Torrey, Joseph (b. 9 JAN 1806, d. 8 MAY 1893)

Given Name: Joseph

Death: 8 MAY 1893

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: James

Death: 21 SEP 1880

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: Edward

Death: 10 SEP 1873

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: In 1828, when New York City had a population of 185,000, a list of citizens worth more than $100,000 was drawn up, in all likelihood the first "Forbes 400 list" ever assembled. There were fifty-nine people on that list and Samuel Whittemore was one of them. He was a Merchant, a founder and President of the Greenwich Savings Bank.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Whittemore
Title: Bradford Adams Whittemore and Edgar Whittemore, The Whittemore Family i
n America (NEHGR Vols. 106, 107, 108)
n America
n America. NEHGR Vols. 106, 107, 108.

Given Name: Samuel

Death: 3 MAR 1835 New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Whittemore
Title: Bradford Adams Whittemore and Edgar Whittemore, The Whittemore Family i
n America (NEHGR Vols. 106, 107, 108)
n America
n America. NEHGR Vols. 106, 107, 108.

Given Name: Jane Hill

Death: 21 JAN 1862 New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Nothing whatever is known about Marmaduke Coggill, at least by this author, other than his name, which appears on his son's baptismal record in St. John's Parish, Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

At least that is sufficient to dispel the rather silly family tradition that George Coggill was an illegitimate son of King George III. There were always several things wrong with the tradition anyway. For one, George III never visited Leeds (or anywhere else in the north of England for that matter) and Leeds would have made a very peculiar place to have dispatched an inconveniently pregnant royal mistress in the late eighteenth century. For another there is no evidence whatever that the King ever had a mistress, pregnant or otherwise, for as far as is known, he exhibited a most unHanoverian fidelity to Queen Charlotte throughout his long life.

It is possible that the tradition was started in order to explain the fact that while the Torrey family Bible contains a good deal of information regarding the parents and siblings of Ann Atkinson, who died before it was purchased, it is silent on the ancestry and relations of George Coggill, who was alive when most of the information was inscribed in it and could, presumably, have provided the facts. This omittance, perhaps, suggested to the Victorian mind of a later generation that a dark secret lurked behind it, such as bastardy. And if an ancestor is to be thought a bastard, he might as well be a royal one.

Why any information regarding the family of George Coggill was omitted is entirely unknown and very curious, indeed, given his financial success and prominence in the New York business community. But doubtless it will remain unknown, barring some very lucky strike by a genealogist in the records of Yorkshire.

Baptism: 27 MAY 1732 St. Peter's Parish, Leeds, Yorkshire

Given Name: Marmaduke

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Nothing is known of Joseph and Elizabeth Atkinson apart from the information given in the Torrey family Bible in my possession. The 1939 Burke's Landed Gentry lists Joseph in the "American Section" under Coggill as a Bishop. If he was a Bishop, however, it was not a Bishop of the Church of England.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Given Name: Joseph

Death: 21 MAY 1806 Probably Leeds, England

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Baptism: 27 NOV 1757 Linton in Craven, Yorkshire

Given Name: Elizabeth

Death: 13 SEP 1819 Probably Leeds, England

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: John Torrey was baptised at the First Church of Boston, but he joined the West Chruch on Oct 3 1773. He carried on his father's baking business as well as other business interests and appears to have spent considerable time in Montreal around the time of the outbreak of the American Revolution.

The family story is that when his son William joined the American army--William was a teenager at the time--his father set off after him to bring him back, but instead joined the army himself as a quartermaster.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Alden
Title: Woodworth-Barnes, Esther Littleford, Mayflower Families Through Five Ge
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden (New York: General Society of Mayf
lower Descendants, 1999)
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden. New York: General Society of Mayf
lower Descendants, 1999.

Given Name: John

Death: 9 FEB 1808 Boston, Massachusetts

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Alden
Title: Woodworth-Barnes, Esther Littleford, Mayflower Families Through Five Ge
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden (New York: General Society of Mayf
lower Descendants, 1999)
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden
nerations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., D
ecember 1620.
Vol 16, Part 1: Family of John Alden. New York: General Society of Mayf
lower Descendants, 1999.

