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.

Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage

In 1773, as recounted yesterday, Philip Mortimer of Middletown, Connecticut, lost his wife Martha and both the brothers he had left behind in Boston.

Philip and Martha had had no children, but he appears to have tried to create a family through informal adoptions.

Mortimer had some business ventures with a Scottish-born merchant in Hartford named John Kieth. This man had started as a ship captain, at one point carrying British troops to the Caribbean. Like Mortimer, he was an Anglican in a Congregational colony.

Both he and his wife were born around 1700, so by midcentury it was clear they weren’t going to have any more children (if they’d had any already). Capt. Kieth adopted a boy named William, born about 1749.

According to local lore, as a teenager William Keith moved in with Philip Mortimer to learn the ropemaking business.

On 10 Feb 1775, the Connecticut Courant reported this news from Hartford:

Last Wednesday, (being Fast Day [1 February]) as Capt. JOHN KIETH of this Town, was attending Public Worship in the North Meeting-House, he was seiz’d with an apoplectic Fit, and expired in a Moment. His Remains were carried to Middletown the Friday following, and decently deposited in Capt. Mortimer’s Tomb.

Mortimer became “Acting Executor” of Kieth’s estate.

That death was no doubt shocking, but Mortimer was already augmenting his household further. Charles Collard Adams’s Middletown Upper Houses (1908) stated: “Capt. Philip Mortimer, being childless, sent to Ireland for his neice, Martha, to become his adopted daughter.”

However, other sources say Mortimer’s favored niece was named Ann Catherine Carnall, born about 1745. As quoted back here, Mortimer had worked with a ship captain named Thomas Carnall to bring Irish youth into Boston in the 1740s; perhaps that man was a brother-in-law. I’m going with the name Ann.

According to Adams, people understood that Mortimer hoped that his niece would marry his protegé, William Keith. He sent the young man “to Boston with a coach and four” to meet Ann and bring her back to Middletown, presumably proposing along the way.

But Ann had come with a maid named Polly Lions Callahan, also in her mid-twenties.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?