1908 Letter and Religious Tract for the Brotherhood of the Kingdom 14th Annual Conf in Marlborough on Hudson NY
Condition as seen. The Green family was one of the Significant Families of Worcester, Massachusetts. I still regard them fondly because of Dr. John Green, who founded the Worcester Public Library (its early incarnation at left). His collection included some extremely rare and beautiful books—the sort NHGs expect to find only at big university libraries. Or in England at some duke’s place. Though not in this priceless category, some of the elderly volumes I consulted for Mr. Impossible bore Dr. Green’s name.
Then there was a Green Hill Park, where once upon a time, the family had lived in a great (for Massachusetts) estate. To my everlasting grief, the house, like so many others, was long gone by the time I discovered it, through old photographs. It included, I recently learned, a museum for the family.
Members of the Green family whose papers are found in this collection resided in Massachusetts, New York and South Carolina.The principal figures are Timothy Green and his son, Timothy Ruggles Green, both lawyers and merchants in New York City.
Timothy Green was the son of Dr. John Green of Leicester, who emigrated to America and married Mary Ruggles of Sandwich, Mass. The family settled in Worcester around 1770. Timothy graduated from Brown in 1786, married Mary Martin of Providence, and practiced law in Worcester briefly before moving permanently to New York City. He engaged in commerce and land speculation with brothers and branches of the Green family in Columbia, S.C. While returning from Charleston in December 1813, Timothy Green was lost at sea. Meltiah, a brother who had worked for him as a commission merchant, had died of yellow fever on the Island of St. Bartholomew four years earlier.
Timothy Ruggles Green inherited his father's legal practice and mercantile interests in New York City. He eventually formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, John W. Mitchell. Their trade and real estate transactions, however, were never on the grand scale of Timothy Green. Timothy Ruggles Green, who devoted much of his time to an equitable distribution of his father's estate among the family, died in December, 1840.
His mother, the widow of Timothy Green, supported herself by opening a boarding house and running a girl's academy in New York. Records in the collection indicate that the school was in operation between 1828 and 1834, and that two instructors were her daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.
Two genealogical charts, Green family (A) and Green family (B), give the family trees for John Green (1736-1799) and Timothy Green (1765-1813) respectively.