Starr, Ephraim (b. 9 JUN 1745, d. 27 AUG 1809)

Note: Ephraim Starr went to sea as a young man and afterwards moved to Goshen, Connecticut, where he clerked in the store owned by Uri Hill. When Hill died, he married his employer's widow and took over the business.

At the time of the Revolution he supplied the local troops. The minutes of the town meeting of September 25th, 1777, say that "he was appointed chairman of a committee with full powers to purchase, at the expense of the town, for each non-commissioned officer and soldier required of this town [:] One shirt, either linen or flannel; one hunting shirt or frock, one pair of woolen overalls, one or two pairs of stockings, one pair of good shoes, &c, &c."

Rev. A. T. Hibbard, in his history of Goshen, says that "After the close of the Revolutionary War his facilities for business were greatly increased. Before the British troops had left New York he went to the city and purchased of persons who were connected with them and who wished to leave there a large quantity of goods at a very low price. These goods were brought to his store, and it is safe to say that they were not sold at a low price. Just at that time there was no other merchant in the town, but one in Litchfield, none in Norfield, Cornwall, or Torrington, and the people in Litchfield traded as much with him as their own merchant. Mr. Starr bought large quantities of produce from the farmers, butter, cheese, pork and many white ash oars [a specialty of northwestern Connecticut at that time]. For this produce he paid no money but always in goods from his store. He employed many teams in the transportation of his produce to New Haven and Derby, and bringing back goods for his store. This was all done by teams of oxen and with carts and sleds."

As Hibbard implies, Ephraim Starr was a very successful merchant, and when he retired in 1793, he held property worth more than $200,000, a fortune that would have made him, at the turn of the nineteenth century, a very rich man in New York or Philadelphia, let alone Goshen, Connecticut.

Although the Congregational Church was established in Connecticut until the 1830's, Starr attended the Episcopal Church.

He died while returning from a journey to Lebanon Springs, New York.

Given Name: Ephraim

Death: 27 AUG 1809 West Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Given Name: Hannah

Death: 26 FEB 1826 Probably Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Guy Richard was a successful merchant in New London and was the city treasurer for many years.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Dolbeare
Title: Winifred Lovering Holman, Early Dolbeares (NEHGR Vol. 112 (1958) pp. 17
0-184.)
0-184.

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: Guy

Death: 1825 Probably New London, Connecticut

Change: Date: 10 Apr 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Dolbeare
Title: Winifred Lovering Holman, Early Dolbeares (NEHGR Vol. 112 (1958) pp. 17
0-184.)
0-184.

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

Death: 1832

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Jedidiah Huntington graduated from Harvard, with distinguished honors, in 1763, and received a master's degree from Yale in 1770. He subsequently worked for his father's many business interests and was active in the Sons of Liberty. He joined the state militia and served in rapid succession as ensign, lieutenant, captain, and colonel.

He married Faith Trumbull, the daughter of Governor Jonathan Trumbull and the sister of the well-known portrait painter, and had one son by her. But when the Revolution began, she became mentally ill and died in 1775. He married his second wife probably in New York, although the exact date is not known, owing to the loss of records.

When the Revolution began in earnest in 1775, he commanded a regiment that joined the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 26th, 1775. There it joined the force that seized Dorchester Heights, forcing the evacuation of Boston. He marched with the army to New York and en route entertained General Washington, with whom he soon became life-long friends, at his home in Norwich. He fought bravely with his regiment at the Battle of Long Island and helped repulse the British at Danbury, Connecticut, assailing the enemy's rear and effecting a junction with his fellow townsman, Benedict Arnold. On May 12th, 1777, he was promoted to Brigadier General at, in Roger Sherman's words, "Gen. Washington's request." He spent the summer of 1777 with General Putnam's command at Peekskill but in the autumn was recalled to the main army under Washington and spent the bitter winter of 1777-78 with Washington at Valley Forge.

Huntington saw little fighting after this point but was utilized constantly by Washington as a staff officer, sitting, for instance, on the court-martial boards of General Charles Lee, and Major John Andre and investigating the losses of Forts Montgomery and Clinton. He was brevetted a Major General at the war's end.

On May 10th, 1783, at a meeting of officers, he was appointed one of a committee of four to draft a plan of organization which resulted in their reporting, on the 13th, the Constitution of the Society of the Cincinnati. He resigned from the Army in late 1783. At this time he received from George Washington a letter thanking him for his services to his country and containing expressions of friendship that go far beyond the perfunctory.

