwards, the immigrant an- cestor of Pierrepont Edwards, was a native of Wales, from whence he was brought by his parents to Oxford, Eng- land, and later to London, and after the death of his father and second marriage of his mother to a Mr. Coles, he accom- panied his step-father and mother to this country, arriving in Boston, Massachu- setts, about 1630, and six years later was apparently a resident of Hartford, Con- necticut. He married Anne Spencer. Their son, Richard Edwards, was a mer- chant in Hartford, and married Elizabeth Tuthill. Their son, Rev. Timothy Ed- wards, was born in 1669, died in 1758; he graduated from Harvard College in 1691, was pastor of the Windsor church in 1694, and chaplain of the Connecticut troops with Arnold's expedition to Can- ada in 1711. He married Esther Stod- dard. Their son, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, was born in Windsor in 1703, and died in Princeton, New Jersey, 1758; he gradu- ated from Yale College in 1720, was pas- tor at Northampton and Stockbridge, and president of Princeton College in 1757.
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He married Sarah Pierrepont, and they were the parents of Pierrepont Edwards.
Pierrepont Edwards was born in North- ampton, Massachusetts, April 8, 1750, died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, April 5, 1826. He was graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1768, and three years later settled in New Haven, Connecticut, as a practicing lawyer. He was elected to the State Legislature, was a soldier in the patriot army during the Revolution, and when Benedict Arnold was found to be guilty of treason he was made adminis- trator of his estate. He was a delegate from Connecticut to the Continental Con- gress, 1787-88, and in the convention called to ratify the Federal constitution, January 9, 1788, he ably advocated the adoption of the instrument. He opposed the Calvinists and helped to found the Toleration party in Connecticut. He was made a judge of the United States Dis- trict Court and held the office at the time of his death. He married, May, 1769, Frances, daughter of Colonel Matthias and Mary (Cozzens) Ogden.
SMITH, Nathan, Physician and Educator.
Nathan Smith was born at Rehoboth, Massachusetts, September 30, 1762, died in New Haven, Connecticut, July 26, 1829. At an early age he removed with his par- ents to Chester, Vermont, where he at- tended school during the winter months, assisting with the work on his father's farm during the remainder of the year. He entered the militia service, and dur- ing the last half of the Revolutionary War was engaged in repulsing the Indian raids on the northern frontier of Vermont.
At the age of twenty-two, while en- gaged in teaching school, he witnessed with intense interest and great steadiness of nerve Dr. Josiah Goodhue. of Putney,
Vermont, perform the difficult operation of amputating the thigh of a patient at Chester. He then decided to study medi- cine, and from 1784 to 1787 was under the instruction of Dr. Goodhue, who became his lifelong friend. He practiced in Corn- ish, New Hampshire, for two years, 1787- 89, then attended medical lectures at Har- vard Medical School, under Drs. Warren, Dexter and Waterhouse, and at the close of the first term his dissertation on the "Circulation of the Blood" was published by authority of the faculty. He was graduated from that institution in 1790 with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, being the only graduate that year, and the fourth of the medical department. In the same year he returned to Cornish, where he practiced until 1906, and during that time he attained eminence and became widely known. In 1796 he went to Scot- land and attended lectures in Edinburgh under the celebrated Drs. Monro and Black, and then spent several months in the hospitals of London with eminent physicians, who elected him a member of the medical society of that city. He re- turned to his native country in 1797, and in the following year went to Dartmouth College, where he established the chair of anatomy and surgery and occupied it from 1798 to 1810, and also established the chair of theory and practice of medi- cine, which he held from 1798 to 1813, at the same time conducting an extensive private practice. Dr. Smith removed to New Haven in 1813, and was professor of theory and practice of physic, surgery and obstetrics at Yale College for the follow- ing sixteen years, and was largely influ- ential in the establishment of a medical building, library and museum. In 1819 he was consulted by President William Allen, of Bowdoin College, in regard to establishing medical instruction in that State, and on June 27, 1820, he was made
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