Given Name: Susannah

Death: BEF 1 OCT 1766

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Lewis Nichols was a prosperous cabinetmaker, though of no lasting fame in that regard, in New York City at the time of the Revolution and owned considerable property in the business district of the city. Presumably he and his workers merely executed the designs found in such furniture style books of period as Thomas Chippendale's Directory, rather than the unique pieces commissioned by the wealthiest citizens from time to time and which are now mostly in museums. He appears to have lived at least for a while at Bottle Hill, now Chatham, New Jersey, and there survives an advertisement he placed in a local newspaper offering "a quantity of mahogonay furniture such as clothes presses, dining tables, breakfast and tea ditto, chairs, small looking glass, and a new riding chair."

The birth and baptismal records of his children were recorded in the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, which presumably he and his wife attended.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Torrey
Title: Torrey family Bible

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Nichols
Title: Frederic C. Torrey, The Ancestors and Descendants of Humphrey Nichols o
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters (Lakehurst, New J
ersey, n.p. 1917)
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters. Lakehurst, New J
ersey, n.p. 1917.

Given Name: Lewis

Death: 30 MAY 1791 New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Mary Thompson was a person of considerable property in her own right and left her surviving children well provided for in her will.
She owned two houses on Broadway, between Leonard and Franklin Streets. Broadway, of course, was the city's most fashionable avenue until the 1840's when Fifth Avenue, running north of Washington Square, took over. But at the end of the eighteenth century, Leonard and Franklin streets were considered very far uptown, suburban in fact, and fashion was centered south of City Hall Park. She let one of these houses to General Hazen after the Revolutionary War, and Lieutenant William Torrey was staying there with his old commander--a lieutenant must have stood in very good stead indeed to have been the guest of a general--when he met Margaret Nichols who was living next door.
The houses were sold in 1808 to John Contoit, who turned the site into Contoit's Garden, one of New York's earliest "pleasure gardens," where people of fashion could come, drink tea or punch, and stroll around the garden, talking and flirting.
For reasons unknown--perhaps she just didn't trust show people--Contoit paid for the houses in silver bullion, delivering the full $10,000 purchase price in an ox cart to her door.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Nichols
Title: Frederic C. Torrey, The Ancestors and Descendants of Humphrey Nichols o
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters (Lakehurst, New J
ersey, n.p. 1917)
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters
f Newark, New Jersey, and of his Brothers and Sisters. Lakehurst, New J
ersey, n.p. 1917.

Given Name: Mary

Death: 10 FEB 1822 Probably New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Ephraim Lyman graduated from Yale College in 1832 and from the divinity school there in 1835. He was ordained in Plymouth, Connecticut, on October 28th, 1835, and served the Congregational Church in that town until June 8th, 1851. He then became the minister at Washington, Connecticut, serving there from June 30th, 1852, until ill health forced his retirement on June 7th, 1863. The next year he moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, and a few years after that he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his two older sons had settled and become prosperous merchants.

He was evidently a minister of considerable gifts. In his history of the town of Goshen, the Rev. A. G. Hibbard says "Mr. Lyman was a man of dignity and decision of character, but possessed of a genial spirit, social and ready to give comfort in affliction, and wise counsel in difficulty and trial. He preached the gospel with no uncertain sound, and held back none of its truths, but with zeal born out of a loving heart declared what he believed to be the whole counsel of God. He was a born leader of men, orderly in all his methods and conscientiously finishing completely all work to which he laid his hand. His was a consecrated life, 'this one thing I do,' sounding out wherever he was placed, and he commanded the confidence and respect of all who knew him, not only by his ability and fidelity as a minister of the gospel but also by his truth, integrity, and capacity as a business man."

