James and Lucretia Mott

pg. 74 MARRIAGE OF JAMES MOTT
When the youngest son, Richard, in 1809, was beginning studies at his sister's school in the mill house at Premium Point, James, the eldest son, had finished his education at Nine Partners Boarding School, and had been employed there for nearly two years as a teacher. He had entered the school in 1797, when he was nine years old, after having been for some time in the local school at Cowbay. His sister Sarah, and subsequently Mary and Abby had been in the school at Nine Partners with him, and in 1806, Lucretia Coffin came there as a pupil, soon after she had passed her thirteenth birthday. She had previously been at school first in Nantucket and then in Boston. She was the daughter of Captain Thomas Coffin and Anna Folger his wife, both of the best Quaker stock of Nantucket, where Lucretia was born on the 3d of 1st mo., 1793. Thomas Coffin was a prosperous sea captain, and since 1779, when he was 23 years old, had been part owner as well as captain of the ship which he sailed in the China Trade. But in 1803 Capt. Doffin gave up the sea and in 1804 established himself in business in Boston, and in 1809 removed to Philadelphia, where he conducted a branch of a great business of Thomas and George Odiorne of Boston in making cut nails, then a new invention and very profitable. Captain Coffin took twenty thousand-dollars of his own money to Philadelphia, a large sum for those days. But business afterward turned against him and he died poor six years later-1815.

pg. 75 But at Nine Partners in 1806, Lucretia Coffin soon became intimate with James Mott's sisters, especially Sarah, and later with James himself. She visited with Sarah at her home in Mamaroneck and before she left school in 1809 the intimacy with James had ripened into an engagement of marriage.

Lucretia Coffin also became a teacher at Nine Partners in the latter part of her stay there, and returned to her father's house in 1809, after he had removed to Philadelphia. The following spring James Mott also went to Philadelphia, staying at Thomas Coffin's house, then taking a clerkship in his business. He wrote to his parents at Mararoneck under date,--"Phila., 5th mo., 22d, 1810.
"**I am still with T. Coffin's family, and yesterday made an entrance into his store, and a very awkward one, too, for his business is so different from what I have been accustomed to, and I am almost entire stranger in the place. **Please direct your letters to 48 Dock street, that is the situation of the store."

After six months experience in the store Thomas offered James Mott a parnership in the business. "A very noble offer," James wrote to his parents, giving him one-third of the net profits. James wrote that the cut nial business was at least one hundred thousand dollars a year, on which the commission of the house would be $2,500, and his third $833, to which the other commissions of the house on consignments from other parties add as much more, making $1,666, and in addition their own business would bring them at leat $1,500 profit of which is one-third would make his yearly aggregate over $2,000, but if it should be only $1,500 he would be satisfied.

Although these pleasant anticipations were not all realized, it was yet in their cheerful light that preparations were made for the marriage. James and Lucretia were both living in her father's house. The "passed meeting" on "fourth day the 20th of 2d mo., 1811," and were married in Pine street Meeting House, Phila., on the 10th of 4th month following. A delegation from Marmaroneck was present at the modest festivities. And the young people continued to make their home with Thomas Coffin.

pg. 321 James Mott, the second child and eldest son of Adam and Anne Mott, was born at "the old place," the old Mott Homestead on Cowneck, on the 20th of 6th month, 1788, and died in Brooklyn, N.Y., of pneumonia, while on a visit to his daughter, Martha M. Lord, on the 26th of 1st month, 1868, in his eightieth year, clear in mind and memory, and in good bodily health until a few days before his death. He had married in Philadelphia, 10th of 4th month, 1811, Lucretia Coffin, born 3d of 1st month, 1793, in Nantucket, died at "Roadside," near Philadelphia, 11th of 11th month, 1880, having nearly completed her eighty-eighth year, clear in mind to the last, although in failing stregth, daughter of Thomas and Anna (Folger) Coffin, of Nantucket and subsequently of Philadelphia.

ADAM AND ANNE MOTT: Their Ancestors and Their Descendants by Thomas C. Cornell; their grandson, Yonkers, N.Y. PRINTED FOR THE FAMILY. 1890

Next- Ancestry- of James Mott and how he is descended from Henry Pearsall one of the original settlers of Long Island, Hempstead, New York, on his mother's side of the family, Anne Mott.

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