Capt. Thomas R. Trowbridge appears to have been a better businessman than a father.

Born in 1597, he was a wealthy woolen merchant in Exeter, England. He married Elizabeth Marshall in 1624, and they had three sons: John, Thomas, and William. When Trowbridge moved his family to America in 1636, he left 7-year-old John behind with his own father.

The rest of the family settled just outside of Boston in Dorchester, where Elizabeth gave birth to their fourth son, James.

"Thomas and Elizabeth must have found it a considerable hardship to live in the newly settled town of Dorchester, accustomed as they were to the comforts of a city like Exeter," a history of those early times said.

In 1639, they moved to New Haven Plantation in Connecticut. Elizabeth died two years later at the age of 37. Trowbridge went back to England and never returned to America.

He left his New Haven property and his three young sons – ages about 4, 8, and 10 – in the care of his business partner, Henry Gibbons. Gibbons seized the property and abandoned the boys. They were made wards of the colony and taken in by neighbors, Sergeant Thomas Jeffreys and his wife, who raised them.

Back in England, Trowbridge waged a futile long-range effort to reclaim his property from Gibbons. About the same time, he was caught up in the War of the Roses between Parliament and King Charles I. Trowbridge served as a captain of parliamentary forces; hence the captain in front of his name.

Trowbridge died in England in 1672. He was 75. His sons stayed in America. They successfully sued Gibbons and claimed their father's estate in 1680.

Trowbridge's descendants include actress Cindy Crawford, suffragette Susan B. Anthony, author Ernest Hemmingway, and President Rutherford B. Hayes.