Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial ...

Phoebe Dunham, daughter of Benjamin
Turner, of Mansfield, Connecticut. She
was born July 10, 1807, and died September
7, 1866. Her father was a
farmer in Mansfield.
Albert Palmer Pitkin, son of Denison
Palmer Pitkin, was born February 27,
1829. He was the senior member of the
firm Pitkin Brothers & Company Iron
Works. He married, November 4, 185 1,
Jane Ann Hastings, a daughter of
Captain Henry and Sarah Ann (Dewey)
Hastings, born December 8, 1828,
died February 1, 1876, in Hartford.
Mr. and Mrs. Pitkin were the parents of
the following children : Albert Hastings,
of whom further ; Howard
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY
Seymour, born
October 31, i860, died October 23, 1917;
and William Taft, born April 20, 1867.
Albert Hastings Pitkin, eldest child of
Albert Palmer and Jane Ann (Hastings)
Pitkin, was born in Hartford, August 20,
1852, and died there, October 14, 1917.
He received his elementary education
in the public schools of that city. He
was associated with Alfred T. Richards
in the Connecticut Mutual Life Insur-
ance Company, from which he retired to
accept the position of general Curator of
the Wadsworth Atheneum and Morgan
Memorial at Hartford, Connecticut,
specializing in the department of Ceramics,
of which he had been honorary
curator for many years. He was for
years a student and collector of ceramics,
specializing in early American pottery.
At the Morgan Memorial at Hartford,
Connecticut, he installed the famous J.
Pierpont Morgan Collections, consisting
of sixteen hundred pieces of ancient
glass, bronze, early French and English
porcelains, Italian majolica, Dresden figurines,
early ivories and metal work from
Augsburg, and Venetian glass. He also
installed the Samuel P. Avery Collec-
tions of Cloisonne, and Continental silver
and glass, and the early American silver
and antique furniture collections of
George Dudley Seymour, and the com-
plete installation of all the Ceramics in
the Morgan Memorial, which includes
two collections of his own, the Early
American Folk Pottery and Red Ware
Collection and the Bennington Collection,
both of which are unrivalled in any
museum or private collection in this
country.
In connection with this work, he
made extensive travels both in this
country and in Europe. On one of these
trips he visited twenty-six of the principal
museums of Europe in order to learn
their methods of classification and in-
stallation. He visited at this time the
great and very unique Exhibition of
Mohammedan Art that was held in Munich.
This trip was made in company
with a friend, the late Dr. Edwin A.
Barber, who was director of the Pennsyl-
vania Museum of Philadelphia, and they
also visited Mexico together. Mr. Pitkin
spent ten months in travel on the Pacific
coast. There is, perhaps, no finer collec-
tion of antique furniture and pottery than
that owned and collected by Mr. Pitkin
during his life, to be found in the entire
State. A portion of his collection has
been placed in the Morgan Memorial as
a Memorial Loan in his memory by his
wife. In addition to his furniture and
pottery collections he also specialized in
rare books and his library contained
many priceless volumes. His ''Notes on
Early American Folk Pottery, including
the History of the Bennington Pottery"
have been published since his death by
his wife.
Mr. Pitkin was a member of the First
Church of Christ of Hartford, which he
joined in 1871, when the Rev. Dr. George
Leon Walker was pastor there, and who
was an intimate friend of Mr. Pitkin dur-