cottage on a plot of land he bought in Yonkers, and the next year he converted the little house into the family homestead and began traveling back and forth each morning and night to his job in Manhattan. Until the Hudson River Railway was built, he took a horse-drawn carriage along what was then called Harlem Road, becoming one of Yonkers’s first daily commuters.
The original small cottage evolved into a “fine country seat” before long, and Samuel Rockwell worked so hard that he was soon able to sell his watch shop in “the crowded city” of New York to establish a real estate business in the “pure air” of Yonkers, which at this point contained only three thousand inhabitants. He cofounded the Yonkers Savings Bank and helped organize the first Presbyterian church in the community. Known as a man of “enlarged views,” Samuel Rockwell was deemed by a late-nineteenth-century historian of Westchester County to hold the best possible claim “to be considered a representative man of the city.”
Samuel was proud of his New England heritage, the lineage and traditions of which he sought to pass down through his children: Samuel Sherman (who died at the age of four), John William (Norman Rockwell’s grandfather), George Sigourney, Frances Elizabeth, and Julius Talcott. He named his second son, born in 1838, after the covey of sixteenth-century John Rockwells who were among the early wave of Pilgrims first settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Born in Somerset, England, in 1588, John Rockwell and his wife, Wilmet Cade, had seeded the Rockwell lineage in the New World through their son and daughter, John and Mary. By 1703, when John’s son Jonathan married a Ridgefield country girl, Abigail Canfield, the Rockwells were sufficiently well established that three years later Jonathan could pack up his loom and head west with his wife to help her family develop their land. Predictably, the relocated Rockwells were successful with their farming and weaving, which their son Abraham and his wife Esther Riggs continued to expand. By the time that Abraham and Esther’s firstborn, Runa Rockwell, and his wife, Rachel Darling, were rearing the son who would establish the Rockwell presence in New York—Samuel Darling Rockwell—the town of Ridgebury, Connecticut, had been inhabited by Rockwells for more than 150 years. And at least a few Rockwell boys fought in 1779 against Benedict Arnold’s troops, who tried to burn down Ridgebury and Danbury in their attempt to stem the American Revolution.
Most important of the traditions that Norman Rockwell would absorb from his own father was the ancestral assumption that the son should model his character on his male parent—with the corollary that the parent was supposed to earn such emulation. Runa Rockwell had patterned himself upon what archival family records call Abraham’s “habits of industry and frugality,” the example of which enabled the weaver and part-time farmer not only to provide well for his own family but to contribute heavily to the local “cause of Religion” and to the needy in the community. “The good will and respect of his townsmen” that this type of behavior had won for his forebears, proudly noted in the old histories of the Rockwell family, were not lost on Samuel Rockwell, who earned great admiration in Yonkers, largely due to a lifetime of steady, reliable labor.
Samuel’s son John only increased his family’s pride in its American lineage when he married Phoebe Boyce Waring, who brought her own dowry of Yonkers nobility to their union. Born in 1841, Phoebe came from an English family that had left Liverpool with the great wave of early-seventeenth-century religious refugees who migrated to Norwalk, Connecticut. A New York contingent was led by Phoebe’s great-grandfather, John Waring, who by the next century had made his way to Yonkers, where his offspring—twelve grandchildren produced by Waring’s fourth child, Peter—would convert the
The original small cottage evolved into a “fine country seat” before long, and Samuel Rockwell worked so hard that he was soon able to sell his watch shop in “the crowded city” of New York to establish a real estate business in the “pure air” of Yonkers, which at this point contained only three thousand inhabitants. He cofounded the Yonkers Savings Bank and helped organize the first Presbyterian church in the community. Known as a man of “enlarged views,” Samuel Rockwell was deemed by a late-nineteenth-century historian of Westchester County to hold the best possible claim “to be considered a representative man of the city.”
Samuel was proud of his New England heritage, the lineage and traditions of which he sought to pass down through his children: Samuel Sherman (who died at the age of four), John William (Norman Rockwell’s grandfather), George Sigourney, Frances Elizabeth, and Julius Talcott. He named his second son, born in 1838, after the covey of sixteenth-century John Rockwells who were among the early wave of Pilgrims first settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Born in Somerset, England, in 1588, John Rockwell and his wife, Wilmet Cade, had seeded the Rockwell lineage in the New World through their son and daughter, John and Mary. By 1703, when John’s son Jonathan married a Ridgefield country girl, Abigail Canfield, the Rockwells were sufficiently well established that three years later Jonathan could pack up his loom and head west with his wife to help her family develop their land. Predictably, the relocated Rockwells were successful with their farming and weaving, which their son Abraham and his wife Esther Riggs continued to expand. By the time that Abraham and Esther’s firstborn, Runa Rockwell, and his wife, Rachel Darling, were rearing the son who would establish the Rockwell presence in New York—Samuel Darling Rockwell—the town of Ridgebury, Connecticut, had been inhabited by Rockwells for more than 150 years. And at least a few Rockwell boys fought in 1779 against Benedict Arnold’s troops, who tried to burn down Ridgebury and Danbury in their attempt to stem the American Revolution.
Most important of the traditions that Norman Rockwell would absorb from his own father was the ancestral assumption that the son should model his character on his male parent—with the corollary that the parent was supposed to earn such emulation. Runa Rockwell had patterned himself upon what archival family records call Abraham’s “habits of industry and frugality,” the example of which enabled the weaver and part-time farmer not only to provide well for his own family but to contribute heavily to the local “cause of Religion” and to the needy in the community. “The good will and respect of his townsmen” that this type of behavior had won for his forebears, proudly noted in the old histories of the Rockwell family, were not lost on Samuel Rockwell, who earned great admiration in Yonkers, largely due to a lifetime of steady, reliable labor.
Samuel’s son John only increased his family’s pride in its American lineage when he married Phoebe Boyce Waring, who brought her own dowry of Yonkers nobility to their union. Born in 1841, Phoebe came from an English family that had left Liverpool with the great wave of early-seventeenth-century religious refugees who migrated to Norwalk, Connecticut. A New York contingent was led by Phoebe’s great-grandfather, John Waring, who by the next century had made his way to Yonkers, where his offspring—twelve grandchildren produced by Waring’s fourth child, Peter—would convert the
Similar Books
