John Coit (1696 - aft. 1774)

Born 25 May 1696 in New London, New London, Connecticut Colony

Ancestors

Husband of Grace (Christophers) Coit — married 2 Jul 1719 (to 9 Nov 1745) in New London, New London, Connecticut

Husband of Hannah (Gardiner) Coit — married 20 Jun 1748 in New London, Connecticut

Descendants

Died after 1774 after age 77 in Newport, Rhode Island [uncertain]

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Biography

Born in 1696, in New London Connecticut, John was the oldest son of John Coit and Mehetabel Chandler. He went into the shipyard business with his father and eventually had his own wharf.

He married Grace Christophers, the daughter of the wealthy judge and merchant, the Honorable Richard Christophers. They were married 2 July 1719 by Eliphalet Adams in the First Congregational Church in New London. Grace's sister Lydia married John Coit's cousin Daniel.

Both Grace's father and brother ordered ships from the Coit shipyards.

Upon their marriage, John Coit Sr. gifted the young couple with lands that had belonged to his father. Mehetabel observes in her diary the birth of Grace's first son, John in April of 1720 and her second son Richard in July of 1722 (named for Grace's father). Mehetabel also remarks on the birth of Grace's third child, first daughter Elizabeth in 1724. Elizabeth was christened the following week by Eliphalet Adams.

There is an odd reference in a letter of John's sister Martha Coit Hubbard Green's to something about talks between John and Grace and that Martha hoped they would now have peace.

John and Grace's daughter Elizabeth died before her sixth month, probably of a fever epidemic that was sweeping New London. It also took John's younger brother Thomas and many friends, neighbors and relatives.

Grace died of "long fever" in 1745 as well as her son Richard 23. Her oldest son John died earlier that same year at 25 after being knocked from the deck of his ship by the boom and drowning. And her son Joseph fell victim to the same "long fever" in 1756.

Of John and Grace's five children, only their son Samuel lived to advanced adulthood.

John's trials must have precipitated some soul-searching, as he joined the New London church a little over a month after Grace's death. He remarried in 1748 to Hanna Gardiner and had 3 more children, Desire, John, and Mehetabel.

Although John served as New London's town clerk in 1758 and seems to have continued to run the family shipyard for several years, by about 1760 he had decided to start a new life in Newport. His niece Lydia Coit Hubbard expressed in a letter to her parents her wish that John might "spend the remainder of his days with that ease and Comfort which I believe he has bin A stranger to for some time."

The date of John's death is unclear, although a 1774 letter written by his brother Joseph notes that John and Hannah were visiting from Newport which indicates that he lived at least into his late seventies.

Sources

• "THE COIT FAMILY or the DESCENDANTS OF JOHN COIT" By Rev. F. W. CHAPMAN, A.M. HARTFORD, 1874 PRESS OF THE CASE, LOOKWOOD & BRAINARD CO p.50
• "One Colonial Woman's World" by Michelle Marchetti Coughlin. onecolonialwomansworld.com
• Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)
• Connecticut Town Death Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)
• Connecticut, Deaths and Burials Index, 1650-1934
• Connecticut, Town Marriage Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)
• Early Connecticut Marriages
• Mayflower Births and Deaths, Vol. 1 and 2
• U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970
• he Chandler family, the descendants of William and Annis Chandler who settled in Roxbury, Massachu;
• http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ct/county/fairfield/ctch14.html
• Totten, John R., Christopers Family, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1920) Vol. 51, Page 22.