John [2] Sergeant

Jeanette A. Rice (Sergeant) wrote in her 1883 memoir, Tales That Have the Rime of Age," p. 11, [http://www.artlex.com/delahunt/talesrimeage2008.pdf] that after her sister Mary Ann's wedding to Rev. Samuel Newbury, the family gathered for a celebration at the house of her uncle John Sergeant. She wrote that, "Stockbridge had been the home of my father's [Dr. Erastus Sergeant Jr's] family for over a hundred years, and we had many relatives and friends there. The dear Uncle [John] and Aunt [Cynthia] who had occupied Grandfather's old home had always given a warm welcome to all the family, making it a pleasant place to go, so that leaving it all behind was only second to breaking away from the old home." She was not referring to the John Sergeant who died in childhood in 1781. She was referring rather to this one, who was born in 1784, and whose wife was Cynthia.

Jeanette also noted that in about 1831:

"... my youngest brother, William, of whom I was very fond, was in Uncle John Sergeant’s store in Stockbridge...."

MR Delahunt writes: I suspect that John and Cynthia Sergeant are the great-grandparents of Katharine Sergeant, influential editor during the early years of the New Yorker magazine, wife of E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.

The earliest connection I have found to date is Katharine's parents.

Charles Spencer Sergeant and his wife Bessie were the parents of three daughters “in an upper-middle-class Brookline, Massachusetts family”:

Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, one of the older two daughters, received a degree from Bryn Mawr in 1903.

Katharine Sergeant Angell White was born in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1892, the youngest of Bessie and Charles Spencer Sergeant's three daughters.

In 1914, Katharine graduated from Bryn Mawr College. She married her first husband, Ernest Angell, a lawyer, in 1915, and with him she had two children, a son, writer Roger Angell (born September 19, 1920, New York, NY), and a daughter, Nancy Angell Stableford (born 1916).

Katharine and Ernest were divorced in 1928 (another source says 1929), and in 1929 Katharine married her second husband, New Yorker staff writer E. B. “Andy” White (Elwyn Brooks White), born 1899, Mt. Vernon, N.Y., died 1985, American writer, graduate of Cornell, 1921. E.B. was the author of Charlottes' Web and co-author with Strunk of Elements of Style.

E.B. and Katharine had one child, a son, Joel White, born December 31, 1930, died in 1997 in Brooklin, Maine of lung cancer. Joel was a renowned U.S. naval architect known for his classic and beautiful designs including the W-Class of boats. Two W boats were posthumously built by Rockport Marine and Brooklin Boat Yard for Donald Tofias. They were christened White Wings and Wild Horses. White's life and character were chronicled in the book A Unit of Water, A Unit of Time by Douglass Whynott and in Joel White: Boatbuilder / designer / sailor by Bill Mayher and Maynard Bray. White died in 1997 in Brooklin, Maine of lung cancer. His widow, Allene White, still lives in Brooklin along with two of his sons and their families. Joel’s third and only other child is Martha White [http://www.bangormetro.com/media/Bangor-Metro/May-2007/E-B-Whites-Web/]

Roger Angell had a daughter, Caroline “Callie” Sergeant Angell, born January 6, 1948, in Manhattan, NYC, and was raised in Palisades, NY. She committed suicide at 62, on May 5, 2010, Manhattan, NYC, survived by her father and her step-mother, Carol R. Angell, her sister Alice Angell, of Portland, ME; and her half-brother, John Henry Angell of Portland, OR. Caroline was an expert on the films made by Andy Warhol.

The reason I suspect that this line descends from John and Cynthia is that Roger Angell wrote an article in the New Yorker (Jan. 16, 2006), in which he muses about the Sergeants: “it’s pronounced ‘Surgeant’ in the family but ‘Sargeant’ locally.” Angell’s mother was a direct descendant; so direct that she and kin inherited “a tall Queen Anne secretary of his, part of a striking four piece set in gleaming cherry.” It seems most likely that such furniture would have remained in the Stockbridge, MA, "Mission House" that Jeanette wrote was occupied by John and Cynthia in the early 19th century. And that their descendants would have been the Sergeants to have inherited these heirlooms.