Notes on some of the Sacketts in the Descendant Chart
Simon Sackett, b 1600
Prior to their coming to the New World, the Sackett brothers and their
families are believed to have been living in the Isle of Ely,
Cambridgeshire, England, but it is not known if this is where their
ancestral home was.
Then on December 1st 1630, Simon Sackett (precise birth year not
known), Simon's wife Isabel with their new baby Simon Jr, Simon's
brother John, and John's son John Jr (no mention of a wife), set sail on
the ship Lyon from Bristol, England. The ship carried 26
well-to-do Puritans (among whom was Roger Williams) and provisions for
Lord John Winthrop's colonist group of the previous year.
After a severe mid-winter crossing, the Lyon reached Nantasket Roads
off Boston on February 5th 1631. Simon settled in Newtown (now
Cambridge), Massachusetts; his brother John proceeded to New
Haven, Connecticut. Newtown was intended by the Massachusetts Bay
Governors.
William Bloomfield, b 1604
A year after Simon Sackett died in 1635, Bloomfield left Newtown
for Hartford, following Hooker's trek and Sackett's widow Isabel,
presumably marrying her there. In 1638, while in Hartford,
Bloomfield transferred the Sackett house in Newtown to Robert
Stedman. In 1648 he moved with his family to New London.
There is a record of him in Springfield Massachusetts in 1656, and soon
after that he was in
New Town (originally in Dutch "Middleborg"; now Astoria, Queens)
in Long Island where he remained the rest of his life and was a leading
citizen. When in 1663 the English settlers in New Netherland revolted
against Dutch rule, civil affairs were put in the hands of Bloomfield
and five
other "leading citizens".
Bloomfield was an ally, with Captain Mason, of Indian Chief Uncas (the
person celebrated in "The Last of the Mohicans" by J. Fennimore
Cooper), in a short but decisive campaign of extermination against the
Pequot Indians in 1637.
(In 1675, King Philip led the Alqonquin in a war against the New
England colonists. The Alqonquin were desperate at seeing their
land being inexorably taken over and settled by whites, and King
Philip's War was
their last stand. A sub-tribe, the Mohicans, led by Uncas and his
father Chingachguck, was at that time in revolt against the Algonquin,
and so joined sides with the British. The French, always
delighted to make mischief for the British, allied themselves with the
Algonquin. The
hostile Indians were wiped out, though part-blood did Mohicans survive,
and the Massachusetts colonies were left deeply in debt.).
Captain Joseph Sackett, b 1656
Joseph Sackett's father Simon died when Joseph was three, and the boy
was sent from Springfield Massachusetts to live with his
grandfather Bloomfield in Newtown, Long Island. When Joseph
grew up, he became a citizen of importance, holding a number of civil
and military titles, the
last being Captain, and received Royal Patents (land grants).
Joseph Sackett was married three times. He had 10 children with his
first wife Elizabeth Betts; when she died he remarried but his second
wife too died and her name is not recorded. He was then 55.
He married Mercy Whitehead, 48, the widow of his first wife's brother
Captain
Thomas Betts. Mercy had 9 children. To their sum of 19 they
then added one more of their own, making it an even score.
Judge Joseph Sackett, b 1680
Justice of the Peace, and a Judge from 1749 until his death.
With his brother-in-law John Alsop, bought land on the West bank of the
Hudson in the town of New Windsor, Orange County, N. Y. (now a suburb
of Newburgh) and built a wharf to provide sloop service to NYC for
passengers and freight, and a ferry crossing to what is now Fishkill,
the first such for the mid-Hudson region, used by Morgan's troops to
join Washington's army in Boston in 1775. Judge Sackett always
however remained a resident of English Kills.
Joseph's daughter Elizabeth, married to Jonathan Fish, had a son
Nicholas (Weygant's #312) who married Elizabeth Stuyversant, a direct
descendent of Petrus Stuyvesant (1610-1672), Dutch Governor of Nieuw
Amsterdam. Nicholas was very active and close to Washington
during the Revolutionary War. He was the father of Hamilton Fish
(1808-1893), who during the eight years of the presidency of Ulysses S
Grant, 1869-1877, was the United States Secretary of State.
Joseph's sister Anne was the great-great grandmother of Clement Moore, who wrote "'Twas the Night Before Christmas.....".
Ann Sackett, b 1681
Anne Sackett (24)*, sister of ancestor Judge Joseph Sackett and a
daughter of Captain Joseph Sackett (7), married Benjamin Moore.
