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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY Gift of
Miss E.S. Bartlett

Batbaniel 5ocel£n

Born January 31, 1796
Died January 13, 1881

Jocel^n plant Gleavelanb

Born August 22, 1853
Died June 15, 1881

FROM THE
COMMEMOBATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
OF
New Haven county
1902

NATHANIEL JOCELYN

NATHANIEL JOCELYN, artist, was born in
New Haven, January 31, 1796. His father, Simeon
Jocelyn, was noted especially for his skill in mathe
matics. The son learned the art of watchmaking,
but when only fifteen began a thorough course of
study in drawing, with himself as instructor, and
three years later he apprenticed himself to an
engraver. At the age of twenty-one he entered
into partnership with Tisdale, Danforth & Willard
in the Hartford Graphic & Bank Note Engraving
Co. and later, with Mr. Danforth, he virtually
founded the National Bank Note Engraving Co.
In 1820 Mr. Jocelyn gave up engraving, chang
ing the graver for the pencil, and soon after estab
lished himself as a portrait painter in New Ha
ven, demonstrating his capacity to transfer, to can
vas, faithful likenesses. His skill was the theme
of conversation and there was a common desire to
secure portraits painted by him, many of which con
tinue to whisper his fame. Several of his por
traits appeared in the first exhibition of the National
Academy, and in 1849 ne was elected academician.

He was also elected honorary member of the Phil
adelphia Art Union. In 1830 he traveled and stud
ied in Europe with his friend, Prof. S. F. B. Morse,
inventor of the telegraph system. In 1844 he re
ceived the gold palette for the best portrait ex
hibited in the State of Connecticut. The Yale Por
trait Catalogue shows that more of the portraits
owned by the University were painted by Jocelyn
than by any other artist except Col. Trumbull.
When Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was re
vised in 1847 a^ the words pertaining to portraiture
were intrusted to Mr. Jocelyn and found their way
into that work as they left his pen. His name ap
pears in connection with his definitions. As a
teacher he had among his pupils Thomas Rossiter,
William Oliver Stone and other artists of note.
Later he served fot- many years, with great suc
cess, at the head of the art department of the Amer
ican Bank Note Co., of which he was one of the
founders, and still later he retired from active busi
ness and returned to New Haven to exercise his
art. His studio was amid the pleasantest of sur
roundings in the Yale Art Building, a structure
in the erection of which by his friend, Mr. Street,
he had manifested so much interest. H. W. French,
in giving a history of Yale Art School, in his in
troductory chapter to "Art and Artists in Connecti
cut" says : "Mr. Jocelyn's influence has been pow
erful for art throughout his long residence in the

city ; and Mr. Street many times confessed that it
was chiefly through suggestions and appeals of Mr.
Jocelyn that the fact of this important lack was
impressed upon his mind. Hence, in a sense, the
art school owes its existence no less to Mr. Jocelyn
than to its founder, Mr. Street." An enthusiastic
spirit tempted him early in life beyond the con
fines of art into large real-estate transactions, the
laying out of streets and the inauguration of many
improvements that are the pride of New Haven to
day. Mr. Jocelyn's common ancestry with the Trum
bull family, which gave Connecticut three govern
ors and the renowned "soldier-artist," Col. John
Trumbull, is traceable from Capt. John Higley, who
came from England to Windsor in 1666, later re
moving to Simsbury. John Higley was a repre
sentative to the Assembly for thirty-seven terms in
twenty-two years, and was prominently identified
with the discovery and development of the rich cop
per mines in Granby, which afterward became the
"Newgate" of Connecticut. In view of the artistic
talent which displayed itself in both Col. Trumbull
and Nathaniel Jocelyn, it is a significant fact that
an historian has referred especially to the skill as
an artist of Capt. Higley's son, Dr. Samuel Higley,
from whom Mr. Jocelyn is descended. The cur
rency known as "Higley coppers," specimens of
which are on exhibition at the Connecticut Histori-

