Root, Timothy III, 1740 - 1815
Timothy Root was the son of Lt. Timothy Root and Mary Hart of Farmingon, Connecticut. After his father's death at Crown Point in 1746 and his mother's remarriage, he grew up in the household of his stepfather, New Lights minister Rev. Samuel Newell in Bristol, Connecticut. Root returned to his father's Farmington homestead as an adult and worked as a farmer and the town's cobbler, making boots and shoes. During the American Revolution, he was a committee member of Farmington's Sons of Liberty and captain in the 5th Regiment of Light Horse. Root also served as town selectman, commissioner of the Farmington Probate Court, and agent for the town on various affairs.
Root heavily invested in property in Farmington, becoming one of the town's prominent land owners in the Meadows. At his death in 1815, Root's properties in Farmington amounted to over 338 acres (worth $16,416, plus additional land in Brownington, Vermont, and the Catskills, New York. As early as 1775, he became an advisor to the Tunxis tribe. That position may have provided him with a way to acquire Indian land. Indeed, he is the most significant purchaser of Tunxis land. Documents indicate that Root accumulated at least 92.29 acres and likely even more in the 200-acre Tunxis reservation parcel, 24.56 acres of the Indian Neck allotment lands adjacent to the 200 acres, and in the East Haven allotments 4.2 acres more.
Find A Grave (Memento Mori Cemetery, Farmington, CT); Hartford Courant, October 17, 1774, p. 1; October 26, 1789, p. 3. Royal R. Hinman, A Historical Collection from Official Records, Files, &c., of the Part Sustained by Connecticut during the War of the Revolution (Hartford, CT: E. Gleason, 1842), 280. Revolutionary War, Company Pay Roll, Fold3. Timothy Root, Probate Package, CSL. Sources for this biography also come from the Related Digital Heritage Items listed below.
Born:
October 16, 1740Died:
November 17, 1815