Moffatt-Ladd House & Garden

When John Moffatt (1691-1786) planned the house that his son Samuel and his new bride would occupy, he hoped to create a grand statement of the family's wealth, position, and sophistication.  At the age of 70, John Moffatt could look back upon a successful mercantile career.  He came to America as a ship captain engaged in the timber trade; about 1724 he married a young woman of means named Katharine Cutt (1700-1769), and through trade and land speculation rose to become one of the wealthiest men in the colony.  Of their five children, four survived--three daughters and one son.  In young Samuel rested all of his father's hopes for the future. 

John Moffatt employed the best Portsmouth craftsmen to build the new mansion on Front Street (now Market Street).  Michael Whidden III billed Moffatt for bringing the pre-cut frame "from ye warf" and raising it on a bluff facing the river.  Whidden lists the names of the eleven joiners who worked with him on the house, the counting house, shop, barn, and fences over the next three years. Ebenezer Dearing's bill enumerates the woodwork that he carved for the house, including modillions, rosettes, stair brackets, capitals used throughout the house, and two chimney pieces, probably for the front parlor (now the dining room) and the chamber above it.   Raising the three-story structure, the first house of its height in Portsmouth, challenged the workmen because of the sharp rise of the land.  Made of red pine, probably cut from Moffatt's own forest land, the frame was adapted during construction to create an unusual floor plan.  Entering the Great Hall, guests were welcomed into a grand room stretching over more than one quarter of the first floor, graced by a broad and sweeping staircase with an exquisitely carved soffit panel.

At first, Samuel Moffatt and his young wife Sarah Catherine did well.  The floor plan of their house gave it a particularly impressive entrance, one well suited to lavish entertaining.  They traveled through town in a four-wheeled carriage, and their friends and Samuel's business associates were from the first families of the colony.

Although some rooms were altered by later inhabitants of the house, the Yellow or Best Chamber has been restored to its appearance about 1765.  The unusual wallpaper, with open reserves imprinted with engravings from a series of hunting scenes the wallpaper was in the latest fashion.  There is no doubt that a room so appointed and furnished en suite with yellow damask bed hangings, window hangings, window cushions, and upholstered furniture was intended to be seen, and the room may have served as a retreat for the women who attended the Moffatt's parties. 

Letters to Samuel from his father suggest that Samuel lived lavishly and was not a good record keeper.  These letters, in conjunction with court documents, indicate that Samuel was not an organized or disciplined merchant.  His informal approach to business sometimes led to disastrous misunderstandings.  He undertook several shipping ventures, including an ill-fated voyage to Africa to obtain slaves, with his brother-in-law Peter Livius.  When most of the enslaved cargo of the ship Triton died during the passage to the West Indies, Livius declared that his share of the cost of the voyage was a loan, rather than an investment, and sued Samuel for his losses.  It was this lawsuit that finally caused Samuel's financial ruin.  Plagued by his voracious brother-in-law's determination to exact his due, Samuel fled the colony aboard the ship Diana in the company of his cousin William Whipple.  Whipple transported Samuel to the Dutch-held island of St. Eustatius, where Samuel was able to escape his creditors and work to re-build his fortune. 

In a bold move designed to thwart Livius's efforts, John Moffatt sued Samuel for the amount he had advanced to his son to establish his mercantile business.  John had never transferred the deed to the house to Samuel, so it was Samuel's moveable goods that were sold at auction to satisfy his debt to his father.  On June 29, 1768, Jonathan Parker wrote to Samuel in St. Eustatius and reported that the "Vendue was held in your Store, the Doors of the house open for any Body to go in & look on the Furniture &c but no Body went in save two or three in the front Room & returned immediately -- the whole Vessells & all, were purchased by 8 or 9 different People on Accont of your Father, so that he has inevitably secured your whole Effects to himself in such an open fair Manner that there cant be the least Reflection and all at the trifling Expense of about £14 LM [legal money] and now the Czar [Peter Livius] has no hold on any thing of yours." 

He went on to say, that Livius, though frustrated in his attempts to sue Samuel directly, was "determined to get his Money out of somebody" and "Has found a Law of this Province made between 40 & 50 Years ago which says that every Master or Commander of a Ship that carries any Inhabitant out of the Province without giving Bond in the Secretary's Office shall be subject to a Fine & pay all the Damages arising thereby."  Livius charged that William Whipple, as commander of the ship Diana in which Samuel fled from the colonies, had "subjected himself to this Law."  When Captain Whipple returned to Portsmouth he was "chagrined at finding a Stop put to his Business, for were he & his Brother to go on with any other Affairs" Livius might keep attaching their ships.  The brother's dissolved their partnership so that Joseph would be free to carry on his business.  William thereafter devoted himself to public service. 

It was not until May 1769 that Sarah Catherine Moffatt left Portsmouth to join her husband in St. Eustatius, taking her oldest child Betty, Mrs. Sparks, "the two Negros & the boy James" with her.  She left two of her children behind with her sister-in-law Katharine Moffatt.  Katharine Moffatt split her time between caring for her ailing mother at her parents’ house on Buck Street (now State Street) and caring for her niece and nephew at her brother's mansion.  After the death of her mother, Katharine and her father took up residence in the newer and more grand residence.