Mitchell-Tiffany family papers

Alfred Mitchell was the youngest son of the Reverend Alfred Mitchell and Lucretia M. (Woodbridge) Mitchell. When the Reverend Mitchell died on December 19, 1831, his wife accepted the invitation of her uncle, Judge Elias Perkins, to occupy his home, the Shaw mansion in New London. It was here that Alfred Mitchell was born on April 1, 1832. His mother died on March 29, 1839, and his eldest brother, Stephen Mix Mitchell (1818-1839), died a few weeks later as a result of pulmonary disease. In the summer of 1839 Gen. William Williams became the guardian of the Mitchell children.

Alfred Mitchell was a member of the class of 1854 at Yale College but left without taking a degree because of poor health. He was later awarded an honorary degree by the university. As a young man Alfred Mitchell engaged in the whaling industry in Honolulu and the ship chandlery business in New York. These business enterprises, neither of which appears to have been successful, required travel to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. In 1861 Alfred Mitchell returned from the Sandwich Islands to enlist in the Union Army. He took a commission as a captain in the Thirteenth Connecticut Regiment, which was transported to Louisiana and became part of the Army of the Gulf of Mexico. Alfred Mitchell was promoted to the rank of Major in May, 1863, and ultimately served on the staff of General Henry W. Birge.

After the war Mitchell moved to California where he worked in gold mining for several years, without financial success. On his return to the East he traveled to Guatemala to investigate the prospects for entering the coffee business, but his interests in Guatemala never seem to have advanced beyond the preliminary stages.

On April 27, 1871, Alfred Mitchell married Annie O. Tiffany, daughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of a prominent jewelry business. Alfred Mitchell became a trustee of Tiffany and Company but appears to have engaged in few, if any, other business activities after his marriage.

Annie Olivia Tiffany was born on November 27, 1844, in New York, the daughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany and Harriet Olivia A. (Young) Tiffany. She attended the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, and married Alfred Mitchell on April 27, 1871. After their marriage, the Mitchells established residences at the Mitchell family home in New London, New York City, and, after 1900, their estate "The Folly" at Port Antonio, Jamaica. They also owned property at Salem, Connecticut, which had formerly been in the Woodbridge family. They traveled frequently throughout Europe, Egypt and Japan. Alfred and Annie O. Mitchell had two daughters, Alfreda Mitchell and Charly Tiffany Mitchell.

Alfred Mitchell died at Port Antonio on April 27, 1911, at the age of 79. After her husband's death Mrs. Mitchell spent most of her time at home in Florida. She died in Miami on January 2, 1937, at the age of 92.

OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS

Alfreda (Mitchell) Bingham was born in New York on December 29, 1874, the daughter of Alfred and Annie O. (Tiffany) Mitchell.

On November 20, 1900, she married Hiram Bingham III, son of Rev. Hiram and Minerva Clarissa (Brewster) Bingham. Seven sons were born of the marriage: Woodbridge, born November 20, 1901; Hiram IV, born July 17, 1903; Alfred Mitchell, born February 20, 1905; Charles Tiffany, born August 31, 1906; Brewster, born September 1, 1908; Mitchell, born November 20, 1910; and Jonathan Brewster, born April 24, 1914.

Alfreda and Hiram Bingham were divorced on March 27, 1937. Alfreda Bingham later married Henry Gregor, a pianist and composer born in Moscow of German and Russian parents. She died on August 27, 1967.

Charly Tiffany (Mitchell) Jeans was born in New York on January 22, 1877, the daughter of Alfred and Annie O. (Tiffany) Mitchell.

Charly Mitchell attended Bryn Mawr College from 1894 to 1898. In 1907 she married James Hopwood Jeans (later Sir James Jeans) and in 1909 returned with him to England. James and Charly (Mitchell) Jeans had one daughter, Olivia Jeans. Charly Jeans seems to have suffered from poor health throughout her adult life and died in 1934 at the age of 57.

