April 30, 1763, the son of Hezekiah and Submit (Murdock) Hunt- 

 ington.^^' 



The Huntington family was one of the most important in Con- 

 necticut colonial history. Gurdon's father, Hezekiah, was in 

 service during the Revolutionary War, going to Boston as a 

 major with the first troops raised in Connecticut. When in Boston 

 he witnessed the miserable condition of the arms then in the 

 hands of the soldiers. Major Huntington went immediately to 

 Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and proposed to 

 the Congress that he would return to his home in Windham and 

 that there he would open a manufactory for repairing muskets 

 and other arms. He claimed to have been the first man to have 

 made a gun in the Colonies. 



Gurdon was too young to have served in the Revolution, but 

 he undoubtedly worked in his father's gun manufactory as a 

 boy. In due course he learned the trades of goldsmith and clock- 

 maker and established his own shop in Windham, which, according 

 to an advertisement (fig. 65) in The Connecticut Gazette of June 

 11, 1784, was "a few rods north of Major Ebenezer Backus' store." 



On Christmas Day, 1785, Gurdon was married in New London 

 to Temperance Williams of Groton. In 1789 their first child, 

 Marvin, was born, and in October of the same year the Huntingtons 

 moved from Windham to Walpole, New Hampshire. No reason 

 can be found for the move, other than the possibility that Gurdon 

 might have anticipated greater opportunity in the new community. 

 There he applied himself to his trade as goldsmith and clock- 

 maker, but apparently he was not very successful. His family 

 grew, and by the time of his death there were eight children. 

 Possibly in an effort to supplement his income, Huntington served 

 as postmaster of the community. In about 1797, seven or eight 

 years after he had moved to Walpole, his father and mother 

 joined him there, and it is believed that Major Hezekiah may have 

 worked as a gunsmith during that period. Eventually the senior 

 Huntington returned to Windham, Connecticut, where he died 

 in 1807.1^2 



Meanwhile Gurdon Huntington struggled on until his death 

 on July 26, 1804. He died insolvent, which created a considerable 

 problem in view of the large family he left behind him. Hunting- 

 ton's estate was administered by Asa Sibley, a clockmaker in 



'21 HooPES,op. cit. (footnote 18), pp. 92-93. 



'22 Memoirs of the Huntington Family Association (Hartford, Conn., 1915), 

 Index no. 1.3.4.4.2.4. 



120 



