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John Colt the younger, ca. 1661-1751

John Colt the younger is our second Colt in America, son of the immigrants John Colt and Mary Skinner of Hartford and then Windsor, Connecticut. He was born probably in Hartford, grew up in Windsor, and spent most of his adult life in what is now known as Old Lyme. He may have worked as a shipbuilder, according to a Rhode Island history that got nearly every other fact about his life wrong – and why are they writing about John Colt anyway?

Somewhere, some time he married Sarah Lord, daughter of William Lord and granddaughter of Thomas Lord and Dorothy Bird, who emigrated with their family from Northamptonshire in 1635 on the Elizabeth and Ann. Thomas Lord was a Puritan and a blacksmith and one of the founders of Hartford. He and his wife are also Pearson ancestors through another son named Richard Lord.[...] read more

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The first American Colt

John Colt, ca. 1630-ca. 1713

I kind of hate to write this boring post and burst any family bubbles. The truth is, we know very little about John Colt, the first immigrant to come here with that family name. And much of what we thought we knew turns out to have been spun in the 19th century to please Colt descendants. We don’t know his birth or death date, the names of his parents, or when and how he got here. We don’t know where he came from, or if he has any connection whatsoever to Colts Hall in Cavendish, Sudbury. Turns out he didn’t come here in 1633 on the Griffin as a ward of the famous Rev. Thomas Hooker, and he probably didn’t get here in 1638 on the Susan and Ellen as some have claimed, either. His first genuine sighting in the records is in 1656, when he was fined for playing cards in Hartford.[...] read more

Aaron Keppel Josephs

A.K.’s history is one of the first parts of the family tree I put together. His section is short and frustrating, because the name Josephs…
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The oldest tallit in America

The oldest tallit in America, originally owned by Abraham Isaacks (d. 1743)

I can’t believe I left this out of my profile of Abraham Isaacks.

In 2006 a beautiful silk prayer shawl, called a tallit, was donated to the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. It’s been authenticated as the oldest tallit in America, and one scholar makes the case that it may be the oldest in the world.

The first owner of the tallit was our ancestor Abraham Isaacks. On his death in 1743 he passed it on to his wife, Hannah Mears Isaacks, who in turn passed it on to their son Jacob Isaacks, a merchant in Newport, in 1745. Jacob Isaacks and his wife Rebecca (who was also part of the Mears family) had eight children, and passed the tallit on to their eldest daughter. [...] read more

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Abraham Isaacks, d. 1743

When Abraham Isaacks arrived in New York from Holland in 1698, the total Jewish population in the colonies numbered two to three hundred. He may have been as young as 5 years old, in which case he was probably in the company of his parents, whose names are not known to us.

Like many of colonial New York’s Jews, Isaacks became a merchant. He was also a landowner and was actively involved in New York political life – both unusual traits for Jews of the time, even for prosperous ones like Isaacks.[...] read more

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A house called “Louisiana”

The Lyman C. Josephs House, also known as Louisiana, is a historic home at 438 Walcott Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island, now broken into apartments. Architect Clarence Luce designed the house, which was built in 1882 and is a well-preserved early example of the Shingle Style. The house received architectural notice not long after its construction, but is more noted for its relatively modest size and lack of ostentation than the summer houses of nearby Newport. It was built for the Lyman Colt Josephs family of Baltimore, Maryland.[...] read more

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The first colonial Jews

Dutch Jews in New York

On August 22, 1654, a handful of Ashkenazic Jews arrived in the port of New Amsterdam, the first known Jews to set foot in the Dutch settlement. They had sailed from Holland and had passports issued by the Dutch West India Company.

In September, they were followed by 23 Sephardic Jews, this time without passports, fleeing the Portuguese reconquest of Dutch possessions in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Over the extreme objections of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch West India Company insisted that the Sephardim be granted permanent residency in New Amsterdam on the basis of “reason and equity.” After much back and forth involving letters and long sea passages, the Jews were granted limited residency in 1655 .[...] read more

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Josephs, Wilson, Pearson & Stott immigrants by year

I just added a new page to the history department and am reproducing it here.

