Everyone is talking about Jesup Green.
Some even spell it correctly. (It’s “Jesup,” not “Jessup.”)
Much of the discussion centers on the “green” part: whether to keep it grassy or sacrifice the top part for parking, and the pros and cons of moving the green space lower, down by the river.
But what about the first part? Who was this “Jesup” dude anyway ?
We really should not forget Morris Ketchum Jesup.
His Wikipedia page begins:
Morris Ketchum Jesup (June 21, 1830 – January 22, 1908), was an American banker and philanthropist. He was the president of the American Museum of Natural History and was known as a leading patron of scientific research and an eminent art collector, particularly towards his support for Frederic Edwin Church.
Morris K. Jesup had great sideburns, and a loyal dog.
That just skims the surface.
Born in Westport — one of 9 children, and the grandson of Ebenezer Jesup, a surgeon in the Continental Army and deacon of Green’s Farms Congregational Church — he moved to New York City in 1842. Later, at 22, he started a company marketing railroad supplies.
It was quite lucrative. He then became a banker, with equal success. He retired in 1884 — just 54 years old — and devoted the remaining 24 years of his life to philanthropy.
Jesup had already been an organizer of the United States Christian Commission, which helped care for wounded soldiers during the Civil War; was a founder and president of YMCA New York, and founder and president of a settlement house for European immigrants.
Tsar Nicholas II knighted Jesup, for his support of immigrants from the Russian Empire.
He was a major contributor to both the Arctic expedition of Robert Peary, and a 5-year voyage to Alaska and Siberia. In honor of another expedition he funded, the northernmost point of Greenland is now named Cape Morris Jesup.
Cape Morris Jesup on May 16, 1900.
As president of the American Museum of Natural History (to which he donated large sums while alive, and gave $1 million in his will), he had a role in creating New York State’s Adirondack Park.
Jesup’s donations to Tuskegee Institute helped George Washington Carver bring mobile classrooms to farmers. Carver’s vehicle was called a “Jesup wagon.” That’s the name still given to mechanized trucks that haul agricultural supplies to county fairs.
He also contributed generously to Yale University, Williams College, Union Theological Seminary — and Syrian Protestant College (now American University of Beirut).
Oh, yes: He was president of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and donated most of the funds for a new building.
Morris K. Jesup died on January 22, 1908, at his Madison Avenue home in New York. But he never forgot Westport.
In 1884 he donated his mansion as the parsonage for the Saugatuck Congregational Church. It’s still used today. (In 1950 the church itself was moved diagonally across the Post Road, from its original site, and was connected to the already standing house).
Unfortunately, Jesup did not live to see the dedication of this most important local gift: the library he endowed in his home town. That took place 4 months later, on April 8. A crowd of 300 — including Governor Rollin P. Woodruff — attended the event, a seminal moment in Westport history.
Morris K. Jesup, at the Westport Library.
Jesup’s contribution to the original Westport Library (called the Morris K. Jesup Memorial Library) — $5,000, plus the land at the corner of the Post Road and Main Street (now the building with Starbucks) — seems paltry in comparison with some of his gifts.
But without him, we might not have the magnificent institution that our Library has grown into today.
In 1986 — after nearly 80 years at its original site, it moved across the Post Road to its current site.
Overlooking — very fittingly — Jesup Green.
Which — also quite fittingly — was officially named “Jesup Green” 85 years ago, in 1939. Not far away his grandfather, Major Ebenezer Jesup, had built a wharf in the early 1800s to handle his shipping business.
The Westport Library — originally endowed by Morris K. Jesup — overlooks Jesup Green.
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You’re on a roll with Jesup, Dan, after yesterday. How about an evergreen series on all the famous old family names around Westport? I’d like to read about the history of Nash Pond, especially how it got built. How all the abuttors now maintain it in modern times, like a private road. And the sixth generation, I think, of Nashes running around town. Not as old as many, I know.
Thanks, Bill. Much appreciated!
