Occom, Aaron

Birth: 1753 in Montauk, Long Island
Death: 1771 in Mohegan, CT
Affiliation

Moor's Indian Charity School; Mohegan Tribe

Education

Moor's Indian Charity School (1760-1761, 1765-1766, 1766-1767)

Nationality

Mohegan

Marital status

At age 18 (presumably in 1771), married Ann Robin. She bore one son, named Aaron, after Aaron Occom's death.

Biography

Aaron Occom was Samson and Mary Occom’s prodigal second child and oldest son. He was born in 1753, during Samson’s mission to the Montauketts of Long Island. The Occoms entered Aaron in Moor’s Indian Charity School when he was seven, in the hope that he would “be Brought up.” However, Aaron proved ill-suited to school, and returned home in October 1761. He had two more brief stints at Moor’s Indian Charity School: the first in December 1765, after Samson departed for his two-and-a-half-year fundraising tour of Great Britain, and the second in November 1766, when Mary found herself unable to control Aaron’s wild behavior (which included attempting to run away with “a very bad girl” and forging store orders in Mary’s name). After his last enrollment at Moor’s, Aaron ran away to sea. He had returned to Mohegan by November 1768, and at age 18, he married Ann Robin. Aaron died in 1771, leaving a son also named Aaron. Samson periodically entertained the idea of apprenticing Aaron to a master, but never seems to have done so. One letter written by Aaron survives: an epistle to Joseph Johnson, another young Mohegan who studied at Moor’s.

Sources

Brooks, Joanna. The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Leadership and Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Native America. Oxford 2006. Love, Deloss. Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England. Pilgrim Press 1899. Richardson, Leon. An Indian Preacher in England. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press 1933.