AMERICA THE GREAT MELTING POT Contact information on HOME page Direct descendant is highlighted in red
James Mott	see FAMILY TREE

Born: 08 Oct 1742 Roslyn, Long Island, NY
Married: 05 Sep 1765 Matinecock, Long Island, NY		His residence at Premium Point
Died: 07 May 1823 Mamaroneck, Westchester Co., NY
		Friends Meeting House at Nine Partners

FATHER

Richard Mott

MOTHER

Sarah Pearsall

WIFE

Mary Underhill

CHILDREN

1. Richard Mott

2. Anne Mott

3. Robert Mott

4. Samuel Mott

Merchant on Beekman St., NY

From Adam and Anne Mott by Cornell, "There is a well authenticated tradition that he had been previously engaged to a young lady named Lawrence, who died after the engagement. Mary's younger brother, Thomas, told in later years that when James Mott first came after her she thought he was in pursuit of a horse which her father had for sale."
"Following the example of his own father, James Mott, went early into business in the City of New York. At one time he was associated with Robert Browne (Browne and Mott), in Pearl or Water Street a little below what was then Beekman slip, and is now the foot of Fulton Street, but there had been no Fulton Street there at that time. In after years, he sometimes told of his early reputation as a judge of liquor when he bought and sold it by the cask. But he was one of the earliest and most earnest advocates of temperance, and if he sold liquor by the cask in his business life, his latter years were a long period of diligent explanation of the error. It was another of the traditions preserved by his brother-in-law, Thomas Underhill, who in those pre-revolutionary days was apprenticed to a silversmith in the neighborhood, that James Mott lived in a two-story brick house on the north side of Backman Street, between Pearl and Cliff Streets- well up toward Cliff Street. This was a street of pleasant residences. The lot was roomy enough to make a roadway by the side of the house. Here were born his four children, in the years immediately preceding the American Revolution. Some memories of these days, as well as the house in which he was born, were preserved by his eldest son Richard, who was in his 10th year at the time of the declaration of independence. In some of the previous rebel disturbance in the city, the Captain of the British ship-of-war Asia, the lying in the River, threatened to bombard the city, and James Mott sent his children by a cartman into the country for safety-the safe place being on the Bowery road, near the present site of Hester Street. A little later, his wife being in failing health, he sold out his New York interests and removed to Mamaroneck. He had not been in business a dozen years, and he was but 33 years old, but he had acquired a competence. He bought of his wife's brother, Samuel Underhill, for 2,100 pounds, the farm, with the "old red mill" on the point of the town of Mamaroneck which runs out nearly in front of the Village of New Rochelle, and here he lived, and he and his sons after him, operated the mill for many years. His wife died soon after his settlement in Mamaroneck, and being in easy circumstances, he devoted the remainder of his long life to the promotion of education, temperance, the suppression of war, slavery and vice, and to the general interests of the Society of Friends, of which he was a zealous but liberal member. He was an unusually handsome man-tall, erect, of great dignity and grace of manner- and a model Quaker gentleman.
 

James Mott was very active in the anti-slavery movement and would use nothing that was made with slave labor either in food or in dress. "For this reason he limited his family to maple sugar, and unless they could get coffee free from the taint of slavery they made it from peas, and he always wore linen in the place of cotton."

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