11
cal Society in Hartford and the United States Mint
at Philadelphia, were designed and manufactured
by this Dr. Higley, who also owned the mines.
Mr. Jocelyn was a quiet yet cordial sympathizer
with the slave. The story of the Amistad Africans
who were captured by the Spaniards for slaves and
brought into the port of New Haven is a matter of
history and familiar to all. Mr. Jocelyn was much
interested in their behalf and painted the picture
of the African leader, Cinquez, which now hangs
in the rooms of the Historical Society in New Ha
ven, where is also a fine painting of the artist him
self, by Harry Thompson.
Until his death, which occurred January 13, 1881,
at the age of eighty-four, at his home on York
street, in New Haven, he was for forty-six years
deacon of the North Congregational Church, of*
New Haven. He was widely known as a man of
scholarly tastes, an extensive reader and one of the
best authorities on events of the past, both local
and general. In announcing his death the New
York fournal of Commerce said : "Fifty years ago
the name of Jocelyn was better known on the face
of a bank note than the name of the bank itself.
His portraits were among the cleverest works of the
kind produced in this country. He was the founder
of the most celebrated of the bank note companies
and was a leader in the highest style of art for
more than two generations."

< .::/f

13
The following letter appropriately serves to pre
serve his memory: National Academy of Design,
Cor. 2jd Street and 4th Avenue,
New York, Jan'y. 25, 1881.
To Mr. Jocelyn P. Cleaveland,
Dear Sir:
The Academy desires to express its bigh regard for
the memory of its venerable and esteemed honorary mem
ber, the late Nathaniel Jocelyn, and its sympathy with
his bereaved family and friends.
As a member of the Academy in its earliest years,
and as an active and efficient fellow worker with its
founders, more than half a century ago, Mr. Jocelyn is
remembered and lamented by his contemporaries who sur
vive him, and by the later generation of artists, by whom
his good life and works are not less known and appreci
ated. In his long and honorable career, he had the happi
ness to witness the growth of the Academy, in whose
progress he was so greatly interested, and to share alike
its early trials and its late triumphs; contributing always,
both in its darker and in its brighter days, his full quota
of successful work.
His prolonged life embraced, indeed, nearly the whole
period of the history of American art ; and to have filled
a worthy and useful place in such a history is a lasting
monument to his memory and a noble record for his pos
terity. With great respect, I am, dear sir,
Truly yours,
[Signed] T. Addison Richards,
Cor. Sec. N. A.

15

Mr. Jocelyn married July 5, 1818, Sarah At-
water, daughter of Capt. Samuel Plant, of New
Haven. They had seven children, one son and six
daughters, the son dying in childhood.

JOCELYN PLANT CLEAVELAND. LL. B.

JOCELYN PLANT CLEAVELAND, LL. B.,
lawyer, son of Rev. James Bradford and Elizabeth
H. (Jocelyn) Cleaveland, was born in New Ha
ven August 22, 1853, in York street, where he lived
and died, at what had been for many generations
the ancestral home. The ancestral line of the
subject of this sketch dates back not only to five
of the "Mayflower" pilgrims, among them Gov.
William Bradford and John Howland, but to
those of an earlier age, the Alsopps, of King John's
time, the Drakes, of Exmouth fame, and the Honey-
woods, of the time of Henry II.
Moses Cleveland, from whom Mr. Cleaveland
was descended, was the first American ancestor of
the Cleaveland family. He came from Ipswich, in
the County of Suffolk, England', in 1635, locating
in Woburn, Mass. ; married Ann, daughter of Ed
ward Winn, and died about 1701. Several of his
son9 settled in what is now Canterbury, Conn.,
about the close of the seventeenth century, and to
them many of the name in Connecticut trace their
ancestry. Moses Cleveland's son, Samuel, from

