Z 1858.000 Sargent (Winthrop) Letter
Z 1858.000
SARGENT (WINTHROP) LETTER
Biography/History:
On July 7, 1775, Sargent enlisted as a lieutenant in Gridley's Massachusetts Artillery Regiment. He later served in the Continental Army, attaining the rank of lieutenant captain in Knox's Artillery Regiment on December 10, 1775, captain in the Third Continental Artillery Regiment on January 1, 1777, and brevet major on August 28, 1783. Sargent also served as aide-de-camp to General Howe from 1780 to 1783.
In 1786 he worked as a surveyor in Ohio. Later that year he attended the organizational meeting of the Ohio Company in Boston, Massachusetts, and he was elected secretary of the company the next year. On October 7, 1787, Sargent was designated by Congress as secretary of the Northwest Territory.
On February 9, 1789, Sargent married Rowena Tupper who died in 1790 after giving birth to a son who later died. In 1791 he became Arthur St. Clair's adjutant general in the military campaign against the Miami Indians in Ohio. Sargent's forces at Fort Recovery were defeated by the Indians on November 4, 1791, and he was wounded twice. Sargent repeatedly served as acting governor of the Northwest Territory due to the frequent absences of Governor St. Clair, and while acting governor he organized the militia to counter future Indian attacks.
Sargent continued as secretary of the Northwest Territory until May 7, 1798, when President John Adams appointed him as the first governor of the Mississippi Territory. However, Sargent's ties to the Federalist Party and his staunch conservatism alienated the more democratic political leaders and constituents of the territory who were more in sympathy with the Jeffersonian Republicans, and this contributed to his unpopularity and ultimate downfall as governor. In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson refused to reappoint him as governor, and Sargent retired from public life to Gloucester, his mansion at Natchez, with his second wife, Mary McIntosh Williams Sargent, whom he had married on October 24, 1798.
In 1809 Sargent helped to organize the Bank of Mississippi, and he was elected as its first president. Sargent was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Society of the Cincinnati. Sargent died near New Orleans on January 3, 1820, while traveling on a north-bound steamboat. He was survived by his wife Mary and sons William Fitz Winthrop and George Washington Sargent.