Latham, son of Daniel and Deborah, and the father of Christopher L. Avery, was born in Groton in 1775. When quite a young man he went to Demerara, South America, where he engaged in ship-building and merchandising. After living there some twenty years, he came back to his native town, and engaged in farming. For a while he lived on a farm a little north of Groton. Then he sold out, and moved into the village, where he and his wife spent the rest of their lives. This farm is now in the possession of one of his granddaughters. He married Betsey, the daughter of Christopher and Mary (Fish) Lester, of Groton, the ceremony taking place on the 7th of July, 1816, when he was forty and she eighteen. Their children were: Latham, who died unmarried at the age of forty; Betsey Ann, who became the wife of Edmund Fish, and died at sixty-nine, leaving three children; Emily, who married Silas H. Fish, and died at seventy-two, leaving two children; Mary Jane, who married A. M. Ramsdell, and died at sixty-three; Christopher, the subject of this sketch; Julia, the widow of Richard J. Sherman, of Buffalo, N.Y.; and Deborah, who married the late I. P. Bouse, and died in 1895, aged sixty-five years.

Christopher L. Avery was educated in the district schools and at the academy in New London. At the age of fifteen he went to New York, where he worked as a book-keeper in a counting-house on South Street about four years. He then went to China, where he stayed a year. Returning to America, he went to Buffalo, N.Y., and engaged in the grain business until 1861, when he brought his family to Groton, Conn., and engaged in merchandising in New York City. He remained in this business until 1873; and in 1876 he settled on his farm in Groton, where he has since lived.

Mr. Avery is progressive in his ideas and methods, and his well-kept homestead property shows the signs of good management. The spacious house, which is a model of comfort and convenience, is situated on rising ground, commanding a delightful and extended view of hills and vales, with a part of the Sound and the Pequonnock River. In politics Mr. Avery is a Democrat, although independent enough to vote the Republican ticket when he considers that candidate to be the better man.

He was married in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1850, to Sarah W. Smith, who bore four children, namely: Latham, a farmer; Mary Louise, the wife of P. L. Schellens, a merchant in Rio Janeiro; Ira Smith, who died at nineteen; and Betsey, the wife of Belton A. Copp, a bank cashier. Mrs. Sarah W. Avery died in 1869; and Mr. Avery married on November 1, 1870, Ellen B. Copp, a daughter of Belton A. and Betsey Ann (Barber) Copp, of Groton, and the grand-daughter of Daniel and Sarah (Allyn) Copp, both descendants of old families. Her father's family is descended from the early Copps, of Boston, for whom Copp's Hill was named. Mr. and Mrs. Avery have two children: Christopher, a law student at Yale; and Mary Jane, a graduate of the Williams Memorial School, living at home.