Marriages in the Mortimer Household

According to the story Charles Collard Adams told in Middletown Upper Houses (1908), young William Keith was supposed to marry his mentor’s niece Martha soon after she arrived from Ireland in the early 1770s.

That mentor, Philip Mortimer, sent Keith off to Boston with a coach to pick up Martha and bring her back Middletown, Connecticut.

But things didn’t go according to Mortimer’s plans. On 10 May 1775, William Keith (c. 1749–1811) married Mary Lions Callahan (c. 1748–1820) of Cork, remembered as the niece’s maid Polly.

Other records say that on 25 June 1775 Philip Mortimer’s Irish-born niece, Ann Catharine Carnall (c. 1745–1817), married another Middletown businessman, George Starr (1740–1820).

The Keiths had their first child, named John after his paternal grandfather, who had died suddenly in February, on 4 December. That was about eight months after the marriage. In his book, Adams pushed the wedding date back to a more respectable January.

I suspect the account in Middletown Upper Houses, delicious as it is, had been massaged into more dramatic shape over the decades. It looks like Adams had the wrong name for the niece, and that woman probably arrived in New England years before the marriages, perhaps as early as 1760.

But I also suspect there’s a seed of truth in this tradition. As a teenager William joined the Mortimer household, which might already have included Ann. People might have expected the two young people to marry.

Instead, William married Polly, and a few weeks later Ann married George.

Were those couples happy? William and Polly Keith had five more children between 1777 and 1786. They remained prosperous as William opened his own ropewalk in Middletown.

George and Ann Starr had two children, Martha Mortimer (1777–1848) and Philip Mortimer (1783–1857), named after her aunt and uncle. He also remained wealthy, and he also owned a ropewalk in Middletown.

TOMORROW: What they did in the war.