David Humphreys (soldier) - Early Life

Early Life

He was born in what was then Derby, Connecticut, and now a part of the neighboring town of Ansonia, in the First Congregational Church parsonage, a spacious two-story house at 37 Elm St. called the David Humphreys House. He was the youngest of five children (four sons and a daughter) of the Rev. Daniel and Sarah Riggs Bowers Humphreys.

Humphreys' father was parson of the church from 1733, the year after he graduated from Yale, to 1787—a run of 54 years. Daniel Humphreys was the second husband of Sarah Riggs Bowers, known in Derby as "Lady Humphreys" for her "dignity and refinement of character," according to author Leo T. Molloy.

As a boy, Humphreys was passionately fond of books. His father prepared both him and his brother, Daniel, for his own alma mater, Yale College, and entered both of them there. David was 15 years old when he entered the school and 19 when he graduated in 1771 with distinguished honors. Among his college friends were Timothy Dwight IV, who later became one of Yale's great presidents; John Trumbull, poet and lawyer (not the artist); and Joel Barlow, poet and diplomat.

After graduation, Humphreys became principal at the public school in Wethersfield, Connecticut for two years. He then worked as a tutor for the youngest of the 11 children of Col. Frederick Philipse at the Philipse Manor house in what is now Yonkers, New York.

Philipse was a prominent and outspoken Tory—which only roused the tutor's Patriot leanings. In 1774 Humphreys returned to New Haven, received a master of arts degree from Yale and was offered a position as an instructor, which he refused. He instead taught part-time at a private school run by his brother, Daniel, in New Haven.(Two contemporaries who also taught school in their early careers were John Adams and Nathan Hale.)