Catherine Murphy Metcalf

Based on burial information, Catherine Murphy was born in Britain about 1744.

In May 1763, she marrried Simon Metcalfe. After giving birth to a son, these Metcalfs emigrated to New York about 1765. Over the next two decades, at least eight more children were born on the northern frontier, in Canada, and in Albany.

Simon Metcalf was a surveyor who mapped lands in the Champlain Valley and beyond - acquiring a number of parcels himself in the process. In 1771, the governor of New York approved a grant of 30,000 acres in what later became Swanton, Vermont to Metcalf and his wife. Afterwards, Catherine Metcalf is said to have received a large sum from the State of Vermont to settle their land claim.

At some time during the 1780s, the Metcalf family settled in Albany. In 1787, Simon Metcalf had acquired a ship and had left New York for the Far East with a consignment of seal furs. By the end of that year, he had sold the shipment in China. Perhaps, Catherine never saw her husband and at least one of her sons again as they seem to have been occupied on both the far and near Pacific shores over their last several years.

In 1788, the house of George Metcalf was listed on an Albany assessment roll and George and his mother were named as its principal residents. The census of 1790 identified household of Simon Metcalf in the second ward as including eight members and a slave. We are not at all certain that Simon Metcalf was one of them for his seems to have been trading actively in the Pacific region every year from 1787 to the end of his life.

Such activities proved dangerous as son Thomas was killed in Hawaii in 1790 and Simon Metcalf himself was killed by angry natives in the Pacific Northwest in 1794.

In the meantime, widow Catherine became head of their Albany home. In 1799, her house and lot in the third ward was valued on the Albany asessment roll. In 1800, her household included a man roughly her age, two younger females, and a free person of color.

Her son and daughter became prominent Albany residents.

Catherine Murphy Metcalf (widow of Simon) died in July 1818 aged seventy-four years, eight months, and nine days. She was buried in the Episcopal cemetery.

Sources: The life of Catherine Murphy Metcalf has not been assigned a CAP biography number. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.