David Humphrey (1752 - 1818)

Born 10 Jul 1752 in Derby, New Haven, Connecticut Colony

Ancestors

Husband of Ann Frances (Bulkeley) Humphrey — married 8 May 1797 in British Factory Chaplaincy,Lisbon,Lisboa,Portugal

Died 21 Feb 1818 at age 65 in New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut, United States

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Biography

Gen. David Humphrey served with Connecticut Line during the American Revolution.

David Humphries had a distinguished military career during the American Revolution, attaining the rank of major general. For several years he was an aide to George Washington, and became his friend as well as his military aide. Several letters written by him to General Washington are published in _______. He also wrote wrote Elegy on the Burning of Fairfield in Connecticut in his sorrow and outrage over that event.

After George Washington became President of the United States, he appointed David Humphries the first United States Ambassador to Spain. While serving in this office, David met Ann Frances Bulkeley, daughter of John Bulkeley, an English banker residing in Portugal. They were married in 1797 when David Humphries was forty-five years of age. No children were born of their marriage.

David was born in 1752 the son of Rev. Daniel and Sarah Riggs Bowers Humphreys.

He first appears as major in General Parson's brigade, in 1777. He subsequently became aide to General Israel Putnam and served under General Greene. In 1780 he was appointed aide and military secretary to the commander-in-chief. It was Humphries who received the captured standards from the British at Yorktown." He had many other military and government posts. Other interests were sheep herding and even wrote the first sonnet by an American just before he went off to war in the summer of 1776, titled "Addressed to my Friends at Yale College" and other war related sonnets.

He died in his room at Butler's Tavern, in New Haven, Connecticut, where he stayed when he was attending to affairs in Derby, and was interred at Grove Street Cemetery.

Sources

• Pease, John Chauncey & Niles, John Milton. A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode-Island (William S. Marsh, 1819) Page 118.
• Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College (Holt, 1885) Vol. 1, Page 459.
• The Pettibone Registry, page 40, 42.
• Wikipedia: David_Humphreys_(soldier)
• "Portugal, Matrimônios, 1670-1910," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F2Z5-VM3 : accessed 25 October 2015), David Humphreys and Ann Frances Bulkeley, 08 May 1797; citing British Factory Chaplaincy,Lisbon,Lisboa,Portugal, reference ; FHL microfilm 477,648.
• Sharpe, William C. History of Seymour, Connecticut, with Biographies and Genealogies (Record Print, Seymour, Conn., 1879) Page 11 & Page 49.
• Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Extracts From The Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn., 1916) Page 514-6.
• Barber, John Warner. Connecticut Historical Collections (Durrie & Peck and J.W. Barber, 1849) Page 201-2.
• NEHGR (NEHGS, Boston, Mass., 1851) Vol. 5, Page 448.