"Abraham Nott, the seventh son and eighth child of John Nott, Junior, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, was born in that town, January 29, 1696-7. His mother was Patience, daughter of William Miller.
He studied divinity, and on the incorporation of the inhabitants of the northern part of Saybrook, Connecticut, into a distinct parish (as the 2d Ecclesiastical Society of Saybrook), in May, 1722, he began to preach to them, and was settled at the gathering of the church there, November 16, 1725. The Indian name by which the neighborhood was known was Pautapaug (or Pettipaug), and it included the present towns of Saybrook, Essex, and Chester, the original church being in the present village of Centerbrook, in Essex. Here he remained until his death, January 24, 1756, at the age of 59. The accounts of his ministry are very scanty. A petition to the General Assembly in 1750 shows that he had difficulty in collecting in valid currency his salary of £85 a year, and the counter remonstrances of his parishioners charge him with neglect of his studies and spending too much of his time in attending to worldly business; besides this, and the tradition among his descendants that he was a man of unusual physical strength, there is little to record. He was an 'Old Light' in theology.
He married Phebe Topping, probably a daughter of John Topping, of Southampton, Long Island. Four sons and one daughter survived him, and by his son Stephen he was the grandfather of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Nott (Y. C. 1780), and of the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College from 1804 to 1866. His widow married, in June, 1758, Lieutenant John Pratt, of Saybrook."