Here’s a PDF chart showing every ancestor of our father’s family I can find who came from elsewhere. It shows their dates of arrival but not the ships they came in on; that information can be found here. I separated the immigrants into four lines based on the families of our paternal great-grandparents: Josephs, Wilson, Pearson, and Stott. Altogether I’ve found  228 Josephs forebears who chose to emigrate to this country, and 95% of them got here in the 1600s. Moreover, 85% of them were part of the Great Migration and were here by the 1640s.[...] read more

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King Philip’s War

Wheeler’s Surprise and the Siege of Brookfield, August 2–4, 1675

King Philip’s War was an armed conflict between the Native Americans of New England and the English colonists that lasted from 1675 to 1678, named after the Wampanoag chief Metacomet, who was known to the English as “King Philip.” It continued in northern New England – primarily Maine – even after Metacomet was killed in 1676, until a treaty was signed at Casco Bay in April of 1678.

Proportionately, it was one of the most devastating wars in the history of North America. More than half of New England’s 90 towns were assaulted by native warriors. For a time in the spring of 1676, it appeared that the entire English population of Massachusetts and Rhode Island might be driven back to a handful of fortified seacoast cities. 1,200 homes were burned, 8,000 cattle lost, and vast stores of foodstuffs destroyed. One in ten soldiers on both sides was injured or killed.[...] read more

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Samuel Libby: an insider account of the American Revolution

Fort Ticonderoga 1775 by Heppenheimer and Maurer

“Grandfather has been telling of his service in the Revolutionary War,” writes Jonathan Pearson in his diary. 

Samuel Libby (1757-1843) had an eventful service. He was present at the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga, fought under General Horatio Gates, was captured three times while privateering, escaped from a prison ship in Savannah harbor, and told the tale to the Marquis de LaFayette. Here is Pearson’s account: 

Grandfather has been telling of his service in the Revolutionary War. When the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, he was at home in Rye but soon after he enlisted into the war. He was stationed at Fort Ticonderoga when it was given up to the British by Genl. Schuyler, which army retreated to S. Keenesboro in batteaux where they left them and retreated from thence to Fort Ann and to Fort Edward, pursued by the the enemy with whom they had some smart skirmishes. On the retreat he was one of a small party who fought with two battalions of the enemy and repulsed them. He was under the command of Col. Long of this State [NH].[...] read more

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John Corish Devereux: the dancing uncle

Note that in the parody engraving on the wall, a cat is teaching a monkey to dance
Grown Ladies Taught to Dance, engraving by John Collett, ca. 1770

When I started this project back in 2010 I spent some puzzled hours wondering how the Devereux name came to be part of the Colt family. It appears nowhere in the direct line. There were murmurings that the name may have come from a friend of the family somewhere along the line. Finally, I found the answer: a dancing uncle! 

The Irish immigrant John Corish Devereux (1774-1848) married Mary Rice Colt, a sister of Roswell Lyman Colt, in 1815. After a colorful start as a dancing master, he eventually became a hugely successful merchant and banker. John and Mary Devereux had no children of their own and eventually left their entire estate to the Colt family. In 1817, Roswell passed on his sister’s name to his fifth child: Mary Devereux Colt,  who would later marry A.K Josephs.  Perhaps he guessed that his sister was not going to have her own family.[...] read more

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Back in the archives

LCJ about 1877

Dear Josephs People,

I’m back in the archives. Seven years of research has yielded some amazing finds, mountains of tidbits, and great stories about our family. My biggest challenge for a while has been putting it in readable form. So far I’ve made three false starts, organizing the material chronologically, then by region, and then by the ship they came in on. All three approaches died of unnecessary complication. Abandoned manuscripts litter my computer. Charts spill out of drawers. Books have colonized my office, multiplying in the night. (And I’m not even counting the e-books).[...] read more