Simon HUNTINGTON
Biography

Simon Huntington.

The title of Deacon became very early a familiar appendage to the name of Huntington. Out of twenty deacons of the first church, seven have been Huntington) six of whom held the office over thirty years each. In the line of Simon, the deaconship descended from father to son through four successive generations, Simon, 1st, Simon, 2d, Ebenezer, and Simon, 3d, covering a period of 120 years. Deacon Barnabas Hunting ton of Franklin was also a progenitor of deacons. Other churches in the vicinity have been prone to select their ministering servants from the same cognomen. Near the close of the last century there were six Deacon Huntingtons officiating at one period, in as many different parishes of Norwich and the neighboring towns.

Simon Huntington, the proprietor, was united to Sarah, daughter of Joseph Clarke of Saybrook, in October, 1658. They lived together fifty- three years, and she survived him fifteen, dying in 1721, at the age of 88. This was probably the earliest, but not the only one of the first thirty-five wedded pairs, that could have celebrated the golden period of their connubial life, if at that day such festivals had been in vogue.

Deacon Simon left an estate appraised at £275. The inventory of his books may be worth quoting as a specimen of what was doubtless a fair library for a layman in 1706.

"A great Bible 10s. Another great bible 8s. Rogers his seven treatises, 5s. A practical Catceise 1s. 6d. William Dyer, 1s. Mr. Moody's Book 8if. Thomas Hooker's Doubting Christian, 9d. New England Psalm Book, 1s, Mr. Adams' Sermon. The bound book of Mr. Fitch and John Rogers 2s. The same unbound 8d. Tho day of doom lOd."

At the time of Deacon Simon's death, his six sons and three daughters were all heads of families. His sons-in-law were Solomon Tracy, Dea. Caleb Forbes of Preston, and Joseph Backus. Four of his sons, Simon, Nathaniel, Daniel, and James, settled near their parents, in Norwich, though not all in one parish. Joseph went to Windham, and Samuel to Lebanon.

The oldest son, Simon, born in Saybrook before the removal to Norwich, married Lydia Gager, Oct. 8, 1683, and had four children. The oldest of these, bearing his own name, the third Simon in direct descent, was the person killed by the bite of a rattlesnake just after he became of age, as previously related in this work.

This second Deacon Simon Huntington had two other sons, besides the one so suddenly removed, viz., Ebenezer and Joshua, and in the series descending from these are found several names of more than common distinction. The last-named son was born Dec. 30, 1698, and is known in local tradition as Capt. Joshua. He was a noted merchant, beginning business at nineteen, and pursuing it for twenty-seven years, during which time it is said that he traded more by sea and land than any other man in Norwich. In the prime of life, activity and usefulness, he took the yellow fever in New York, came home sick, and died the 27th of August, 1745, aged 47.* He was the father of Gen. Jabez Huntington, of whom more will be said hereafter.

Among the Huntingtons of note in this and the neighboring towns, besides the clerks and deacons already mentioned, we might enumerate five or six judges of the common courts, five members of Congress, one of them President of the Continental Congress and Governor of the State, and six or seven who acquired the military rank of colonels and generals, one of them a brigadier-general in the army of the Revolution. Of the clergy, also, a considerable list of Huntingtons might be made without going out of New London county for their nativity.

The name has also been widely disseminated in other States besides Connecticut, and rendered honorable by the talents and virtues of those who have borne it. But it is not on this account wholly that we give it special prominence in these details, but rather for this reason, that the Huntingtons are the only family among the proprietors, with whom any connection has hitherto been traced with Norwich in England. As we have seen, Margaret Baret, the mother of Christopher and Simon Huntington, appears to have been a native of Norwich, and it is not improbable that her children were also born there.

History of Norwich, Connecticut: From Its Possession by the Indians to the Year 1866 Author Frances Manwaring Caulkins Publisher By H.P. Haven, 1874

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