Reverend Alfred Mitchell, the youngest son of Stephen Mix Mitchell (1743-1835), was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, on May 22, 1790. He graduated from Yale College in 1809, and then studied theology with the Reverend Dr. Ebenezer Porter, of Washington, Connecticut. When Dr. Porter accepted a professorship at Andover Theological Seminary in March, 1832, Alfred Mitchell accompanied him and finished the year with the senior class.

Mitchell then preached for a short time to a congregation in Bridge-water, Massachusetts. In 1813 he began a pastorate at the Second Congregational Church at Chelsea on the Landing in Norwich, Connecticut. Mitchell was ordained and installed on October 27, 1814, the ordination sermon being preached by Dr. Porter (a copy of which is included in the collection). His prosperous pastorate was terminated by his death, after an illness of eight weeks, on December 19, 1831, at the age of 41.

On January 16, 1815, Reverend Mitchell married Lucretia Mumford Woodbridge, the second daughter of Nathaniel Shaw and Elizabeth (Mumford) Woodbridge, of what is now Salem, Connecticut. She died on March 29, 1839, at the age of 45. Their marriage produced four daughters and five sons. Two daughters and a son died in infancy. The eldest son, Stephen Mix Mitchell, born April 13, 1818, was a member of the Amherst College class of 1838 but withdrew because of pulmonary disease, which proved fatal in 1839. Donald Grant Mitchell (1822-1908) was the second son, and the youngest son was Alfred Mitchell (1832-1911).

Donald Grant Mitchell was born in Norwich, Connecticut on April 12, 1822, the son of Rev. Alfred Mitchell and Lucretia M. (Woodbridge) Mitchell. He graduated from Yale in 1841, where, in his last year, he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. After graduation he moved to the family farm in Salem, Connecticut, and continued his literary work. In 1843 he was awarded a silver medal (by the New York Agricultural Society) for his plans of farm buildings. From the autumn of 1844 until January, 1845, he worked as a clerk to Joel W. White, consul to Liverpool. Because of a pulmonary weakness he retired to the milder climate of the island of Jersey. From March, 1845, to August, 1846, he traveled, much of the time on foot, through Britain and Europe.

Returning to America in comparatively good health in September, 1846, Mitchell began writing for the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer under the pseudonym "Ik Marvel." In New York he also studied law, (under the guidance of John Osborne Sargent), but his principal interest continued to be his literary work. In 1847 he published his first book, Fresh Gleanings, which was a record of his European travels. In June, 1848, he went to Paris and wrote a series of 30 letters for the Courier and Enquirer on the Revolution of 1848. His second book, The Battle Summer (1850), written after his return to America, dealt with events leading up to the revolution. A projected sequel was never written. During 1850 he edited the Lorgnette, a journal designed to satirize the follies of New York society. His Reveries of a Bachelor was a popular success and was followed in 1851 by Dream Life. Beginning in 1868, he edited the journal Hearth and Home, with Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Donald Grant Mitchell contributed to the leading American periodicals from 1842 to 1897. His writings also include: Fudge Doings (1855); My Farm of Edgewood (1863); Seven Stories (1864); Wet Days at Edgewood (1865); Doctor Johns (1866); Rural Studies (1867, republished as Out-of-Town Places, 1884); About Old Story Tellers (1877); Woodbridge Record (1883); Daniel Tyler (1883); Bound Together (1884); English Lands, Letters and Kings (4 vols. 1889-1897); and American Lands and Letters (2 vols. 1897-1899). The Edgewood edition of his works in fifteen volumes was published in 1907.

On May 31, 1853, Donald Grant Mitchell married Mary Frances Pringle, of Charleston, South Carolina. He then served as the United States Consul in Venice until his resignation in February 1854, when he moved to Paris. Mitchell returned to the United States in May, 1855, and purchased a two hundred acre farm, later increased to 360 acres, near New Haven, Connecticut. He called this farm "Edgewood." His earlier interests in farming grew to include town and park planning, and "Edgewood" became the example of his sense of beauty to which his series of Edgewood books were devoted. In 1904 the New England Association of Park Superintendants awarded Mitchell a silver cup in recognition that he had "laid the foundation for scientific and beautiful park building throughout this country." Included in the collection is his proposal for the lay-out of East Rock Park in New Haven. Donald Grant Mitchell died at Edgewood on December 15, 1908.

