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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