In the archives of West Point there is a curious memorandum, in the handwriting of General Lincoln, to the effect that on August 19th, 1788, General Washington weighed 209 pounds, General Lincoln weighed 224, General Knox weighed 280, and General Huntington checked in at a distinctly diminutive 132. The meaning and import of this memo cannot even be guessed at. But it is easy to conjure up the image of these distinguished gentlemen sitting around on a hot summer's day, having one glass of punch after another, weighing each other on a handy scale, and rough-housing like a group of school boys.

After the war, General Huntington resumed business in Norwich and was Sheriff of the county , Treasurer of the State of Connecticut, and a delegate to the convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. In 1789, the newly inaugurated President Washington appointed Huntington Collector of Customs for the Port of New London, a great patronage plum in the days when federal revenues derived almost entirely from tariffs and the collector was allowed to keep the money, for his own profit, for long periods of time. He held the post until shortly before his death.

The house that he built on the northwest corner of Huntington and Broad Streets in New London was modeled to some extent on Mt. Vernon. It was torn down in 1949 to make way for a supermarket.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: DAB
Title: Dictionary of American Biography

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: ANB
Title: American National Biography

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Huntington I
Title: E.A. Huntington, Huntington Family Memorial

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Huntington II
Title: Huntington II

Given Name: Jedidiah

Death: 25 SEP 1818 New London, Connecticut

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Given Name: Ann

Death: 1831

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: John Nelson Steele went to the University of Virginia, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1873. But because he was still too young to join the Maryland Bar, he attended the University of Maryland and received a Bachelor of Laws degree from there as well. He was admitted to the bar in 1875 and was associated with his father in practice until 1889, when he formed the partnership of Steele, Semmes, and Carey. (His partner John Semmes was the nephew of Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes who had commanded the legendary Confederate raider, C.S.S. <i>Alabama.</i>) The firm was later named Steele and Semmes.

He served as President of the Baltimore Bar Association in 1900 and the Maryland Board of Law Examiners from 1900 to 1906. He served as Baltimore Parks Commissioner from 1898 to 1900. He was a member of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore and the Maryland Club.

He was among the first American lawyers to specialize in corporate law, now, perhaps, the largest single segment of the American bar. In 1906, after being widowed, he moved to New York and became general counsel of American Smelting and Refining Company, which was owned by M. Guggenheim's Sons, as well as general counsel for American Securities Corporation, and the Guggenheim Exploration Company. He was also general counsel for the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, the Kennecott Copper Corporation, and the Alaska Development and Mineral Company. He was a director of the Utah Copper Company. In his obituaries he was always referred to as "the copper financier" but was involved in Alaskan gold mining interests as well. He was a frequent counsellor to J. Pierpont Morgan. Morgan's chief personal attorney, Frank Stetson, said of him that "What Mr. Steele's knowledge and Mr. Steele's savoir faire accomplished cannot be over-estimated. He did more than meet and dispatch what seemed perilous obstacles; he was a pilot; he kept equanimity and cooperation steady in the face of elements that sometimes may even threaten a mammoth enterprise's abandonment."

Deeply read in history, John Nelson Steele was particularly interested in Maryland history. One night he called on a Wall Street friend, Marion J. Verdery, and was introduced to an elderly Maryland writer who had once been quite well known but was by then (the 1890's) in great financial difficulties and living in Mr. Verdery's house. Steele was "thrilled by the honor of introduction to such a brother Marylander," and, learning of his distress, saw to it that James Ryder Randall, author of the classic Civil War song "Maryland, My Maryland!" (now the state song) was never in want again.

John Nelson Steele was a member of the Union Club in New York City and the Everglades Club of Palm Beach, where he spent the winters after he retired.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: National Cyclopedia of American Biography

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: CD
Title: William C. Marye, Colonial Dames ancestor chart, prepared for Margaret M
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: New York Times
Title: New York Times

Page: 03/08/1934

Given Name: John Nelson

Death: 7 MAR 1934 West Palm Beach, Florida

Change: Date: 4 Apr 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: CD
Title: William C. Marye, Colonial Dames ancestor chart, prepared for Margaret M
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916.

Given Name: Mary Alricks

Death: 5 FEB 1903

Change: Date: 22 Feb 2003

Note: Moses Lyman was among the original settlers of Goshen, Connecticut, and played a leading part in its affairs until his death. He first bought land there on Oct 24 1739, when he bought two fifty-acre lots on Town Hill.

He served the town as collector and treasurer in 1739 and was on the grand jury in 1744. He served for many years as magistrate and a contemporary said of him, "He was remarkable for his endeavors to make peace and reconcile difficulties." He representred the town in the General Assembly for fourteen sessions. On the occasion of his death, the pastor of the Congregational Church, the Rev. Abel Newell, preached a sermon entitled "Good Men the Strength and Defense of a People," which was printed at the request of the congregation.