Louis Mitchell was born November 7, 1826, in New London, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend Alfred Mitchell and Lucretia M. (Woodbridge) Mitchell. He suffered from serious physical disabilities as a result of a childhood illness which was poorly treated. After the death of his mother in 1839, he and his younger brother Alfred continued their education under the guardianship of General William Williams. At the outbreak of the Civil War Alfred was commissioned as a captain in the Thirteenth Connecticut Regiment, and although Louis was exempted from service because of his physical disabilities, he took passage as ship companion on the vessel which transported the Thirteenth Regiment to New Orleans. He collected information on the Connecticut regiments which he supplied to those who later compiled records. He also collected the material for a proposed genealogy of the Woodbridge family, but died before he was able to complete the project. The notes which he left were used by Donald Grant Mitchell to complete the genealogy, which was published in 1883 as the Woodbridge Record. Louis Mitchell lived in Norwich with his cousin, Mrs. Levi Hart Goddard, and in New London with the family of his brother Alfred Mitchell. He died on July 15, 1881, at the age of 54.

Stephen Mix Mitchell was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut on December 9, 1743, the only child of James Mitchell and his second wife Rebecca, daughter of Rev. Stephen and Mary (Stoddard) Mix. James Mitchell had emigrated from Paisley, Scotland, and settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Stephen Mix Mitchell's mother, who was a first cousin of Jonathan Edwards, died while he was an infant. After his graduation from Yale College in 1763, Stephen Mitchell received a Berkeley Scholarship and in September, 1766, began a three year term as tutor in the college. At the same time he pursued a law degree under the direction of the Hon. Jared Ingersoll. On August 2, 1769, he married Hannah Grant, daughter of Donald Grant, an emigrant from Inverness, Scotland, to Newtown, Connecticut.

Stephen Mix Mitchell was admitted to the Fairfield County bar in 1770, and settled in Newtown, but in 1772 moved to Wethersfield, where he continued in practice for about seven years. He began his public career as a Representative in the General Assembly of the State in October, 1778, and in the following May he accepted the office of Associate Judge of the Hartford County Court. He was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1783, 1785, and 1787 and lived to be the last surviving member of the Old Congress, with the exception of President James Madison. Mitchell continued as Representative in the General Assembly (serving one term as clerk) until his transfer to the upper house of the legislature in 1784. He was reelected to the House of Assistants for seven more years (1785, 1787, 1792) and was then chosen to fill the unexpired term of the late Honorable Roger Sherman as United States Senator, serving from December, 1793, to March, 1795. In May, 1790, he became Presiding Judge of the Hartford County Court, until his transfer to the Superior Court in October, 1795. Mitchell became Chief Justice of the State in May, 1807, retiring in 1814. He was a presidential elector in 1805, and in 1807 Yale College conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1788 Mitchell served as a member of the State Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States and in 1818 as a member of the State Constitutional Convention.

Stephen Mix Mitchell died in Wethersfield on September 30, 1835, at the age of 93. His wife, Hannah (Grant) Mitchell, died on February 14, 1830, at the age of 81. Their marriage produced eleven children, of whom Walter Mitchell (1777-1849) and the Rev. Alfred Mitchell (1790-1831) are represented in the collection.

Walter Mitchell, the third son of the Honorable Stephen Mix Mitchell, was born in Wethersfield on October 7, 1777. He became a lawyer and practiced for many years in Hartford. He also served as a judge of the Hartford County Court from 1838 to 1840. He never married and died in Hartford on July 29, 1849, at the age of 72.

