TRUMBULL, Jonathan,

Head of Distinguished Family.

The Governors Trumbull, father and son, were descended from John Trumbull, a cooper, who came from Newcastle on-Tyne, England, and settled at Rowley, Massachusetts, in 1640. He filled the positions of town clerk and schoolmaster. His wife, Elinor Chandler, he married in England. From them the line of descent to the elder Governor Jonathan Trumbull is through John, son of the emigrant John, and Joseph, who removed from Massachusetts to Lebanon, Connecticut, and married Hannah Higley. Joseph Trumbull was a merchant.
Governor Jonathan Trumbull, son of Joseph and Hannah (Higley) Trumbull, was born October 12, 1710. He was graduated with honor from Harvard College at the age of seventeen, having acquired an especial proficiency in the Hebrew language. He commenced the study of theology under the Rev. Solomon Williams, of Lebanon, Connecticut, became a duly licensed minister, and had charge of the church at Colchester. The death of his brother Joseph, however, changed the direction of his life, it being necessary for him to aid his father in the conduct of his mercantile business. His efficiency in his new calling was manifest from the outset; he extended trade of the house to, Halifax, London, Amsterdam and the West Indies; but ruin came later by reason of financial depression and losses at sea, meantime the young man had studied law, but was soon called to official positions. In 1733 he was first elected to the General Assembly, and in 1739 he became speaker of that body. In 1740 he became an assistant to the Governor, and was re-elected twenty-two times. He was a devoted friend of education, and in 1743 he established in his native town an academy where his own children were educated, and which was of so superior character that it drew students from practically all the colonies, and from the West Indies also. When twenty-nine he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of militia, but saw no field service. His patriotism became pronounced in 1765, when, as a member of the council, he left the chamber rather than witness Governor Fitch subscribe to the oath to carry out the provisions of the Stamp Act. He was Lieutenant-Governor, 176&69, and was elected Governor in the latter year, over a number of prominent competitors. It was said of him that he was the only one of the colonial Governors to stand out against encroachments upon the rights of the people; at the same time he discountenanced violent opposition, believing that redress would rather follow gentle methods than it would power and force. But when war came, he was quick to act; and, under his inspiring influence,

Connecticut furnished to the patriot cause a greater number of troops than did any other State except Massachusetts. In addition to his arduous duties as Governor and in the council chamber, he conducted a voluminous and important correspondence with the other patriot colonies, and his relations with Washington were of so confidential a nature, and his counsels and assistance were of such great value to that eminent man, that he is credited with having said at times, when in universal need of advice or supplies, "We must consult Brother Jonathan"-a sobriquet which has come down through all the years, "Brother Jonathan" having come to be regarded as the personification of the United States. Trumbull encountered many and great difficulties; desertions from the army were many, as were also the calls of Washington for additional troops. At one time, in the midst of the harvest of 1776, on the urgent appeal of Washington, Trumbull called for nine more regiments, with the appeal, "May the God of the armies of Israel be your leader." On account of his advanced age and approaching feebleness incident to the great burdens he had carried, Trumbull resigned his gubernatorial office in 1783, after occupying it for fourteen years, and having been a prime figure in all the events of the period covering the inception of the Revolution, the long war, and the firm establishment of the new government.
The aged patriot now engaged in business, but for only a short time, and his remaining years were passed in pleasant retirement, in devotional reading and correspondence. He wrote a "Dissertation Upon the Revolutionary War," which was incorporated in the "Collections of the Historical Society of Connecticut."
He received many visitors, among them the Marquis de Chastellux, who had come with Count Rochambeau, to aid in the Revolution, who wrote of Trumbull as "a little old man in the antique dress of the first settlers, possessing all the importance and all the pedantry becoming the great magistrate of a small republic." He received the degree of LL. D. from Yale College in 1779, and from the University of Edinburgh in 1787.
Governor Trumbull married, in 1735, Faith, daughter of the Rev. John Robinson, and a descendant of the John Alden immortalized in Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish." She was a woman of strong character and sturdy patriotism. They reared a remarkable family of four sons and two daughters. Joseph was a member of the Continental Congress, and the first commissary-general of the army; Jonathan is to be further mentioned in this narrative; David was commissary of the Connecticut, and assistant to his brother Joseph in the army; John served as an aide to Washington, and after the war became a historical painter. Of the daughters, Faith became the wife of General Jedidiah Huntington; and Mary the wife of William Williams, a Georgia signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Governor Trumbull died at Lebanon, Connecticut, August 17, 1785, being within a few months of seventy-five years of age. The inscription upon his monument records that "he died full of honors, rich in benevolence, and firm in the faith and hopes of Christianity." The Connecticut Society of Sons of the American Revolution in 1896 placed on the chimney above the fireplace in the old war office at Lebanon, a bronze slab bearing the following inscription:

1775-1783.
LEBANON WAR OFFICE.

During the War of the Revolution, Governor Jonathan Trumbull and the Council of Safety held more than eleven hundred meetings in this building; and here also came many distinguished officers of the Continental Army and French Allies.
Their Monument is More Enduring than Bronze

Governor Jonathan Trumbull (2), son of Governor Jonathan Trumbull (i), was born March 26, 1740, and died August 7, 1809. He was graduated from Harvard College with honors in 1759. At the time of the beginning of the Revolutionary War he was serving as a deputy from Lebanon to the General Assembly of Connecticut, in which he was for a time speaker of the house. In 1775 he was appointed deputy paymaster-general for the northern department of the army, an office he filled until the close of the northern campaign. He was obliged to retire from the army for a time on the death of his brother Joseph, in order to settle up the latter's estate, and during this time was reelected as a deputy to the General Assembly. While presenting his brother's accounts to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, his financial ability was conceded to be so remarkable that he was appointed comptroller of the treasury, a position which placed him at the head of the treasury department. The department was reorganized the following year and he was made one of a committee of five to control it. In 1780 was appointed secretary and first aide to General Washington, a position which he kept him in close and constant touch with that eminent man, whose warm friendship he ever enjoyed, and he was resent at the surrender of Cornwallis. He was again elected as a deputy to the General Assembly in 1788, and became speaker of the House of Representatives.
In 1789 he represented Connecticut in the first Congress of the United States under the constitution; in 1791 was made speaker of the House of Representatives of that body; and in 1794 was elected a Senator in the Congress of the United States. He resigned his seat in the Senate when he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of his native State, in 1796; and was elected Governor in 1798, upon the death of Governor Oliver Wolcott, and he filled by successive reelections until his death. Few men of his day studied more closely the public questions of the hour, and his perfect mastery of subjects under his consideration enabled him to give a clear and decisive expression to his views. In manner he was simple and unaffected, and even during the most heated political campaign his private character was never subjected to attack, but the criticism was always against the measures he championed. Governor Trumbull married, March 26, 1767, Eunice Backus. Children: Jonathan, born December 24, 1767, died young; Faith, February 1, 1769, married Daniel Wadsworth, of Hartford; Mary, December 27, 1777, died young; Harriet, became the wife of Professor Silliman, of Yale College; Maria, February 14, 1785, married Henry Hudson, of Hartford. The mother of these children long survived her husband, dying in New Haven, in 1826.