Captain Elisha Bangs

"He was born in Brewster, October 7, 1805. He began early to go to sea, and soon had the command of ships "Rajah," "Denmark," "Faneuil Hall" and "Crimea." He retired from the sea about 1855, and owned and was interested in many ships in the foreign trade, and was a prominent man in the town. He always lived in Brewster and died there April 9, 1886."

 Elisha Bangs, fourth son of Capt. Elkanah Bangs and his wife Sally Crosby, went to sea at an early age and had already earned the title "Captain" when he married for the first time in 1828. By 1842 when, twice a widower, he married for the third time he was a Brewster taxpayer of some substance with a house on Main Street, a horse and chaise in the barn, and shipping investments worth $4000.

    In the summer of 1854 a local letter-writer reported "Capt Elisha Bangs House Barn and Carriages where all burnt down last November, barely saved the furniture much broken. . . He is haveing a nother built on the same place." The portraits of himself and his wife Sarah with their infant son which Elisha Bangs had commissioned in 1845 were evidently saved, without apparent damage.

    Captain Bangs probably retired from the sea as a result of the fire to look after his family--which now included two surviving sons and a baby daughter--and the rebuilding of their home, an elegant structure still standing on Brewster's Main Street. Local records show that not only did his real estate holdings increase in value after 1854 but his ownership shares in clipper ships made him a wealthy man by local standards: the assets of $35,000 he declared in 1870 would be worth something like $3,500,000 in today's money.

http://capecodhistory.us/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I21628&tr...

"Elisha Bangs, born in 1804, was a son of Elkanah and Sally Bangs. He followed the sea from 1818 until 1849, twenty-seven years as master mariner. From 1849 until his death in 1886 he lived retired at his home in Brewster, where his widow and daughter now reside. Mr. Bangs married Sarah H., daughter of Freeman and Mehitabel (Low) Foster. They had five children, three of whom are living: Elisha D., Herbert H. and Loella F." - Deyo (1890), p 912-913

Captain Elisha Bangs is buried, together with his three wives, his parents, an older brother and four of his five children, in the Lower Road cemetery in Brewster. His oldest son Elisha Dillingham Bangs, the infant shown with his mother in the portrait of Sarah H. Bangs, attended Harvard, became a banker and settled in Winchester, MA. He inherited the portraits of his parents which remained in his family until the 1970s.

[Sarah,] the daughter of Freeman and Mehitable (Low or Lowe) Foster of Brewster, married Captain Elisha Bangs in 1842 as his third wife: his first two wives, Martha Crocker and Olive Snow, died young and left no children. The third Mrs. Bangs gave birth to a daughter in 1843, less than a year after her marriage to Captain Elisha, but the baby lived only seven months. Her second child, a son named Elisha Dillingham Bangs, was born on September 29, 1844 just nine months after the death of the first and is portrayed here in his mother's lap when he is clearly less than a year old, dating this portrait to the first half of 1845. Another son, William H., born in 1846 lived only two years--dying of "congestion of the brain"--but Herbert H., born in 1849 and Louella F., born in 1852, all survived to adulthood and beyond, as did their older brother Elisha D. [2]

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