Charles Lewis Tiffany, the son of Comfort and Chloe (Draper) Tiffany, was born in Killingly, Connecticut, on February 15, 1812, a descendant of Humphrey Tiffany who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1600. As a boy he attended district schools and then spent two years at an academy in Plainfield, Connecticut. At the age of fifteen he managed a general store for his father, and when his father's cotton manufacturing mill became prosperous, he entered the business. In 1837 he and John B. Young moved to New York and opened a stationery and notion shop. The business grew, and with the retirement of Young and Ellis, a third partner, from the firm, it was reorganized in 1853 as Tiffany and Company. By this time it had become primarily a jewelry business.

Tiffany and Company became the foremost of American jewelers, with more than twenty foreign monarchs among its customers. In addition to establishing Tiffany and Company, Charles Tiffany was one of the founders of the New York Society of Fine Arts, a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a member of the National Academy of Design. France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1878) and the Czar of Russia conferred on him the medal Praemia Digno.

Charles Tiffany married Harriet Olivia Avery Young, the sister of his first partner, on November 30, 1841. Six children were born of the marriage: Charles Lewis, born October 7, 1842, died in infancy; Annie Olivia, born November 27, 1844, later married Alfred Mitchell (1832-1911); Louis Comfort, born February 18, 1848, became the founder, president and director of the Tiffany Glass Company; Louise Harriet, born December 18, 1856; Henry Charles, born September 1, 1858, who also died in infancy; and Burnett Young, born April 12, 1860. Harriet (Young) Tiffany died November 6, 1897, in Yonkers, New York, and Charles Tiffany died February 18, 1902, in New York, at the age of 90.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in New York City on February 18, 1848, the son of Charles Lewis and Harriet Olivia A. (Young) Tiffany. His formal education took him through secondary school, after which he studied art, first with George Inness and Samuel Colman, and later under Leon Bailly in Paris. He was accepted as an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1871.

On May 15, 1872, he married Mary Woodbridge Goddard, a cousin of Alfred Mitchell, whom, she referred to affectionately as "Uncle Alf." Four children were born of the marriage: Mary Woodbridge, born April 3, 1873, was known as "May May;" Charles Louis, born December 9, 1874, died in infancy; Charles Lewis II, born January 7, 1878, later became a vice president of Tiffany and Company; and Hilda Goddard, born August 24, 1879. Mary (Goddard) Tiffany died on January 22, 1884. His second marriage, to, Louise Wakeman Knox, took place on November 9, 1886. Four children were born of the marriage: Louise Comfort, born September 24, 1887; Julia DeForest, born September 24, 1887; Annie Olivia, born December 29, 1888, who died as a young child; and Dorothy Trimble, born October 11, 1891. Louise (Knox) Tiffany died in 1904.

In 1877 Louis Tiffany and other artists, including Wyatt Eaton, John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who felt that the National Academy of Design was too narrow and unprogressive, organized the Society of American Artists. In 1875 Tiffany began experimenting with stained glass and in 1878 established a glass-making plant of his own. He invented a process of his own for making glass, giving it the name Favrile glass. Popularly known as "Tiffany" glass, it brought him his greatest popular reputation. Between 1893 and 1926 Tiffany was awarded numerous prizes and medals, among them the Grand Prix and a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900. He was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and honorary member of the Imperial Society of Fine Arts of Tokyo and of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts of Paris. In 1919 he established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation for art students. He was a vice president and director of both Tiffany and Company jewelers and Tiffany and Company Safe Deposit Company. Louis Comfort Tiffany died in New York City on January 17, 1933, at the age of 84.

In addition to materials found in the collection, the following sources were used in the preparation of the biographical notes.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1907.

Dunn, Waldo H. The Life of Donald Grant Mitchell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.

Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.

[underline]. National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. James T. White and Co. 1897. 1950.

Perkins, Mary E. Chronicles of a Connecticut Farm, 1769-1905. Privately printed, 1905.

Purtell, Joseph. The Tiffany Touch. New York: Random House, 1971.

Tiffany, Nelson Otis. The Tiffanys of America. 1901.

For a chart outlining the genealogical relations of the Mitchell-Tiffany family, please consult the Genealogical Chart.