He served the church as tything man in 1743 and was named deacon in 1759.

His tombstone reads: "Moses Lyman, Esq., who died 6th of January, 1768, in his 65th year. 'Lyman so fam'd, so meek, so just and wise;
He sleeps! in hope,
Then cease from tears, when Christ appears, his dust shall rise.'"

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: 6 JAN 1768 Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: A grandson, still another Moses Lyman, said of Sarah Hayden that "while at school in Northampton her attention was called to the great subject of her soul's concerns, and although her mind was much exercised with a sense of her need of personal religion, she was not willing to have it known. While her mind was in this state she received a polite invitation to attend a ball. She hesitated, but finally, from motives of politeness, accompanied her partner to the ballroom. She had danced once and began again when she felt, to use her own expression, 'dancing over the pit of hell,' and that if she died she must drop there. She spoke to another young lady to take her place and disappeared. She danced no more. She is believed to have been a professor of religion before she came to Goshen, as was her husband."

Sarah Hayden's early life coincided with the Great Awakening, a period of intense Puritan revivalism in New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The leader of this revival, and one of the great American preachers, was Jonathan Edwards, whose church was located in Northampton and which was attended by Sarah Hayden. It is not surprising that she should have been much influenced by this spellbinding man.

A professor of religion in this case does not, of course, mean an academic appointment, but rather one who openly avows a religious faith.

Given Name: Sarah

Death: 27 AUG 1808 Goshen, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: Daniel

Death: 8 OCT 1751 Guilford, Connecticut

Change: Date: 12 Apr 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: NEHGR--CONN.
Title: Genealogies of Connecticut Families

Page: Vol. I, pp. 484-490

Given Name: Lois

Death: 4 FEB 1768 Possibly Guildford, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Joseph Starr lived in Middletown, Connecticut, all his life where he made his living as a tailor. He served as a constable in 1728 and as a grand juror in 1745. He appears to have spent some time in New Haven in 1764.

Given Name: Joseph

Death: 23 MAR 1781 Middletown, Connecticut

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: Priscilla

Death: 15 MAY 1796

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: Marion

Death: 1972 New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Given Name: Huntington

Death: 21 MAY 1928 New York City

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: Isaac Nevett Steele was among the most distinguished lawyers in the history of the Maryland bar. He was educated privately, being tutored by the Rev. Nathaniel Wheaton, and also attended the Cambridge Public Academy and St. John's College in Annapolis. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a member of the class of 1828, although he did not receive his A. B. degree until 1833. He studied law under Alexander C. Magruder and David Hoffman in Baltimore and was admitted to the bar in 1830 at the age of twenty-one.

According to the <i>National Cyclopedia of American Biography</i> (which has a handsome engraving of him in early middle age in Volume 29), "He rose rapidly to prominence, becoming not only a leader of the Maryland bar but also one of the foremost lawyers in America." In 1839 he was named Deputy Attorney General for Baltimore County, a position he held for ten years. In 1843 he was the prosecuting attorney in the sensational murder trial of Adam Horn and secured a conviction after a trial lasting seven days (a very long trial by the standards of the day).

His health failed him in 1845 and he took a leave of absence in order to travel in Europe and England, remaining abroad for eighteen months. Returning to this country, he resumed his duties as Deputy Attorney General, but his health failed again in 1849, shortly after his marriage. President Zachary Taylor appointed him Chargé d'Affaires to Venezuela, where it was hoped the equable climate of Caracas would be good for him. In Caracas he arranged for the settlement of long-outstanding claims by United States citizens that had been considered hopeless. He also nearly lost his life when robbers broke into the United States Legation hoping to find money left there for safe-keeping.

Returning to Baltimore in 1853 he resumed the practice of law, mostly in private practice, but he also served as Baltimore City Attorney from 1872 to 1874. The <i>National Cyclopedia</i> says that "During his long professional career there were few cases before the Maryland courts, involving great principles or large interests, in which he was not prominent as counsel and his name appeared more frequently in the pages of Maryland reports than any other lawyer of his time."

One of his most famous cases was the trial of Mrs. Elizabeth G. Wharton for the murder of Brevet Major General William Scott Ketchum in 1871, a trial that aroused intense public interest, involving as it did not only a general as victim, but a socially prominent female defendant. As the defendant's counsel, he persuaded the jury to acquit her of the charges.

He was a founding member of the Maryland Bar Association and Bar Association of Baltimore. He served as president of the latter in 1880-1881. He was also a member of the Maryland Historical Society and the Maryland Club in Baltimore. In 1872 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from St. John's College. Although not very active in politics, he served as the Chairman of the Whig State Central Committee in the 1840's and was a Democrat in later years. In 1880, he served as a Presidential Elector, casting his vote for Winfield Scott Hancock, who lost to James A. Garfield.