Try this for starters: https://06880danwoog.com/2017/04/06/nashs-pond-the-way-back-story/
It’s called Jesup Green because that was roughly the location of the Jesup wharf built by Morris’s dad, Major Ebenezer. In 1807, he and a group of investors built the Connecticut Turnpike – which, no accident, came across the river and right past the Jesup wharf. It’s now part of the Post Road. Before that most traffic travelled on the Kings Highway/Myrtle Avenue, etc. That year Jesup built in a stylish mansion which addressed the new road. It’s now the parsonage for the Saugatuck Congregational Church. The house remains in its original location. The church later joined it after being towed across the street.
Thanks for the information, Morley. I’ll amend the story accordingly!
My bad: Ebenezer was Morris’s grandfather. His dad was Charles.
Interesting. Any living descendants?
Wow! His legacy should be respected.
With a parking lot expansion! Woo-hoo!
🤣
For those that want more information on Morris Jesup, you can access a prior article on 06880 as a “Friday Flashback” of September 2, 2022 with the following link: https://06880danwoog.com/2022/09/02/friday-flashback-312/?noamp=mobile#comments
What a fun and interesting read, Dan, thank you! The relevance to the present debate aside, the life of these “gilded age” personalities is so fascinating in its versatility and breadth of interests and commitments. There is no doubt much to be learned in looking at the environments that fostered the curiosity and dedication they displayed (and also sometimes the ruthlessness!)
The first Jesups in Westport spelled their name “Jessup.” Edward Jessup, his siblings and his stepfather and mother moved to (what is today) Westport in the late 1660s, about two decades after it was settled in 1648 by the five Bankside families—Green, Frost, Gray, Newton and Andrews.
Documents from a trial in 1692 reflect that “Edward Jessup” was a key witness in a witch trial of “Mercy Desborough of Compo.” (One of Mercy’s sins appears to be that she had a better scholastic command of passages of the Bible than Edward and some of his buddies.)
http://ia904509.us.archive.org/9/items/edwardjessupofwe00jesu/edwardjessupofwe00jesu_bw.pdf
The Jesup Green area of Westport has a longer and deeper connection to the Jesup family than simply the 1908 bequest of the library by Morris. Ebenezer Jesup, undertook a major maritime development of the Saugatuck River, constructing a wharf near its navigable headwaters. In 1811, to promote his new port, Jesup arranged for the construction of a new highway by his riverfront facility, including a new carriage bridge across the Saugatuck River. By diverging from the Kings Highway, Jesup impacted on the future of Westport in two ways. First, Kings Highway was left as a side road, thereby preserving its colonial heritage to this day. Second, he supercharged the development of what would become Westport Center on the Saugatuck River.
A couple of decades ago, I asked the Archivist for the Argyll & Bute District in Scotland whether he spelled his name “McDonald” or “MacDonald.” He replied: “It doesn’t matter. Spelling is a twentieth-century conceit.”
It is generally a waste of time to get hung up about spelling, especially the spelling of names, hundreds of years ago. Orthography wasn’t much standardised until the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, and the spelling of names has long been idiosyncratic. Spend some time with old documents, and you will see the same word spelled different ways in a single document, or even a single paragraph. Some people spelled their own names differently at different times, and scribes writing for churches, courts, town councils and the like, used whatever spelling sounded right to them.
Very interesting! Do you ever spell your name “Ian”?
My parents chose that spelling. I hired a lawyer to change it when I was 12. He basically told me it didn’t matter: spelling be damned, it was the same name. The US government felt differently, however, so I got a legal name change when I got naturalised.
Don’t forget most people didn’t know how to read or write. My own illiterate German ancestors spelt our last name inconsistently as Kaley and such. When they got to America, it became Kelly or Kelley. I always assumed I was Irish.
Work allowed me to visit the American University of Beirut many times, where I was taken in by the place and seeming impossibility of its mission and existence. One day, I was stopped in my tracks by the arched windows and balconies of an academic building named Jesup Hall. Could it be the Morris of our Westport Library? Apparently so, and his philanthropy 127 years ago is still a part of daily campus life in a struggling region of the world.
We need more parking, not less; AND we need Jesup Green. Surely there is a solution for both.
Placing a parking lot on that landscape is a disservice to the Library and also to the existing beauty of the sculpted lawn. It is a question of preserving a well-designed landscape that provides a gorgeous setting for the library versus a commercial incentive devoid of any visual consideration whatsoever. Money wins in that option.
Jeff