The Reverend Lyman and his wife must have been unusually competent parents as well, judging from the fact that all three of their sons who lived to maturity would one day be listed in <i>Who's Who.
</i>
There is a story about Ephraim Lyman, told to me years ago by his granddaughter, my great aunt, Marion Lyman Stebbins, that should not be allowed to pass into oblivion. It seems that he was very fond of Yale and was assiduous in attending graduations and other such functions, but never went to class reunions. One day his son Hart asked him why.

"Well," he said, or at least as we might reasonably reconstruct what he said, "the reason is simple enough. Not long before my class was scheduled to graduate, most of my closest friends got into a terrible scrape and were all expelled. So I don't really have anyone to reunion with."

"But, father," replied Hart, "if all your friends got into a scrape and were expelled, how was it that you weren't involved and expelled also?"

"Son," said the Reverend Ephraim Lyman, who preached the gospel with no uncertain sound, "by the grace of God, I was suspended at the time."

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Hibbard
Title: Hibbard, A. G., History of the Town of Goshen, Connecticut: with Geneal
ogies and Biographies (Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and B
rainard Company, 1897)
ogies and Biographies
gies and Biographies. Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and Br
ainard Company, 1897.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Morse
Title: Abner Morse, A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of Several Anci
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards (Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861)
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards. Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861.

Given Name: Ephraim

Death: 29 OCT 1880 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Morse
Title: Abner Morse, A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of Several Anci
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards (Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861)
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards. Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861.

Given Name: Hannah Dolbeare

Death: 19 JUL 1904 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Erastus Lyman was evidently a merchant in Goshen. I say evidently because the Lyman Genealogy from which most of the data here is derived, made a point of saying little at length. Take, as one of numberless examples, the following paragraph about Erastus.

"Mr. L., like others in the family, was a man of distinguished abilities, energetic, methodical, and successful in business, eminently distinguished for his piety and benevolence, and his deep interest in the affairs of the church and the town. In the course of his life he filled almost all the offices of the church, the society and the town. Towards the close of his active life, he remarked to a friend that he transacted more business for others than for himself. He was a friend of the friendless, the protector of the widow and the orphan, and their ready advisor of all who sought his counsel."

What ever he did, he was the richest man in town. His assessment in 1840 was $27,000, more than twice that of the second richest, his brother Moses, who was assessed at $13,000.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Hibbard
Title: Hibbard, A. G., History of the Town of Goshen, Connecticut: with Geneal
ogies and Biographies (Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and B
rainard Company, 1897)
ogies and Biographies
gies and Biographies. Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and Br
ainard Company, 1897.

Given Name: Erastus

Death: 20 DEC 1854 Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Given Name: Abigail

Death: 22 JAN 1855 Probably Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Peter Richards was a successful and active member of the New London mercantile establishment.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Morse
Title: Abner Morse, A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of Several Anci
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards (Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861)
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards. Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861.

Given Name: Peter

Death: 17 JUN 1863 Washington, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Morse
Title: Abner Morse, A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of Several Anci
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards (Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861)
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards
ent Puritans, Volume III: Richards. Boston: H. W. Dutton & Son, 1861.

Given Name: Ann Channing

Death: 9 JAN 1857 Washington, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Moses Lyman was one of the most prominent citizens of Goshen, and one of only two to take out a license for a carriage. He was a farmer, living on the property of his father. He held numerous town offices, including several times that of First Selectman

During the Revolution he served in the State Militia with the rank of Colonel. He fought at Saratoga and was rewarded for his services at that battle with the honor of conveying the news of the victory to George Washington. Later, he commanded the troops that guarded Major André during his trial for espionage in Tappan, New York.

His house in Goshen, built between 1790 and 1810 is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Hibbard
Title: Hibbard, A. G., History of the Town of Goshen, Connecticut: with Geneal
ogies and Biographies (Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and B
rainard Company, 1897)
ogies and Biographies
gies and Biographies. Hartford, Connecticut: The Case, Lockwood, and Br
ainard Company, 1897.

Given Name: Moses

Death: 29 SEP 1829 Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Given Name: Ruth

Death: 8 JUN 1775

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003