THE NEW YORK

Genealogical and Biographical Record.

VOL. XIII.

NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 1882.

No. 4.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOSEPH LEMUEL CHESTER, D.C.L., LL.D.

BY JOHN J. LATTING, ESQ., New York,

(With Portrait.)

JOSEPH LEMUEL CHESTER, Corresponding member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and a member of its Council, distinguished in England as "the American Genealogist," died at his residence, No. 124 Southwark Park Road, London, on Friday, May 26, 1882. His immigrant ancestor in this country was Captain Samuel Chester, who, about 1663, came from Boston, in company with William Condy (called his nephew), and settled at New London, Conn. He was for several years a leading merchant, engaged in the West India trade, and acted as commander of different vessels sailing out of New London. He became the purchaser of lands on the East side of the harbor of New London, at Groton, where he ultimately fixed his residence, and where he died in the month of March, 1709-10, leaving a will, made April 23, 1708, in which he names his wife, Hannah, and three sons, Abraham, John, and Jonathan, and a daughter, Mercy Burrows. His estate was inventoried at £295 6s. 6d.

The subject of this sketch was a descendant of the sixth generation from this Captain Samuel Chester, through the latter's son John, above named. He was the fifth child of Joseph and Prudee (Tracy) Chester, of Norwich, Conn., and was born in that city April 30, 1821. Deprived of his father, by death, at the early age of eleven years, he was left, with his six surviving brothers and sisters, to the care, instruction, and guidance of his widowed mother, a woman of marked Christian piety, and of rare intelligence and virtue. Lineally descended, through her father, Major Eleazer Tracy, of Norwich, from the Tracys of Toddington, in Gloucestershire (who claimed an ancestry beginning with Egbert, the first Anglo-Saxon King of England), and through her mother, Prudee Rogers, daughter of Captain Uriah Rogers, of Norwich, from the Rev. John Rogers, the "famous minister of Dedham," she inherited the fair prestige to which such a lineage entitled her, and her memory and worth are fondly cherished in the family. In 1835 she removed with most of her children to Rome, Ohio, where she subsequently married Rev. John Hall, Rector of St. Peter's Church, of Ashtabula, Ohio.