Genealogy Story – James Pierpont

I’ve mentioned in several blogs over the past few years the name of James Pierpont, my great*7 grandfather. But I’d like to pull together in one place a number of things about this remarkable man and his influence on American history.

James was born in 1659 in Roxbury, MA, the sixth child of John and Thankful Pierrepont. John had come to America in 1640 as part of the Puritan migration and purchased land in Roxbury in 1648. He was the first of the family line to drop the “-re-“ which was part of the original family name in French. Thankful’s parents, John and Elizabeth Stow had settled in Roxbury in 1634 with their nine children.

James received his education at Roxbury Latin School, graduating in 1677, and then his college degree from Harvard in 1681. Harvard at the time was a school for training pastors. He took his church orders from the church in Roxbury in 1683, moved to New Haven, CT in 1684, and was ordained there in 1685.

Over the next several years he married and was widowed twice before marrying a third time:

His first marriage was in 1691 (at age 32) to Abigail Davenport. Abigail was the 19yo granddaughter of John Davenport, the leader of the Puritan group who settled New Haven in 1638, and one of James’ predecessors as the pastor of the Congregational Church in New Haven. As was the custom of the day, Abigail attended church on the first Sunday after their wedding in her wedding dress. However, it was a cold late fall day and as a result she became sick, leading to her death that winter from consumption.

Two years later, James (at age 35) married a second time to Sarah Haynes, the 21yo daughter of Rev. Joseph Haynes from Hartford, and the granddaughter of John Haynes. John Haynes had been a one-time governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, then one of the two founders of the Connecticut Colony in Hartford (which was named after his former town of Hertford, England). He then served as the eight-term governor of the Connecticut Colony. However, like James’ first wife, Sarah died only two years later, apparently as a result of complication from the birth of their first child.

For his third and final marriage, James (now age 39), married Mary Hooker, the 25yo daughter of Rev. Samuel Hooker of Farmington and the granddaughter of Rev. Thomas Hooker, the other co-founder of the Connecticut Colony, and the first pastor of the Hartford church.

What remarkable political savvy in these three marriages – bringing together not only the founding family of the New Haven Colony (Davenport), but both of the founding families of the Connecticut Colony (Haynes and Hooker). Thus it is no wonder that in 1701 New Haven (of which he was the chief pastor) became the co-capital of the Connecticut Colony and that later that year when the legislature met in New Haven he was the principal founder of the Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale). See more about this below.

But James influence did not stop with himself. He had a total of nine children, one with Sarah and the other eight with Mary. These were:

Abigail married Rev. Joseph Noyes, the son of one of the other Yale founders, the Rev. James Noyes II. James was then the Senior Fellow (Chair) of the Board of Trustees of Yale as well as the pastor of the church in Stonington, CT.

James was a graduate of Yale but he became a business man in Boston. One of his pursuits was the [unsuccessful] attempt to regain the various British titles and estates that the Pierrepont family had had over the years.

Rev. Samuel was also educated at Yale, but drowned in the Connecticut River at the age of 23 while pastoring the church at Lyme, CT.

Mary married Rev. William H Russell, pastor of the church in Middletown, CT and the son of Rev. Nodiah Russell, one of the other founders of Yale. [Note, there are two Rev. Russells who were among the founders of Yale – Nodiah (also sometimes spelled as Noahdiah) who was the father of William and Hannah, and Samuel Russell at whose house the founders met in 1701. See below for my connections to these two men.]

Joseph became a farmer. He married Hannah Russell, the youngest daughter of Rev. Nodiah Russell. Joseph was my great*6 grandfather. Joseph’s great-grandson, Austin Pierpont, married Sally Beecher whose Beecher relatives figured prominently in the American Civil War – you can read more about that here http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/08/genealogy-story-henry-ward-beecher-and.html

Benjamin died at the age of 5 months

Benjamin (it was not uncommon for parents to give a subsequent child the same name as an earlier child who had died young) was educated at Yale, but died at the age of 28

Sarah married Rev. Jonathan Edwards who became one of America’s most famous preachers. I’ll not try to repeat all his accomplishments, you can read them here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_(theologian). But Jonathan and Sarah’s grandson, Timothy Dwight was a later president of Yale and also figured in the story of the US Civil War. You can read some of those details in the above mentioned article about the Beecher family. Also, as I noted in an earlier blog (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/05/genealogy-story-josiah-atkins-house-in.html ) Jonathan Edwards once visited my hometown of Wolcott (at the time still called Farmingbury) where he was involved in making the decision to dismiss the first pastor of the church there.

Hezekiah died at the age of 29, but not before marrying and starting a family. I have written about his grandson, also named Hezekiah, here http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/05/afs-hillary-clinton-and-my-ancestors.html

Again, what a remarkable man James Pierpont was, not only on the shaping of Connecticut through his connections to other founding families of the state, but through his children!

James died in 1714 at the age of 55, so he did not live long enough to see some of the ways in which his influence had been felt. The Collegiate School of Connecticut had initially been located along the Connecticut River in Killingworth (now Clinton), CT, then it moved to Saybrook and then Wethersfield. Two years after James’ death it made its final move to New Haven, right down the street from James’ grave. It was renamed as Yale College in 1718.

Update - According to my preliminary research, Nodiah Russell is my 8th cousin, 10 times removed with our common ancestor being Sir John Russell (1340). Samuel Russell is my 10th cousin, 8 times removed with the same common ancestor.