According to a background history provided by Yale University Library for the family archives:
Alfred Mitchell was the youngest son of the Reverend Alfred Mitchell and Lucretia M. (Woodbridge) Mitchell. When the Reverend Mitchell died on December 19, 1831, his wife accepted the invitation of her uncle, Judge Elias Perkins, to occupy his home, the Shaw mansion in New London. It was here that Alfred Mitchell was born on April 1, 1832. His mother died on March 29, 1839, and his eldest brother, Stephen Mix Mitchell (1818-1839), died a few weeks later as a result of pulmonary disease. In the summer of 1839 Gen. William Williams became the guardian of the Mitchell children.
Alfred Mitchell was a member of the class of 1854 at Yale College but left without taking a degree because of poor health. He was later awarded an honorary degree by the university. As a young man Alfred Mitchell engaged in the whaling industry in Honolulu and the ship chandlery business in New York. These business enterprises, neither of which appears to have been successful, required travel to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. In 1861 Alfred Mitchell returned from the Sandwich Islands to enlist in the Union Army. He took a commission as a captain in the Thirteenth Connecticut Regiment, which was transported to Louisiana and became part of the Army of the Gulf of Mexico. Alfred Mitchell was promoted to the rank of Major in May, 1863, and ultimately served on the staff of General Henry W. Birge.[1]
After the war Mitchell moved to California where he worked in gold mining for several years, without financial success. On his return to the East he traveled to Guatemala to investigate the prospects for entering the coffee business, but his interests in Guatemala never seem to have advanced beyond the preliminary stages.
On April 27, 1871, Alfred Mitchell married Annie O. Tiffany, daughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of a prominent jewelry business. Alfred Mitchell became a trustee of Tiffany and Company but appears to have engaged in few, if any, other business activities after his marriage.
Annie Olivia Tiffany was born on November 27, 1844, in New York, the daughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany and Harriet Olivia A. (Young) Tiffany. She attended the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, and married Alfred Mitchell on April 27, 1871. After their marriage, the Mitchells established residences at the Mitchell family home in New London, New York City, and, after 1900, their estate "The Folly" at Port Antonio, Jamaica. They also owned property at Salem, Connecticut, which had formerly been in the Woodbridge family. They traveled frequently throughout Europe, Egypt and Japan. Alfred and Annie O. Mitchell had two daughters, Alfreda Mitchell and Charly Tiffany Mitchell.
Alfred Mitchell died at Port Antonio on April 27, 1911, at the age of 79. After her husband's death Mrs. Mitchell spent most of her time at home in Florida. She died in Miami on January 2, 1937, at the age of 92.[2]
According to the engraving on the Cenotaph for the Mitchell family in the Norwich City Cemetery,[3] Alfred Mitchell was first buried at Port Antonio, Jamaica when he died in 1911 and in 1924, was reinterred at "Woodbridge Hill," also known as Woodbridge Cemetery in Salem, CT. [4]
"The Tiffany Fortune and other Chronicles of a Connecticut Family" by Alfred M. Bingham
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