19
whom Mr. Cleaveland was dercended, was one of
the seven who founded the first church at Canter
bury June 13, 1711.
Our subject's father, Rev. James B. Cleaveland,
who died in 1889, was a Congregational clergyman
of talent and courage. He was pastor over
churches in Connecticut for many years, having
been previously pastor of the Congregational
Church in South Egremont, Mass. James B.
Cleaveland graduated from Yale in 1847, and from
Yale Seminary several years later. By common
ancestry Air. Cleaveland was related, paternally,
to three Presidents of the United States, John Ad
ams, John Quincy Adams and Grover Cleveland,
and to one Connecticut governor, Gov. Chauncey
F. Cleveland, the latter being also descended from
Moses Cleveland.
Air. Cleaveland's mother is a woman of cul
ture and a poetess of recognizee! ability, her poem
"No Sects in Heaven" having been widely read in
both this country and England. Her father, Na
thaniel Jocelyn, was a noted portrait painter and
engraver. Air. Jocelyn P. Cleaveland's genealogical rec
ord is directly traceable to several early settlers
of distinctly local interest, among them William
Peck, Richard Miles and Richard Baldwin.
William Peck, who came to this country in 1637
with Govs. Eaton and Hopkins and Rev. John Dav-

21
enport, signed the first compact for the New Ha
ven Colony in June, 1639, and was an original pro
prietor and freeman, and deacon of the original
church, the First Church of New Haven.
Richard Miles, also deacon of the First Church,
was prominent in the affairs of both New Haven
and Milford, where he was one of the judges in
civil affairs, Stone No. 4, in the Milford Memorial
Bridge, being specifically set apart to his memory.
Richard Baldwin was one of the settlers of Mil
ford, a member of the General Court and one of
the committee "for ye consummating of matters be
twixt Connecticutt and us," when the two colonies
were joined in 1664. His name is perpetuated by
Stone No. 7 in the Milford Memorial Bridge.
The subject of this sketch, after preliminary
work in the New Haven preparatory schools, and a
course of study in the Scientific Department of Yale
College, entered Yale Law School, from which he
was graduated in 1876, being admitted to the New
Haven County Bar the same year. Here in his
native city he practiced his profession for five years,
being for four years connected with the firm of
Wright & Harrison in the National New Haven
Bank Building, and for one year preceding his death
in business for himself in the Cutler building. His
career, bright with hope, came to a sudden end at
the age of twenty-seven, his death, which occurred
June 15, 1881, being the result of over-exertion in

23
the sun. He was a member of the North Congre
gational Church and of its choir and musical direc
tor in its mission Sunday-school. He was con
nected with the State Militia, serving in Company
F, Second Regiment, C. N. G. (New Haven Grays),
and was a member of Hiram Lodge, No. i, F. &
A. M.
At the time of his death Mr. Cleaveland was
contemplating publishing a book relative to the
rights and duties of police officers and tha board of
police commissioners. Especially interested in the
dangers encountered by brakemen, he was gather
ing facts that he might secure legislation in their
behalf. Hopeful, considerate of the interests of
others more than of his own, persevering, an earnest
and ingenious pleader at the Bar, he was the life
of the social circle and gave early promise of success
in the vocation he had chosen.
The esteem in which he was held by his brother
lawyers is indicated by the following resolutions
adopted at the meeting of the New Haven County
Bar held in his honor:
Resolved, That we regard with profound sorrow the
death of Jocelyn P. Cleaveland, one of the junior mem
bers of the Bar, who, by God's all wise providence, has
suddenly been called from our midst in the full vigor and
energy of his early manhood, while yet at the threshold
of his professional life.
Resolved, That in the death of our late brother, this
Bar has lost a diligent student, a genial and social mem-

25
ber, and a conscientious gentleman, who by his earnest
application and strict .attention to his professional duties,
bid fair to become an able lawyer.
Mr. Cleaveland was never married. In addition
to his father and mother, above referred to, he
was survived by his brother, Livingston W.
Cleaveland, now Judge of Probate in New Ha
ven, and by his sister, Mrs. Robert L. Rice, of
Granby, Conn. A younger brother, Foster Wild
Cleaveland, died in infancy in 1856. His father
died in 1889.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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