Descendants of Captain John Mott
John Mott of the Revolution had three families, the first was desolated by the fighting in and around his native Mount Holly, New Jersey during the Revolution.
The second was with the widow Beulah Mann who brought him a stepson. The third family was with his much younger wife, Naomi Daggett. There is much more about that on
the John Mott of the Revolution page.
I have compiled the progeny of two women, John’s oldest child Sarah, and John’s third wife Naomi, through 5 generations in two separate descendant reports.
I have also compiled the family of John’s stepson, The Rev. William Mann in a third report.
Sarah Mott and Richard Weter
When recounting the desolation of John Mott’s first family, Amanda T. Jones, his granddaughter, wrote that one of the little girls who hid in the
basement, “never forgot the tumult overhead – she living to be not much under a hundred.” That little girl was no doubt Sarah Mott.
She was born about 1773, lived until she was about 84 years old; she and her husband Richard Weter were progenitors of a family that stretched to
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota within three generations.
I have speculated that it was John Mott’s brother Ebenezer that drew John to upstate New York east of Albany. Whether he took his oldest living child, Sarah, with him or
whether she was already there is not known, but Richard Weter and his young family are on the 1800 census of Pittstown one page away from his father-in-law
John Mott and his young family with Naomi Daggett whom he had married in 1794 in Pittstown.
Sarah and Richard Weter raised their family in the small hamlet of Floyd in New York, some 150 miles from Pittstown through Albany and up the Mohawk River,
ninety-five miles as the crow flies. Two daughters, Malinda and Sarah, married and would remain in that area, family and descendants farming. The others would head west,
Josephus to Lenawee County, just north of the Michigan-Ohio border. Other sons, and daughter Patience, would go even further west to settle in Walworth County,
Wisconsin and McHenry County, Illinois, north and south of each other across the state line. Some 81 of their descendants are buried in the Linn-Hebron
Cemetery which is only three miles south of the state line.
The Rev. William Mann, D.D.
Nothing is really known about John’s first wife other than her name in the Mott Bible, and only a little about his second, the widow Beulah Mann. John would have three children by
Beulah, one of whom, his namesake John, went west to central New York with his step-family but had no issue. John’s stepson, William Mann, taught school in John’s
native Mount Holly, New Jersey, and kept in touch with his surviving step brother and sister until shortly before they died in the late 1860s. His two sons became attorneys in
Philadelphia, 20 miles southeast of Mount Holly. His oldest, Civil War Colonel William B. Mann, was a District Attorney of Philadelphia and was much involved in
local and national politics.
Naomi Daggett and John Mott
Naomi Daggett had eight children with John, only four having issue. The eldest, Mayhew Daggett Mott, named for his father-in-law, had children born in New York before heading west in
1853 at the age of 58 to Winnebago County, Wisconsin with his wife, son Wesley, and daughter Martha. Their son Benjamin went east into New Hampshire, and the youngest,
Mary Alma, gradually moved west with her husband Henry Jones to Buffalo and then during the Civil War to Clinton in Rock County, Wisconsin.
Her line is perhaps the most prolific, with children relocating to Junction City, Kansas and Cleveland, Ohio. I have recorded 114 direct line descendants of Mary Alma.
She was held in great esteem; four of her descendants were named Mary Alma or Alma; her son Benjamin named his two first-born Naomi for his mother and Mary Alma for his sister.
I've not recorded here occupations, but family lore has it that Mayhew Daggett Mott had a shoe manufacturing business in Rome which was destroyed by fire which led him eventually to
relocate to Wisconsin. However true that might be, there is evidence that his brother Benjamin, who went to New Hampshire, was a shoe maker as well, the trade having been passed on to
his son Perkins.
Reflections
While compiling these families I discovered some interesting, to me anyway, things about some of the descendants of John Mott.
John Mott's great-granddaughter Marion Manley has a book written about her, the first woman architect in the city of Miami, Florida; she’s a second cousin.
The Havighurst family, descended from Sarah and Richard Weter, were celebrated academics and authors; two of them have Wikipedia pages; they are my half-4th cousins.
While the first few generations reflect the agrarian nature of America – they were farmers – later generations went on to become lawyers, academics,
veterans of foreign and domestic wars, and one operated a tourist shop on Buttons Bay in Lake Geneva, Buttons Bay being named after John Mott’s great-grandson,
Alexander Henry Button who helped build the original Geneva Inn, then called Gypsy Lodge.
I was also intrigued by the proximity and the likelihood that the branches kept in touch. A good example was the 1918 funeral of Alexander Button of Lake Geneva.
His mother was Patience Weter by her second marriage;
his funeral was attended by his half-nephew, Chester Tripp of Eden, Wisconsin, a descendant of Patience by her first husband.
William Mann exchanged letters with his step-brother Mayhew Mott. I have about twenty letters between the first cousins Amanda T. Jones and Wesley Mott. I wish more letters had survived.
While I’ve now recorded 800 direct line descendants in my database, I’m sure I’ve made some errors and there are many more descendants. Going five generations leads me into the
second half 20th century where current descendants are hard to discover, nor, for privacy reasons, do I want to include in anything public. If you have anything to contribute to
my database, from corrections to additions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.