The <i>National Cyclopedia </i>concluded its biography of him by saying, "He was known as the greatest 'lawyer's lawyer' in Maryland and was said by some of his eulogists to have had the greatest legal mind of his day. He possessed to a rare degree the power to state facts in a lucid and orderly manner and in delivery or argument or public address fascinated all who heard him by the dignity and beauty of his diction." There is another fine engraving of him, this one in old age, in Scharf's <i>History of Baltimore City and County.
</i>
On his death, the Baltimore <i>Sun</i> wrote in an editorial that, "To a thorough and complete knowledge of his profession he joined an intellect as luminous as it was subtle, and as powerful in its logic as it was wonderful in its resources. To the splendid vigor of a legal athlete he united the qualities of a legal strategist of the highest order, so that his opponents were put constantly on the defensive and forced to preserve an attitude of perpetual vigilance, never knowing which to dread the more or to guard against the more carefully, the convincing and persuasive reasoning that overturned like a house of cards the best-constructed arguments of his adversaries, or the cunning and masterly fence that struck a mortal blow where it was least expected."

While editorial obituaries in this time were invariably flattering, this is extraordinary praise. It is, perhaps, not surprising that three of his sons, and many of his later descendants would become lawyers in the very first rank of the American bar.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: National Cyclopedia of American Biography

Given Name: Isaac Nevett

Death: 11 APR 1891 Baltimore, Maryland

Change: Date: 28 Feb 2003

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: CD
Title: William C. Marye, Colonial Dames ancestor chart, prepared for Margaret M
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916
. Steele, Jan. 3, 1916.

Given Name: Rosa Landonia

Death: 10 FEB 1894

Change: Date: 9 Feb 2003

Note: James Steele, as the eldest and only surviving son, inherited a large fortune in land and slaves from his father and was one of the wealthiest men in Dorchester County, Maryland. Shortly after his marriage, he purchased "The Point" near Cambridge, Maryland, and resided there until he moved to Cambridge itself.

In 1815 James Steele purchased the Ogle House in Annapolis, which had been the residence of Governor Samuel Ogle when he served as Governor from 1798 to 1801. It was one of the state capital's grander residences, now the headquarters of the Naval Academy Alumni Association.

He was elected to the Maryland Assembly in 1784, and served intermittently until 1795. He was a justice in Dorchester County from 1784 until 1788 and again from 1798 until at least 1800. He was appointed a justice of the Orphan's Court in 1788 but declined to serve. He held numerous other local posts and was elected to the vestry of Great Choptank Parish in 1793, 1799, 1801, and 1804.

He died at Boonsboro, Washington County, in western Maryland, when he was returning from the springs where he had gone to take the waters for his health. According to the Billings-Steele family Bible, he "died after a lingering disease of the stomach of 2 or 3 years duration, which he bore with exemplary fortitude and Christian resignation--much lamented by his distressed and affectionate wife and children. He was a good and kind husband--a fond and indulgent father--a humane and generous master."

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Jones
Title: Elias Jones, Revised History of Dorchester County (Baltimore, Maryland: T
he Read-Taylor Press, 1925)
he Read-Taylor Press, 1925.

Page: pp. 458-467.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Papenfuse
Title: Edward C. Papenfuse, et al, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland L
egislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Pr
ess, 1979, 1985)
egislature, 1635-1789
egislature, 1635-1789. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Pr
ess, 1979, 1985.

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: MHS Steele File
Title: Transcript of Steele family Bible records, on file at the Maryland Hist
orical Society, MS 761.
orical Society, MS 761.
orical Society, MS 761.

Given Name: James

Death: 21 SEP 1816 Boonsboro, Washington County, Maryland

Change: Date: 13 May 2003

Note: In 1817 Mary Nevett Steele asked her brother-in-law Richard Rush, then United States Minister to Great Britain, to purchase a set of chairs for him in England for use in the Ogle House. In 1903, eight of the chairs were auctioned and bought by Charles Steele, James's grandson, for $1000 apiece.

In 1825 Lafayette visited the Steele family at the Ogle House on his tour of America and pronounced the drawing room to be "the handsomest in America."

Source: (Individual)
Abbreviation: Papenfuse
Title: Edward C. Papenfuse, et al, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland L
egislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Pr
ess, 1979, 1985)
egislature, 1635-1789
egislature, 1635-1789. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Pr
ess, 1979, 1985.

Given Name: Mary

Death: 16 SEP 1836 Annapolis, Maryland

Change: Date: 21 Feb 2003