Their son was Lt Samuel Moore (98), 1711-1780, who sired Benjamin
Moore, 1748-1819, who sired Professor Clement Moore (809), 1779-1863.
It was this Professor Moore who wrote the poem that begins:
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.....
Professor Moore was Captain Joseph Sackett's great-great grandson.
RHN is Captain Joseph Sackett's 6-great grandson. RHN is Moore's 3rd cousin, four times removed.
_______________
• (#) are reference codes from Weygant's "Sacketts of America.
Reverend Richard Sackett, b 1686
Graduated from Yale in 1709; write-up in the 1860 issue of The Yale Graduate".
Captain Joseph Sackett, b 1656
Joseph Sackett's father Simon died when Joseph was three, and the boy
was sent from Springfield Massachusetts to live with his grandfather
Bloomfield in Newtown, Long Island. When Joseph grew up, he
became a citizen of importance, holding a number of civil and military
titles, the
last being Captain, and received Royal Patents (land grants).
Joseph Sackett was married three times. He had 10 children with his
first wife Elizabeth Betts; when she died he remarried but his second
wife too died and her name is not recorded. He was then 55.
He married Mercy Whitehead, 48, the widow of his first wife's brother
Captain
Thomas Betts. Mercy had 9 children. To their sum of 19 they
then added one more of their own, making it an even score.
Elizabeth Betts
Elizabeth’s father, Richard Betts, came to New England 1635, moved to
Newtown Massachusetts in 1636, thence by 1642 to Ipswich, finally to
Newtown Long Island in 1645.
He was a leader in the 1663 Revolution against the Dutch, then held a
series of governmental positions culminating in Magistrate and finally
membership in the "High Court of Assise", the supreme power of the colony.
He lived to be 100, and was the last of the original purchasers.
William Sackett, b 1731
Susan Westcott Hoke's diary says her grandmother's grandfather was the
pioneer Stephen Sackett of Sackett's Harbor, NY. William
Sackett is the name given by Weygant.
She also writes that the family is related to Ann Bolyn through the
Earls of Dorset, back to 1340. She cites a book on the family by
(or in?) the New York Historical Society.
Dr Joseph Sackett, b 1707
Was a lawyer and merchant in New York City, but left to further the
development of family real estate interests purchased by his father and
father-in-law in Orange County on the Hudson in New York. Was
appointed High Sheriff of Orange County by Governor George Clinton and
successors. This business lasted from 1741 to 1757, at which time
he returned to New York City to practice law.
Elizabeth Sackett, b 1729
Elizabeth Sackett Fish's son Nicholas (312), (1758-1833), married
Elizabeth Stuyversant, a direct descendent of Petrus Stuyvesant
(1610-1672), Dutch Governor of Nieuw Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam in 1647. Unpopular with the
Burghers for being far too much of a company (Dutch West India) man,
they refused to help him resist the British when they took over in
1664. He spent the rest of his life on his farm in downtown
Manhattan, the Bouwerie.
William W Sackett, b 1765
Spelled his name with one "t", but all his immediate family used the
double t.
Residences also listed: Hunting Grove (now Burnside, Orange County), Monticello, Lumberland; all in New York State.
Educated at Columbia College; was by education and profession a
surveyor and civil engineer. After college, he read law at the office of
his step-father, John Woods, Esq, NYC.
When he reached his majority and came into his grandfather's
inheritance, he moved to family lands in Orange County near Newburgh,
then the most promising village on the West bank of the central Hudson,
being rapidly populated substantially by immigrants from Long Island.
He married in 1790, and in 1793 he assumed an interest in his
father-in-law's fulling, grist and saw mills in Hunting Grove, but in
1796 moved to Newburgh, having been appointed Revenue Collector for
the 9th Division of the NY District. In 1797 he mapped the area,
the map still today considered definitive for political boundaries.
In 1801 he became Director and Surveyor for the Newburgh and Cochecton
Turnpike, in which capacity he came across and bought tracts of land
which could be profitably developed. From 1801 to 1813 he was
active
in his brothers-in-laws' general store in Newburgh, but then in 1813 he
moved to one of his land tracts in Monticello, Sullivan County (where he
had been involved in the building of the Narrowsburgh and Sullivan
Turnpike), living there while he built a sawmill and grand house with
outbuildings on an extensive, heavily wooded tract in the adjacent
town, Lumberland. Here he spent the remaining 20 years of his
life.
According to his great-grandaughter's "family branch" chart, one of WW
Sacket's sons was nominated to be first governor of New York State, but
died before the election.