The Tuttle Family of New Haven

Great grandmother Mabel Tuttle was born Jan 31, 1863 in Wilmington Illinois to parents Burton and Jane Thompson Tuttle.  Burton came from New York and Jane was born to parents who had immigrated from Scotland.  Mabel was an only child.  By 1870 the family had moved to Mankato, Minnesota, where Mabel married Henry Edson Swan in 1890 and their daughter (our grandmother) Margaret Swan was born in 1895 (also an only child).  The three generations, Burton and Jane, Henry and Mabel, and Margaret moved together to Ontario, California in the late 1890s, citing the need to raise frail Margaret in a warmer climate.

This post traces the Tuttle ancestry back to its colonial roots. 

The 1850 U.S. census shows that Burton’s parents were Milton and Almira Tuttle, farmers living in Wilmington Illinois, Burton being the middle of three children.  

It can be difficult to trace lines further back than this in the United States midwest, but in this case there are several genealogies which do the work for us.  The best I’ve found, The Descendants of William and Elizabeth Tuttle, written by George Frederick Tuttle of Columbus Ohio in 1883, can be found on line with a simple Google search.

Sources are in fundamental agreement that…

• The parents of Milton Tuttle were Abijah Tuttle (1773-1810) and Mabel Shepard (1773-?)  (So it seems likely that Mabel Tuttle was named after her great grandmother, Mabel Shepard.  It also seems likely that the naming tradition was, in-part, continued with the naming of Mabel’s grand daughter, Annabel, born in 1925)
• The parents of Abijah Tuttle were Nathaniel Tuttle III (1742-1802) and Elizabeth Bassett (1746-1819)
• The parents of Nathaniel Tuttle III were Nathaniel Tuttle II (1714-1786) and Mary Todd (1720-1742)
• The parents of Nathaniel Tuttle II were Nathaniel Tuttle I (1675-1721) and Esther (maiden name uncertain)
• The parents of Nathaniel Tuttle I were Jonathan Tuttle (1637-1705) and Rebecca Bell (1643-1676)
• The parents of Jonathan Tuttle were William Tuttle (1607-1673) and Elizabeth Matthews (1612-1684)

Click here for the full Tuttle ancestry

William and Elizabeth Tuttle are 9th great grandparents.   From 1638 through the 18th century, all of these ancestors lived in New Haven Connecticut. William Tuttle was one of the original founders of New Haven. 

William Tuttle was born in England, and came to Boston in 1635 on the ship Planter with Elizabeth, their three eldest children, his brothers John and Richard, and their widowed mother.

The brothers settled in Boston for the first two years, setting up successful businesses. By 1638 William and family moved to New Haven because of its strategic shipping location between Boston and New Amsterdam.  

William was one of the original settlers of New Haven and a signer of the 1639 Fundamental Agreement of the New Haven Colony.

A map of 1644 New Haven shows his land on the east shore of the Qunnipiac River in what is today Fairhaven (east of today’s downtown New Haven).

Tuttle was a successful businessman with trading ventures up and down the coast, as well as leading citizen of New Haven, throughout his lifetime.

During the 1640s and 1650s, the governors and merchants of New Haven, including Tuttle, were involved in several enterprises to establish settlements along the Delaware. These efforts led to protracted squabbling with the Dutch in New Amsterdam and ultimately failed. (It was not until 1665 that the successful English settlement in New Jersey at Elizabethtown took place, with settlement of Philadelphia taking place in the early 1680s.)

In 1656 William Tuttle bought an estate in what is now central New Haven.  When Yale College moved to New Haven in 1716, it was established on this property.  For the first 30 years of Yale’s existence in New Haven, the former Tuttle estate was its only property. Today the property remains part of Yale, diagonally adjacent to the New Haven Green.

William’s June 1673 death was apparently unexpected because he left no will, and his children would fight over the estate for years.  Some branches of the family fell apart in various scandals.  One of his daughters was murdered by her brother, who was then hanged by his neighbors. Another daughter was put into a home for the insane because she murdered her son. Yet another daughter, Elizabeth, was divorced by her husband when he found his first child had been sired by another man (source Mary Athey).

But one of Elizabeth’s legitimate children, Timothy Edwards was the father of Jonathan Edwards, the famous theologian after whom one of Yale’s colleges is named.  Jonathan, in turn, was the grandfather of Aaron Burr, who famously killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel.  So Jonathan Edwards is a second cousin and Aaron Burr a fourth cousin of our Sandford branch today. 

Jonathan Tuttle’s branch eluded the controversies, maintaining a lower-profile existence in New Haven and eventually moving west to join with the Swan and Sandford families.

William and Elizabeth Tuttle were originally buried in the New Haven Green, but their markers have since been moved to the Grove Street Cemetery, adjacent to the Yale campus.