Paul Dudley Sargent

Paul Dudley Sargent (Baptized June 23, 1745, Salem, Massachusetts – September 28, 1828 Sullivan, Maine) was a privateer and soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Early life Sargent was born in 1745 and baptized on June 23, 1745, in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the son of Katherine Winthrop (1711–1781), a widow of Samuel Brown and the second wife of his father, Epes Sargent. His father was one of the largest landholders in Gloucester and was a colonel of militia before the Revolution and a justice of the general session court for more than thirty years. His younger brother was John Sargent (1750–1824), was an exiled loyalist who became a lieutenant in the King's American Regiment, and his elder half-brothers included Winthrop Sargent (1727–1793) and Daniel Sargent Sr. (1730–1806), a prominent merchant. As a first name, 'Winthrop' occurs frequently among descendants of Epes Sargent's first wife, Esther McCarty, though it was Colonel Sargent's mother Katharine Winthrop Browne who was descended from Governor Winthrop, not she. His maternal grandparents were Ann Dudley, daughter of Joseph Dudley, and John Winthrop (1681–1747), son of Wait Winthrop, grandson of John Winthrop the Younger and great-grandson of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Sargent's paternal ancestor, William, came to America from Gloucester, England, before 1678. Among his first cousins was Dudley Saltonstall, a notorious Revolutionary War naval commander. Through his brother Winthrop, he was uncle to Winthrop Sargent (1753–1820), a major in the Continental Army who was appointed the first Governor of the Mississippi Territory by president John Adams, and Judith Sargent Murray, an early American advocate for women's rights, essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. Through his brother Daniel, he was an uncle to Lucius Manlius Sargent, the author, antiquarian, and temperance advocate, Henry Sargent, the artist who was the father of Henry Winthrop Sargent, the prominent horticulturist, and merchant prince Daniel Sargent of Boston, paid the elderly Colonel Sargent's respects to his former comrade-in-arms Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette during the latter's visit to the United States in 1824. The painter John Singer Sargent was descended from the first Winthrop Sargent's youngest son Fitzwilliam. Career