Initially a blacksmith, he became wealthy from his ventures.[2] He was among the first manufacturers in Connecticut at the time, being a pioneer in the manufacturing of bayonets and scythes.[13][2][1] Bayonets were used as ancillary weapons at war while scythes were used by farmers for mowing grass and harvesting crops. He also became one of the largest landholders in Wallingford.[3] For his role in the war, he is recognized as a Patriot of the Revolution by the Daughters of the American Revolution.[12] His son Ira Yale would follow in his footsteps and become a pewter manufacturer.[14] He was the pewter master of Lemuel Johnson Curtis and William Elton.[15] They acquired his enterprise in 1835 and started the firm Curtis & Hall, German silver and Britannia Ware manufacturers.[15]
They were also the granduncles of Boston sailmaker Rufus M. Yale.[1] Another of Capt. Yale's brother, Nathaniel Yale, became the great-grandfather of Judge George Edwin Lawrence, partner of Lt. Col. and Congressman Charles Herbert Joyce.[19][1] He was the father of Vermont state attorney Robert A. Lawrence, who married the granddaughter of Senator Augustus P. Hunton.[20][21][1]
Personal life
A Liberty Party publication, inciting to vote for the Liberty ticket, 1844
Capt. Elihu Yale married on November 24, 1774, to Lucretia Stanley, daughter of Capt. Abraham Stanley, and descendant of Capt. John Stanley of the Stanley-Whitman House.[13][2] He died on May 12, 1806, on a Sunday, after having attended the church.[1] His wife died on April 30, 1813. They had 7 children together.[1]
Lois Yale (1776-1814), wife of Postmaster and tavern owner Jared Kirtland, became the aunt of Judge Jared Potter Kirtland, cofounder of Western Reserve University. Their daughter, Lois Yale Kirtland, married to Dr. Eli Mygatt, son of the President of the City Bank of Cleveland, and their granddaughter became the mother-in-law of Pennsylvania politician Ira Franklin Mansfield, owner of coal mines, board director of the First National Bank of Rochester, and president of Beaver College.[22]
Lucretia Yale (1778-1800), married County Surveyor and Deputy Sheriff Moses Sperry Beach, and became the mother of newspaper entrepreneur Moses Yale Beach, who, at one point, owned the largest newspaper in America.[23][11][3] The William street, Meadow Street and Orchard Street, in Wallingford, are named after Moses Yale Beach's estate. His son, abolitionist Moses S. Beach, would sell his paper the New York Sun to a friend of Karl Marx named Charles Anderson Dana, Assistant Secretary of War of Abraham Lincoln, and stayed a stockholder.[24][25][26][27]
Capt. Yale's cousin, Rev. Thomas Yale, became the first of the Yales to graduate from Yale College in 1765.[1] The past member being Deacon David Yale, educated at Cambridge University, England, who received an honorary degree from Yale in 1724.[29] This was the David Yale initially considered to inherit the fortune of Elihu Yale, benefactor of Yale College, but the man's whole estate, made from the diamond mines of Golconda, India,[30] went to the British branch instead, and was lost through corruption with no living descendants past his grandchildren.[31][32] Another cousin of Capt. Yale was Capt. Josiah Yale and abolitionist Levi Yale, cofounder of the anti-slavery political party of Connecticut named the Liberty Party.[1]
^February Meeting, 1916, Publications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1915-1916, John Wilson and Son, Vol. 18, University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.,
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