Samuel Tudor IV, Esq. was a prominent nineteenth-century American entrepreneur, business and civic leader of Hartford, Connecticut. He was a founding director of Aetna Insurance Company, the Phoenix National Bank and the Society of Savings Bank of Hartford, as well as a founding trustee and major early benefactor of Trinity College. Tudor was also connected with the establishment of many of the leading institutions of that city. He was a director of the American Asylum School for the Deaf, the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the U.S., and a co-founder of the Hartford Academy.
Background and family
Tudor was born in East Windsor, in the Colony of Connecticut, in 1769, son of Samuel Tudor, III, and Naomi Diggens. His father was called to the Lexington alarm as a lieutenant in the Connecticut militia, while his uncle, Dr. Elihu Tudor, was a loyalist and intimate friend of loyalist Governor William Franklin of New Jersey. Elihu was a preeminent surgeon who attended to British General James Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec. Tudor’s grandfather, Samuel, Jr, was a Yale-educated Presbyterian minister. The family descended from Owen Tudor, a founder of Hartford who was in Connecticut by 1645 and who made unsubstantiated claims to be related to the British monarchs. Samuel IV, who was also commonly known as Samuel Tudor, Jr., married Mary Watson, daughter of John Watson, a wealthy Windsor, CT, merchant, and Ann Bliss. John Watson was a second cousin of Connecticut GovernorJonathan Trumbull, Jr., and of his brother, the celebrated Revolutionary War painter, John Trumbull. With Watson, Tudor had 2 sons, William Watson, who married Mary Dalrymple Bruce, great granddaughter of General Samuel Barwick II, Governor of Barbados; and Henry Samuel Tudor, who married Mary Rowe Bradley, daughter of U.S. Senator Stephen Rowe Bradley, and sister of William Czar Bradley, U.S. Representative, both of Vermont.
Merchant and founder of banks and insurance companies
Samuel was a prosperous importer and wholesale and retail dry goods merchant, with interests in several firms, including Tudor, Woodbridge & Co, established in 1805, one of the largest in Hartford. In 1814 he joined with 2 other partners to found the Phoenix Bank, which became one of the largest banks in Connecticut. He served as director and briefly as president of that bank. He was one of the first shareholders of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, which today is known as The Hartford, and later was elected to the founding board of directors of the Aetna Insurance Company in 1819, the second insurance company to be created in Hartford County. He served on Aetna's board of directors for forty-three years, virtually for the balance of his life. Aetna was closely allied with Phoenix Bank and was to become the largest life insurance company in the world. Tudor and his fellow board of directors appointed Aetna’s first president, Thomas K. Brace. Tudor was also a founding trustee of the Society of Savings, the first savings bank in Connecticut.
Philanthropy
Tudor was for 47 years a member of the vestry of and a major financial contributor to Christ Church in Hartford. He played a leading role in the expansion of the church in 1827, his committee retaining the prominent architect, Ithiel Towne for the Gothic Revival design. In 1983, Christ Church Cathedral was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. He served on a committee with 2 other parishioners that participated in the founding of Washington College, later renamed Trinity College. Trinity is the second oldest college in Connecticut after Yale. As noted on the College's website, Tudor made large contributions to the institution. He additionally served for several years as its first treasurer and as a trustee.
Personal life
Tudor owned a large property on Main Street in Hartford that included a private greenhouse, ice house, and extensive ornamental and fruit gardens, which were said to be worthy as a destination for visitors to the city. He also enjoyed a reputation as a skilled musician. He lived to be 92. The celebrated nineteenth century American poet, Lydia Sigourney was the wife of Tudor’s longtime business partner and friend, Charles Sigourney, president of Phoenix Bank. She published a memorial poem of Tudor in 1862. Of him she wrote:
